Logical Reduction of Metarules

International audienceMany forms of inductive logic programming (ILP) use metarules, second-order Horn clauses, to define the structure of learnable programs and thus the hypothesis space. Deciding which metarules to use for a given learning task is a major open problem and is a trade-off between efficiency and expressivity: the hypothesis space grows given more metarules, so we wish to use fewer metarules, but if we use too few metarules then we lose expressivity. In this paper, we study whether fragments of metarules can be logically reduced to minimal finite subsets. We consider two traditional forms of logical reduction: subsumption and entailment. We also consider a new reduction technique called derivation reduction, which is based on SLD-resolution. We compute reduced sets of metarules for fragments relevant to ILP and theoretically show whether these reduced sets are reductions for more general infinite fragments. We experimentally compare learning with reduced sets of metarules on three domains: Michalski trains, string transformations, and game rules. In general, derivation reduced sets of metarules outperform subsumption and entailment reduced sets, both in terms of predictive accuracies and learning times

Environmental effects on star formation in dwarf galaxies and star clusters

We develop a simple analytical criterion to investigate the role of the environment on the onset of star formation. We will consider the main external agents that influence the star formation (i.e. ram pressure, tidal interaction, Rayleigh-Taylor and Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities) in a spherical galaxy moving through an external environment. The theoretical framework developed here has direct applications to the cases of dwarf galaxies in galaxy clusters and dwarf galaxies orbiting our Milky Way system, as well as any primordial gas-rich cluster of stars orbiting within its host galaxy. We develop an analytic formalism to solve the fluid dynamics equations in a non-inertial reference frame mapped with spherical coordinates. The two-fluids instability at the interface between a stellar system and its surrounding hotter and less dense environment is related to the star formation processes through a set of differential equations. The solution presented here is quite general, allowing us to investigate most kinds of orbits allowed in a gravitationally bound system of stars in interaction with a major massive companion. We present an analytical criterion to elucidate the dependence of star formation in a spherical stellar system (as a dwarf galaxy or a globular cluster) on its surrounding environment useful in theoretical interpretations of numerical results as well as observational applications. We show how spherical coordinates naturally enlighten the interpretation of the two-fluids instability in a geometry that directly applies to astrophysical case. This criterion predicts the threshold value for the onset of star formation in a mass vs. size space for any orbit of interest. Moreover, we show for the first time the theoretical dependencies of the different instability phenomena acting on a system in a fully analytical way.Comment: ACCEPTED in A&A the 09/09/2014. Changes from ver 1: the non-inertial linear-response theory for gas instabilities in spherical coordinates is moved to the Appenidx and will be available only on-lin

A Detection of an Anti-correlated Hard X-ray Lag in AM Herculis

Context {Earlier cross-correlation studies for AM Her were performed in various energy range from optical to X-ray and suggested that it mostly shows a high level of correlation but on occasion it shows a low level of correlation or uncorrelation.} Aims {To investigate the degree of correlation between soft (2-4 keV) and hard (9-20 keV) X-rays, we perform the cross-correlation study of the X-ray data sets of AM Her obtained with {\it RXTE}.} Methods {We cross-correlate the background-subtracted soft and hard X-ray light curves using the XRONOS program crosscor and fit a model to the obtained cross-correlation functions.} Results {We detect a hard X-ray lag of $192\pm33$ s in a specific section of energy-dependent light curve, where the soft X-ray (2-4 keV) intensity decreases but the hard X-ray (9-20 keV) intensity increases. From a spectral analysis, we find that the X-ray emission temperature increases during the anti-correlated intensity variation. In two other observations, the cross-correlation functions show a low level of correlation, which is consistent with the earlier results performed in a different energy range.} Conclusions {We report a detection of an anti-correlated hard X-ray lag of $\sim$190 s from the proto-type polar AM Her. The hard X-ray lag is detected for the first time in the given energy range, and it is the longest lag among those reported in magnetic cataclysmic variables. We discuss the implications of our findings regarding the origin of the hard X-ray lag and the anti-correlated intensity variation.}Comment: Accepted in A&A, 4 page

Stellar Motion around Spiral Arms: Gaia Mock Data

We compare the stellar motion around a spiral arm created in two different scenarios, transient/co-rotating spiral arms and density-wave-like spiral arms. We generate Gaia mock data from snapshots of the simulations following these two scenarios using our stellar population code, SNAPDRAGONS, which takes into account dust extinction and the expected Gaia errors. We compare the observed rotation velocity around a spiral arm similar in position to the Perseus arm, and find that there is a clear difference in the velocity features around the spiral arm between the co-rotating spiral arm and the density-wave-like spiral arm. Our result demonstrates that the volume and accuracy of the Gaia data are sufficient to clearly distinguish these two scenarios of the spiral arms.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, to appear in the proceedings of "The Milky Way Unravelled by Gaia: GREAT Science from the Gaia Data Releases", Barcelona, 1-5 December 2014, eds. N. Walton, F. Figueras, C. Soubira

Gas and Stellar Motions and Observational Signatures of Co-Rotating Spiral Arms

We have observed a snapshot of our N-body/Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics simulation of a Milky Way-sized barred spiral galaxy in a similar way to how we can observe the Milky Way. The simulated galaxy shows a co-rotating spiral arm, i.e. the spiral arm rotates with the same speed as the circular speed. We observed the rotation and radial velocities of the gas and stars as a function of the distance from our assumed location of the observer at the three lines of sight on the disc plane, (l, b) = (90, 0), (120, 0) and (150,0) deg. We find that the stars tend to rotate slower (faster) behind (at the front of) the spiral arm and move outward (inward), because of the radial migration. However, because of their epicycle motion, we see a variation of rotation and radial velocities around the spiral arm. On the other hand, the cold gas component shows a clearer trend of rotating slower (faster) and moving outward (inward) behind (at the front of) the spiral arm, because of the radial migration. We have compared the results with the velocity of the maser sources from Reid et al. (2014), and find that the observational data show a similar trend in the rotation velocity around the expected position of the spiral arm at l = 120 deg. We also compared the distribution of the radial velocity from the local standard of the rest, V_LSR, with the APOGEE data at l = 90 deg as an example.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

The stellar kinematics of co-rotating spiral arms in Gaia mock observations

We have observed an N-body/Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics simulation of a Milky Way like barred spiral galaxy. We present a simple method that samples N-body model particles into mock Gaia stellar observations and takes into account stellar populations, dust extinction and Gaia's science performance estimates. We examine the kinematics around a nearby spiral arm at a similar position to the Perseus arm at three lines of sight in the disc plane; (l,b)=(90,0), (120,0) and (150,0) degrees. We find that the structure of the peculiar kinematics around the co-rotating spiral arm, which is found in Kawata et al. (2014b), is still visible in the observational data expected to be produced by Gaia despite the dust extinction and expected observational errors of Gaia. These observable kinematic signatures will enable testing whether the Perseus arm of the Milky Way is similar to the co-rotating spiral arms commonly seen in N-body simulations.Comment: 9 pages 4 Figures, submitted to MNRAS 22nd Dec 201

EUVE J0425.6-5714: A Newly Discovered AM Herculis Star

We detected a new AM Her star serendipitously in a 25 day observation with the EUVE satellite. A coherent period of 85.82 min is present in the EUVE Deep Survey imager light curve of this source. A spectroscopic identification is made with a 19th magnitude blue star that has H and He emission lines, and broad cyclotron humps typical of a magnetic cataclysmic variable. A lower limit to the polar magnetic field of 46 MG is estimated from the spacing of the cyclotron harmonics. EUVE J0425.6-5714 is also detected in archival ROSAT HRI observations spanning two months, and its stable and highly structured light curve permits us to fit a coherent ephemeris linking the ROSAT and EUVE data over a 1.3 yr gap. The derived period is 85.82107 +/- 0.00020 min, and the ephemeris should be accurate to 0.1 cycles until the year 2005. A narrow but partial X-ray eclipse suggests that this object belongs to the group of Am Her stars whose viewing geometry is such that the accretion stream periodically occults the soft X-ray emitting accretion spot on the surface of the white dwarf. A non-detection of hard X-rays from ASCA observations that are contemporaneous with the ROSAT HRI shows that the soft X-rays must dominate by at least an order of magnitude, which is consistent with a known trend among AM Her stars with large magnetic field. This object should not be confused with the Seyfert galaxy 1H 0419-577 (= LB 1727), another X-ray/EUV source which lies only 4' away, and was the principal target of these monitoring observations.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, to appear in PASP, Dec. 1998 issu