3,310 research outputs found
The role of beak shape in octopodid taxonomy
Beak shapes in nine species of Southern Ocean octopodids were measured using seven size-standardized ratios. The results were analysed using principal component analysis and discriminant function analysis and showthat beak shape may be used as a taxonomic character to distinguish between genera, but not between species. Stepwise discriminant function analysis indicated that all seven ratios were required to maximize discrimination between beaks. A phenogram constructed from a matrix of Mahalanobis distances differed from a dendrogram produced from genetic data. This suggests that, although useful for discrimination, beak morphology is probably not suitable for constructing phylogenies
Note: A versatile mass spectrometer chamber for molecular beam and temperature programmed desorption experiments
A dual purpose mass spectrometer chamber capable of performing molecular beam scattering (MBS) and temperature programmed desorption (TPD) is detailed. Two simple features of this design allow it to perform these techniques. First, the diameter of entrance aperture to the mass spectrometer can be varied to maximize signal for TPD or to maximize angular resolution for MBS. Second, the mass spectrometer chamber can be radially translated so that it can be positioned close to the sample to maximize signal or far from the sample to maximize angular resolution. The performance of this system is described and compares well with systems designed for only one of these techniques
Slightly generalized Generalized Contagion: Unifying simple models of biological and social spreading
We motivate and explore the basic features of generalized contagion, a model
mechanism that unifies fundamental models of biological and social contagion.
Generalized contagion builds on the elementary observation that spreading and
contagion of all kinds involve some form of system memory. We discuss the three
main classes of systems that generalized contagion affords, resembling: simple
biological contagion; critical mass contagion of social phenomena; and an
intermediate, and explosive, vanishing critical mass contagion. We also present
a simple explanation of the global spreading condition in the context of a
small seed of infected individuals.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures; chapter to appear in "Spreading Dynamics in
Social Systems"; Eds. Sune Lehmann and Yong-Yeol Ahn, Springer Natur
Corrected overlap weight and clustering coefficient
We discuss two well known network measures: the overlap weight of an edge and
the clustering coefficient of a node. For both of them it turns out that they
are not very useful for data analytic task to identify important elements
(nodes or links) of a given network. The reason for this is that they attain
their largest values on maximal subgraphs of relatively small size that are
more probable to appear in a network than that of larger size. We show how the
definitions of these measures can be corrected in such a way that they give the
expected results. We illustrate the proposed corrected measures by applying
them on the US Airports network using the program Pajek.Comment: The paper is a detailed and extended version of the talk presented at
the CMStatistics (ERCIM) 2015 Conferenc
Multilayer metamaterial absorbers inspired by perfectly matched layers
We derive periodic multilayer absorbers with effective uniaxial properties
similar to perfectly matched layers (PML). This approximate representation of
PML is based on the effective medium theory and we call it an effective medium
PML (EM-PML). We compare the spatial reflection spectrum of the layered
absorbers to that of a PML material and demonstrate that after neglecting gain
and magnetic properties, the absorber remains functional. This opens a route to
create electromagnetic absorbers for real and not only numerical applications
and as an example we introduce a layered absorber for the wavelength of
~m made of SiO and NaCl. We also show that similar cylindrical
core-shell nanostructures derived from flat multilayers also exhibit very good
absorptive and reflective properties despite the different geometry
High resolution dynamical mapping of social interactions with active RFID
In this paper we present an experimental framework to gather data on
face-to-face social interactions between individuals, with a high spatial and
temporal resolution. We use active Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
devices that assess contacts with one another by exchanging low-power radio
packets. When individuals wear the beacons as a badge, a persistent radio
contact between the RFID devices can be used as a proxy for a social
interaction between individuals. We present the results of a pilot study
recently performed during a conference, and a subsequent preliminary data
analysis, that provides an assessment of our method and highlights its
versatility and applicability in many areas concerned with human dynamics
Statistically validated networks in bipartite complex systems
Many complex systems present an intrinsic bipartite nature and are often
described and modeled in terms of networks [1-5]. Examples include movies and
actors [1, 2, 4], authors and scientific papers [6-9], email accounts and
emails [10], plants and animals that pollinate them [11, 12]. Bipartite
networks are often very heterogeneous in the number of relationships that the
elements of one set establish with the elements of the other set. When one
constructs a projected network with nodes from only one set, the system
heterogeneity makes it very difficult to identify preferential links between
the elements. Here we introduce an unsupervised method to statistically
validate each link of the projected network against a null hypothesis taking
into account the heterogeneity of the system. We apply our method to three
different systems, namely the set of clusters of orthologous genes (COG) in
completely sequenced genomes [13, 14], a set of daily returns of 500 US
financial stocks, and the set of world movies of the IMDb database [15]. In all
these systems, both different in size and level of heterogeneity, we find that
our method is able to detect network structures which are informative about the
system and are not simply expression of its heterogeneity. Specifically, our
method (i) identifies the preferential relationships between the elements, (ii)
naturally highlights the clustered structure of investigated systems, and (iii)
allows to classify links according to the type of statistically validated
relationships between the connected nodes.Comment: Main text: 13 pages, 3 figures, and 1 Table. Supplementary
information: 15 pages, 3 figures, and 2 Table
Organic aerosol formation downwind from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
A large fraction of atmospheric aerosols are derived from organic compounds with various volatilities. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) WP-3D research aircraft made airborne measurements of the gaseous and aerosol composition of air over the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that occurred from April to August 2010. A narrow plume of hydrocarbons was observed downwind of DWH that is attributed to the evaporation of fresh oil on the sea surface. A much wider plume with high concentrations of organic aerosol (>25 micrograms per cubic meter) was attributed to the formation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) from unmeasured, less volatile hydrocarbons that were emitted from a wider area around DWH. These observations provide direct and compelling evidence for the importance of formation of SOA from less volatile hydrocarbons
Suicide ideation of individuals in online social networks
Suicide explains the largest number of death tolls among Japanese adolescents
in their twenties and thirties. Suicide is also a major cause of death for
adolescents in many other countries. Although social isolation has been
implicated to influence the tendency to suicidal behavior, the impact of social
isolation on suicide in the context of explicit social networks of individuals
is scarcely explored. To address this question, we examined a large data set
obtained from a social networking service dominant in Japan. The social network
is composed of a set of friendship ties between pairs of users created by
mutual endorsement. We carried out the logistic regression to identify users'
characteristics, both related and unrelated to social networks, which
contribute to suicide ideation. We defined suicide ideation of a user as the
membership to at least one active user-defined community related to suicide. We
found that the number of communities to which a user belongs to, the
intransitivity (i.e., paucity of triangles including the user), and the
fraction of suicidal neighbors in the social network, contributed the most to
suicide ideation in this order. Other characteristics including the age and
gender contributed little to suicide ideation. We also found qualitatively the
same results for depressive symptoms.Comment: 4 figures, 9 table
Atmospheric emissions from the deepwater Horizon spill constrain air-water partitioning, hydrocarbon fate, and leak rate
The fate of deepwater releases of gas and oil mixtures is initially determined by solubility and volatility of individual hydrocarbon species; these attributes determine partitioning between air and water. Quantifying this partitioning is necessary to constrain simulations of gas and oil transport, to predict marine bioavailability of different fractions of the gas-oil mixture, and to develop a comprehensive picture of the fate of leaked hydrocarbons in the marine environment. Analysis of airborne atmospheric data shows massive amounts (∼258,000 kg/day) of hydrocarbons evaporating promptly from the Deepwater Horizon spill; these data collected during two research flights constrain air-water partitioning, thus bioavailability and fate, of the leaked fluid. This analysis quantifies the fraction of surfacing hydrocarbons that dissolves in the water column (∼33% by mass), the fraction that does not dissolve, and the fraction that evaporates promptly after surfacing (∼14% by mass). We do not quantify the leaked fraction lacking a surface expression; therefore, calculation of atmospheric mass fluxes provides a lower limit to the total hydrocarbon leak rate of 32,600 to 47,700 barrels of fluid per day, depending on reservoir fluid composition information. This study demonstrates a new approach for rapid-response airborne assessment of future oil spills. Copyright 2011 by the American Geophysical Union
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