Improvement of indoor VLC network downlink scheduling and resource allocation

Indoor visible light communications (VLC) combines illumination and communication by utilizing the high-modulation-speed of LEDs. VLC is anticipated to be complementary to radio frequency communications and an important part of next generation heterogeneous networks. In order to make the maximum use of VLC technology in a networking environment, we need to expand existing research from studies of traditional point-to-point links to encompass scheduling and resource allocation related to multi-user scenarios. This work aims to maximize the downlink throughput of an indoor VLC network, while taking both user fairness and time latency into consideration. Inter-user interference is eliminated by appropriately allocating LEDs to users with the aid of graph theory. A three-term priority factor model is derived and is shown to improve the throughput performance of the network scheduling scheme over those previously reported. Simulations of VLC downlink scheduling have been performed under proportional fairness scheduling principles where our newly formulated priority factor model has been applied. The downlink throughput is improved by 19.6% compared to previous two-term priority models, while achieving similar fairness and latency performance. When the number of users grows larger, the three-term priority model indicates an improvement in Fairness performance compared to two-term priority model scheduling

Non-LTE analysis of copper abundances for the two distinct halo populations in the solar neighborhood

Two distinct halo populations were found in the solar neighborhood by a series of works. They can be clearly separated by [alpha\Fe] and several other elemental abundance ratios including [Cu/Fe]. Very recently, a non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (non-LTE) study revealed that relatively large departures exist between LTE and non-LTE results in copper abundance analysis. We aim to derive the copper abundances for the stars from the sample of Nissen et al (2010) with both LTE and non-LTE calculations. Based on our results, we study the non-LTE effects of copper and investigate whether the high-alpha population can still be distinguished from the low-alpha population in the non-LTE [Cu/Fe] results. Our differential abundance ratios are derived from the high-resolution spectra collected from VLT/UVES and NOT/FIES spectrographs. Applying the MAFAGS opacity sampling atmospheric models and spectrum synthesis method, we derive the non-LTE copper abundances based on the new atomic model with current atomic data obtained from both laboratory and theoretical calculations. The copper abundances determined from non-LTE calculations are increased by 0.01 to 0.2 dex depending on the stellar parameters compared with the LTE results. The non-LTE [Cu/Fe] trend is much flatter than the LTE one in the metallicity range -1.6<[Fe/H]<-0.8. Taking non-LTE effects into consideration, the high- and low-alpha stars still show distinguishable copper abundances, which appear even more clear in a diagram of non-LTE [Cu/Fe] versus [Fe/H]. The non-LTE effects are strong for copper, especially in metal-poor stars. Our results confirmed that there are two distinct halo populations in the solar neighborhood. The dichotomy in copper abundance is a peculiar feature of each population, suggesting that they formed in different environments and evolved obeying diverse scenarios.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, 2 table

Study of Interplanetary Magnetic Field with Ground State Alignment

We demonstrate a new way of studying interplanetary magnetic field -- Ground State Alignment (GSA). Instead of sending thousands of space probes, GSA allows magnetic mapping with any ground telescope facilities equipped with spectropolarimeter. The polarization of spectral lines that are pumped by the anisotropic radiation from the Sun is influenced by the magnetic realignment, which happens for magnetic field (<1G). As a result, the linear polarization becomes an excellent tracer of the embedded magnetic field. The method is illustrated by our synthetic observations of the Jupiter's Io and comet Halley. Polarization at each point was constructed according to the local magnetic field detected by spacecrafts. Both spatial and temporal variations of turbulent magnetic field can be traced with this technique as well. The influence of magnetic field on the polarization of scattered light is discussed in detail. For remote regions like the IBEX ribbons discovered at the boundary of interstellar medium, GSA provides a unique diagnostics of magnetic field.Comment: 11 pages, 19 figures, published in Astrophysics and Space Scienc

A Scalable Asynchronous Distributed Algorithm for Topic Modeling

Learning meaningful topic models with massive document collections which contain millions of documents and billions of tokens is challenging because of two reasons: First, one needs to deal with a large number of topics (typically in the order of thousands). Second, one needs a scalable and efficient way of distributing the computation across multiple machines. In this paper we present a novel algorithm F+Nomad LDA which simultaneously tackles both these problems. In order to handle large number of topics we use an appropriately modified Fenwick tree. This data structure allows us to sample from a multinomial distribution over $T$ items in $O(\log T)$ time. Moreover, when topic counts change the data structure can be updated in $O(\log T)$ time. In order to distribute the computation across multiple processor we present a novel asynchronous framework inspired by the Nomad algorithm of \cite{YunYuHsietal13}. We show that F+Nomad LDA significantly outperform state-of-the-art on massive problems which involve millions of documents, billions of words, and thousands of topics

Synthesis and Activity of Six-Membered Cyclic Alkyl Amino Carbene–Ruthenium Olefin Metathesis Catalysts

Ru–cyclic alkyl amino carbene (Ru–CAAC) olefin metathesis catalysts perform extraordinarily in metathesis macrocyclization and ethenolysis, but previous studies have been limited to the use of five-membered CAAC (CAAC-5) ligands. In this work, we synthesized a different group of ruthenium catalysts with more σ-donating and π-accepting six-membered CAAC (CAAC-6) ligands, and their metathesis activity was probed through initiation studies, ring-closing metathesis (RCM), cross-metathesis, and ethenolysis. These catalysts display higher initiation rates than analogous Ru–CAAC-5 complexes but demonstrate lower activity in RCM and ethenolysis