21,654 research outputs found
Faster K-Means Cluster Estimation
There has been considerable work on improving popular clustering algorithm
`K-means' in terms of mean squared error (MSE) and speed, both. However, most
of the k-means variants tend to compute distance of each data point to each
cluster centroid for every iteration. We propose a fast heuristic to overcome
this bottleneck with only marginal increase in MSE. We observe that across all
iterations of K-means, a data point changes its membership only among a small
subset of clusters. Our heuristic predicts such clusters for each data point by
looking at nearby clusters after the first iteration of k-means. We augment
well known variants of k-means with our heuristic to demonstrate effectiveness
of our heuristic. For various synthetic and real-world datasets, our heuristic
achieves speed-up of up-to 3 times when compared to efficient variants of
k-means.Comment: 6 pages, Accepted at ECIR 201
Information architecture for a federated health record server
This paper describes the information models that have been used to implement a federated health record server and to deploy it in a live clinical setting. The authors, working at the Centre for Health Informatics and Multiprofessional Education (University College London), have built up over a decade of experience within Europe on the requirements and information models that are needed to underpin comprehensive multi-professional electronic health records. This work has involved collaboration with a wide range of health care and informatics organisations and partners in the healthcare computing industry across Europe though the EU Health Telematics projects GEHR, Synapses, EHCR-SupA, SynEx and Medicate. The resulting architecture models have fed into recent European standardisation work in this area, such as CEN TC/251 ENV 13606. UCL has implemented a federated health record server based on these models which is now running in the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Whittington Hospital in North London. The information models described in this paper reflect a refinement based on this implementation experience
A study of the kinematics and binary-induced shaping of the planetary nebula HaTr 4
We present the first detailed spatio-kinematical analysis and modelling of
the planetary nebula HaTr 4, one of few known to contain a post-common-envelope
central star system. Common envelope evolution is believed to play an important
role in the shaping of planetary nebulae, but the exact nature of this role is
yet to be understood. High spatial- and spectral- resolution spectroscopy of
the [OIII]5007 nebular line obtained with VLT-UVES are presented alongside deep
narrowband Ha+[NII]6584 imagery obtained using EMMI-NTT, and together the two
are used to derive the three-dimensional morphology of HaTr 4. The nebula is
found to display an extended ovoid morphology with an enhanced equatorial
region consistent with a toroidal waist - a feature believed to be typical
amongst planetary nebulae with post-common-envelope central stars. The nebular
symmetry axis is found to lie perpendicular to the orbital plane of the central
binary, concordant with the idea that the formation and evolution of HaTr 4 has
been strongly influenced by its central binary.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
The Birmingham-CfA cluster scaling project - I: gas fraction and the M-T relation
We have assembled a large sample of virialized systems, comprising 66 galaxy
clusters, groups and elliptical galaxies with high quality X-ray data. To each
system we have fitted analytical profiles describing the gas density and
temperature variation with radius, corrected for the effects of central gas
cooling. We present an analysis of the scaling properties of these systems and
focus in this paper on the gas distribution and M-T relation. In addition to
clusters and groups, our sample includes two early-type galaxies, carefully
selected to avoid contamination from group or cluster X-ray emission. We
compare the properties of these objects with those of more massive systems and
find evidence for a systematic difference between galaxy-sized haloes and
groups of a similar temperature. We derive a mean logarithmic slope of the M-T
relation within R_200 of 1.84+/-0.06, although there is some evidence of a
gradual steepening in the M-T relation, with decreasing mass. We recover a
similar slope using two additional methods of calculating the mean temperature.
Repeating the analysis with the assumption of isothermality, we find the slope
changes only slightly, to 1.89+/-0.04, but the normalization is increased by
30%. Correspondingly, the mean gas fraction within R_200 changes from
(0.13+/-0.01)h70^-1.5 to (0.11+/-0.01)h70^-1.5, for the isothermal case, with
the smaller fractional change reflecting different behaviour between hot and
cool systems. There is a strong correlation between the gas fraction within
0.3*R_200 and temperature. This reflects the strong (5.8 sigma) trend between
the gas density slope parameter, beta, and temperature, which has been found in
previous work. (abridged)Comment: 27 pages, accepted for publication in MNRAS; uses longtable.sty &
lscape.st
Buyer Market Power in UK Food Retailing
The potential existence of buyer market power in UK food retailing has attracted the scrutiny of the UK's anti-trust authorities, culminating in the decision to launch the second of two comprehensive regulatory inquiries in recent years. Throughout, detection of buyer power has been dogged by the paucity of reliable evidence of its existence. In this paper we present a simple theoretical model of oligopsony which delivers quasireduced form retailer-producer pricing equations in which the presence of market power can be detected using readily available market data. Using a cointegrated vector autoregression, we find empirical results that are consistent with the presence of oligopsony power in all six food products investigated.Buyer power, Cointegrated VARs, UK food industry, Agribusiness, Consumer/Household Economics,
The Chemical Compositions of the Type II Cepheids -- The BL Her and W Vir Variables
Abundance analyses from high-resolution optical spectra are presented for 19
Type II Cepheids in the Galactic field. The sample includes both short-period
(BL Her) and long-period (W Vir) stars. This is the first extensive abundance
analysis of these variables. The C, N, and O abundances with similar spreads
for the BL Her and W Vir show evidence for an atmosphere contaminated with
-process and CN-cycling products. A notable anomaly of the BL Her
stars is an overabundance of Na by a factor of about five relative to their
presumed initial abundances. This overabundance is not seen in the W Vir stars.
The abundance anomalies running from mild to extreme in W Vir stars but not
seen in the BL Her stars are attributed to dust-gas separation that provides an
atmosphere deficient in elements of high condensation temperature, notably Al,
Ca, Sc, Ti, and -process elements. Such anomalies have previously been seen
among RV Tau stars which represent a long-period extension of the variability
enjoyed by the Type II Cepheids. Comments are offered on how the contrasting
abundance anomalies of BL Her and W Vir stars may be explained in terms of the
stars' evolution from the blue horizontal branch.Comment: 41 pages including 11 figures and 4 tables; Accepted for publication
in Ap
Probing spacetime foam with extragalactic sources
Due to quantum fluctuations, spacetime is probably ``foamy'' on very small
scales. We propose to detect this texture of spacetime foam by looking for
core-halo structures in the images of distant quasars. We find that the Very
Large Telescope interferometer will be on the verge of being able to probe the
fabric of spacetime when it reaches its design performance. Our method also
allows us to use spacetime foam physics and physics of computation to infer the
existence of dark energy/matter, independent of the evidence from recent
cosmological observations.Comment: LaTeX, 11 pages, 1 figure; version submitted to PRL; several
references added; very useful comments and suggestions by Eric Perlman
incorporate
Twenty-one centimeter tomography with foregrounds
Twenty-one centimeter tomography is emerging as a powerful tool to explore
the end of the cosmic dark ages and the reionization epoch, but it will only be
as good as our ability to accurately model and remove astrophysical foreground
contamination. Previous treatments of this problem have focused on the angular
structure of the signal and foregrounds and what can be achieved with limited
spectral resolution (bandwidths in the 1 MHz range). In this paper we introduce
and evaluate a ``blind'' method to extract the multifrequency 21cm signal by
taking advantage of the smooth frequency structure of the Galactic and
extragalactic foregrounds. We find that 21 cm tomography is typically limited
by foregrounds on scales Mpc and limited by noise on scales Mpc, provided that the experimental bandwidth can be made substantially
smaller than 0.1 MHz. Our results show that this approach is quite promising
even for scenarios with rather extreme contamination from point sources and
diffuse Galactic emission, which bodes well for upcoming experiments such as
LOFAR, MWA, PAST, and SKA.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures. Revised version including various cases with
high noise level. Major conclusions unchanged. Accepted for publication in
Ap
Parallel-propagating Fluctuations at Proton-kinetic Scales in the Solar Wind are Dominated by Kinetic Instabilities
We use magnetic helicity to characterise solar wind fluctuations at
proton-kinetic scales from Wind observations. For the first time, we separate
the contributions to helicity from fluctuations propagating at angles
quasi-parallel and oblique to the local mean magnetic field, . We
find that the helicity of quasi-parallel fluctuations is consistent with
Alfv\'en-ion cyclotron and fast magnetosonic-whistler modes driven by proton
temperature anisotropy instabilities and the presence of a relative drift
between -particles and protons. We also find that the helicity of
oblique fluctuations has little dependence on proton temperature anisotropy and
is consistent with fluctuations from the anisotropic turbulent cascade. Our
results show that parallel-propagating fluctuations at proton-kinetic scales in
the solar wind are dominated by proton temperature anisotropy instabilities and
not the turbulent cascade. We also provide evidence that the behaviour of
fluctuations at these scales is independent of the origin and macroscopic
properties of the solar wind.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJL. 6 Pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl
- …