573 research outputs found
Low-Frequency Spectral Turn-Overs in Millisecond Pulsars Studied from Imaging Observations
Measurements of pulsar flux densities are of great importance for
understanding the pulsar emission mechanism and for predictions of pulsar
survey yields and the pulsar population at large. Typically these flux
densities are determined from phase-averaged "pulse profiles", but this method
has limited applicability at low frequencies because the observed pulses can
easily be spread out by interstellar effects like scattering or dispersion,
leading to a non-pulsed continuum component that is necessarily ignored in this
type of analysis. In particular for the class of the millisecond pulsars (MSPs)
at frequencies below 200MHz, such interstellar effects can seriously compromise
de- tectability and measured flux densities. In this paper we investigate MSP
spectra based on a complementary approach, namely through investigation of
archival con- tinuum imaging data. Even though these images lose sensitivity to
pulsars since the on-pulse emission is averaged with off-pulse noise, they are
insensitive to effects from scattering and provide a reliable way to determine
the flux density and spectral indices of MSPs based on both pulsed and unpulsed
components. Using the 74MHz VLSSr as well as the 325MHz WENSS and 1.4GHz NVSS
catalogues, we investigate the imaging flux densities of MSPs and evaluate the
likelihood of spectral turn-overs in this population. We determine three new
MSP spectral indices and identify six new MSPs with likely spectral turn-overs.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publication in MNRA
Identifying Critical States by the Action-Based Variance of Expected Return
The balance of exploration and exploitation plays a crucial role in
accelerating reinforcement learning (RL). To deploy an RL agent in human
society, its explainability is also essential. However, basic RL approaches
have difficulties in deciding when to choose exploitation as well as in
extracting useful points for a brief explanation of its operation. One reason
for the difficulties is that these approaches treat all states the same way.
Here, we show that identifying critical states and treating them specially is
commonly beneficial to both problems. These critical states are the states at
which the action selection changes the potential of success and failure
substantially. We propose to identify the critical states using the variance in
the Q-function for the actions and to perform exploitation with high
probability on the identified states. These simple methods accelerate RL in a
grid world with cliffs and two baseline tasks of deep RL. Our results also
demonstrate that the identified critical states are intuitively interpretable
regarding the crucial nature of the action selection. Furthermore, our analysis
of the relationship between the timing of the identification of especially
critical states and the rapid progress of learning suggests there are a few
especially critical states that have important information for accelerating RL
rapidly.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure
Características dos anéis de crescimento de Drimys brasiliensis e Podocarpus sellowi em áreas de floresta ombrófila densa das Terras Baixas e Altomontana, no Estado do Paraná.
Resumo
The nature of the low-frequency emission of M51: First observations of a nearby galaxy with LOFAR
The grand-design spiral galaxy M51 was observed with the LOFAR High Frequency
Antennas (HBA) and imaged in total intensity and polarisation. This observation
covered the frequencies between 115 MHz and 175 MHz. We produced an image of
total emission of M51 at the mean frequency of 151 MHz with 20 arcsec
resolution and 0.3 mJy rms noise, which is the most sensitive image of a galaxy
at frequencies below 300 MHz so far. The integrated spectrum of total radio
emission is described well by a power law, while flat spectral indices in the
central region indicate thermal absorption. We observe that the disk extends
out to 16 kpc and see a break in the radial profile near the optical radius of
the disk. Our main results, the scale lengths of the inner and outer disks at
151 MHz and 1.4 GHz, arm--interarm contrast, and the break scales of the
radio--far-infrared correlations, can be explained consistently by CRE
diffusion, leading to a longer propagation length of CRE of lower energy. The
distribution of CRE sources drops sharply at about 10 kpc radius, where the
star formation rate also decreases sharply. We find evidence that thermal
absorption is primarily caused by HII regions. The non-detection of
polarisation from M51 at 151 MHz is consistent with the estimates of Faraday
depolarisation. Future searches for polarised emission in this frequency range
should concentrate on regions with low star formation rates.Comment: 20 pages, 18 figures, accepted for publication in A&
Orbital and superorbital variability of LS I +61 303 at low radio frequencies with GMRT and LOFAR
LS I +61 303 is a gamma-ray binary that exhibits an outburst at GHz
frequencies each orbital cycle of 26.5 d and a superorbital
modulation with a period of 4.6 yr. We have performed a detailed
study of the low-frequency radio emission of LS I +61 303 by analysing all the
archival GMRT data at 150, 235 and 610 MHz, and conducting regular LOFAR
observations within the Radio Sky Monitor (RSM) at 150 MHz. We have detected
the source for the first time at 150 MHz, which is also the first detection of
a gamma-ray binary at such a low frequency. We have obtained the light-curves
of the source at 150, 235 and 610 MHz, all of them showing orbital modulation.
The light-curves at 235 and 610 MHz also show the existence of superorbital
variability. A comparison with contemporaneous 15-GHz data shows remarkable
differences with these light-curves. At 15 GHz we see clear outbursts, whereas
at low frequencies we see variability with wide maxima. The light-curve at 235
MHz seems to be anticorrelated with the one at 610 MHz, implying a shift of
0.5 orbital phases in the maxima. We model the shifts between the maxima
at different frequencies as due to changes in the physical parameters of the
emitting region assuming either free-free absorption or synchrotron
self-absorption, obtaining expansion velocities for this region close to the
stellar wind velocity with both mechanisms.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
Arginine methylation analysis of the splicing-associated SR protein SFRS9/SRP30C
The human SFRS9/SRp30c belongs to the SR family of splicing regulators. Despite evidence that members of this protein family may be targeted by arginine methylation, this has yet to be experimentally addressed. In this study, we found that SFRS9 is a target for PRMT1-mediated arginine methylation in vitro, and that it is immunoprecipitated from HEK-293 lysates by antibodies that recognize both mono- and dimethylated arginines. We further observed that upon treatment with the methylation inhibitor Adox, the fluorescent EGFP-SFRS9 re-localizes to dot-like structures in the cell nucleus. In subsequent confocal analyses, we found that EGFP-SFRS9 localizes to nucleoli in Adox-treated cells. Our findings indicate the importance of arginine methylation for the subnuclear localization of SFRS9144657669CONSELHO NACIONAL DE DESENVOLVIMENTO CIENTÍFICO E TECNOLÓGICO - CNPQFUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO - FAPESPsem informaçã
The effect of bone marrow-derived stem cells associated with platelet-rich plasma on the osseointegration of immediately placed implants
Stem cells associated with growth factors have been shown to improve bone healing and the osseointegration of dental implants. A Brazilian miniature pig model was used to evaluate the effect of autologous bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MS
Inter-comparison of gauge-corrected global satellite rainfall estimates and their applicability for effective water resource management in a transboundary river basin: the case of the Meghna river basin
The Meghna River basin is a transboundary basin that lies in Bangladesh (~40%) and India (~60%). Due to its terrain structure, the Bangladesh portion of the basin experiences frequent floods that cause severe human and economic losses. Bangladesh, as the downstream nation in the basin, faces challenges in receiving hydro-meteorological and water use data from India for effective water resource management. To address such issue, satellite rainfall products are recognized as an alternative. However, they are affected by biases and, thus, must be calibrated and verified using ground observations. This research compares the performance of four widely available gauge-adjusted satellite rainfall products (GSRPs) against ground rainfall observations in the Meghna basin within Bangladesh. Further biases in the GSRPs are then identified. The GSRPs have both similarities and differences in terms of producing biases. To maximize the usage of the GSRPs and to further improve their accuracy, several bias correction and merging techniques are applied to correct them. Correction factors and merging weights are calculated at the local gauge stations and are spatially distributed by adopting an interpolation method to improve the GSRPs, both inside and outside Bangladesh. Of the four bias correction methods, modified linear correction (MLC) has performed better, and partially removed the GSRPs’ systematic biases. In addition, of the three merging techniques, inverse error-variance weighting (IEVW) has provided better results than the individual GSRPs and removed significantly more biases than the MLC correction method for three of the five validation stations, whereas the two other stations that experienced heavy rainfall events, showed better results for the MLC method. Hence, the combined use of IEVW merging and MLC correction is explored. The combined method has provided the best results, thus creating an improved dataset. The applicability of this dataset is then investigated using a hydrological model to simulated streamflows at two critical locations. The results show that the dataset reproduces the hydrological responses of the basin well, as compared with the observed streamflows. Together, these results indicate that the improved dataset can overcome the limitations of poor data availability in the basin and can serve as a reference rainfall dataset for wide range of applications (e.g., flood modelling and forecasting, irrigation planning, damage and risk assessment, and climate change adaptation planning). In addition, the proposed methodology of creating a reference rainfall dataset based on the GSRPs could also be applicable to other poorly-gauged and inaccessible transboundary river basins, thus providing reliable rainfall information and effective water resource management for sustainable development
Expression, purification and antimicrobial activity of recombinant pediocin PA-1 M31L, a PA-1 derivative with enhanced stability
Meeting presentationPediocin, the prototypical class IIa bacteriocin, is an efficient antilisterial molecule. Loss of pediocin PA-1
activity is attributed to methionine oxidation at position 31 and this can be overcome by substituting
methionine for leucine (pediocin M31L). The aim of this study was to produce pediocin M31L with
enhanced stability by recombinant expression in E. coli cells
An automated archival VLA transients survey
In this paper we present the results of a survey for radio transients using
data obtained from the Very Large Array archive. We have reduced, using a
pipeline procedure, 5037 observations of the most common pointings - i.e. the
calibrator fields. These fields typically contain a relatively bright point
source and are used to calibrate `target' observations: they are therefore
rarely imaged themselves. The observations used span a time range ~ 1984 - 2008
and consist of eight different pointings, three different frequencies (8.4, 4.8
and 1.4 GHz) and have a total observing time of 435 hours. We have searched for
transient and variable radio sources within these observations using components
from the prototype LOFAR transient detection system. In this paper we present
the methodology for reducing large volumes of Very Large Array data; and we
also present a brief overview of the prototype LOFAR transient detection
algorithms. No radio transients were detected in this survey, therefore we
place an upper limit on the snapshot rate of GHz frequency transients > 8.0 mJy
to rho less than or equal to 0.032 deg^-2 that have typical timescales 4.3 to
45.3 days. We compare and contrast our upper limit with the snapshot rates -
derived from either detections or non-detections of transient and variable
radio sources - reported in the literature. When compared with the current Log
N - Log S distribution formed from previous surveys, we show that our upper
limit is consistent with the observed population. Current and future radio
transient surveys will hopefully further constrain these statistics, and
potentially discover dominant transient source populations. In this paper we
also briefly explore the current transient commissioning observations with
LOFAR, and the impact they will make on the field.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA
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