Magnetic topology and surface differential rotation on the K1 subgiant of the RS CVn system HR 1099

We present here spectropolarimetric observations of the RS CVn system HR 1099 (V711 Tau) secured from 1998 February to 2002 January with the spectropolarimeter MuSiCoS at the Telescope Bernard Lyot (Observatoire du Pic du Midi, France). We apply Zeeman-Doppler Imaging and reconstruct brightness and magnetic surface topologies of the K1 primary subgiant of the system, at five different epochs. We confirm the presence of large, axisymmetric regions where the magnetic field is mainly azimuthal, providing further support to the hypothesis that dynamo processes may be distributed throughout the whole convective zone in this star. We study the short-term evolution of surface structures from a comparison of our images with observations secured at close-by epochs by Donati et al. (2003) at the Anglo-Australian Telescope. We conclude that the small-scale brightness and magnetic patterns undergo major changes within a timescale of 4 to 6 weeks, while the largest structures remain stable over several years. We report the detection of a weak surface differential rotation (both from brightness and magnetic tracers) indicating that the equator rotates faster than the pole with a difference in rotation rate between the pole and the equator about 4 times smaller than that of the Sun. This result suggests that tidal forces also impact the global dynamic equilibrium of convective zones in cool active stars.Comment: accepted by MNRA

Components Qualification for a Possible use in the Mu2e Calorimeter Waveform Digitizers

The Mu2e experiment at Fermilab searches for the charged flavor violating conversion of a muon into an electron in the Coulomb field of a nucleus. The detector consists of a straw tube tracker and a CSI crystal electromagnetic calorimeter, both housed in a superconducting solenoid. Both the front-end and the digital electronics, located inside the cryostat, will be operated in vacuum under a 1 T magnetic field, having to sustain the high flux of neutrons and ionizing particles coming from the muons stopping target. These harsh experimental conditions make the design of the calorimeter waveform digitizer quite challenging. All the selected commercial devices must be tested individually and qualified for radiation hardness and operation in high magnetic field. At the moment the expected particles flux and spectra at the digitizers location are not completely simulated and we are using initial rough estimates to select the components for the first prototype. We are gaining experience in the qualification procedures using the selected components but the choice will be frozen only when dose and neutron flux simulations will be completed. The experimental results of the first qualification campaign are presented.Comment: TWEPP 2016 - Topical Workshop on Electronics for Particle Physics, 26-30 September 2016, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT

Routine immunofluorescent and histochemical analysis of bone marrow involvement of lymphoma/leukaemia: the use of cryostat sections.

Enzyme histochemical and immunohistological (immuno-fluorescence and -peroxidase) techniques have been routinely used for investigating over 70 normal and pathological bone marrow samples. This recently standardized diagnostic procedure is very quick and can be performed in a few hours. In 6 cases the clinical diagnosis of leukaemia/lymphoma has become apparent only after the immunohistological analysis of the bone marrow. In 6 other cases the information about the staging of B cell malignancies was superior in the frozen biopsies to the paraffin embedded preparations. Amongst many other features the monoclonality of B CLL/lymphomas, the special features of B CLL infiltrates (RFA-1+, Leu-1+, HLA-DR+, SmIg+), follicular lymphoma deposits (containing follicular dendritic cells) and non-T, non-B acute lymphoblastic leukaemic blasts (terminal transferase+, HLA-DR+) as well as the sometimes conspicuous presence of infiltrating normal T cells could be clearly and reproducibly demonstrated

A robust ransac-based planet radius estimation for onboard visual based navigation

Individual spacecraft manual navigation by human operators from ground station is expected to be an emerging problem as the number of spacecraft for space exploration increases. Hence, as an attempt to reduce the burden to control multiple spacecraft, future missions will employ smart spacecraft able to navigate and operate autonomously. Recently, image-based optical navigation systems have proved to be promising solutions for inexpensive autonomous navigation. In this paper, we propose a robust image processing pipeline for estimating the center and radius of planets and moons in an image taken by an on-board camera. Our custom image pre-processing pipeline is tailored for resource-constrained applications, as it features a computationally simple processing flow with a limited memory footprint. The core of the proposed pipeline is a best-fitting model based on the RANSAC algorithm that is able to handle images corrupted with Gaussian noise, image distortions, and frame drops. We report processing time, pixel-level error of estimated body center and radius and the effect of noise on estimated body parameters for a dataset of synthetic images

CloudScout: A deep neural network for on-board cloud detection on hyperspectral images

The increasing demand for high-resolution hyperspectral images from nano and microsatellites conflicts with the strict bandwidth constraints for downlink transmission. A possible approach to mitigate this problem consists in reducing the amount of data to transmit to ground through on-board processing of hyperspectral images. In this paper, we propose a custom Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) deployed for a nanosatellite payload to select images eligible for transmission to ground, called CloudScout. The latter is installed on the Hyperscout-2, in the frame of the Phisat-1 ESA mission, which exploits a hyperspectral camera to classify cloud-covered images and clear ones. The images transmitted to ground are those that present less than 70% of cloudiness in a frame. We train and test the network against an extracted dataset from the Sentinel-2 mission, which was appropriately pre-processed to emulate the Hyperscout-2 hyperspectral sensor. On the test set we achieve 92% of accuracy with 1% of False Positives (FP). The Phisat-1 mission will start in 2020 and will operate for about 6 months. It represents the first in-orbit demonstration of Deep Neural Network (DNN) for data processing on the edge. The innovation aspect of our work concerns not only cloud detection but in general low power, low latency, and embedded applications. Our work should enable a new era of edge applications and enhance remote sensing applications directly on-board satellite

Discovery of the first tau Sco analogues: HD 66665 and HD 63425

The B0.2 V magnetic star tau Sco stands out from the larger population of massive OB stars due to its high X-ray activity, peculiar wind diagnostics and highly complex magnetic field. This paper presents the discovery of the first two tau Sco analogues - HD 66665 and HD 63425, identified by the striking similarity of their UV spectra to that of tau Sco. ESPaDOnS spectropolarimetric observations were secured by the Magnetism in Massive Stars CFHT Large Program, in order to characterize the stellar and magnetic properties of these stars. CMFGEN modelling of optical ESPaDOnS spectra and archived IUE UV spectra showed that these stars have stellar parameters similar to those of tau Sco. A magnetic field of similar surface strength is found on both stars, reinforcing the connection between the presence of a magnetic field and wind peculiarities. However, additional phase-resolved observations will be required in order to assess the potential complexity of the magnetic fields, and verify if the wind anomalies are linked to this property.Comment: 6 pages, 2 tables, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. The definitive version will be available at www.blackwel-synergy.co

Vortex and half-vortex dynamics in a spinor quantum fluid of interacting polaritons

Spinorial or multi-component Bose-Einstein condensates may sustain fractional quanta of circulation, vorticant topological excitations with half integer windings of phase and polarization. Matter-light quantum fluids, such as microcavity polaritons, represent a unique test bed for realising strongly interacting and out-of-equilibrium condensates. The direct access to the phase of their wavefunction enables us to pursue the quest of whether half vortices ---rather than full integer vortices--- are the fundamental topological excitations of a spinor polariton fluid. Here, we are able to directly generate by resonant pulsed excitations, a polariton fluid carrying either the half or full vortex states as initial condition, and to follow their coherent evolution using ultrafast holography. Surprisingly we observe a rich phenomenology that shows a stable evolution of a phase singularity in a single component as well as in the full vortex state, spiraling, splitting and branching of the initial cores under different regimes and the proliferation of many vortex anti-vortex pairs in self generated circular ripples. This allows us to devise the interplay of nonlinearity and sample disorder in shaping the fluid and driving the phase singularities dynamicsComment: New version complete with revised modelization, discussion and added material. 8 pages, 7 figures. Supplementary videos: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B0QCllnLqdyBfmc2ai0yVF9fa2g2VnZodGUwemVkLThBb3BoOVRKRDJMS2dUdjlZdkRTQk