Relativistic spin precession in the binary PSR J1141−-6545

PSR J1141$-$6545 is a precessing binary pulsar that has the rare potential to reveal the two-dimensional structure of a non-recycled pulsar emission cone. It has undergone $\sim 25 \deg$ of relativistic spin precession in the $\sim18$ years since its discovery. In this paper, we present a detailed Bayesian analysis of the precessional evolution of the width of the total intensity profile, to understand the changes to the line-of-sight impact angle ($\beta$) of the pulsar using four different physically motivated prior distribution models. Although we cannot statistically differentiate between the models with confidence, the temporal evolution of the linear and circular polarisations strongly argue that our line-of-sight crossed the magnetic pole around MJD 54000 and that only two models remain viable. For both these models, it appears likely that the pulsar will precess out of our line-of-sight in the next $3-5$ years, assuming a simple beam geometry. Marginalising over $\beta$ suggests that the pulsar is a near-orthogonal rotator and provides the first polarization-independent estimate of the scale factor ($\mathbb{A}$) that relates the pulsar beam opening angle ($\rho$) to its rotational period ($P$) as $\rho = \mathbb{A}P^{-0.5}$ : we find it to be $> 6 \rm~deg~s^{0.5}$ at 1.4 GHz with 99\% confidence. If all pulsars emit from opposite poles of a dipolar magnetic field with comparable brightness, we might expect to see evidence of an interpulse arising in PSR J1141$-$6545, unless the emission is patchy.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal Letter

Predictive-State Decoders: Encoding the Future into Recurrent Networks

Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) are a vital modeling technique that rely on internal states learned indirectly by optimization of a supervised, unsupervised, or reinforcement training loss. RNNs are used to model dynamic processes that are characterized by underlying latent states whose form is often unknown, precluding its analytic representation inside an RNN. In the Predictive-State Representation (PSR) literature, latent state processes are modeled by an internal state representation that directly models the distribution of future observations, and most recent work in this area has relied on explicitly representing and targeting sufficient statistics of this probability distribution. We seek to combine the advantages of RNNs and PSRs by augmenting existing state-of-the-art recurrent neural networks with Predictive-State Decoders (PSDs), which add supervision to the network's internal state representation to target predicting future observations. Predictive-State Decoders are simple to implement and easily incorporated into existing training pipelines via additional loss regularization. We demonstrate the effectiveness of PSDs with experimental results in three different domains: probabilistic filtering, Imitation Learning, and Reinforcement Learning. In each, our method improves statistical performance of state-of-the-art recurrent baselines and does so with fewer iterations and less data.Comment: NIPS 201

Morphometry of the Dugong Dugon (Muller, 1776) skeleton based on Indian Museum specimens, Kolkata, India

817-821The present study discussed about detailed examination of skeleton characters of four dugong specimens received from Indian Museum. The specimens were deposited and preserved in the National Zoological Collection (ZSI/27608; ZSI/27609; ZSI/27610; ZSI/27611) of The Mammal and Osteological Section, Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata

Clinicopathological Features of Cutaneous Lymphomas and T-Cell Receptor Gamma Gene Rearrangement Studies in Early Stage Mycosis Fungoides

OBJECTIVE: To study the clinicopathological features of cutaneous lymphomas and the role of TCR gene rearrangement in the diagnosis ofpatch/plaque (Stage I/IIA) mycosis fungoides where the histological diagnosis of mycosis fungoides could not be excluded or the diagnosis was suggestive but not confirmatory. METHOD: Ahospital based cross sectional study was conducted from November 2012 to August 2014 where in patients with a diagnosis of cutaneous lymphoma (CL) were included. Diagnosis was established by histology and immunohistochemistry and classified based on WHO-EORTC classification. TCR gamma gene rearrangement assay was done by PCR in patch/plaque (Stage I/IIA) mycosis fungoides (MF) where the histological diagnosis of mycosis fungoides could not be excluded or the diagnosis was suggestive but not confirmatory. Routine laboratory tests; lymph node, bone marrow biopsies and imaging were done when indicated for staging based on the ISCL/EORTC proposal. RESULTS: There were 54 patients (M/F-1.25) with CL.This included primary cutaneous T-cell lymphomas (CTCL) (48), secondary CTCL (4), primary cutaneous B-cell lymphoma (CBCL) (1) and secondary CBCL (1). Among CTCL there were 27 cases of MF, LyP (lymphomatoid papulosis) (8), SPTL (subcutaneous panniculitis like T-cell lymphoma) (6), ALCL (Anaplastic large cell lymphoma) (3), PTCL, NOS (peripheral T-cell lymphoma, not otherwise specified) (3) and HVLL (hydroa vacciniforme like T-cell lymphoma) (1). Mean age at diagnosis of MF, CD30+ LPD, SPTL and PTCL, NOS were 41.1±18.8 years, 33.8±17.1 years, 33.6±17.3 years and 56.3±18.9 years respectively.Paediatric CL accounted for 16.7% of cases. The most common type of CTCL in the paediatric age group (≤20 years) was MF (n=4, 44.4%) followed by LyP (n=2, 22.2%), SPTL (n=2, 22.2%) and HVLL (n=1, 11.1%). Male preponderance was noted in all subtypes of cutaneous lymphoma except SPTL. Unusual clinical types of MF in our study included hypopigmented MF and dyshidrosiform MF. MF with palmoplantar involvement was seen in 14.8% patients. Among the unusual types of CTCL (other than MF) seen in our study were one case each of erythrodermic ALCL, LyP type D and HVLL. Clonality detection rate among early stage MF in our study was 61.5%. Statistical significance of clonal detection with histological grading and immunohistochemistry findings was not found in our study. CONCLUSION: CTCL was the most common subtype as reported in earlier studies from Asian countries and the West. However the proportion of CBCL was lower than that reported from other countries. Female preponderance was noted in SPTL and rest of the subtypes showed a male preponderance.MF was the commonest among CTCL comprising 56.25% of all CTCLs. Monoclonality detection in early stage MF was slightly lower than the detection rate in various studies across Europe using a similar protocol. Though the statistical significance of clonality detection with histopathological grading of MF could not be demonstrated it was evident that in patients with histopathological diagnosis suggestive of MF had increased clonal detection rate.Usefulness of TCR clonal rearrangement studies in early MF has to be further evaluated with large population studies