3,302 research outputs found
Speech earthquakes: scaling and universality in human voice
Submitted for publicationSubmitted for publicationSpeech is a distinctive complex feature of human capabilities. In order to understand the physics underlying speech production, in this work we empirically analyse the statistics of large human speech datasets ranging several languages. We first show that during speech the energy is unevenly released and power-law distributed, reporting a universal robust Gutenberg-Richter-like law in speech. We further show that such earthquakes in speech show temporal correlations, as the interevent statistics are again power-law distributed. Since this feature takes place in the intra-phoneme range, we conjecture that the responsible for this complex phenomenon is not cognitive, but it resides on the physiological speech production mechanism. Moreover, we show that these waiting time distributions are scale invariant under a renormalisation group transformation, suggesting that the process of speech generation is indeed operating close to a critical point. These results are put in contrast with current paradigms in speech processing, which point towards low dimensional deterministic chaos as the origin of nonlinear traits in speech fluctuations. As these latter fluctuations are indeed the aspects that humanize synthetic speech, these findings may have an impact in future speech synthesis technologies. Results are robust and independent of the communication language or the number of speakers, pointing towards an universal pattern and yet another hint of complexity in human speech
Using network science to analyze football passing networks: dynamics, space, time and the multilayer nature of the game
From the diversity of applications of Network Science, in this Opinion Paper
we are concerned about its potential to analyze one of the most extended group
sports: Football (soccer in U.S. terminology). As we will see, Network Science
allows addressing different aspects of the team organization and performance
not captured by classical analyses based on the performance of individual
players. The reason behind relies on the complex nature of the game, which,
paraphrasing the foundational paradigm of complexity sciences "can not be
analyzed by looking at its components (i.e., players) individually but, on the
contrary, considering the system as a whole" or, in the classical words of
after-match interviews "it's not just me, it's the team".Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur
The Visibility Graph: a new method for estimating the Hurst exponent of fractional Brownian motion
Fractional Brownian motion (fBm) has been used as a theoretical framework to
study real time series appearing in diverse scientific fields. Because its
intrinsic non-stationarity and long range dependence, its characterization via
the Hurst parameter H requires sophisticated techniques that often yield
ambiguous results. In this work we show that fBm series map into a scale free
visibility graph whose degree distribution is a function of H. Concretely, it
is shown that the exponent of the power law degree distribution depends
linearly on H. This also applies to fractional Gaussian noises (fGn) and
generic f^(-b) noises. Taking advantage of these facts, we propose a brand new
methodology to quantify long range dependence in these series. Its reliability
is confirmed with extensive numerical simulations and analytical developments.
Finally, we illustrate this method quantifying the persistent behavior of human
gait dynamics.Comment: 5 pages, submitted for publicatio
Quasiperiodic graphs: structural design, scaling and entropic properties
A novel class of graphs, here named quasiperiodic, are constructed via
application of the Horizontal Visibility algorithm to the time series generated
along the quasiperiodic route to chaos. We show how the hierarchy of
mode-locked regions represented by the Farey tree is inherited by their
associated graphs. We are able to establish, via Renormalization Group (RG)
theory, the architecture of the quasiperiodic graphs produced by irrational
winding numbers with pure periodic continued fraction. And finally, we
demonstrate that the RG fixed-point degree distributions are recovered via
optimization of a suitably defined graph entropy
Optical spectroscopy of the microquasar GRS 1758-258: a possible intermediate mass system?
Context. GRS 1758-258 is one of two prototypical microquasars towards the
Galactic Center direction discovered almost a quarter of a century ago. The
system remains poorly studied in the optical domain due to its counterpart
being a very faint and absorbed target in a crowded region of the sky. Aims.
Our aim is to investigate GRS 1758-258 in order to shed light on the nature of
the stellar binary components. In particular, the main physical parameters of
the donor star, such as the mass or the spectral type, are not yet well
constrained. Methods. GRS 1758-258 has remained so far elusive to optical
spectroscopy owing to its observational difficulties. Here, we use this
traditional tool of stellar astronomy at low spectral resolution with a 10 m
class telescope and a long slit spectrograph. Results. An improved spectrum is
obtained as compared to previous work. The quality of the data does not allow
the detection of emission or absorption features but, nevertheless, we manage
to partially achieve our aims comparing the de-reddened continuum with the
spectral energy distribution expected from an irradiated disc model and
different donor star templates. Conclusions. We tentatively propose that GRS
1758-258 does not host a giant star companion. Instead, a main sequence star
with mid-A spectral type appears to better agree with our data. The main
impacts of this finding are the possibility that we are dealing with an
intermediate mass system and, in this case, the prediction of an orbital period
significantly shorter than previously proposed.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in A&
Why one-size-fits-all vaso-modulatory interventions fail to control glioma invasion: in silico insights
There is an ongoing debate on the therapeutic potential of vaso-modulatory
interventions against glioma invasion. Prominent vasculature-targeting
therapies involve functional tumour-associated blood vessel deterioration and
normalisation. The former aims at tumour infarction and nutrient deprivation
medi- ated by vascular targeting agents that induce occlusion/collapse of
tumour blood vessels. In contrast, the therapeutic intention of normalising the
abnormal structure and function of tumour vascular net- works, e.g. via
alleviating stress-induced vaso-occlusion, is to improve chemo-, immuno- and
radiation therapy efficacy. Although both strategies have shown therapeutic
potential, it remains unclear why they often fail to control glioma invasion
into the surrounding healthy brain tissue. To shed light on this issue, we
propose a mathematical model of glioma invasion focusing on the interplay
between the mi- gration/proliferation dichotomy (Go-or-Grow) of glioma cells
and modulations of the functional tumour vasculature. Vaso-modulatory
interventions are modelled by varying the degree of vaso-occlusion. We
discovered the existence of a critical cell proliferation/diffusion ratio that
separates glioma invasion re- sponses to vaso-modulatory interventions into two
distinct regimes. While for tumours, belonging to one regime, vascular
modulations reduce the tumour front speed and increase the infiltration width,
for those in the other regime the invasion speed increases and infiltration
width decreases. We show how these in silico findings can be used to guide
individualised approaches of vaso-modulatory treatment strategies and thereby
improve success rates
A radio and infrared exploration of the Cygnus X-3 environments
To confirm, or rule out, the possible hot spot nature of two previously
detected radio sources in the vicinity of the Cygnus X-3 microquasar.
We present the results of a radio and near infrared exploration of the
several arc-minute field around the well known galactic relativistic jet source
Cygnus X-3 using the Very Large Array and the Calar Alto 3.5~m telescope.
The data this paper is based on do not presently support the hot spot
hypothesis. Instead, our new observations suggest that these sources are most
likely background or foreground objects. Actually, none of them appears to be
even barely extended as would be expected if they were part of a bow shock
structure. Our near infrared observations also include a search for extended
emission in the Bracket (2.166 m) and (2.122 m)
lines as possible tracers of shocked gas in the Cygnus X-3 surroundings. The
results were similarly negative and the corresponding upper limits are
reported.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A; 5 pages, 4 figure
Chandra X-ray counterpart of KS 1741-293
We aim to investigate the nature of the high energy source KS 1741-293 by
revisiting the radio and infrared associations proposed in the early 1990s. Our
work is mostly based on the analysis of modern survey and archive data,
including the NRAO, MSX, 2MASS and Chandra archives, and catalogues. We also
have obtained deep CCD optical observations by ourselves. The coincidence of KS
1741-293 with an extended radio and far-infrared source, tentatively suggested
in 1994, is no longer supported by modern observational data. Instead, a
Chandra source is the only peculiar object found to be consistent with all
high-energy error circles of KS 1741-293 and we propose it to be its most
likely X-ray counterpart. We also report the existence of a non-thermal radio
nebula in the vicinity of the KS 1741-293 position with the appearance of a
supernova remnant. The possibility of being associated to this X-ray binary is
discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in Astronomy &
Astrophysic
Detailed study of SNR G306.3-0.9 using XMM-Newton and Chandra observations
We used combined data from XMM-Newton and Chandra observatories to study the
X-ray morphology of SNR G306.3-0.9. A spatially-resolved spectral analysis was
used to obtain physical and geometrical parameters of different regions of the
remnant. Spitzer infrared observations were also used to constrain the
progenitor supernova and study the environment in which the SNR evolved. The
X-ray morphology of the remnant displays a non-uniform structure of
semi-circular appearance, with a bright southwest region and very weak or
almost negligible X-ray emission in its northern part. These results indicate
that the remnant is propagating in a non-uniform environment as the shock
fronts are encountering a high-density medium, where enhanced infrared emission
is detected. The X-ray spectral analysis of the selected regions shows distinct
emission-line features of several metal elements, confirming the thermal origin
of the emission. The X-ray spectra are well represented by a combination of two
absorbed thermal plasma models: one in equilibrium ionization with a mean
temperature of ~0.19 keV, and another out of equilibrium ionization at a higher
temperature of ~1.1 or 1.6-1.9 keV. For regions located in the northeast,
central, and southwest part of the SNR, we found elevated abundances of Si, S,
Ar, Ca, and Fe, typical of ejecta material. The outer regions located northwest
and south show values of the abundances above solar but lower than to those
found in the central regions. This suggests that the composition of the
emitting outer parts of the SNR is a combination of ejecta and shocked material
of the interstellar medium. The comparison between the S/Si, Ar/Si, and Ca/Si
abundances ratios (1.75, 1.27, and 2.72 in the central region, respectively),
favor a Type Ia progenitor for this SNR, a result that is also supported by an
independent morphological analysis using X-ray and IR data.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures. Accepted by Astronomy and Astrophysic
Real-time evolution of a large-scale relativistic jet
Context. Astrophysical jets are ubiquitous in the Universe on all scales, but
their large-scale dynamics and evolution in time are hard to observe since they
usually develop at a very slow pace.
Aims. We aim to obtain the first observational proof of the expected
large-scale evolution and interaction with the environment in an astrophysical
jet. Only jets from microquasars offer a chance to witness the real-time,
full-jet evolution within a human lifetime, since they combine a 'short', few
parsec length with relativistic velocities.
Methods. The methodology of this work is based on a systematic recalibraton
of interferometric radio observations of microquasars available in public
archives. In particular, radio observations of the microquasar GRS 1758-258
over less than two decades have provided the most striking results.
Results. Significant morphological variations in the extended jet structure
of GRS 1758-258 are reported here that were previously missed. Its northern
radio lobe underwent a major morphological variation that rendered the hotspot
undetectable in 2001 and reappeared again in the following years. The reported
changes confirm the Galactic nature of the source. We tentatively interpret
them in terms of the growth of instabilities in the jet flow. There is also
evidence of surrounding cocoon. These results can provide a testbed for models
accounting for the evolution of jets and their interaction with the
environment.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in Astronomy
and Astrophysics Letter
- âŠ