5,777 research outputs found
A new technique for monitoring the water vapor in the atmosphere
In the correction of satellite Doppler data for tropospheric effects the precipitable water vapor (PWV) is inferred at the tracking site. The technique depends on: (1) an ephemeris for the satellite; (2) an analytic model for the refraction range effect that is good to a few centimeters; (3) Doppler data with noise level below 10 centimeters; and (4) a surface pressure/temperature measurement at the tracking site. The PWV is a by product of the computation necessary to correct the Doppler data for tropospheric effects. A formulation of the refraction integral minimizes the necessity for explicit water vapor, temperature and pressure profiles
The Extended Methanol Maser Emission in W51
The European VLBI Network (EVN) has been used to make phase referenced,
wide-field (several arcminute) spectral line observations of the 6.7-GHz
methanol maser emission towards W51. In the W51main region, the bulk of the
methanol is offset from an UCHII region. This probably indicates the methanol
emission arises at the interface of the expanding UCHII region and not from an
edge-on circumstellar disc, as previously suggested. Near the W51 IRS2 region,
the methanol emission is associated with a very compact, extremely embedded
source supporting the hypothesis that methanol masers trace the earliest stages
of massive star formation. As well as these two previously well studied sites
of star formation, many previously unknown regions star formation are detected,
demonstrating that methanol masers are powerful means of detection young
massive stars.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
The effect of delayed auditory feedback on activity in the temporal lobe while speaking: A Positron Emission Tomography study
Purpose: Delayed auditory feedback is a technique that can improve fluency in stutterers, while disrupting fluency in many non-stuttering individuals. The aim of this study was to determine the neural basis for the detection of and compensation for such a delay, and the effects of increases in the delay duration. Method: Positron emission tomography (PET) was used to image regional cerebral blood flow changes, an index of neural activity, and assessed the influence of increasing amounts of delay. Results: Delayed auditory feedback led to increased activation in the bilateral superior temporal lobes, extending into posterior-medial auditory areas. Similar peaks in the temporal lobe were sensitive to increases in the amount of delay. A single peak in the temporal parietal junction responded to the amount of delay but not to the presence of a delay (relative to no delay). Conclusions: This study permitted distinctions to be made between the neural response to hearing one's voice at a delay, and the neural activity that correlates with this delay. Notably all the peaks showed some influence of the amount of delay. This result confirms a role for the posterior, sensori-motor ‘how’ system in the production of speech under conditions of delayed auditory feedback
The GEOS-3 orbit determination investigation
The nature and improvement in satellite orbit determination when precise altimetric height data are used in combination with conventional tracking data was determined. A digital orbit determination program was developed that could singly or jointly use laser ranging, C-band ranging, Doppler range difference, and altimetric height data. Two intervals were selected and used in a preliminary evaluation of the altimeter data. With the data available, it was possible to determine the semimajor axis and eccentricity to within several kilometers, in addition to determining an altimeter height bias. When used jointly with a limited amount of either C-band or laser range data, it was shown that altimeter data can improve the orbit solution
Massive Protoplanetary Disks in the Trapezium Region
(abridged) We determine the disk mass distribution around 336 stars in the
young Orion Nebula cluster by imaging a 2.5' x 2.5' region in 3 mm continuum
emission with the Owens Valley Millimeter Array. For this sample of 336 stars,
we observe 3 mm emission above the 3-sigma noise level toward ten sources, six
of which have also been detected optically in silhouette against the bright
nebular background. In addition, we detect 20 objects that do not correspond to
known near-IR cluster members. Comparisons of our measured fluxes with longer
wavelength observations enable rough separation of dust emission from thermal
free-free emission, and we find substantial dust emission toward most objects.
For the ten objects detected at both 3 mm and near-IR wavelengths, eight
exhibit substantial dust emission. Excluding the high-mass stars and assuming a
gas-to-dust ratio of 100, we estimate circumstellar masses ranging from 0.13 to
0.39 Msun. For the cluster members not detected at 3 mm, images of individual
objects are stacked to constrain the mean 3 mm flux of the ensemble. The
average flux is detected at the 3-sigma confidence level, and implies an
average disk mass of 0.005 Msun, comparable to the minimum mass solar nebula.
The percentage of stars in Orion surrounded by disks more massive than ~0.1
Msun is consistent with the disk mass distribution in Taurus, and we argue that
massive disks in Orion do not appear to be truncated through close encounters
with high-mass stars. Comparison of the average disk mass and number of massive
dusty structures in Orion with similar surveys of the NGC 2024 and IC 348
clusters constrains the evolutionary timescales of massive circumstellar disks
in clustered environments.Comment: 27 pages, including 7 figures. Accepted by Ap
Robust Online Monitoring of Signal Temporal Logic
Signal Temporal Logic (STL) is a formalism used to rigorously specify
requirements of cyberphysical systems (CPS), i.e., systems mixing digital or
discrete components in interaction with a continuous environment or analog com-
ponents. STL is naturally equipped with a quantitative semantics which can be
used for various purposes: from assessing the robustness of a specification to
guiding searches over the input and parameter space with the goal of falsifying
the given property over system behaviors. Algorithms have been proposed and
implemented for offline computation of such quantitative semantics, but only
few methods exist for an online setting, where one would want to monitor the
satisfaction of a formula during simulation. In this paper, we formalize a
semantics for robust online monitoring of partial traces, i.e., traces for
which there might not be enough data to decide the Boolean satisfaction (and to
compute its quantitative counterpart). We propose an efficient algorithm to
compute it and demonstrate its usage on two large scale real-world case studies
coming from the automotive domain and from CPS education in a Massively Open
Online Course (MOOC) setting. We show that savings in computationally expensive
simulations far outweigh any overheads incurred by an online approach
Strong Near-Infrared Emission Interior to the Dust-Sublimation Radius of Young Stellar Objects MWC275 and AB Aur
Using the longest optical-interferometeric baselines currently available, we
have detected strong near-infrared (NIR) emission from inside the
dust-destruction radius of Herbig Ae stars MWC275 and AB Aur. Our
sub-milli-arcsecond resolution observations unambiguously place the emission
between the dust-destruction radius and the magnetospheric co-rotation radius.
We argue that this new component corresponds to hot gas inside the
dust-sublimation radius, confirming recent claims based on spectrally-resolved
interferometry and dust evaporation front modeling.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, Accepted for publication in ApJ
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