13,159 research outputs found
Preface "Nonlinear processes in oceanic and atmospheric flows"
Nonlinear phenomena are essential ingredients in many oceanic and atmospheric
processes, and successful understanding of them benefits from multidisciplinary
collaboration between oceanographers, meteorologists, physicists and
mathematicians. The present Special Issue on ``Nonlinear Processes in Oceanic
and Atmospheric Flows'' contains selected contributions from attendants to the
workshop which, in the above spirit, was held in Castro Urdiales, Spain, in
July 2008. Here we summarize the Special Issue contributions, which include
papers on the characterization of ocean transport in the Lagrangian and in the
Eulerian frameworks, generation and variability of jets and waves, interactions
of fluid flow with plankton dynamics or heavy drops, scaling in meteorological
fields, and statistical properties of El Ni\~no Southern Oscillation.Comment: This is the introductory article to a Special Issue on "Nonlinear
Processes in Oceanic and Atmospheric Flows'', published in the journal
Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics, where the different contributions are
summarized. The Special Issue itself is freely available from
http://www.nonlin-processes-geophys.net/special_issue103.htm
X-Ray Fluorescence Analysis of Fine Atmospheric Aerosols from a Site in Mexico City
A study was performed in the Winter of the year 2015 in a Southwestern site in the MAMC (Ciudad Universitaria), collecting PM2.5 samples with a Mini Vol. As a part of wider study focused to fully characterize aerosols at this site, an X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) spectrometer (based on an Rh X-ray tube) built to analyze environmental samples, was used to characterize the sample set. A total of 16 elements (Al, Si, P, S, Cl, K, Ca, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, and Pb) were detected in most samples and mean concentrations were calculated. Cluster analysis was also applied to the elemental concentrations to find possible correlations among the elements
Study of CT Images Processing with the Implementation of MLEM Algorithm using CUDA on NVIDIA’S GPU Framework
In medicine, the acquisition process in Computed Tomography Images (CT) is obtained by a reconstruction algorithm. The classical method for image reconstruction is the Filtered Back Projection (FBP). This method is fast and simple but does not use any statistical information about the measurements. The appearance of artifacts and its low spatial resolution in reconstructed images must be considered. Furthermore, the FBP requires of optimal conditions of the projections and complete sets of data. In this paper a methodology to accelerate acquisition process for CT based on the Maximum Likelihood Estimation Method (MLEM) algorithm is presented. This statistical iterative reconstruction algorithm uses a GPU Programming Paradigms and was compared with sequential algorithms in which the reconstruction time was reduced by up to 3 orders of magnitude while preserving image quality. Furthermore, they showed a good performance when compared with reconstruction methods provided by commercial software. The system, which would consist exclusively of a commercial laptop and GPU could be used as a fast, portable, simple and cheap image reconstruction platform in the future
Dust emission at 8-mic and 24-mic as Diagnostics of HII Region Radiative Transfer
We use the Spitzer SAGE survey of the Magellanic Clouds to evaluate the
relationship between the 8-mic PAH emission, 24-mic hot dust emission, and HII
region radiative transfer. We confirm that in the higher-metallicity Large
Magellanic Cloud, PAH destruction is sensitive to optically thin conditions in
the nebular Lyman continuum: objects identified as optically thin candidates
based on nebular ionization structure show 6 times lower median 8-mic surface
brightness (0.18 mJy arcsec^-2) than their optically thick counterparts (1.2
mJy arcsec^-2). The 24-mic surface brightness also shows a factor of 3 offset
between the two classes of objects (0.13 vs 0.44 mJy arcsec^-2, respectively),
which is driven by the association between the very small dust grains and
higher density gas found at higher nebular optical depths. In contrast, PAH and
dust formation in the low-metallicity Small Magellanic Cloud is strongly
inhibited such that we find no variation in either 8-mic or 24-mic emission
between our optically thick and thin samples. This is attributable to extremely
low PAH and dust production together with high, corrosive UV photon fluxes in
this low-metallicity environment. The dust mass surface densities and
gas-to-dust ratios determined from dust maps using Herschel HERITAGE survey
data support this interpretation.Comment: Accepted to ApJ, May 15, 2017. 10 pages, 9 figure
EURONU WP6 2009 yearly report: Update of the physics potential of Nufact, superbeams and betabeams
Many studies in the last ten years have shown that we can measure the unknown
angle theta13, discover leptonic CP violation and determine the neutrino
hierarchy in more precise neutrino oscillation experiments, searching for the
subleading channel nue -> numu in the atmospheric range. In this first report
of WP6 activities the following new results are reviewed: (1) Re-evaluation of
the physics reach of the upcoming generation of experiments to measure theta13
and delta; (2) New tools to explore a larger parameter space as needed beyond
the standard scenario; (3) Neutrino Factory: (a) evaluation of the physics
reach of a Nufact regards sterile neutrinos; (b) evaluation of the physics
reach of a Nufact as regards non-standard interactions; (c) evaluation of the
physics reach of a Nufact as regards violation of unitarity; (d) critical
assessment on long baseline tau-detection at Nufact; (e) new physics searches
at a near detector in a Nufact; (4) Beta-beams: (a) choice of ions and location
for a gamma = 100 CERN-based beta-beam; (b) re-evaluation of atmospheric
neutrino background for the gamma = 100 beta-beam scenario; (c) study of a two
baseline beta-beam; (d) measuring absolute neutrino mass with beta-beams; (e)
progress on monochromatic beta-beams; (5) Update of the physics potential of
the SPL super-beam. Eventually, we present an updated comparison of the
sensitivity to theta13, delta and the neutrino mass hierarchy of several of the
different proposed facilities.Comment: 2009 Yearly report of the Working Package 6 (Physics) of the EUROnu
FP7 EU project. 55 pages, 21 figures
PHOTOMATCH: AN OPEN-SOURCE MULTI-VIEW and MULTI-MODAL FEATURE MATCHING TOOL for PHOTOGRAMMETRIC APPLICATIONS
Automatic feature matching is a crucial step in Structure-from-Motion (SfM) applications for 3D reconstruction purposes. From an historical perspective we can say now that SIFT was the enabling technology that made SfM a successful and fully automated pipeline. SIFT was the ancestor of a wealth of detector/descriptor methods that are now available. Various research activities have tried to benchmark detector/descriptors operators, but a clear outcome is difficult to be drawn. This paper presents an ISPRS Scientific Initiative aimed at providing the community with an educational open-source tool (called PhotoMatch) for tie point extractions and image matching. Several enhancement and decolorization methods can be initially applied to an image dataset in order to improve the successive feature extraction steps. Then different detector/descriptor combinations are possible, coupled with different matching strategies and quality control metrics. Examples and results show the implemented functionality of PhotoMatch which has also a tutorial for shortly explaining the implemented methods
Improvements to the X-ray Spectrometer at the Aerosol Laboratory, Instituto de Física, UNAM
Due to the demands of better (accurate and precise) analytical results using X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) at the Aerosol Laboratory, Instituto de Física, UNAM, it was necessary to carry out improvements in instrumentation and analytical procedures in the x-ray spectrometer located in this facility. A new turbomolecular vacuum system was installed, which allows reaching the working pressure in a shorter time. Characteristic x-rays are registered with a Silicon Drift Detector, or SDD, (8 mm thick Be window, 140 eV at 5.9 keV resolution), working directly in a high-vacuum, permitting the detection of x-rays with energies as low as 1 keV (Na Ka) and higher counting rates than in the past. Due to the interference produced by the Rh L x-rays emitted by the tube normally used for atmospheric and food analysis with Cl K x-rays, another tube with a W anode was mounted in the spectrometer to avoid this interference, with the possibility to select operation with any of these tubes. Examples of applications in atmospheric aerosols and other samples are presented, to demonstrate the enhanced function of the spectrometer. Other future modifications are also explained
Fast pseudo-CT synthesis from MRI T1-weighted images using a patch-based approach
MRI-based bone segmentation is a challenging task because bone tissue and air both present low signal intensity on MR images, making it difficult to accurately delimit the bone boundaries. However, estimating bone from MRI images may allow decreasing patient ionization by removing the need of patient-specific CT acquisition in several applications. In this work, we propose a fast GPU-based pseudo-CT generation from a patient-specific MRI T1-weighted image using a group-wise patch-based approach and a limited MRI and CT atlas dictionary. For every voxel in the input MR image, we compute the similarity of the patch containing that voxel with the patches of all MR images in the database, which lie in a certain anatomical neighborhood. The pseudo-CT is obtained as a local weighted linear combination of the CT values of the corresponding patches. The algorithm was implemented in a GPU. The use of patch-based techniques allows a fast and accurate estimation of the pseudo-CT from MR T1-weighted images, with a similar accuracy as the patient-specific CT. The experimental normalized cross correlation reaches 0.9324±0.0048 for an atlas with 10 datasets. The high NCC values indicate how our method can accurately approximate the patient-specific CT. The GPU implementation led to a substantial decrease in computational time making the approach suitable for real applications
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