Future of technology in NERC data models and informatics: outputs from InformaTEC

The ‘Big Data’ paradigm will revolutionize understanding of the natural environment. New technologies are revolutionizing our ability to measure, model, understand and make robust, evidence-based predictions at increasingly spatial and temporal resolutions. Realising this potential will require reengineering of environmental sciences in the observation infrastructure, in data management and processing, and in the culture of environmental sciences. Collectively these will deliver vibrant, integrated research communities. Manipulating such enormous data streams requires a new data infrastructure underpinned by four technologies. Pervasive environmental sensor networks will continuously measure suites of environmental parameters and transmit these wirelessly to scientists, regulators and modellers in real time. Integrated environmental modelling will process data, streamed from sensor networks, using components synthesizing natural systems developed by domain experts, each of which will be linked at runtime to other expert developed components. Semantic interoperability will facilitate cross-disciplinary working, as has already happened within the biosciences so that data items can be exchanged with unambiguous, shared meaning. Cloud computing will revolutionize data processing allowing scalable computing close to observations on an as-needed basis. Leveraging the full potential of these technologies requires a major culture change in the environmental sciences where national and continental scale observatories of sensors networks become basic scientific tools

Geological Map Database : a Practitioner’s Guide to Delivering the Information

Geological map databases are key to the future work of geological surveys around the world. The British Geological Survey has invested heavily in re-engineering the information processes around geological mapping. This paper gives a high-level overview of the main components of the resulting system

Science information strategy : stake holder consultation phase 1 report, public version : February 2011

A stakeholder consultation was undertaken in autumn 2010. The main objectives of the study were: To identify how NERC could improve the services and service levels of its Environmental Data Centres; and To understand customer expectations and plan how to improve the management of those expectations. The responses provide a baseline of the current stakeholder experience of using the NERC data centres and the attitude of the community towards them. Subsequent consultations will allow us to moniotor the impact of the Science Information Strategy as it is implemented. NERC were aided in the design, implementation and analysis of the consultation by LISU (Loughborough University). The dataset created during this project is very rich and diverse and should be studied further during the second phase of the Science Information Strategy Implementation. This report, and its companion report by Loughborough University staff, should be regarded as initial findings, however, a number of principle conclusions can be drawn, and these are: 1. The study has met its goal of finding the views of existing and potential users. The demographics clearly indicate the success. We have a good spread across the major sectors and research areas. 2. There is a high level of stakeholder satisfaction with the services from the data centres. 86% of respondents are either “Very Satisfied” or “Fairly Satisfied” with using the data centres; whilst 75% of respondents depositing data are either “Very Satisfied” or “Fairly Satisfied”. There is clearly some work to be done in improving customer satisfaction, especially with the process of depositing data, but the overall satisfaction rates are very gratifying. 3. The Polar Data Centre appears to be under performing, when compared to the other data centres. This needs to be explored further. 4. The profile of the data centres needs to be raised. There is clearly considerable ignorance about the data centres. A disappointing 22% of those interviewed by telephone said they would consult NERC data centres in the first instance. 5. High quality metadata is valued by the data centre users. 6. The barriers to use of NERC data centres need to be further investigated. Some of these have been addressed in the NERC Data Policy and this message needs to be communicated clearly to users. Others need more work and should be explored in the later phase of the Science Information Strategy Implementation. 7. The NERC data centres have many users who require more than just digital data. For example 26% of depositors are depositing physical samples or collections. 8. Ease of use of the systems developed by the data centres is commented on several times by users. During the telephone interviews more users listed improved functionality as the one thing they would change. 9. The specialist knowledge provided by the data centre staff is clearly important to some stakeholders and not to others. It is possible to speculate that academics don’t value this service while non‐specialists see its value. However, this area needs further investigation to discover what is really required by different stakeholder communities and what is legitimate for NERC to actively support. 10. Users are looking for data that we do not hold. We need to publish clear collections policies for the data centres, so that users know what we do hold and what we don’t hold

Search for intermediate mass black hole binaries in the first observing run of Advanced LIGO

International audienceDuring their first observational run, the two Advanced LIGO detectors attained an unprecedented sensitivity, resulting in the first direct detections of gravitational-wave signals produced by stellar-mass binary black hole systems. This paper reports on an all-sky search for gravitational waves (GWs) from merging intermediate mass black hole binaries (IMBHBs). The combined results from two independent search techniques were used in this study: the first employs a matched-filter algorithm that uses a bank of filters covering the GW signal parameter space, while the second is a generic search for GW transients (bursts). No GWs from IMBHBs were detected; therefore, we constrain the rate of several classes of IMBHB mergers. The most stringent limit is obtained for black holes of individual mass 100  M⊙, with spins aligned with the binary orbital angular momentum. For such systems, the merger rate is constrained to be less than 0.93  Gpc−3 yr−1 in comoving units at the 90% confidence level, an improvement of nearly 2 orders of magnitude over previous upper limits

First low-frequency Einstein@Home all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves in Advanced LIGO data

International audienceWe report results of a deep all-sky search for periodic gravitational waves from isolated neutron stars in data from the first Advanced LIGO observing run. This search investigates the low frequency range of Advanced LIGO data, between 20 and 100 Hz, much of which was not explored in initial LIGO. The search was made possible by the computing power provided by the volunteers of the Einstein@Home project. We find no significant signal candidate and set the most stringent upper limits to date on the amplitude of gravitational wave signals from the target population, corresponding to a sensitivity depth of 48.7  [1/Hz]. At the frequency of best strain sensitivity, near 100 Hz, we set 90% confidence upper limits of 1.8×10-25. At the low end of our frequency range, 20 Hz, we achieve upper limits of 3.9×10-24. At 55 Hz we can exclude sources with ellipticities greater than 10-5 within 100 pc of Earth with fiducial value of the principal moment of inertia of 1038  kg m2

First narrow-band search for continuous gravitational waves from known pulsars in advanced detector data

International audienceSpinning neutron stars asymmetric with respect to their rotation axis are potential sources of continuous gravitational waves for ground-based interferometric detectors. In the case of known pulsars a fully coherent search, based on matched filtering, which uses the position and rotational parameters obtained from electromagnetic observations, can be carried out. Matched filtering maximizes the signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio, but a large sensitivity loss is expected in case of even a very small mismatch between the assumed and the true signal parameters. For this reason, narrow-band analysis methods have been developed, allowing a fully coherent search for gravitational waves from known pulsars over a fraction of a hertz and several spin-down values. In this paper we describe a narrow-band search of 11 pulsars using data from Advanced LIGO’s first observing run. Although we have found several initial outliers, further studies show no significant evidence for the presence of a gravitational wave signal. Finally, we have placed upper limits on the signal strain amplitude lower than the spin-down limit for 5 of the 11 targets over the bands searched; in the case of J1813-1749 the spin-down limit has been beaten for the first time. For an additional 3 targets, the median upper limit across the search bands is below the spin-down limit. This is the most sensitive narrow-band search for continuous gravitational waves carried out so far

Initial invasive or conservative strategy for stable coronary disease

BACKGROUND Among patients with stable coronary disease and moderate or severe ischemia, whether clinical outcomes are better in those who receive an invasive intervention plus medical therapy than in those who receive medical therapy alone is uncertain. METHODS We randomly assigned 5179 patients with moderate or severe ischemia to an initial invasive strategy (angiography and revascularization when feasible) and medical therapy or to an initial conservative strategy of medical therapy alone and angiography if medical therapy failed. The primary outcome was a composite of death from cardiovascular causes, myocardial infarction, or hospitalization for unstable angina, heart failure, or resuscitated cardiac arrest. A key secondary outcome was death from cardiovascular causes or myocardial infarction. RESULTS Over a median of 3.2 years, 318 primary outcome events occurred in the invasive-strategy group and 352 occurred in the conservative-strategy group. At 6 months, the cumulative event rate was 5.3% in the invasive-strategy group and 3.4% in the conservative-strategy group (difference, 1.9 percentage points; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.8 to 3.0); at 5 years, the cumulative event rate was 16.4% and 18.2%, respectively (difference, 121.8 percentage points; 95% CI, 124.7 to 1.0). Results were similar with respect to the key secondary outcome. The incidence of the primary outcome was sensitive to the definition of myocardial infarction; a secondary analysis yielded more procedural myocardial infarctions of uncertain clinical importance. There were 145 deaths in the invasive-strategy group and 144 deaths in the conservative-strategy group (hazard ratio, 1.05; 95% CI, 0.83 to 1.32). CONCLUSIONS Among patients with stable coronary disease and moderate or severe ischemia, we did not find evidence that an initial invasive strategy, as compared with an initial conservative strategy, reduced the risk of ischemic cardiovascular events or death from any cause over a median of 3.2 years. The trial findings were sensitive to the definition of myocardial infarction that was used