Neural NILM: Deep Neural Networks Applied to Energy Disaggregation

Energy disaggregation estimates appliance-by-appliance electricity consumption from a single meter that measures the whole home's electricity demand. Recently, deep neural networks have driven remarkable improvements in classification performance in neighbouring machine learning fields such as image classification and automatic speech recognition. In this paper, we adapt three deep neural network architectures to energy disaggregation: 1) a form of recurrent neural network called `long short-term memory' (LSTM); 2) denoising autoencoders; and 3) a network which regresses the start time, end time and average power demand of each appliance activation. We use seven metrics to test the performance of these algorithms on real aggregate power data from five appliances. Tests are performed against a house not seen during training and against houses seen during training. We find that all three neural nets achieve better F1 scores (averaged over all five appliances) than either combinatorial optimisation or factorial hidden Markov models and that our neural net algorithms generalise well to an unseen house.Comment: To appear in ACM BuildSys'15, November 4--5, 2015, Seou

Discovery of a Transiting Planet Near the Snow-Line

In most theories of planet formation, the snow-line represents a boundary between the emergence of the interior rocky planets and the exterior ice giants. The wide separation of the snow-line makes the discovery of transiting worlds challenging, yet transits would allow for detailed subsequent characterization. We present the discovery of Kepler-421b, a Uranus-sized exoplanet transiting a G9/K0 dwarf once every 704.2 days in a near-circular orbit. Using public Kepler photometry, we demonstrate that the two observed transits can be uniquely attributed to the 704.2 day period. Detailed light curve analysis with BLENDER validates the planetary nature of Kepler-421b to >4 sigmas confidence. Kepler-421b receives the same insolation as a body at ~2AU in the Solar System and for a Uranian albedo would have an effective temperature of ~180K. Using a time-dependent model for the protoplanetary disk, we estimate that Kepler-421b's present semi-major axis was beyond the snow-line after ~3Myr, indicating that Kepler-421b may have formed at its observed location.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures, 3 tables. Accepted in Ap

Kinks Dynamics in One-Dimensional Coupled Map Lattices

We examine the problem of the dynamics of interfaces in a one-dimensional space-time discrete dynamical system. Two different regimes are studied : the non-propagating and the propagating one. In the first case, after proving the existence of such solutions, we show how they can be described using Taylor expansions. The second situation deals with the assumption of a travelling wave to follow the kink propagation. Then a comparison with the corresponding continuous model is proposed. We find that these methods are useful in simple dynamical situations but their application to complex dynamical behaviour is not yet understood.Comment: 17pages, LaTex,3 fig available on cpt.univ-mrs.fr directory pub/preprints/94/dynamical-systems/94-P.307

Localization-delocalization transition of a reaction-diffusion front near a semipermeable wall

The A+B --> C reaction-diffusion process is studied in a system where the reagents are separated by a semipermeable wall. We use reaction-diffusion equations to describe the process and to derive a scaling description for the long-time behavior of the reaction front. Furthermore, we show that a critical localization-delocalization transition takes place as a control parameter which depends on the initial densities and on the diffusion constants is varied. The transition is between a reaction front of finite width that is localized at the wall and a front which is detached and moves away from the wall. At the critical point, the reaction front remains at the wall but its width diverges with time [as t^(1/6) in mean-field approximation].Comment: 7 pages, PS fil

Triple Reassortant H3N2 Influenza A Viruses, Canada, 2005

Since January 2005, H3N2 influenza viruses have been isolated from pigs and turkeys throughout Canada and from a swine farmer and pigs on the same farm in Ontario. These are human/classical swine/avian reassortants similar to viruses that emerged in US pigs in 1998 but with a distinct human-lineage neuraminidase gene

Observational Constraints on the Formation and Evolution of Binary Stars

We present a high spatial resolution UV to NIR survey of 44 young binary stars in Taurus with separations of 10-1000 AU. The primary results include: (1) The relative ages of binary star components are more similar than the relative ages of randomly paired single stars, supporting coeval formation. (2) Only one of the companion masses is substellar, and hence the apparent overabundance of T Tauri star companions relative to main-sequence star companions can not be explained by a wealth of substellar secondaries that would have been missed in main-sequence surveys. (3) Roughly 10% of T Tauri binary star components have very red NIR colors (K-L > 1.4) and unusually high mass accretion rates. This phenomenon does not appear to be restricted to binary systems, however, since a comparable fraction of single T Tauri stars exhibit the same properties. (4) Although the disk lifetimes of single stars are roughly equal to their stellar ages, the disk lifetimes of binary stars are an order of magnitude less than their ages. (5) The accretion rates for both single and binary T Tauri stars appear to be moderately mass dependent. (6) Although most classical T Tauri star binaries retain both a circumprimary and a circumsecondary disk, there are several systems with only a circumprimary disk. Together with the relative accretion rates, this suggests that circumprimary disks survive longer, on average, than circumsecondary disks. (7) The disk lifetimes, mass ratios, and relative accretion signatures of the closest binaries (10-100 AU) suggest that they are being replenished from a circumbinary reservoir with low angular momentum. Overall, these results support fragmentation as the dominant binary star formation mechanism.Comment: 67 pages including 11 figures, LaTeX2e, accepted for publication in Ap

Sigma-phase in Fe-Cr and Fe-V alloy systems and its physical properties

A review is presented on physical properties of the sigma-phase in Fe-Cr and Fe-V alloy systems as revealed both with experimental -- mostly with the Mossbauer spectroscopy -- and theoretical methods. In particular, the following questions relevant to the issue have been addressed: identification of sigma and determination of its structural properties, kinetics of alpha-to-sigma and sigma-to-alpha phase transformations, Debye temperature and Fe-partial phonon density of states, Curie temperature and magnetization, hyperfine fields, isomer shifts and electric field gradients.Comment: 26 pages, 23 figures and 83 reference

The JCMT Gould Belt Survey: Evidence for radiative heating in Serpens MWC 297 and its influence on local star formation

We present SCUBA-2 450micron and 850micron observations of the Serpens MWC 297 region, part of the JCMT Gould Belt Survey of nearby star-forming regions. Simulations suggest that radiative feedback influences the star-formation process and we investigate observational evidence for this by constructing temperature maps. Maps are derived from the ratio of SCUBA-2 fluxes and a two component model of the JCMT beam for a fixed dust opacity spectral index of beta = 1.8. Within 40 of the B1.5Ve Herbig star MWC 297, the submillimetre fluxes are contaminated by free-free emission with a spectral index of 1.03+-0.02, consistent with an ultra-compact HII region and polar winds/jets. Contamination accounts for 73+-5 per cent and 82+-4 per cent of peak flux at 450micron and 850micron respectively. The residual thermal disk of the star is almost undetectable at these wavelengths. Young Stellar Objects are confirmed where SCUBA-2 850micron clumps identified by the fellwalker algorithm coincide with Spitzer Gould Belt Survey detections. We identify 23 objects and use Tbol to classify nine YSOs with masses 0.09 to 5.1 Msun. We find two Class 0, one Class 0/I, three Class I and three Class II sources. The mean temperature is 15+-2K for the nine YSOs and 32+-4K for the 14 starless clumps. We observe a starless clump with an abnormally high mean temperature of 46+-2K and conclude that it is radiatively heated by the star MWC 297. Jeans stability provides evidence that radiative heating by the star MWC 297 may be suppressing clump collapse.Comment: 24 pages, 13 figures, 7 table

A Pan-STARRS 1 study of the relationship between wide binarity and planet occurrence in the Kepler field

The NASA Kepler mission has revolutionized time-domain astronomy and has massively expanded the number of known extrasolar planets. However, the effect of wide multiplicity on exoplanet occurrence has not been tested with this data set. We present a sample of 401 wide multiple systems containing at least one Kepler target star. Our method uses Pan- STARRS 1 and archival data to produce an accurate proper motion catalogue of the Kepler field. Combined with Pan-STARRS 1 SED fits and archival proper motions for bright stars, we use a newly developed probabilistic algorithm to identify likely wide binary pairs which are not chance associations. As byproducts of this we present stellar SED templates in the Pan-STARRS 1 photometric system and conversions from this system to Kepler magnitudes. We find that Kepler target stars in our binary sample with separations above 6 arcsec are no more or less likely to be identified as confirmed or candidate planet hosts than a weighted comparison sample of Kepler targets of similar brightness and spectral type. Therefore we find no evidence that binaries with projected separations greater than 3000 au affect the occurrence rate of planets with P <300 d around FGK stars.Peer reviewe

Centrally Condensed Collapse of Starless Cores

Models of self-gravitating gas in the early stages of pressure-free collapse are compared for initial states which are equilibrium layers, cylinders, and Bonnor-Ebert spheres. For each geometrical case the density profile has an inner region of shallow slope surrounded by an outer region of steep slope, and the profile shape during early collapse remains similar to the profile shape of the initial equilibrium. The two-slope density structure divides the spherical collapse history into a starless infall phase and a protostellar accretion phase. The similarity of density profiles implies that Bonnor-Ebert fits to observed column density maps may not distinguish spherical cores from oblate or prolate cores, and may not distinguish static cores from collapsing cores. The velocity profiles discriminate better than the density profiles between initial geometries and between collapse ages. The infall velocity generally has a subsonic maximum value, which is approximately equal to the initial velocity dispersion times the ratio of collapse age to central free-fall time. Observations of starless core line profiles constrain collapse models. Collapse from initial states which are strongly condensed and slightly prolate is consistent with infall asymmetry observed around starless cores, and is more consistent than collapse from initial states which are weakly condensed, and/or oblate. Spherical models match observed inward speeds 0.05-0.09 km/s over 0.1-0.2 pc, if the collapse has a typical age 0.3-0.5 free fall times, and if it began from a centrally condensed state which was not in stable equilibrium. In a collapsing core, optically thin line profiles should broaden and develop two-peak structure as seen in L1544.Comment: To appear in ApJ 10 April 2005, v623, 14 pr. pages, 6 figure