Birthrates and delay times of Type Ia supernovae

Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) play an important role in diverse areas of astrophysics, from the chemical evolution of galaxies to observational cosmology. However, the nature of the progenitors of SNe Ia is still unclear. In this paper, according to a detailed binary population synthesis study, we obtained SN Ia birthrates and delay times from different progenitor models, and compared them with observations. We find that the Galactic SN Ia birthrate from the double-degenerate (DD) model is close to those inferred from observations, while the birthrate from the single-degenerate (SD) model accounts for only about 1/2-2/3 of the observations. If a single starburst is assumed, the distribution of the delay times of SNe Ia from the SD model is a weak bimodality, where the WD + He channel contributes to the SNe Ia with delay times shorter than 100Myr, and the WD + MS and WD + RG channels to those with age longer than 1Gyr.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, accepted by Science in China Series G (Dec.30, 2009

Parallel processing architecture for computing inverse differential kinematic equations of the PUMA arm

In advanced robot control problems, on-line computation of inverse Jacobian solution is frequently required. Parallel processing architecture is an effective way to reduce computation time. A parallel processing architecture is developed for the inverse Jacobian (inverse differential kinematic equation) of the PUMA arm. The proposed pipeline/parallel algorithm can be inplemented on an IC chip using systolic linear arrays. This implementation requires 27 processing cells and 25 time units. Computation time is thus significantly reduced

Efecto del estrés producido por la mezcla de sales en la concentración de aldehído malónico, proteínas y enzimas antioxidantes de Leymus chinensis de tres colores foliares diferentes

The mixed salt stress is common in nature. Salt stressalways affects plant growth. Different plant species have different adaptive capacity to salty soil. Leymus chinensis is an herbaceous plant with different leaf colors. However, little research was conducted to explore the different tolerance mechanisms to salt stress among the three different leaf colour genotypes of Leymus chinensis (grey green, transitional color, yellow green). Pot experiments for Leymus chinensis in three leaf colors were conducted under mixed salt treatments in 2010. Malondialdehyde (MDA) and protein concentrations, and the activity of various antioxidant enzymes [i.e., superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), ascorbate peroxidase (APX), glutathione reductase (GR), dehydroascorbate reductase (DHAR) and monodehydroascorbate reductase (MDHAR)] were determined and compared among the three leaf color genotypes of Leymus chinensis. The concentrations of MDA and protein, and the activity of antioxidant enzymes showed an increasing trend with increasing pHs in almost all three leaf colors, and all of them became highest when salt stress and pH values were also highest. Moreover, antioxidant enzymes were the highest in the grey-green leaf color, and the lowest in the yellow green leaf color after exposure to the same pH treatment. The results suggested that all three leaf colors of Leymus chinensis were tolerant to salt stress, and the salt-tolerance declined according to the order of grey green > transitional color > yellow green of Leymus chinensis. This study can give us a better understanding of the intra-species adaptation to mixed salt soils.El estrés causado por mezcla de sales en el suelo es común en la naturaleza. El estrés salino siempre afecta el crecimiento de las plantas. Plantas de especies diferentes difieren en su capacidad de adaptación al estrés por sales en el suelo. Leymus chinensis es una planta herbácea con diferentes colores foliares. Sin embargo, se han conducido pocos estudios tendientes a determinar los diferentes mecanismos de tolerancia al estrés salino entre los tres genotipos de color foliar diferente de L. chinensis (grisáceo verdoso, color intermedio, amarillo verdoso). En 2010, se condujeron experimentos en macetas usando genotipos de L. chinensis de tres colores diferentes de hoja expuestos o no a tratamientos conteniendo una mezcla de sales. Las concentraciones de aldehído malónico (MDA) y proteínas, y la actividad de varias enzimas antioxidantes [es decir, la superóxido dismutasa (SOD), catalasa (CAT), ascórbico peroxidasa (APX), glutatión reductasa (GR), dehidroascórbico reductasa (DHAR) y monodehidroascórbico reductasa (MDHAR)] se determinaron y compararon entre los tres genotipos de color foliar diferente de L. chinensis. Las concentraciones de MDA y proteínas, y la actividad de enzimas antioxidantes mostraron una tendencia a incrementarse a mayores pHs en casi todos los colores foliares, y las tendencias en los tres colores foliares alcanzaron su punto máximo cuando el estrés salino y los valores de pH fueron máximos. Más aún, las concentraciones de las enzimas antioxidantes fueron las más altas en el color grisáceo verdoso, intermedias en el color intermedio, y las más bajas en el color amarillo verdoso después de la exposición al mismo tratamiento de pH. Los resultados sugirieron que los genotipos de los tres colores foliares de L. chinensis fueros tolerantes al estrés salino, y la tolerancia a la sal declinó de acuerdo al orden grisáceo verdoso > color intermedio > amarillo verdoso de L. chinensis. Este estudio puede proveer un mejor entendimiento de la adaptación intraespecífica de L. chinensis a suelos salinos.Fil: Zhou, C.. Chinese Academy of Science; China. Liaoning University; ChinaFil: Busso, Carlos Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Centro de Recursos Naturales Renovables de la Zona Semiárida. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Centro de Recursos Naturales Renovables de la Zona Semiárida; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Agronomía; ArgentinaFil: Yang, Y. G.. Liaoning University; ChinaFil: Zhang, Z.. Shenyang University; ChinaFil: Wang, Z. W.. Chinese Academy of Science; ChinaFil: Yang, Y. F.. Northeast Normal University; ChinaFil: Han, X. G.. Chinese Academy of Science; Chin

On the Impact of Entity Linking in Microblog Real-Time Filtering

Microblogging is a model of content sharing in which the temporal locality of posts with respect to important events, either of foreseeable or unforeseeable nature, makes applica- tions of real-time filtering of great practical interest. We propose the use of Entity Linking (EL) in order to improve the retrieval effectiveness, by enriching the representation of microblog posts and filtering queries. EL is the process of recognizing in an unstructured text the mention of relevant entities described in a knowledge base. EL of short pieces of text is a difficult task, but it is also a scenario in which the information EL adds to the text can have a substantial impact on the retrieval process. We implement a start-of-the-art filtering method, based on the best systems from the TREC Microblog track realtime adhoc retrieval and filtering tasks , and extend it with a Wikipedia-based EL method. Results show that the use of EL significantly improves over non-EL based versions of the filtering methods.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, 1 table. SAC 2015, Salamanca, Spain - April 13 - 17, 201

The C-flash and the ignition conditions of type Ia supernovae

Thanks to a stellar evolution code able to compute through the C-flash we link the binary population synthesis of single degenerate progenitors of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) to their physical condition at the time of ignition. We show that there is a large range of possible ignition densities and we detail how their probability distribution depends on the accretion properties. The low density peak of this distribution qualitatively reminds of the clustering of the luminosities of Branch-normal SNe Ia. We tighten the possible range of initial physical conditions for explosion models: they form a one-parameter family, independent of the metallicity. We discuss how these results may be modified if we were to relax our hypothesis of a permanent Hachisu wind or if we were to include electron captures.Comment: 10 pages, 14 figures, MNRAS accepte

Validating Sample Average Approximation Solutions with Negatively Dependent Batches

Sample-average approximations (SAA) are a practical means of finding approximate solutions of stochastic programming problems involving an extremely large (or infinite) number of scenarios. SAA can also be used to find estimates of a lower bound on the optimal objective value of the true problem which, when coupled with an upper bound, provides confidence intervals for the true optimal objective value and valuable information about the quality of the approximate solutions. Specifically, the lower bound can be estimated by solving multiple SAA problems (each obtained using a particular sampling method) and averaging the obtained objective values. State-of-the-art methods for lower-bound estimation generate batches of scenarios for the SAA problems independently. In this paper, we describe sampling methods that produce negatively dependent batches, thus reducing the variance of the sample-averaged lower bound estimator and increasing its usefulness in defining a confidence interval for the optimal objective value. We provide conditions under which the new sampling methods can reduce the variance of the lower bound estimator, and present computational results to verify that our scheme can reduce the variance significantly, by comparison with the traditional Latin hypercube approach