4,116 research outputs found
Mitigating the effects of omission errors on area and area change estimates
Information on Earth's land surface and change over time has never been easier to obtain, but making informed decisions to manage land well necessitates that this information is accurate and precise. In recent years, due largely to the inevitability of classification errors in remote sensing-based maps and the marked effects of these errors on subsequent area estimates, sample-based area estimates of land cover and land change have increased in importance and use. Area estimation of land cover and change by sampling is often made more efficient by a priori knowledge of the study area to be analyzed (e.g., stratification). Satellite data, obtained free of cost for virtually all of Earth's land surface, provide an excellent source for constructing landscape stratifications in the form of maps. Errors of omission, defined as sample units observed as land change but mapped as a stable class, may introduce considerable uncertainty in parameter estimates obtained from the sample data (e.g., area estimates of land change). The effects of omission errors are exacerbated in situations where the area of intact forest is large relative to the area of forest change, a common situation in countries that seek results-based payments for reductions in deforestation and associated carbon emissions. The presence of omission errors in such situations can preclude the acquisition of statistically valid evidence of a reduction in deforestation, and thus prevent payments. International donors and countries concerned with mitigating the effects of climate change are looking for guidance on how to reduce the effects of omission errors on area estimates of land change. This article presents the underlying reasons for the effects of omission errors on area estimates, case studies highlighting real-world examples of these effects, and proposes potential solutions. Practicable approaches to efficiently splitting large stable strata are presented that may reduce the effects of omission errors and immediately improve the quality of estimates. However, more research is needed before further recommendations can be provided on how to contain, mitigate and potentially eliminate the effects of omissions errors. © 2019 Elsevier Inc.This research was funded by support from the NASA Carbon Monitoring System ( NNX16AP26G ) and USGS/SilvaCarbon to Boston University (PI Pontus Olofsson). M.J. Sanz was supported by the Spanish Government through MarĂa de Maeztu excellence accreditation MDM-2017-0714
Dimension in a Radiative Stellar Atmosphere
Dimensional scales are examined in an extended 3+1 Vaidya atmosphere
surrounding a Schwarzschild source. At one scale, the Vaidya null fluid
vanishes and the spacetime contains only a single spherical 2-surface. Both of
these behaviors can be addressed by including higher dimensions in the
spacetime metric.Comment: to appear in Gen. Rel. Gra
Age truncation and portfolio effects in Puget Sound Pacific herring
Forage fish undergo dramatic changes in abundance through time. Long-term fluctuations, which have historically been attributed to changes in recruitment, may also be due to changes in adult mortality. Pacific herring, a lightly exploited forage fish in Puget Sound, WA, have exhibited shifts in age structure and decreases in spawning biomass during the past 30 years. Here, we investigate changes in adult mortality as a potential explanation for these shifts. Using a hierarchical, age-structured population model, we indicate that adult natural mortality for Puget Sound Pacific herring has increased since 1973. We find that natural mortality has increased for every age class of adult (age 3+), especially age 4 fish, whose estimated mortality has doubled over the survey time period (from M=0.84 to M=1.76). We demonstrate that long-term shifts in mortality explain changes in age structure, and may explain biomass declines and failure to reach management thresholds for some spawning sites in Puget Sound. Temporal shifts in natural adult mortality could have negative implications for herring and herring predators. For predators, these implications include a reduction in the stability of the herring resource
Traversable Wormholes in Geometries of Charged Shells
We construct a static axisymmetric wormhole from the gravitational field of
two charged shells which are kept in equilibrium by their electromagnetic
repulsion. For large separations the exterior tends to the Majumdar-Papapetrou
spacetime of two charged particles. The interior of the wormhole is a
Reissner-Nordstr\"om black hole matching to the two shells. The wormhole is
traversable and connects to the same asymptotics without violation of energy
conditions. However, every point in the Majumdar-Papapetrou region lies on a
closed timelike curve.Comment: 9 pages, LaTeX, 1 figur
Inference with interference between units in an fMRI experiment of motor inhibition
An experimental unit is an opportunity to randomly apply or withhold a
treatment. There is interference between units if the application of the
treatment to one unit may also affect other units. In cognitive neuroscience, a
common form of experiment presents a sequence of stimuli or requests for
cognitive activity at random to each experimental subject and measures
biological aspects of brain activity that follow these requests. Each subject
is then many experimental units, and interference between units within an
experimental subject is likely, in part because the stimuli follow one another
quickly and in part because human subjects learn or become experienced or
primed or bored as the experiment proceeds. We use a recent fMRI experiment
concerned with the inhibition of motor activity to illustrate and further
develop recently proposed methodology for inference in the presence of
interference. A simulation evaluates the power of competing procedures.Comment: Published by Journal of the American Statistical Association at
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01621459.2012.655954 . R package
cin (Causal Inference for Neuroscience) implementing the proposed method is
freely available on CRAN at https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=ci
Binary black holes in circular orbits. II. Numerical methods and first results
We present the first results from a new method for computing spacetimes
representing corotating binary black holes in circular orbits. The method is
based on the assumption of exact equilibrium. It uses the standard 3+1
decomposition of Einstein equations and conformal flatness approximation for
the 3-metric. Contrary to previous numerical approaches to this problem, we do
not solve only the constraint equations but rather a set of five equations for
the lapse function, the conformal factor and the shift vector. The orbital
velocity is unambiguously determined by imposing that, at infinity, the metric
behaves like the Schwarzschild one, a requirement which is equivalent to the
virial theorem. The numerical scheme has been implemented using multi-domain
spectral methods and passed numerous tests. A sequence of corotating black
holes of equal mass is calculated. Defining the sequence by requiring that the
ADM mass decrease is equal to the angular momentum decrease multiplied by the
orbital angular velocity, it is found that the area of the apparent horizons is
constant along the sequence. We also find a turning point in the ADM mass and
angular momentum curves, which may be interpreted as an innermost stable
circular orbit (ISCO). The values of the global quantities at the ISCO,
especially the orbital velocity, are in much better agreement with those from
third post-Newtonian calculations than with those resulting from previous
numerical approaches.Comment: 27 pages, 20 PostScript figures, improved presentation of the
regularization procedure for the shift vector, new section devoted to the
check of the momentum constraint, references added + minor corrections,
accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Boron Phosphate and Aluminum Phosphate Aerogels
Anhydrous sol-gel condensation of triethyl phosphate [(CH3CH2O)3PO] with boron trichloride (BCL3 ) or triethyl aluminum [(CH3CH2 ) 3A1] in organic solvents, led to formation of metallophosphate gels. The pore fluid of the gels was removed under supercritical conditions in a pressurized vessel to form aerogels. The aerogels were then calcined at progressively higher temperatures to produce high surface area phosphates. Since the initial gel reagent mixtures contained several NMR active nuclei, the condensation chemistry prior to the gel point was monitored by solution nB NMR. The surface areas, distribution of pore sizes, and total pore volumes of the aerogel products were determined using nitrogen gas physisorption methods
Generalized Vaidya Solutions
A large family of solutions, representing, in general, spherically symmetric
Type II fluid, is presented, which includes most of the known solutions to the
Einstein field equations, such as, the monopole-de Sitter-charged Vaidya ones.Comment: Gen. Relativ. Grav. 31 (1), 107-114 (1999
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