1-D Air-snowpack modeling of atmospheric nitrous acid at South Pole during ANTCI 2003

A 1-D air-snowpack model of HONO has been developed and constrained by observed chemistry and meteorology data. The 1-D model includes molecular diffusion and mechanical dispersion, windpumping in snow, gas phase to quasi-liquid layer phase HONO transfer and quasi-liquid layer nitrate and interstitial air HONO photolysis. Photolysis of nitrate is important as a dominant HONO source inside the snowpack, however, the observed HONO emission from the snowpack was triggered mainly by the equilibrium between quasi liquid layer nitrite and firn air HONO deep down the snow surface (i.e. 30 cm below snow surface). The high concentration of HONO in the firn air is subsequently transported above the snowpack by diffusion and windpumping. The model uncertainties come mainly from lack of measurements and the interpretation of the QLL properties based on the bulk snow measurements. One critical factor is the ionic strength of QLL nitrite, which is estimated here by the bulk snow pH, nitrite concentration, and QLL to bulk snow volume ratio

Observations of HONO by laser-induced fluorescence at the South Pole during ANTCI 2003

Observations of nitrous acid (HONO) by laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) at the South Pole taken during the Antarctic Troposphere Chemistry Investigation (ANTCI), which took place over the time period of Nov. 15, 2003 to Jan. 4, 2004, are presented here. The median observed mixing ratio of HONO 10 m above the snow was 5.8 pptv (mean value 6.3 pptv) with a maximum of 18.2 pptv on Nov 30th, Dec 1st, 3rd, 15th, 17th, 21st, 22nd, 25th, 27th and 28th. The measurement uncertainty is ±35%. The LIF HONO observations are compared to concurrent HONO observations performed by mist chamber/ion chromatography (MC/IC). The HONO levels reported by MC/IC are about 7.2 ± 2.3 times higher than those reported by LIF. Citation: Liao, W., A. T. Case, J. Mastromarino, D. Tan, and J. E. Dibb (2006), Observations of HONO by laser-induced fluorescence at the South Pole during ANTCI 2003, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L09810, doi:10.1029/2005GL025470

A blind deconvolution approach to recover effective connectivity brain networks from resting state fMRI data

A great improvement to the insight on brain function that we can get from fMRI data can come from effective connectivity analysis, in which the flow of information between even remote brain regions is inferred by the parameters of a predictive dynamical model. As opposed to biologically inspired models, some techniques as Granger causality (GC) are purely data-driven and rely on statistical prediction and temporal precedence. While powerful and widely applicable, this approach could suffer from two main limitations when applied to BOLD fMRI data: confounding effect of hemodynamic response function (HRF) and conditioning to a large number of variables in presence of short time series. For task-related fMRI, neural population dynamics can be captured by modeling signal dynamics with explicit exogenous inputs; for resting-state fMRI on the other hand, the absence of explicit inputs makes this task more difficult, unless relying on some specific prior physiological hypothesis. In order to overcome these issues and to allow a more general approach, here we present a simple and novel blind-deconvolution technique for BOLD-fMRI signal. Coming to the second limitation, a fully multivariate conditioning with short and noisy data leads to computational problems due to overfitting. Furthermore, conceptual issues arise in presence of redundancy. We thus apply partial conditioning to a limited subset of variables in the framework of information theory, as recently proposed. Mixing these two improvements we compare the differences between BOLD and deconvolved BOLD level effective networks and draw some conclusions

A (p,q) Deformation of the Universal Enveloping Superalgebra U(osp(2/2))

We investigate a two parameter quantum deformation of the universal enveloping orthosymplectic superalgebra U(osp(2/2)) by extending the Faddeev-Reshetikhin-Takhtajan formalism to the supersymetric case. It is shown that $U_{p,q}(osp(2/2))$ possesses a non-commutative, non-cocommutative Hopf algebra structure. All the results are expressed in the standard form using quantum Chevalley basis.Comment: 8 pages; IC/93/41

Inkjet-printed vertically emitting solid-state organic lasers

In this paper, we show that Inkjet Printing can be successfully applied to external-cavity vertically-emitting thin-film organic lasers, and can be used to generate a diffraction-limited output beam with an output energy as high as 33.6 uJ with a slope efficiency S of 34%. Laser emission shows to be continuously tunable from 570 to 670 nm using an intracavity polymer-based Fabry-Perot etalon. High-optical quality films with several um thicknesses are realized thanks to ink-jet printing. We introduce a new optical material where EMD6415 commercial ink constitutes the optical host matrix and exhibits a refractive index of 1.5 and an absorption coefficient of 0.66 cm-1 at 550-680 nm. Standard laser dyes like Pyromethene 597 and Rhodamine 640 are incorporated in solution to the EMD6415 ink. Such large size " printed pixels " of 50 mm 2 present uniform and flat surfaces, with roughness measured as low as 1.5 nm in different locations of a 50um x 50um AFM scan. Finally, as the gain capsules fabricated by Inkjet printing are simple and do not incorporate any tuning or cavity element, they are simple to make, have a negligible fabrication cost and can be used as fully disposable items. This works opens the way towards the fabrication of really low-cost tunable visible lasers with an affordable technology that has the potential to be widely disseminated

Grouping time series by pairwise measures of redundancy

A novel approach is proposed to group redundant time series in the frame of causality. It assumes that (i) the dynamics of the system can be described using just a small number of characteristic modes, and that (ii) a pairwise measure of redundancy is sufficient to elicit the presence of correlated degrees of freedom. We show the application of the proposed approach on fMRI data from a resting human brain and gene expression profiles from HeLa cell culture.Comment: 4 pages, 8 figure

On the Connection Between Momentum Cutoff and Operator Cutoff Regularizations

Operator cutoff regularization based on the original Schwinger's proper-time formalism is examined. By constructing a regulating smearing function for the proper-time integration, we show how this regularization scheme simulates the usual momentum cutoff prescription yet preserves gauge symmetry even in the presence of the cutoff scales. Similarity between the operator cutoff regularization and the method of higher (covariant) derivatives is also observed. The invariant nature of the operator cutoff regularization makes it a promising tool for exploring the renormalization group flow of gauge theories in the spirit of Wilson-Kadanoff blocking transformation.Comment: 28 pages in plain TeX, no figures. revised and expande

The cosmological origin of Higgs particles

A proposal of the cosmological origin of Higgs particles is given. We show, that the Higgs field could be created from the vacuum quantum conformal fluctuation of Anti-de Sitter space-time, the spontaneous breaking of vacuum symmetry, and the mass of Higgs particle are related to the cosmological constant of our universe,especially the theoretical estimated mass m$_{H}$ of Higgs particles is m$_{H}=\sqrt{-2\mu ^{2}}$ =$\sqrt{|\Lambda /\pi}$.Comment: 7 pages,no figure

ASTROD, ASTROD I and their gravitational-wave sensitivities

ASTROD (Astrodynamical Space Test of Relativity using Optical Devices) is a mission concept with three spacecraft -- one near L1/L2 point, one with an inner solar orbit and one with an outer solar orbit, ranging coherently with one another using lasers to test relativistic gravity, to measure the solar system and to detect gravitational waves. ASTROD I with one spacecraft ranging optically with ground stations is the first step toward the ASTROD mission. In this paper, we present the ASTROD I payload and accelerometer requirements, discuss the gravitational-wave sensitivities for ASTROD and ASTROD I, and compare them with LISA and radio-wave PDoppler-tracking of spacecraft.Comment: presented to the 5th Edoardo Amaldi Conference (July 6-11, 2003) and submitted to Classical and Quantum Gravit