5,421 research outputs found
Constraining the Atmospheric Composition of the Day-Night Terminators of HD 189733b : Atmospheric Retrieval with Aerosols
A number of observations have shown that Rayleigh scattering by aerosols
dominates the transmission spectrum of HD 189733b at wavelengths shortward of 1
m. In this study, we retrieve a range of aerosol distributions consistent
with transmission spectroscopy between 0.3-24 m that were recently
re-analyzed by Pont et al. (2013). To constrain the particle size and the
optical depth of the aerosol layer, we investigate the degeneracies between
aerosol composition, temperature, planetary radius, and molecular abundances
that prevent unique solutions for transit spectroscopy. Assuming that the
aerosol is composed of MgSiO, we suggest that a vertically uniform aerosol
layer over all pressures with a monodisperse particle size smaller than about
0.1 m and an optical depth in the range 0.002-0.02 at 1 m provides
statistically meaningful solutions for the day/night terminator regions of HD
189733b. Generally, we find that a uniform aerosol layer provide adequate fits
to the data if the optical depth is less than 0.1 and the particle size is
smaller than 0.1 m, irrespective of the atmospheric temperature, planetary
radius, aerosol composition, and gaseous molecules. Strong constraints on the
aerosol properties are provided by spectra at wavelengths shortward of 1 m
as well as longward of 8 m, if the aerosol material has absorption
features in this region. We show that these are the optimal wavelengths for
quantifying the effects of aerosols, which may guide the design of future space
observations. The present investigation indicates that the current data offer
sufficient information to constrain some of the aerosol properties of
HD189733b, but the chemistry in the terminator regions remains uncertain.Comment: Transferred to ApJ and accepted. 11 pages, 10 figures, 1 tabl
Finding 9-1-1 Callers in Tall Buildings
Accurately determining a user’s floor location is essential for minimizing delays in emergency response. This paper presents a floor localization system intended for emergency calls. We aim to provide floor-level accuracy with minimum infrastructure support. Our approach is to use multiple sensors, all available in today’s smartphones, to trace a user’s vertical movements inside buildings. We make three contributions. First, we present a hybrid architecture for floor localization with emergency calls in mind. The architecture combines beacon-based infrastructure and sensor-based dead reckoning, striking the right balance between accurately determining a user’s location and minimizing the required infrastructure. Second, we present the elevator module for tracking a user’s movement in an elevator. The elevator module addresses three core challenges that make it difficult to accurately derive displacement from acceleration. Third, we present the stairway module which determines the number of floors a user has traveled on foot. Unlike previous systems that track users’ foot steps, our stairway module uses a novel landing counting technique
Untying Financial Stress and Financial Anxiety: Implications for Research and Financial Practitioners
The purpose of this study is to test for differences in the predictors of financial stress and financial anxiety using data from the 2018 FINRA Investor Education Foundation’s National Financial Capability Study (NFCS). This study further investigated how financial stress and financial anxiety are associated with financial satisfaction. The results revealed similarities and differences in the predictors of financial stress and financial anxiety. Furthermore, the findings show that financial stress and financial anxiety are negatively associated with financial satisfaction, with a stronger effect of financial anxiety than financial stress with financial satisfaction. Researchers and practitioners often use financial stress and financial anxiety interchangeably; however, the results of this study offer evidence of variation in the characteristics associated with each construct. Implications for research and financial practitioners working with individuals and families dealing with financial stress and financial anxiety are discussed
On the potential of the EChO mission to characterise gas giant atmospheres
Space telescopes such as EChO (Exoplanet Characterisation Observatory) and
JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) will be important for the future study of
extrasolar planet atmospheres. Both of these missions are capable of performing
high sensitivity spectroscopic measurements at moderate resolutions in the
visible and infrared, which will allow the characterisation of atmospheric
properties using primary and secondary transit spectroscopy. We use the NEMESIS
radiative transfer and retrieval tool (Irwin et al. 2008, Lee et al. 2012) to
explore the potential of the proposed EChO mission to solve the retrieval
problem for a range of H2-He planets orbiting different stars. We find that
EChO should be capable of retrieving temperature structure to ~200 K precision
and detecting H2O, CO2 and CH4 from a single eclipse measurement for a hot
Jupiter orbiting a Sun-like star and a hot Neptune orbiting an M star, also
providing upper limits on CO and NH3. We provide a table of retrieval
precisions for these quantities in each test case. We expect around 30
Jupiter-sized planets to be observable by EChO; hot Neptunes orbiting M dwarfs
are rarer, but we anticipate observations of at least one similar planet.Comment: 22 pages, 30 figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRA
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Improving the Vertical Accuracy of Indoor Positioning for Emergency Communication
The emergency communication systems are undergoing a transition from the PSTN-based legacy system to an IP-based next generation system. In the next generation system, GPS accurately provides a user's location when the user makes an emergency call outdoors using a mobile phone. Indoor positioning, however, presents a challenge because GPS does not generally work indoors. Moreover, unlike outdoors, vertical accuracy is critical indoors because an error of few meters will send emergency responders to a different floor in a building. This paper presents an indoor positioning system which focuses on improving the accuracy of vertical location. We aim to provide floor-level accuracy with minimal infrastructure support. Our approach is to use multiple sensors available in today's smartphones to trace users' vertical movements inside buildings. We make three contributions. First, we present the elevator module for tracking a user's movement in elevators. The elevator module addresses three core challenges that make it difficult to accurately derive displacement from acceleration. Second, we present the stairway module which determines the number of floors a user has traveled on foot. Unlike previous systems that track users' foot steps, our stairway module uses a novel landing counting technique. Third, we present a hybrid architecture that combines the sensor-based components with minimal and practical infrastructure. The infrastructure provides initial anchor and periodic corrections of a user's vertical location indoors. The architecture strikes the right balance between the accuracy of location and the feasibility of deployment for the purpose of emergency communication
Exact Partition Function Zeros of a Polymer on a Simple-Cubic Lattice
We study conformational transitions of a polymer on a simple-cubic lattice by
calculating the zeros of the exact partition function, up to chain length 24.
In the complex temperature plane, two loci of the partition function zeros are
found for longer chains, suggesting the existence of both the coil-globule
collapse transition and the melting-freezing transition. The locus
corresponding to coil-globule transition clearly approaches the real axis as
the chain length increases, and the transition temperature could be estimated
by finite-size scaling. The form of the logarithmic correction to the scaling
of the partition function zeros could also be obtained. The other locus does
not show clear scaling behavior, but a supplementary analysis of the specific
heat reveals a first-order-like pseudo-transition.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figure
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