27,468 research outputs found
Preliminary Abundance Analysis of Galactic Bulge Main Sequence, Subgiant, and Giant Branch Stars Observed During Microlensing with Keck/HIRES
We present an abundance analysis of six main sequence turnoff, subgiant, and
giant branch stars toward the Galactic bulge that were observed with Keck/HIRES
during microlensing events. This is an early look at the first detailed
chemical analysis of main sequence stars in the Galactic bulge. Lensing events
allow the effective aperture of Keck to be increased beyond its current
dimensions; although, some events still stretched its spectroscopic
capabilities. Future large telescopes with high resolution and high throughput
spectrometers will allow the study of abundances in distant stellar populations
and in less evolved stars with greater ease.Comment: 8 pages including 2 figures. To appear in SPIE proceedings on
Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation. Uses spie.cl
Contribution of integrated farm management (IFM) to Defra objectives
A farming system comprises a complex of interrelated and interacting factors. Any study of an isolated part of the system will not provide adequate understanding of the behaviour of the entire system and interactions may be equally or more important than individual components. There is therefore a requirement for the development of integrated approaches and practices to help farming systems adapt to, eliminate or reduce the negative impacts of production on the environment. This must be achieved whilst maintaining the economic viability of the farm enterprise. Our analysis has confirmed that IFM techniques generally have far more beneficial than adverse effects on current Defra policy objectives. However, there are some notable ‘conflicts’ where a technique that has a large beneficial effect in one policy area has a large negative effect in another. Carbon footprinting is used to quantify the impact of some integrated farming practices
Retrieving Neptune's aerosol properties from Keck OSIRIS observations. I. Dark regions
We present and analyze three-dimensional data cubes of Neptune from the
OSIRIS integral-field spectrograph on the 10-m Keck telescope, from July 2009.
These data have a spatial resolution of 0.035"/pixel and spectral resolution of
R~3800 in the H and K broad bands. We focus our analysis on regions of
Neptune's atmosphere that are near-infrared dark- that is, free of discrete
bright cloud features. We use a forward model coupled to a Markov chain Monte
Carlo algorithm to retrieve properties of Neptune's aerosol structure and
methane profile above ~4 bar in these near-infrared dark regions.
Using a set of high signal-to-noise spectra in a cloud-free band from 2-12N,
we find that Neptune's cloud opacity is dominated by a compact, optically thick
cloud layer with a base near 3 bar and composed of low albedo, forward
scattering particles, with an assumed characteristic size of ~1m. Above
this cloud, we require a vertically extended haze of smaller (~0.1 m)
particles, which reaches from the upper troposphere (~0.6 bar) into the
stratosphere. The particles in this haze are brighter and more isotropically
scattering than those in the deep cloud. When we extend our analysis to 18
cloud-free locations from 20N to 87S, we observe that the optical depth in
aerosols above 0.5 bar decreases by a factor of 2-3 or more at mid- and
high-southern latitudes relative to low latitudes.
We also consider Neptune's methane (CH) profile, and find that our
retrievals indicate a strong preference for a low methane relative humidity at
pressures where methane is expected to condense. Our preferred solution at most
locations is for a methane relative humidity below 10% near the tropopause in
addition to methane depletion down to 2.0-2.5 bar. We tentatively identify a
trend of lower CH columns above 2.5 bar at mid- and high-southern latitudes
over low latitudes.Comment: Published in Icarus: 15 September 201
Computing the Similarity Between Moving Curves
In this paper we study similarity measures for moving curves which can, for
example, model changing coastlines or retreating glacier termini. Points on a
moving curve have two parameters, namely the position along the curve as well
as time. We therefore focus on similarity measures for surfaces, specifically
the Fr\'echet distance between surfaces. While the Fr\'echet distance between
surfaces is not even known to be computable, we show for variants arising in
the context of moving curves that they are polynomial-time solvable or
NP-complete depending on the restrictions imposed on how the moving curves are
matched. We achieve the polynomial-time solutions by a novel approach for
computing a surface in the so-called free-space diagram based on max-flow
min-cut duality
Different populations of RNA polymerase II in living mammalian cells
RNA polymerase II is responsible for transcription of most eukaryotic genes, but, despite exhaustive analysis, little is known about how it transcribes natural templates in vivo. We studied polymerase dynamics in living Chinese hamster ovary cells using an established line that expresses the largest (catalytic) subunit of the polymerase (RPB1) tagged with the green fluorescent protein (GFP). Genetic complementation has shown this tagged polymerase to be fully functional. Fluorescence loss in photobleaching (FLIP) reveals the existence of at least three kinetic populations of tagged polymerase: a large rapidly-exchanging population, a small fraction resistant to 5,6-dichloro-1-β-D-ribofuranosylbenzimidazole (DRB) but sensitive to a different inhibitor of transcription (i.e. heat shock), and a third fraction sensitive to both inhibitors. Quantitative immunoblotting shows the largest fraction to be the inactive hypophosphorylated form of the polymerase (i.e. IIA). Results are consistent with the second (DRB-insensitive but heat-shock-sensitive) fraction being bound but not engaged, while the third (sensitive to both DRB and heat shock) is the elongating hyperphosphorylated form (i.e. IIO)
Development of Uniform CdTe Pixel Detectors Based on Caltech ASIC
We have developed a large CdTe pixel detector with dimensions of 23.7 x 13.0
mm and a pixel size of 448 x 448 um^2. The detector is based on recent
technologies of an uniform CdTe single crystal, a two-dimensional ASIC, and
stud bump-bonding to connect pixel electrodes on the CdTe surface to the ASIC.
Good spectra are obtained from 1051 pixels out of total 1056 pixels. When we
operate the detector at -50 C, the energy resolution is 0.67 keV and 0.99 keV
at 14 keV and 60 keV, respectively. Week-long stability of the detector is
confirmed at operating temperatures of both -50 C and -20 C. The detector also
shows high uniformity: the peak positions for all pixels agree to within 0.82%,
and the average of the energy resolution is 1.04 keV at a temperature of -50 C.
When we normalized the peak area by the total counts detected by each pixel, a
variation of 2.1 % is obtained.Comment: 11pages, 17figures, accepted for publication in Proc. SPIE 200
Strategies for protecting intellectual property when using CUDA applications on graphics processing units
Recent advances in the massively parallel computational abilities of graphical processing units (GPUs) have increased their use for general purpose computation, as companies look to take advantage of big data processing techniques. This has given rise to the potential for malicious software targeting GPUs, which is of interest to forensic investigators examining the operation of software. The ability to carry out reverse-engineering of software is of great importance within the security and forensics elds, particularly when investigating malicious software or carrying out forensic analysis following a successful security breach. Due to the complexity of the Nvidia CUDA (Compute Uni ed Device Architecture) framework, it is not clear how best to approach the reverse engineering of a piece of CUDA software. We carry out a review of the di erent binary output formats which may be encountered from the CUDA compiler, and their implications on reverse engineering. We then demonstrate the process of carrying out disassembly of an example CUDA application, to establish the various techniques available to forensic investigators carrying out black-box disassembly and reverse engineering of CUDA binaries. We show that the Nvidia compiler, using default settings, leaks useful information. Finally, we demonstrate techniques to better protect intellectual property in CUDA algorithm implementations from reverse engineering
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