Cycle 23 Variation in Solar Flare Productivity

The NOAA listings of solar flares in cycles 21-24, including the GOES soft X-ray magnitudes, enable a simple determination of the number of flares each flaring active region produces over its lifetime. We have studied this measure of flare productivity over the interval 1975-2012. The annual averages of flare productivity remained approximately constant during cycles 21 and 22, at about two reported M or X flares per region, but then increased significantly in the declining phase of cycle 23 (the years 2004-2005). We have confirmed this by using the independent RHESSI flare catalog to check the NOAA events listings where possible. We note that this measure of solar activity does not correlate with the solar cycle. The anomalous peak in flare productivity immediately preceded the long solar minimum between cycles 23 and 24

The Signal Data Explorer: A high performance Grid based signal search tool for use in distributed diagnostic applications

We describe a high performance Grid based signal search tool for distributed diagnostic applications developed in conjunction with Rolls-Royce plc for civil aero engine condition monitoring applications. With the introduction of advanced monitoring technology into engineering systems, healthcare, etc., the associated diagnostic processes are increasingly required to handle and consider vast amounts of data. An exemplar of such a diagnosis process was developed during the DAME project, which built a proof of concept demonstrator to assist in the enhanced diagnosis and prognosis of aero-engine conditions. In particular it has shown the utility of an interactive viewing and high performance distributed search tool (the Signal Data Explorer) in the aero-engine diagnostic process. The viewing and search techniques are equally applicable to other domains. The Signal Data Explorer and search services have been demonstrated on the Worldwide Universities Network to search distributed databases of electrocardiograph data

Strategies and How-Tos on Interstate Closures for MOT

Full interstate closures have proven to be an effective method for balancing congestion and safety when maintaining interstate infrastructure. This presentation will describe successful practices, federal requirements, and the process to follow when closing an interstate for maintenance

The escaping set of a quasiregular mapping

We show that if the maximum modulus of a quasiregular mapping f grows sufficiently rapidly then there exists a non-empty escaping set I(f) consisting of points whose forward orbits under iteration tend to infinity. This set I(f) has an unbounded component but, in contrast to the case of entire functions on the complex plane, the closure of I(f) may have a bounded component.Comment: 10 page

An Untriggered Search for Optical Bursts

We present an untriggered search for optical bursts with the ROTSE-I telephoto array. Observations were taken which monitor an effective 256 square degree field continuously over 125 hours to m_{ROTSE}=15.7. The uniquely large field, moderate limiting magnitude and fast cadence of $\sim$10 minutes permits transient searches in a new region of sensitivity. Our search reveals no candidate events. To quantify this result, we simulate potential optical bursts with peak magnitude, m_{p}, at t=10 s, which fade as f=(\frac{t}{t_{0}}) ^{\alpha_{t}}, where \alpha_t < 0. Simple estimates based on observational evidence indicate that a search of this sensitivity begins to probe the possible region occupied by GRB orphan afterglows. Our observing protocol and image sensitivity result in a broad region of high detection efficiency for light curves to the bright and slowly varying side of a boundary running from [\alpha_{t},m_{p}]=[-2.0,6.0] to [-0.3,13.2]. Within this region, the integrated rate of brief optical bursts is less than 1.1\times 10^{-8} {\rm s}^{-1} {\rm deg}^{-2}. At $\sim$22 times the observed GRB rate from BATSE, this suggests a limit on \frac{\theta_{opt}}{\theta_{\gamma}}\lesssim 5 where \theta_{opt} and \theta_{\gamma} are the optical and gamma-ray collimation angles, respectively. Several effects might explain the absence of optical bursts, and a search of the kind described here but more sensitive by about 4 magnitudes should offer a more definitive probe.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, 1 tabl

Enhancing Relaxed Performance: Evaluating an Autism Arts Festival

‘Relaxed performances’ allow spectators to enjoy a non-judgmental environment in the theatre, where they can talk or move around, along with other adjustments to make them more accessible to a range of audiences including those on the autistic spectrum. Typical accommodations include reduced intensity of lighting and sound, provision of visual stories to familiarise spectators with the venue and production, and trained staff available to assist visitors. This paper will evaluate the Autism Arts Festival, an attempt to develop the idea of a relaxed performance further to create an entirely autism-friendly festival in Canterbury, UK. We developed a suite of features to make the festival more accessible, and whilst audience response indicates that no single one was used by all audience members, the suite as a whole was nevertheless effective at increasing the accessibility of the festival. Moreover, discussions with the performers indicate that the festival, as an ‘autistic space’, was conducive of both a sense of community solidarity and engagement with the politics of neurodiversity

A Search for Early Optical Emission from Short and Long Duration Gamma-ray Bursts

Gamma-ray bursts of short duration may harbor vital clues to the range of phenomena producing bursts. However, recent progress from the observation of optical counterparts has not benefitted the study of short bursts. We have searched for early optical emission from six gamma-ray bursts using the ROTSE-I telephoto array. Three of these events were of short duration, including GRB 980527 which is among the brightest short bursts yet observed. The data consist of unfiltered CCD optical images taken in response to BATSE triggers delivered via the GCN. For the first time, we have analyzed the entire 16 degree by 16 degree field covered for five of these bursts. In addition, we discuss a search for the optical counterpart to GRB 000201, a well-localized long burst. Single image sensitivities range from 13th to 14th magnitude around 10 s after the initial burst detection, and 14 - 15.8 one hour later. No new optical counterparts were discovered in this analysis suggesting short burst optical and gamma-ray fluxes are uncorrelated.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, subm. to ApJ Let

Prompt Optical Observations of Gamma-ray Bursts

The Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE) seeks to measure simultaneous and early afterglow optical emission from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). A search for optical counterparts to six GRBs with localization errors of 1 square degree or better produced no detections. The earliest limiting sensitivity is m(ROTSE) > 13.1 at 10.85 seconds (5 second exposure) after the gamma-ray rise, and the best limit is m(ROTSE) > 16.0 at 62 minutes (897 second exposure). These are the most stringent limits obtained for GRB optical counterpart brightness in the first hour after the burst. Consideration of the gamma-ray fluence and peak flux for these bursts and for GRB990123 indicates that there is not a strong positive correlation between optical flux and gamma-ray emission.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to ApJ Letter

Investigations on path indexing for graph databases

Graph databases have become an increasingly popular choice for the management of the massive network data sets arising in many contemporary applications. We investigate the effectiveness of path indexing for accelerating query processing in graph database systems, using as an exemplar the widely used open-source Neo4j graph database. We present a novel path index design which supports efficient ordered access to paths in a graph dataset. Our index is fully persistent and designed for external memory storage and retrieval. We also describe a compression scheme that exploits the limited differences between consecutive keys in the index, as well as a workload-driven approach to indexing. We demonstrate empirically the speed-ups achieved by our implementation, showing that the path index yields query run-times from 2x up to 8000x faster than Neo4j. Empirical evaluation also shows that our scheme leads to smaller indexes than using general-purpose LZ4 compression. The complete stand-alone implementation of our index, as well as supporting tooling such as a bulk-loader, are provided as open source for further research and development