Report of the SNOMS Project 2006 to 2012, SNOMS SWIRE NOCS Ocean Monitoring System. Part 1: Narrative description

The ocean plays a major role in controlling the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. Increasing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are a threat to the stability of the earth’s climate. A better understanding of the controlling role of the ocean will improve predictions of likely future changes in climate and the impact of the uptake of CO2 itself on marine eco-systems caused by the associated acidification of the ocean waters. The SNOMS Project (SWIRE NOCS Ocean Monitoring System) is a ground breaking joint research project supported by the Swire Group Trust, the Swire Educational Trust, the China Navigation Company (CNCo) and the Natural Environment Research Council. It collects high quality data on concentrations of CO2 in the surface layer of the ocean. It contributes to the international effort to better quantify (and understand the driving processes controlling) the exchanges of CO2 between the ocean and the atmosphere. In 2006 and 2007 a system that could be used on a commercial ship to provide data over periods of several months with only limited maintenance by the ships crew was designed and assembled by NOCS. The system was fitted to the CNCo ship the MV Pacific Celebes in May 2007. The onboard system was supported by web pages that monitored the progress of the ship and the functioning of the data collection system. To support the flow of data from the ship to the archiving of the data at the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC in the USA) data processing procedures were developed for the quality control and systematic handling of the data. Data from samples of seawater collected by the ships crew and analysed in NOC (730 samples) have been used to confirm the consistency of the data from the automated measurement system on the ship. To examine the data collected between 2007 and 2012 the movements of the ship are divided into 16 voyages. Initially The Celebes traded on a route circum-navigating the globe via the Panama and Suez Canals. In 2009 the route shifted to one between Australia and New Zealand to USA and Canada. Analysis of the data is an on going process. It has demonstrated that the system produces reliable data. Data are capable of improving existing estimates of seasonal variability. The work has improved knowledge of gas exchange processes. Data from the crew-collected-samples are helping improve our ability to estimate alkalinity in different areas. This helps with the study of ocean acidification. Data from the 9 round trips in the Pacific are currently being examined along with data made available by the NOAA-PMEL laboratory forming time series from 2004 to 2012. The data from the Pacific route are of considerable interest. One reason is that the data monitors variations in the fluxes of CO2 associated with the current that flows westwards along the equator. This is one of the major natural sources of CO2 from the ocean into the atmosphere

A Systematic Review of Research Studies Examining Telehealth Privacy and Security Practices Used By Healthcare Providers

The objective of this systematic review was to systematically review papers in the United States that examine current practices in privacy and security when telehealth technologies are used by healthcare providers. A literature search was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Protocols (PRISMA-P). PubMed, CINAHL and INSPEC from 2003 – 2016 were searched and returned 25,404 papers (after duplications were removed). Inclusion and exclusion criteria were strictly followed to examine title, abstract, and full text for 21 published papers which reported on privacy and security practices used by healthcare providers using telehealth.  Data on confidentiality, integrity, privacy, informed consent, access control, availability, retention, encryption, and authentication were all searched and retrieved from the papers examined. Papers were selected by two independent reviewers, first per inclusion/exclusion criteria and, where there was disagreement, a third reviewer was consulted. The percentage of agreement and Cohen’s kappa was 99.04% and 0.7331 respectively. The papers reviewed ranged from 2004 to 2016 and included several types of telehealth specialties. Sixty-seven percent were policy type studies, and 14 percent were survey/interview studies. There were no randomized controlled trials. Based upon the results, we conclude that it is necessary to have more studies with specific information about the use of privacy and security practices when using telehealth technologies as well as studies that examine patient and provider preferences on how data is kept private and secure during and after telehealth sessions.Keywords: Computer security, Health personnel, Privacy, Systematic review, Telehealth

Kerr/CFT Correspondence in the Low Energy Limit of Heterotic String Theory

We investigate the recently proposed Kerr/CFT correspondence in the context of heterotic string theory. The Kerr/CFT correspondence states that the near-horizon states of an extremal four (or higher) dimensional black hole could be identified with a certain chiral conformal field theory under the conjecture that the central charges from the non-gravitational fields vanish. The corresponding Virasoro algebra is generated by a class of diffeomorphisms which preserves the appropriate boundary conditions on the near-horizon geometry. To understand the chiral conformal field theory, we consider the class of extremal Kerr-Sen black hole (that contains three non-gravitational fields) as a class of solutions in the low energy limit (effective field theory) of heterotic string theory. We derive the expression of the conserved charges for the extremal Kerr-Sen solutions that contain dilaton, abelian gauge filed and antisymmetric tensor filed. We confirm and extend the validity of the conjecture (that the central charges from the non-gravitational fields vanish) for theories including antisymmetric tensor fields. We combine the calculated central charges with the expected form of the temperature using the Cardy formula to obtain the entropy of the extremal black hole microscopically; in agreement with the macroscopic Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of the extremal black hole.Comment: 14 pages, a few sentences added to the introduction, version to appear in JHE

D-Brane Potentials from Multi-Trace Deformations in AdS/CFT

It is known that certain AdS boundary conditions allow smooth initial data to evolve into a big crunch. To study this type of cosmological singularity, one can use the dual quantum field theory, where the non-standard boundary conditions are reflected by the presence of a multi-trace potential unbounded below. For specific AdS_4 and AdS_5 models, we provide a D-brane (or M-brane) interpretation of the unbounded potential. Using probe brane computations, we show that the AdS boundary conditions of interest cause spherical branes to be pushed to the boundary of AdS in finite time, and that the corresponding potential agrees with the multi-trace deformation of the dual field theory. Systems with expanding spherical D3-branes are related to big crunch supergravity solutions by a phenomenon similar to geometric transition.Comment: 26 pages, 3 figures, v4: a few typos fixed

Synchrotron emission from secondary leptons in microquasar jets

We present a model to estimate the synchrotron radio emission generated in microquasar (MQ) jets due to secondary pairs created via decay of charged pions produced in proton-proton collisions between stellar wind ions and jet relativistic protons. Signatures of electrons/positrons are obtained from consistent particle energy distributions that take into account energy losses due to synchrotron and inverse Compton (IC) processes, as well as adiabatic expansion. The space parameter for the model is explored and the corresponding spectral energy distributions (SEDs) are presented. We conclude that secondary leptonic emission represents a significant though hardly dominant contribution to the total radio emission in MQs, with observational consequences that can be used to test some still unknown processes occurring in these objects as well as the nature of the matter outflowing in their jets

Tunneling Time Distribution by means of Nelson's Quantum Mechanics and Wave-Particle Duality

We calculate a tunneling time distribution by means of Nelson's quantum mechanics and investigate its statistical properties. The relationship between the average and deviation of tunneling time suggests the exsistence of ``wave-particle duality'' in the tunneling phenomena.Comment: 14 pages including 11 figures, the text has been revise

No Dynamics in the Extremal Kerr Throat

Motivated by the Kerr/CFT conjecture, we explore solutions of vacuum general relativity whose asymptotic behavior agrees with that of the extremal Kerr throat, sometimes called the Near-Horizon Extreme Kerr (NHEK) geometry. We argue that all such solutions are diffeomorphic to the NHEK geometry itself. The logic proceeds in two steps. We first argue that certain charges must vanish at all times for any solution with NHEK asymptotics. We then analyze these charges in detail for linearized solutions. Though one can choose the relevant charges to vanish at any initial time, these charges are not conserved. As a result, requiring the charges to vanish at all times is a much stronger condition. We argue that all solutions satisfying this condition are diffeomorphic to the NHEK metric.Comment: 42 pages, 3 figures. v3: minor clarifications and correction

Near Extremal Kerr Entropy from AdS_2 Quantum Gravity

We analyze the asymptotic symmetries of near extremal Kerr black holes in four dimensions using the AdS_2/CFT_1 correspondence. We find a Virasoro algebra with central charge c_R=12J that is independent from the Virasoro algebra (with the same central charge) that acts on the degenerate ground state. The energy of the excitations is computed as well, and we can use Cardy's formula to determine the near extremal entropy. Our result is consistent with the Bekenstein-Hawking area law for near extremal Kerr black holes.Comment: 28 pages. v2: references added, typos correcte

Status of Identification of VHE gamma-ray sources

With the recent advances made by Cherenkov telescopes such as H.E.S.S., the field of very high-energy (VHE) gamma-ray astronomy has recently entered a new era in which for the first time populations of Galactic sources such as e.g. Pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) or Supernova remnants (SNRs) can be studied. However, while some of the new sources can be associated by positional coincidence as well as by consistent multi-wavelength data to a known counterpart at other wavelengths, most of the sources remain not finally identified. In the following, the population of Galactic H.E.S.S. sources will be used to demonstrate the status of the identifications, to classify them into categories according to this status and to point out outstanding problems.Comment: To appear in Astrophysics and Space Science (Proceedings of "The multimessenger approach to unidentified gamma-ray sources