Solar feature tracking in both spatial and temporal domains

A new method for automated coronal loop tracking, in both spatial and temporal domains, is presented. The reliability of this technique was tested with TRACE 171A observations. The application of this technique to a flare-induced kink-mode oscillation, revealed a 3500 km spatial periodicity which occur along the loop edge. We establish a reduction in oscillatory power, for these spatial periodicities, of 45% over a 322 s interval. We relate the reduction in oscillatory power to the physical damping of these loop-top oscillations

Evaluating the applicability of multi-agent software for implementing distributed industrial data management approaches

Distributed approaches to industrial control or information management problems are often tackled using Multi-agent methods. Multi-Agent systems – solutions resulting from taking a Multi-agent based approaches - often come with a certain amount of “overhead” such as communication systems, but can provide a helpful tool with the design and implementation. In this paper, a distributed data management problem is addressed with both a bespoke approach developed specifically for this problem and a more general Multi-agent approach. The two approaches are compared using architecture and software metrics. The software metric results show similar results, although overall the bespoke approach was more appropriate for the particular application examined. The architectural analysis indicates that the main reason for this difference is the communication and computation overhead associated with the agent-based system. It was not within the scope of this study to compare the two approaches under multiple application scenarios.BoeingThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15159-5_1

Overcoming limited dataset availability when working with industrial organisations

Increasing data security and privacy requirements combined with the need for additional data management research leads to a conflict for industrial companies. In order to solve their industrial data management problems companies need to share some of their data, but their internal confidentiality rules sometimes hamper this sharing process. Existing techniques for sharing data without releasing company secrets often loose some of the problems/characteristics within the data. This paper therefore presents a qualitative process to overcome this problem of industrial data sharing while still enabling external researchers to develop relevant solutions to organizational problems. It is based on initial trials with two industrial case studies and showed some promising results.BoeingThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from IEEE via http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/INDIN.2015.728184

THE EVOLVING THREAT AND ENFORCEMENT OF REPLICA GOODS

Of all the instances and schemes for infringing and counterfeiting trademark rights, perhaps none has been as successful and insidious as “replicas.” The term “replica,” when applied, for instance, to a watch or handbag, is synonymous with “counterfeit.” Both terms are used to describe a product that is an exact and unauthorized copy of an authentic product. While some street merchants may call their counterfeit products “replicas,” the designation exploded in popularity on the thousands of websites that boast look-alike counterfeit products. The popularity of “replica” goods is largely dependent on the absence of liability for manufacturers of these transient and low-cost goods, coupled with the public’s quest for a luxury image without the luxury good price. The prevalence of replica goods and the never-ending demand for them has created an unprecedented enforcement challenge for trademark owners. This Article discusses the issue of replicas and the difficulty in applying liability. It addresses the difficulty in convincing consumers that replica goods are harmful, absent some personal liability. United States Customs even permits those traveling to the United States to import one counterfeit good, such as a handbag or item of clothing, so long as it is intended for personal use. How can trademark owners persuade consumers that all counterfeiting is a crime, when certain circumstances allow—or in the case of replicas, at least appear to condone—counterfeit products? The Author concludes that trademark owners must be proactive and search for alternative ways to enforce their intellectual property rights, including holding third parties liable for infringement

THE EVOLVING THREAT AND ENFORCEMENT OF REPLICA GOODS

Of all the instances and schemes for infringing and counterfeiting trademark rights, perhaps none has been as successful and insidious as “replicas.” The term “replica,” when applied, for instance, to a watch or handbag, is synonymous with “counterfeit.” Both terms are used to describe a product that is an exact and unauthorized copy of an authentic product. While some street merchants may call their counterfeit products “replicas,” the designation exploded in popularity on the thousands of websites that boast look-alike counterfeit products. The popularity of “replica” goods is largely dependent on the absence of liability for manufacturers of these transient and low-cost goods, coupled with the public’s quest for a luxury image without the luxury good price. The prevalence of replica goods and the never-ending demand for them has created an unprecedented enforcement challenge for trademark owners. This Article discusses the issue of replicas and the difficulty in applying liability. It addresses the difficulty in convincing consumers that replica goods are harmful, absent some personal liability. United States Customs even permits those traveling to the United States to import one counterfeit good, such as a handbag or item of clothing, so long as it is intended for personal use. How can trademark owners persuade consumers that all counterfeiting is a crime, when certain circumstances allow—or in the case of replicas, at least appear to condone—counterfeit products? The Author concludes that trademark owners must be proactive and search for alternative ways to enforce their intellectual property rights, including holding third parties liable for infringement

Evaluation of Retrievable Drip Tape Irrigation Systems

California growers of lettuce, broccoli, celery, and cauliflower have long been leaders in drip tape applications. Starting in the early 1990s, large acreages of buried, subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) were installed with the intent of leaving the tape in the ground for up to 10 years (Burt and Styles, 1999). Tape burial depths were typically 20 - 25 cm below the soil surface. Although yields and irrigation efficiencies typically increased, there were numerous challenges with SDI. Since the tape was buried, such issues occurred as gopher damage, problems with root intrusion, soil back-siphonage when the system was shut off, damage during harvesting during wet weather, and difficulties in developing uniform wetting patterns for germination. In addition, because the location of the buried tape was permanently fixed, any shifting of the beds that took place during cultivation operations would result in vertical or lateral displacement from the tape. The fixed position also made crop rotations inherently inflexible since crop bed widths could not be varied

Distributed Model Predictive Control for Cooperative Multirotor Landing on Uncrewed Surface Vessel in Waves

Heterogeneous autonomous robot teams consisting of multirotor and uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) have the potential to enable various maritime applications, including advanced search-and-rescue operations. A critical requirement of these applications is the ability to land a multirotor on a USV for tasks such as recharging. This paper addresses the challenge of safely landing a multirotor on a cooperative USV in harsh open waters. To tackle this problem, we propose a novel sequential distributed model predictive control (MPC) scheme for cooperative multirotor-USV landing. Our approach combines standard tracking MPCs for the multirotor and USV with additional artificial intermediate goal locations. These artificial goals enable the robots to coordinate their cooperation without prior guidance. Each vehicle solves an individual optimization problem for both the artificial goal and an input that tracks it but only communicates the former to the other vehicle. The artificial goals are penalized by a suitable coupling cost. Furthermore, our proposed distributed MPC scheme utilizes a spatial-temporal wave model to coordinate in real-time a safer landing location and time the multirotor's landing to limit severe tilt of the USV

The effects of transients on photospheric and chromospheric power distributions

We have observed a quiet Sun region with the Swedish 1-meter Solar Telescope (SST) equipped with CRISP Imaging SpectroPolarimeter. High-resolution, high-cadence, H$\alpha$ line scanning images were taken to observe different layers of the solar atmosphere from the photosphere to upper chromosphere. We study the distribution of power in different period-bands at different heights. Power maps of the upper photosphere and the lower chromosphere show suppressed power surrounding the magnetic-network elements, known as "magnetic shadows". These also show enhanced power close to the photosphere, traditionally referred to as "power halos". The interaction between acoustic waves and inclined magnetic fields is generally believed to be responsible for these two effects. In this study we explore if small-scale transients can influence the distribution of power at different heights. We show that the presence of transients, like mottles, Rapid Blueshifted Excursions (RBEs) and Rapid Redshifted Excursions (RREs), can strongly influence the power-maps. The short and finite lifetime of these events strongly affects all powermaps, potentially influencing the observed power distribution. We show that Doppler-shifted transients like RBEs and RREs that occur ubiquitously, can have a dominant effect on the formation of the power halos in the quiet Sun. For magnetic shadows, transients like mottles do not seem to have a significant effect in the power suppression around 3 minutes and wave interaction may play a key role here. Our high cadence observations reveal that flows, waves and shocks manifest in presence of magnetic fields to form a non-linear magnetohydrodynamic system.Comment: 11 pages, 11 Figures, 4 movies (will be available online in ApJ). ApJ (accepted

Departure of high temperature iron lines from the equilibrium state in flaring solar plasmas

The aim of this study is to clarify if the assumption of ionization equilibrium and a Maxwellian electron energy distribution is valid in flaring solar plasmas. We analyze the 2014 December 20 X1.8 flare, in which the \ion{Fe}{xxi} 187~\AA, \ion{Fe}{xxii} 253~\AA, \ion{Fe}{xxiii} 263~\AA\ and \ion{Fe}{xxiv} 255~\AA\ emission lines were simultaneously observed by the EUV Imaging Spectrometer onboard the Hinode satellite. Intensity ratios among these high temperature Fe lines are compared and departures from isothermal conditions and ionization equilibrium examined. Temperatures derived from intensity ratios involving these four lines show significant discrepancies at the flare footpoints in the impulsive phase, and at the looptop in the gradual phase. Among these, the temperature derived from the \ion{Fe}{xxii}/\ion{Fe}{xxiv} intensity ratio is the lowest, which cannot be explained if we assume a Maxwellian electron distribution and ionization equilibrium, even in the case of a multi-thermal structure. This result suggests that the assumption of ionization equilibrium and/or a Maxwellian electron energy distribution can be violated in evaporating solar plasma around 10~MK.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Ap

Solving Boltzmann Optimization Problems with Deep Learning

Decades of exponential scaling in high performance computing (HPC) efficiency is coming to an end. Transistor based logic in complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology is approaching physical limits beyond which further miniaturization will be impossible. Future HPC efficiency gains will necessarily rely on new technologies and paradigms of compute. The Ising model shows particular promise as a future framework for highly energy efficient computation. Ising systems are able to operate at energies approaching thermodynamic limits for energy consumption of computation. Ising systems can function as both logic and memory. Thus, they have the potential to significantly reduce energy costs inherent to CMOS computing by eliminating costly data movement. The challenge in creating Ising-based hardware is in optimizing useful circuits that produce correct results on fundamentally nondeterministic hardware. The contribution of this paper is a novel machine learning approach, a combination of deep neural networks and random forests, for efficiently solving optimization problems that minimize sources of error in the Ising model. In addition, we provide a process to express a Boltzmann probability optimization problem as a supervised machine learning problem