High resolution imaging at large telescopes

Image recovery at a resolution limited only by diffraction is now possible at large telescopes. The theory of speckle image reconstruction is explained and the current status of a video recording and digitization system for the reconstruction procedure is described. Potential applications of the process when used with very large telescopes are discussed. The constraints on telescope design imposed by these techniques are listed

Hydrological Investigations at Biafo Glacier, Karakoram Range, Himalaya; an Important Source of Water For the Indus River

Over 80% of the flow of the Upper Indus River is derived from less than 20% of its area: essentially from zones of heavy snowfall and glacierized basins above 3500 m elevation. The trans-Himalaya n contribution comes largely from an area of some 20000 km2 of glacierized basins, mostly along the axis of the Greater Karakoram range and especially from 20-30 of the largest glacier basins. Very few glaciological investigations have so far been undertaken in this the major glacierized region of Central Asia. Biafo Glacier, one of the largest of the Karakoram glaciers, drains south-eastwards from the central Karakoram crest. Its basin covers a total area of 853 km2 , 628 km2 of which are permanent snow and ice, with 68% of the glacier area forming the accumulation zone. This paper describes investigations of snow accumulation, ablation , glacier movement, and glacier depth undertaken in the period 1985-87 , set against a background of investigations carried out over the last 130 yea rs. Biafo Glacier differs from most of the other Karakoram glaciers in being nourished mainly by direct snowfall rather than by avalanching; this has the advantage of allowing extensive investigation of accumulation over a broad range of altitude. Snow-accumulation studies in the Biafo Glacier basin have indicated that annual accumulation varies from 0.9 to 1.9 m of water equivalent between 4650 and 5450 m a .. s.l. This suggests an annual moisture input above the equilibrium line of approximately 0.6 km3. Monopulse radar measurements indicate the presence of ice thickness as great as 1400 m at the equilibrium line, although these results may not be completely reliable . Mean surface velocity during the summer of 0.8 m d -I has been measured near to the equilibrium line. Calculations of annual ice flux through the vertical cross-profile at the equilibrium line indicate a throughput of 0.7 km3 a-I Estimates from stake ablation measurements also suggest that ice loss on Biafo Glacier is about 0.7 km3 a-I. The close agreement between these three sets of measurements is reassuring, indicating that the ablation zone of Biafo Glacier, whose area covers 0.09% of the whole Upper Indus basin, produces approximately 0.9% of the total run-off. However. it should be mentioned that this estimate does not include water originating from seasonal snow melt, e either above or below the equilibrium line, or from rainfall. Net annual ice losses due to wastage of the glacier since 1910 are probably of the order of 0.4-{).5 m a-I; this would represent between 12 and 15% of annual water yield from melting ice

Entanglement without nonlocality

We consider the characterization of entanglement from the perspective of a Heisenberg formalism. We derive an original two-party generalized separability criteria, and from this describe a novel physical understanding of entanglement. We find that entanglement may be considered as fundamentally a local effect, and therefore as a separable computational resource from nonlocality. We show how entanglement differs from correlation physically, and explore the implications of this new conception of entanglement for the notion of classicality. We find that this understanding of entanglement extends naturally to multipartite cases.Comment: 9 pages. Expanded introduction and sections on physical entanglement and localit

Self-similar Bianchi models: II. Class B models

In a companion article (referred hearafter as paper I) a detailed study of the simply transitive Spatially Homogeneous (SH) models of class A concerning the existence of a simply transitive similarity group has been given. The present work (paper II) continues and completes the above study by considering the remaining set of class B models. Following the procedure of paper I we find all SH models of class B subjected only to the minimal geometric assumption to admit a proper Homothetic Vector Field (HVF). The physical implications of the obtained geometric results are studied by specialising our considerations to the case of vacuum and $\gamma -$law perfect fluid models. As a result we regain all the known exact solutions regarding vacuum and non-tilted perfect fluid models. In the case of tilted fluids we find the \emph{general }self-similar solution for the exceptional type VI$_{-1/9}$ model and we identify it as equilibrium point in the corresponding dynamical state space. It is found that this \emph{new} exact solution belongs to the subclass of models $n_\alpha ^\alpha =0$, is defined for $\gamma \in (\frac 43,\frac 32)$ and although has a five dimensional stable manifold there exist always two unstable modes in the restricted state space. Furthermore the analysis of the remaining types, guarantees that tilted perfect fluid models of types III, IV, V and VII$_h$ cannot admit a proper HVF strongly suggesting that these models either may not be asymptotically self-similar (type V) or may be extreme tilted at late times. Finally for each Bianchi type, we give the extreme tilted equilibrium points of their state space.Comment: Latex, 15 pages, no figures; to appear in Classical Quantum Gravity (uses iopart style/class files); (v2) minor corrections to match published versio

Invasive Wild pigs as primary nest predators for Wild turkeys

Depredation of wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) nests is a leading cause of reduced recruitment for the recovering and iconic game species. invasive wild pigs (Sus scrofa) are known to depredate nests, and have been expanding throughout the distributed range of wild turkeys in north America. We sought to gain better insight on the magnitude of wild pigs depredating wild turkey nests. We constructed simulated wild turkey nests throughout the home ranges of 20 GPS-collared wild pigs to evaluate nest depredation relative to three periods within the nesting season (i.e., early, peak, and late) and two nest densities (moderate = 12.5-25 nests/km2, high = 25-50 nests/km2) in south-central Texas, USA during March–June 2016. Overall, the estimated probability of nest depredation by wild pigs was 0.3, equivalent to native species of nest predators in the study area (e.g., gray fox [Urocyon cinereoargenteus], raccoon [Procyon lotor], and coyote [Canis latrans]). female wild pigs exhibited a constant rate of depredation regardless of nesting period or density of nests. However, male wild pigs increased their rate of depredation in areas with higher nest densities. Management efforts should remove wild pigs to reduce nest failure in wild turkey populations especially where recruitment is low

The Incremental Garbage Collection of Processes

Key Words and Phrases: garbage collection, multiprocessing systems, processor scheduling. "lazy evaluation, "eager" evaluation. CR Categories: 3.60, 3.80, 4.13, 4.22, 4.32. This report describes research done at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Support for the laboratory's artificial intelligence research is provided in part by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense under Office of Naval Research contract N00014-75-C-0522. This paper was presented at the AI*PL Conference at Rochester, N.Y. in August, 1977.This paper investigates some problems associated with an argument evaluation order that we call "future" order, which is different from both call-by-name and call-by-value. In call-by-future, each formal parameter of a function is bound to a separate process (called a "future") dedicated to the evaluation of the corresponding argument. This mechanism allows the fully parallel evaluation of arguments to a function, and has been shown to augment the expressive power of a language. We discuss an approach to a problem that arises in this context: futures which were thought to be relevant when they were created become irrelevant through being ignored in the body of the expression where they were bound. The problem of irrelevant processes also appears in multiprocessing problem-solving systems which start several processors working on the same problem but with different methods, and return with the solution which finishes first. This parallel method strategy has the drawback that the processes which are investigating the losing methods must be identified, stopped, and re-assigned to more useful tasks. The solution we propose is that of garbage collection. We propose that the goal structure of the solution plan be explicitly represented in memory as part of the graph memory (like Lisp's heap) so that a garbage collection algorithm can discover which processes are performing useful work, and which can be recycled for a new task. An incremental algorithm for the unified garbage collection of storage and processes is described.MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agenc

Cosmic No Hair for Collapsing Universes

It is shown that all contracting, spatially homogeneous, orthogonal Bianchi cosmologies that are sourced by an ultra-stiff fluid with an arbitrary and, in general, varying equation of state asymptote to the spatially flat and isotropic universe in the neighbourhood of the big crunch singularity. This result is employed to investigate the asymptotic dynamics of a collapsing Bianchi type IX universe sourced by a scalar field rolling down a steep, negative exponential potential. A toroidally compactified version of M*-theory that leads to such a potential is discussed and it is shown that the isotropic attractor solution for a collapsing Bianchi type IX universe is supersymmetric when interpreted in an eleven-dimensional context.Comment: Extended discussion to include Kantowski-Sachs universe. In press, Classical and Quantum Gravit

A dynamical systems approach to the tilted Bianchi models of solvable type

We use a dynamical systems approach to analyse the tilting spatially homogeneous Bianchi models of solvable type (e.g., types VI$_h$ and VII$_h$) with a perfect fluid and a linear barotropic $\gamma$-law equation of state. In particular, we study the late-time behaviour of tilted Bianchi models, with an emphasis on the existence of equilibrium points and their stability properties. We briefly discuss the tilting Bianchi type V models and the late-time asymptotic behaviour of irrotational Bianchi VII$_0$ models. We prove the important result that for non-inflationary Bianchi type VII$_h$ models vacuum plane-wave solutions are the only future attracting equilibrium points in the Bianchi type VII$_h$ invariant set. We then investigate the dynamics close to the plane-wave solutions in more detail, and discover some new features that arise in the dynamical behaviour of Bianchi cosmologies with the inclusion of tilt. We point out that in a tiny open set of parameter space in the type IV model (the loophole) there exists closed curves which act as attracting limit cycles. More interestingly, in the Bianchi type VII$_h$ models there is a bifurcation in which a set of equilibrium points turn into closed orbits. There is a region in which both sets of closed curves coexist, and it appears that for the type VII$_h$ models in this region the solution curves approach a compact surface which is topologically a torus.Comment: 29 page

A multipole-Taylor expansion for the potential of gravitational lens MG J0414+0534

We employ a multipole-Taylor expansion to investigate how tightly the gravitational potential of the quadruple-image lens MG J0414+0534 is constrained by recent VLBI observations. These observations revealed that each of the four images of the background radio source contains four distinct components, thereby providing more numerous and more precise constraints on the lens potential than were previously available. We expand the two-dimensional lens potential using multipoles for the angular coordinate and a modified Taylor series for the radial coordinate. After discussing the physical significance of each term, we compute models of MG J0414+0534 using only VLBI positions as constraints. The best-fit model has both interior and exterior quadrupole moments as well as exterior m=3 and m=4 multipole moments. The deflector centroid in the models matches the optical galaxy position, and the quadrupoles are aligned with the optical isophotes. The radial distribution of mass could not be well constrained. We discuss the implications of these models for the deflector mass distribution and for the predicted time delays between lensed components.Comment: 44 pages, 5 figures, 11 tables, accepted for publication in Ap

What factors influence Fair Access students to consider university and what do they look for?

This paper reports the findings of a participatory mixed methods study into the perceptions of Fair Access students on the factors which led them to consider accessing Higher Education. The study consisted of focus groups with thirteen first year Fair Access Students (female n=9, male n=4) studying at the university. The data from which was analysed thematically, identifying five themes (what others say, going to university to escape, influence of habitus, location and what the university offered). These five themes formed the basis of a Likert type questionnaire which was completed by 239 students (n=168 Fair Access, n=71 non-Fair Access). It was evident that students from Fair Access backgrounds have the same high aspirations as their non-Fair Access counterparts, as do their families. However they can be discouraged and disadvantaged in the application system due to a variety of reasons; within compulsory education (perceptions of teachers as well as a lack of careers advice and support), intuitional habitus of Higher Education Institutions (provision of pre-access information and support) as well as not identifying themselves as coming from a widening participation background, thus reducing the likelihood of a contextual offer. All of these could impact on the ability of an individual from a WP background being successful in obtaining a place to study in Higher Education