12,034 research outputs found
Machine learning techniques to select Be star candidates. An application in the OGLE-IV Gaia south ecliptic pole field
Statistical pattern recognition methods have provided competitive solutions
for variable star classification at a relatively low computational cost. In
order to perform supervised classification, a set of features is proposed and
used to train an automatic classification system. Quantities related to the
magnitude density of the light curves and their Fourier coefficients have been
chosen as features in previous studies. However, some of these features are not
robust to the presence of outliers and the calculation of Fourier coefficients
is computationally expensive for large data sets. We propose and evaluate the
performance of a new robust set of features using supervised classifiers in
order to look for new Be star candidates in the OGLE-IV Gaia south ecliptic
pole field. We calculated the proposed set of features on six types of variable
stars and on a set of Be star candidates reported in the literature. We
evaluated the performance of these features using classification trees and
random forests along with K-nearest neighbours, support vector machines, and
gradient boosted trees methods. We tuned the classifiers with a 10-fold
cross-validation and grid search. We validated the performance of the best
classifier on a set of OGLE-IV light curves and applied this to find new Be
star candidates. The random forest classifier outperformed the others. By using
the random forest classifier and colour criteria we found 50 Be star candidates
in the direction of the Gaia south ecliptic pole field, four of which have
infrared colours consistent with Herbig Ae/Be stars. Supervised methods are
very useful in order to obtain preliminary samples of variable stars extracted
from large databases. As usual, the stars classified as Be stars candidates
must be checked for the colours and spectroscopic characteristics expected for
them
Runoff at the micro-plot and slope scale following wildfire, central Portugal
Through their effects on soil properties and vegetation/litter cover, wildfires can strongly enhance overland flow generation and accelerate soil erosion [1] and, thereby, negatively affect land-use sustainability as well as downstream aquatic and flood zones. Wildfires are a common phenomenon in present-day Portugal, devastating in an average year some 100.000 ha of forest and woodlands and in an exceptional year like 2003 over 400.000 ha. There therefore exists a clear need in Portugal for a tool that can provide guidance to post-fire land management by predicting soil erosion risk, on the one hand, and, on the other, the mitigation effectiveness of soil conservation measures. Such a tool has recently been developed for the Western U.S.A. [3: ERMiT] but its suitability for Portuguese forests will need to be corroborated by field observations.
Testing the suitability of existing erosion models in recently burned forest areas in Portugal is, in a nutshell, the aim of the EROSFIRE projects. In the first EROSFIRE project the emphasis was on the prediction of erosion at the scale of individual hill slopes. In the ongoing EROSFIRE-II project the spatial scope is extended to include the catchment scale, so that also the connectivity between hill slopes as well as channel and road processes are being addressed. Besides ERMiT, the principal models under evaluation for slope-scale erosion prediction are: (i) the variant of USLE [4] applied by the Portuguese Water Institute after the wildfires of 2003; (ii) the Morgan–Morgan–Finney model (MMF) [5]; (iii) MEFIDIS [6]. From these models, MEFIDIS and perhaps MMF will, after successful calibration at the slope scale, also be applied for predicting catchment-scale sediment yields of extreme events
Effects of epitaxial strain on the growth mechanism of YBa2Cu3O7-x thin films in [YBa2Cu3O7-x / PrBa2Cu3O7-x] superlattices
We report on the growth mechanism of YBa2Cu3O7-x (YBCO). Our study is based
on the analysis of ultrathin, YBa2Cu3O7-x layers in c-axis oriented YBa2Cu3O7-x
/ PrBa2Cu3O7-x superlattices. We have found that the release of epitaxial
strain in very thin YBCO layers triggers a change in the dimensionality of the
growth mode. Ultrathin, epitaxially strained, YBCO layers with thickness below
3 unit cells grow in a block by block two dimensional mode coherent over large
lateral distances. Meanwhile, when thickness increases, and the strain relaxes,
layer growth turns into three dimensional, resulting in rougher layers and
interfaces.Comment: 10 pages + 9 figures, accepted in Phys. Rev.
Poliartritis y leishmaniosis canina: Patogenia de la alteración articular : caso clÃnico
Uno de los signos clÃnicos a menudo observados en los perros con leishmaniosis es la presencia de cojeras, asociadas en muchos casos a poliartritis. la patogenia de estas alteraciones articulares no está del todo clara. Si bien la presencia del parásito en la articulación explicarÃa en muchos casos la alteración observada, debe tenerse también en cuenta el efecto patógeno que puede tener lugar a través del depósito de inmunocomplejos circulantes (ICC), que son frecuentes en esta enfermedad. En el presente artÃculo revisamos la bibliografÃa y comparamos nuestro caso con otros publicados, discutiendo sobre el posible origen de estas artropatÃas.Lameness, often associated with polyarthritis, is one of the most frequent clinical signs observed in dogs with leishmaniasis.The pathogenesis of these joint disturbances is not well known.Even the presence of the parasite in the joint sometimes may explain the observed alteration, the pathogenic effect triggered by the deposition of circulating immunocomplexes (CIC) that are afien produced in dogs with Cl, should also be considered.The present paper reviews the literature and compares our clinical case with others reported, thus, discussing the possible aetiology of these arthropathies
Runoff and erosion at the micro-plot and slope scale in a small burnt catchment, central Portugal
Wildfires can have important impacts on hydrological processes and soil erosion in forest catchments, due to the destruction of vegetation cover and changes to soil properties. However, the processes involved are non-linear and not fully understood. This has severely limited the understanding on the impacts of wildfires, especially in the up-scaling from hillslopes to catchments; in consequence, current models are poorly adapted for burnt forest conditions.
The objective of this presentation is to give an overview of the hydrological response and sediment yield from the micro-plot to slope scale, in the first year following a wildfire (2008/2009) that burnt an entire catchment nearby the Colmeal village, central Portugal. The overview will focus on three slopes inside the catchment, with samples including:
• Runoff at micro-plot scale (12 bounded plots) and slope scale (12 open plots); • Sediments and Organic Matter loss at micro-plot scale (12 bounded plots) and slope scale (12 open plots plus 3 Sediment fences); • Rainfall and Soil moisture data; • Soil Water Repellency and Ground Cover data.
The analysis of the first year following the wildfire clearly shows the complexity of runoff generation and the associated sediment transport in recently burnt areas, with pronounced differences between hillslopes and across spatial scales as well as with marked variations through time.
This work was performed in the framework of the EROSFIRE-II project (PTDC/AGR-CFL/70968/2006) which has as overall aim to predict soil erosion risk in recently burnt forest areas, including common post-fire forest management practices; the project focuses on the simultaneous measurement of runoff and soil erosion at multiple spatial scales.The results to be presented in this session are expected to show how sediment is generated, transported and exported in the Colmeal watershed; and contribute to understand and simulate erosion processes in burnt catchments, including for model development and evaluation
Environments for sonic ecologies
This paper outlines a current lack of consideration for the environmental context of Evolutionary Algorithms used for the generation of music. We attempt to readdress this balance by outlining the benefits of developing strong coupling strategies between agent and en- vironment. It goes on to discuss the relationship between artistic process and the viewer and suggests a placement of the viewer and agent in a shared environmental context to facilitate understanding of the artistic process and a feeling of participation in the work. The paper then goes on to outline the installation ‘Excuse Me and how it attempts to achieve a level of Sonic Ecology through the use of a shared environmental context
The star formation activity in cosmic voids
Using a sample of cosmic voids identified in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7, we study the star formation activity of void galaxies. The properties of galaxies living in voids are compared with those of galaxies living in the void shells and with a control sample, representing the general galaxy population. Void galaxies appear to form stars more efficiently than shell galaxies and the control sample. This result cannot be interpreted as a consequence of the bias towards low masses in underdense regions, as void galaxy subsamples with the same mass distribution as the control sample also show statistically different specific star formation rates. This highlights the fact that galaxy evolution in voids is slower with respect to the evolution of the general population. Nevertheless, when only the star-forming galaxies are considered, we find that the star formation rate is insensitive to the environment, as the main sequence is remarkably constant in the three samples under consideration. This fact implies that environmental effects manifest themselves as fast quenching mechanisms, while leaving the non-quenched galaxies almost unaffected, as their star formation activity is largely regulated by the mass of their halo. We also analyse galaxy properties as a function of void-centric distance and find that the enhancement in the star formation activity with respect to the control sample is observable up to a radial distance 1.5Rvoid. This result can be used as a suitable definition of void shells. Finally, we find that larger voids show an enhanced star formation activity in the shells with respect to their smaller counterparts, which could be related to the different dynamical evolution experienced by voids of different size
Surface roughness and thermal conductivity of semiconductor nanowires: going below the Casimir limit
By explicitly considering surface roughness at the atomic level, we
quantitatively show that the thermal conductivity of Si nanowires can be lower
than Casimir's classical limit. However, this violation only occurs for deep
surface degradation. For shallow surface roughness, the Casimir formula is
shown to yield a good approximation to the phonon mean free paths and
conductivity, even for nanowire diameters as thin as 2.22 nm. Our exact
treatment of roughness scattering is in stark contrast with a previously
proposed perturbative approach, which is found to overpredict scattering rates
by an order of magnitude. The obtained results suggest that a complete
theoretical understanding of some previously published experimental results is
still lacking.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure
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