11,551 research outputs found
A low noise, high thermal stability, 0.1 K test facility for the Planck HFI bolometers
We are developing a facility which will be used to characterize the bolometric detectors for Planck, an ESA mission to investigate the Cosmic Microwave Background. The bolometers operate at 0.1 K, employing neutron-transmutation doped (NTD) Ge thermistors with resistances of several megohms to achieve NEPs~1×10^(–17) W Hz^(–1/2). Characterization of the intrinsic noise of the bolometers at frequencies as low as 0.010 Hz dictates a test apparatus thermal stability of 40 nK Hz^(–1/2) to that frequency. This temperature stability is achieved via a multi-stage isolation and control geometry with high resolution thermometry implemented with NTD Ge thermistors, JFET source followers, and dedicated lock-in amplifiers. The test facility accommodates 24 channels of differential signal readout, for measurement of bolometer V(I) characteristics and intrinsic noise. The test facility also provides for modulated radiation in the submillimeter band incident on the bolometers, for measurement of the optical speed-of-response; this illumination can be reduced below detectable limits without interrupting cryogenic operation. A commercial Oxford Instruments dilution refrigerator provides the cryogenic environment for the test facility
Muon g-2 through a flavor structure on soft SUSY terms
In this work we analyze the possibility to explain the muon anomalous
magnetic moment discrepancy within theory and experiment through lepton flavor
violation processes. We propose a flavor extended MSSM by considering a
hierarchical family structure for the trilinear scalar Soft-Supersymmetric
terms of the Lagranagian, present at the SUSY breaking scale. We obtain
analytical results for the rotation mass matrix, with the consequence of having
non-universal slepton masses and the possibility of leptonic flavour mixing.
The one-loop supersymmetric contributions to the leptonic flavour violating
process are calculated in the physical basis, with slepton
flavour mixed states, instead of using the well known Mass Insertion Method. We
present the regions in parameter space where the muon g-2 problem is either
entirely solved or partially reduced through the contribution of these flavor
violating processes.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures. Changes on version 3: In order to obtain the
complete result for muon g-2 in the limit of non-flavor violation we added
the terms given in the appendix. We redid the graphics and numerical analysis
including these changes. We also corrected some typos and changed the order
of figure
Low motivation and unawareness in small farmers as an obstacle for implementation of the EU pig welfare rules
Using semi-structured interviews, Croatian pig farmers and institutional stakeholders were asked about their intentions to improve pig welfare, future perspectives, opinions and communication efforts on the EU pig welfare directives. While full-time family farmers (FFF) and employees at farm enterprises (EFE) expressed interest in improving pig welfare on their farms as a prerequisite for increasing competitiveness in the future, part-time family farmers (PFF) were not interested in pig welfare because they did not want to increase productivity and feared for their existence. Communication between institutional stakeholders and FFF with more than ten sows is best stablished, whereas communication with EFE is more via private consultants and communication with PFF is lacking. As Croatia is today counting over 85% farms as production units with up to 10 sows covering 75% of whole pig production, these results represent considerably important indicators of necessity to approach this population of farmers
The Phase Diagram and Spectrum of Gauge-Fixed Abelian Lattice Gauge Theory
We consider a lattice discretization of a covariantly gauge-fixed abelian
gauge theory. The gauge fixing is part of the action defining the theory, and
we study the phase diagram in detail. As there is no BRST symmetry on the
lattice, counterterms are needed, and we construct those explicitly. We show
that the proper adjustment of these counterterms drives the theory to a new
type of phase transition, at which we recover a continuum theory of (free)
photons. We present both numerical and (one-loop) perturbative results, and
show that they are in good agreement near this phase transition. Since
perturbation theory plays an important role, it is important to choose a
discretization of the gauge-fixing action such that lattice perturbation theory
is valid. Indeed, we find numerical evidence that lattice actions not
satisfying this requirement do not lead to the desired continuum limit. While
we do not consider fermions here, we argue that our results, in combination
with previous work, provide very strong evidence that this new phase transition
can be used to define abelian lattice chiral gauge theories.Comment: 42 pages, 30 figure
Degree Landscapes in Scale-Free Networks
We generalize the degree-organizational view of real-world networks with
broad degree-distributions in a landscape analogue with mountains (high-degree
nodes) and valleys (low-degree nodes). For example, correlated degrees between
adjacent nodes corresponds to smooth landscapes (social networks), hierarchical
networks to one-mountain landscapes (the Internet), and degree-disassortative
networks without hierarchical features to rough landscapes with several
mountains. We also generate ridge landscapes to model networks organized under
constraints imposed by the space the networks are embedded in, associated to
spatial or, in molecular networks, to functional localization. To quantify the
topology, we here measure the widths of the mountains and the separation
between different mountains.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
Faster k-Medoids Clustering: Improving the PAM, CLARA, and CLARANS Algorithms
Clustering non-Euclidean data is difficult, and one of the most used
algorithms besides hierarchical clustering is the popular algorithm
Partitioning Around Medoids (PAM), also simply referred to as k-medoids. In
Euclidean geometry the mean-as used in k-means-is a good estimator for the
cluster center, but this does not hold for arbitrary dissimilarities. PAM uses
the medoid instead, the object with the smallest dissimilarity to all others in
the cluster. This notion of centrality can be used with any (dis-)similarity,
and thus is of high relevance to many domains such as biology that require the
use of Jaccard, Gower, or more complex distances.
A key issue with PAM is its high run time cost. We propose modifications to
the PAM algorithm to achieve an O(k)-fold speedup in the second SWAP phase of
the algorithm, but will still find the same results as the original PAM
algorithm. If we slightly relax the choice of swaps performed (at comparable
quality), we can further accelerate the algorithm by performing up to k swaps
in each iteration. With the substantially faster SWAP, we can now also explore
alternative strategies for choosing the initial medoids. We also show how the
CLARA and CLARANS algorithms benefit from these modifications. It can easily be
combined with earlier approaches to use PAM and CLARA on big data (some of
which use PAM as a subroutine, hence can immediately benefit from these
improvements), where the performance with high k becomes increasingly
important.
In experiments on real data with k=100, we observed a 200-fold speedup
compared to the original PAM SWAP algorithm, making PAM applicable to larger
data sets as long as we can afford to compute a distance matrix, and in
particular to higher k (at k=2, the new SWAP was only 1.5 times faster, as the
speedup is expected to increase with k)
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