Global Distribution of Water Vapor and Cloud Cover--Sites for High Performance THz Applications

Absorption of terahertz radiation by atmospheric water vapor is a serious impediment for radio astronomy and for long-distance communications. Transmission in the THz regime is dependent almost exclusively on atmospheric precipitable water vapor (PWV). Though much of the Earth has PWV that is too high for good transmission above 200 GHz, there are a number of dry sites with very low attenuation. We performed a global analysis of PWV with high-resolution measurements from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) on two NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) satellites over the year of 2011. We determined PWV and cloud cover distributions and then developed a model to find transmission and atmospheric radiance as well as necessary integration times in the various windows. We produced global maps over the common THz windows for astronomical and satellite communications scenarios. Notably, we show that up through 1 THz, systems could be built in excellent sites of Chile, Greenland and the Tibetan Plateau, while Antarctic performance is good to 1.6 THz. For a ground-to-space communication link up through 847 GHz, we found several sites in the Continental United States where mean atmospheric attenuation is less than 40 dB; not an insurmountable challenge for a link.Comment: 15 pages, 23 figure

Subdomain Model for Predicting Armature Reaction Field of Dual-Stator Consequent-Pole PM Machines Accounting for Tooth-Tips

International audienceThis paper presents an exact analytical subdomain model of dual-stator consequent-pole permanent-magnet (DSCPPM) machines accounting for tooth-tips, which can accurately predict the armature reaction field distribution in DSCPPM machines. In the proposed subdomain model, the field domain is composed of four types of sub-regions, viz. magnets, outer/inner air gaps, slots and slot openings. The analytical expressions of vector potential in each sub-region are determined by boundary and interface conditions. In comparison to the analytically predicted results, the corresponding flux density field distributions computed by finite element (FE) method are analyzed, which confirms the excellent accuracy of the developed subdomain model

Universal Adversarial Perturbations for CNN Classifiers in EEG-Based BCIs

Multiple convolutional neural network (CNN) classifiers have been proposed for electroencephalogram (EEG) based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). However, CNN models have been found vulnerable to universal adversarial perturbations (UAPs), which are small and example-independent, yet powerful enough to degrade the performance of a CNN model, when added to a benign example. This paper proposes a novel total loss minimization (TLM) approach to generate UAPs for EEG-based BCIs. Experimental results demonstrated the effectiveness of TLM on three popular CNN classifiers for both target and non-target attacks. We also verified the transferability of UAPs in EEG-based BCI systems. To our knowledge, this is the first study on UAPs of CNN classifiers in EEG-based BCIs. UAPs are easy to construct, and can attack BCIs in real-time, exposing a potentially critical security concern of BCIs

Chandra Observations of the Cl1604 Supercluster at z=0.9: Evidence for an Overdensity of Active Galactic Nuclei

We present the results of Chandra observations of the Cl1604 supercluster at z~0.9. The system is the largest structure mapped at redshifts approaching unity, containing at least eight spectroscopically confirmed galaxy clusters and groups. Using two 50-ksec ACIS-I pointings we examine both the X-ray point source population and the diffuse emission from individual clusters in the system. We find a 2.5\sigma excess of point sources detected in the hard band (2-10 keV) relative to the number of sources found in blank fields observed by Chandra. No such excess is observed in the soft band (0.5-2 keV). The hard-band source density is 1.47 times greater than that of a blank field, in agreement with the previously reported correlation between overdensity amplitude and cluster redshift. Using a maximum likelihood technique we have matched 112 of the 161 detected X-ray point sources to optical counterparts and found 15 sources that are associated with the supercluster. All 15 sources have rest-frame luminosities consistent with emission from active galactic nuclei (AGN). We find that the supercluster AGN largely avoid the densest regions of the system and are instead distributed on the outskirts of massive clusters or within poorer clusters and groups. We have also detected diffuse emission from two of the eight clusters and groups in the system, clusters Cl1604+4304 and Cl1604+4314. The systems have bolometric luminosities of 1.43x10^44 and 8.20x10^43 h70^-2 erg s^-1 and gas temperatures of 3.50 (+1.82-1.08) and 1.64 (+0.65-0.45) keV, respectively. Using updated velocity dispersions, we compare the properties of these systems to the cluster scaling relations followed by other X-ray and optically selected galaxy clusters at high redshift.Comment: 24 pages, 14 figures, submitted to Ap

Electrochemical detection of low-copy number salivary RNA based on specific signal amplification with a hairpin probe

We developed a technique for electrochemical detection of salivary mRNA employing a hairpin probe (HP). Steric hindrance (SH) suppresses unspecific signal and generates a signal-on amplification process for target detection. The stem-loop configuration brings the reporter end of the probe into close proximity with the surface and makes it unavailable for binding with the mediator. Target binding opens the hairpin structure of the probe, and the mediator can then bind to the accessible reporter. Horseradish peroxidase is utilized to generate electrochemical signal. This signal-on process is characterized by a low basal signal, a strong positive readout and a large dynamic range. The SH is controlled via hairpin design and electrical field. By applying electric field control to HPs, the limit of detection of RNA is about 0.4 fM, which is 10 000-fold more sensitive than conventional linear probes. Endogenous Interleukin-8 mRNA is detected with the HP, and good correlation with the quantitative PCR technique is obtained. The resultant process allows a simple setup and by reducing the number of steps it is suited for the point-of-care detection of specific nucleic acid sequences from complex body fluids such as saliva

Extended Radio AGN at z ∼ 1 in the ORELSE Survey: The Confining Effect of Dense Environments

Recent hydrodynamic simulations and observations of radio jets have shown that the surrounding environment has a large effect on their resulting morphology. To investigate this, we use a sample of 50 Extended Radio Active Galactic Nuclei (ERAGN) detected in the Observations of Redshift Evolution in Large-Scale Environments survey. These sources are all successfully cross-identified to galaxies within a redshift range of 0.55 ≤ z ≤ 1.35, either through spectroscopic redshifts or accurate photometric redshifts. We find that ERAGN are more compact in high-density environments than those in low-density environments at a significance level of 4.5σ. Among a series of internal properties under our scrutiny, only the radio power demonstrates a positive correlation with their spatial extent. After removing the possible radio power effect, the difference of size in low- and high-density environments persists. In the global environment analyses, the majority (86%) of high-density ERAGN reside in the cluster/group environment. In addition, ERAGN in the cluster/group central regions are preferentially compact with a small scatter in size, compared to those in the cluster/group intermediate regions and fields. In conclusion, our data appear to support the interpretation that the dense intracluster gas in the central regions of galaxy clusters plays a major role in confining the spatial extent of radio jets