7,286 research outputs found
Constraining the structure and formation of the Galactic bulge from a field in its outskirts. FLAMES-GIRAFFE spectra of about 400 red giants around (l,b)=(0{\deg},-10{\deg})
The presence of two stellar populations in the Milky Way bulge has been
reported recently. We aim at studying the abundances and kinematics of stars in
the outer bulge, thereby providing additional constraints on models of its
formation. Spectra of 401 red giant stars in a field at
(l,b)=(0{\deg},-10{\deg}) were obtained with FLAMES at the VLT. Stars of
luminosities down to below the two bulge red clumps (RCs) are included. From
these spectra we measure general metallicities, abundances of Fe and the
alpha-elements, and radial velocities (RV) of the stars. These measurements as
well as photometric data are compared to simulations with the Besancon and
TRILEGAL models of the Galaxy. We confirm the presence of two populations among
our sample stars: i) a metal-rich one at [M/H] ~+0.3, comprising about 30% of
the sample, with low RV dispersion and low alpha-abundance, and ii) a
metal-poor population at [M/H] ~-0.6 with high RV dispersion and high
alpha-abundance. The metal-rich population could be connected to the Galactic
bar. We identify this population as the carrier of the double RC feature. We do
not find a significant difference in metallicity or RV between the two RCs, a
small difference in metallicity being probably due to a selection effect. The
RV dispersion agrees well with predictions of the Besancon Galaxy model, but
the metallicity of the "thick bulge" model component should be shifted to lower
metallicity by 0.2 to 0.3dex to well reproduce the observations. We present
evidence that the metallicity distribution function depends on the evolutionary
state of the sample stars, suggesting that enhanced mass loss preferentially
removes metal-rich stars. We also confirm the decrease of \alpha-element
over-abundance with increasing metallicity.Comment: 19 pages (excluding on-line table), 21 figures, accepted for
publication in A&
Grid Loss: Detecting Occluded Faces
Detection of partially occluded objects is a challenging computer vision
problem. Standard Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) detectors fail if parts of
the detection window are occluded, since not every sub-part of the window is
discriminative on its own. To address this issue, we propose a novel loss layer
for CNNs, named grid loss, which minimizes the error rate on sub-blocks of a
convolution layer independently rather than over the whole feature map. This
results in parts being more discriminative on their own, enabling the detector
to recover if the detection window is partially occluded. By mapping our loss
layer back to a regular fully connected layer, no additional computational cost
is incurred at runtime compared to standard CNNs. We demonstrate our method for
face detection on several public face detection benchmarks and show that our
method outperforms regular CNNs, is suitable for realtime applications and
achieves state-of-the-art performance.Comment: accepted to ECCV 201
Close-up of primary and secondary asteroseismic CoRoT targets and the ground-based follow-up observations
To optimise the science results of the asteroseismic part of the CoRoT
satellite mission a complementary simultaneous ground-based observational
campaign is organised for selected CoRoT targets. The observations include both
high-resolution spectroscopic and multi-colour photometric data. We present the
preliminary results of the analysis of the ground-based observations of three
targets. A line-profile analysis of 216 high-resolution FEROS spectra of the
delta Sct star HD 50844 reveals more than ten pulsation frequencies in the
frequency range 5-18 c/d, including possibly one radial fundamental mode (6.92
c/d). Based on more than 600 multi-colour photometric datapoints of the beta
Cep star HD180642, spanning about three years and obtained with different
telescopes and different instruments, we confirm the presence of a dominant
radial mode nu1=5.48695 c/d, and detect also its first two harmonics. We find
evidence for a second mode nu2=0.3017 c/d, possibly a g-mode, and indications
for two more frequencies in the 7-8 c/d domain. From Stromgren photometry we
find evidence for the hybrid delta Sct/gamma Dor character of the F0 star HD
44195, as frequencies near 3 c/d and 21 c/d are detected simultaneously in the
different filters.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, HELAS II International Conference
"Helioseismology, Asteroseismology and MHD Connections", 2008, J.Phys.: Conf.
Ser. 118, 01207
CMS-RCNN: Contextual Multi-Scale Region-based CNN for Unconstrained Face Detection
Robust face detection in the wild is one of the ultimate components to
support various facial related problems, i.e. unconstrained face recognition,
facial periocular recognition, facial landmarking and pose estimation, facial
expression recognition, 3D facial model construction, etc. Although the face
detection problem has been intensely studied for decades with various
commercial applications, it still meets problems in some real-world scenarios
due to numerous challenges, e.g. heavy facial occlusions, extremely low
resolutions, strong illumination, exceptionally pose variations, image or video
compression artifacts, etc. In this paper, we present a face detection approach
named Contextual Multi-Scale Region-based Convolution Neural Network (CMS-RCNN)
to robustly solve the problems mentioned above. Similar to the region-based
CNNs, our proposed network consists of the region proposal component and the
region-of-interest (RoI) detection component. However, far apart of that
network, there are two main contributions in our proposed network that play a
significant role to achieve the state-of-the-art performance in face detection.
Firstly, the multi-scale information is grouped both in region proposal and RoI
detection to deal with tiny face regions. Secondly, our proposed network allows
explicit body contextual reasoning in the network inspired from the intuition
of human vision system. The proposed approach is benchmarked on two recent
challenging face detection databases, i.e. the WIDER FACE Dataset which
contains high degree of variability, as well as the Face Detection Dataset and
Benchmark (FDDB). The experimental results show that our proposed approach
trained on WIDER FACE Dataset outperforms strong baselines on WIDER FACE
Dataset by a large margin, and consistently achieves competitive results on
FDDB against the recent state-of-the-art face detection methods
Beyond unequal access: Acculturation, race, and resistance to pharmaceuticalization in the United States
Trends toward pharmaceuticalization in Western countries have led to increased research and theorizing about the roles macro-level institutions, structures, and collective actors play in contributing to patients’ reliance on prescription drugs. Relatively less work has focused on the degree to which patients resist pharmaceuticalization pressures, and even less research has explored the factors contributing to patients’ resistance to pharmaceuticalization. Drawing on focus groups with patients who had been recently prescribed a prescription drug, this paper investigates how marginalization in the mainstream US society, as measured by acculturation and race, contributes to differences in patients’ subjective experiences and responses to prescription drugs. We find that racial minorities report a greater skepticism of prescription drugs compared to whites and express that they turn to prescription drugs as a last resort. While highly acculturated participants rarely discuss alternatives to prescription drugs, less acculturated racial minorities indicate a preference for complementary and alternative remedies. We draw on the literatures on the pharmaceuticalization of society and the social nature of medicine to examine the role marginalization plays in patients’ views of prescription drugs. Public health research conceives of racial minorities’ lower rates of prescription drug usage compared to whites as primarily a problem of lack of access. Our results suggest another piece to the puzzle: minorities resist pharmaceuticalization pressures to express their cultural and racial identities
Magnetotransport in the Kondo model with ferromagnetic exchange interaction
We consider the transport properties in an applied magnetic field of the spin
S=1/2 Kondo model with ferromagnetic exchange coupling to electronic
reservoirs, a description relevant for the strong coupling limit of
underscreened spin S=1 Kondo impurities. Because the ferromagnetic Kondo
interaction is marginally irrelevant, perturbative methods should prove
accurate down to low energies. For the purpose of this study, we use a
combination of Majorana diagrammatic theory with Density Matrix Numerical
Renormalization Group simulations. In the standard case of antiferromagnetic
Kondo exchange, we first show that our technique recovers previously obtained
results for the T-matrix and spin relaxation at weak coupling (above the Kondo
temperature). Considering then the ferromagnetic case, we demonstrate how the
low-energy Kondo anomaly splits for arbitrary small values of the Zeeman
energy, in contrast to fully screened Kondo impurities near the strong coupling
Fermi liquid fixed point, and in agreement with recent experimental findings
for spin S=1 molecular quantum dots.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures, minor changes in V
A qualitative study to explore various meanings of mental distress and help-seeking in the Yamuna valley, North India
Context: In rural India, mental healthcare remains limited due to scant state services and incongruency between provider- and patient-framing distress. Help-seeking by people with mental health problems is related to how meanings of distress are understood differently by individuals, based on their interaction with various actors in the community and the available cultural explanation within their local ecologies. Methodology: This study examines the mutually constituted relationship between meanings of mental distress and help-seeking among people residing in the Upper Yamuna Valley, Uttarakhand, North India. This qualitative study builds on six in-depth interviews with people with severe mental health issues and one person with epilepsy, referred as people with psychosocial disability (PPSD) in the study. The data analysis was iterative and followed thematic approach. Results: The study found that personal belief based on one's experience, such as negative self-judgment and wider cultural explanations, such as supernatural beliefs, as well as gender roles, impacted the way people address their mental health problems, in turn shaping their help-seeking behavior. Participants lost hope for a cure after years of trying to find an effective solution. Moreover, lack of access to care and remoteness of the mountainous area made help-seeking and recovery feel impossible. Conclusions: This study underscores the need for researchers and policy professionals to explore the local context and culture to improve care and treatment quality. The study also explains that personal explanation of psychosocial problems and help seeking are not unidirectional. It is a complex phenomenon layered with the local contexts which should be addressed in clinical practice, as well as future research. Finally, clinicians' training should address the local cultural language of distress to identify the problem and suggest an effective solution
Persistence, seasonal dynamics and pathogenic potential of Vibrio communities from pacific oyster hemolymph
Bacteria of the genus Vibrio occur at a continuum from free-living to symbiotic life forms, including opportunists and pathogens, that can contribute to severe diseases, for instance summer mortality events of Pacific oysters Crassostrea gigas. While most studies focused on Vibrio isolated from moribund oysters during mortality outbreaks, investigations of the Vibrio community in healthy oysters are rare. Therefore, we characterized the persistence, diversity, seasonal dynamics, and pathogenicity of the Vibrio community isolated from healthy Pacific oysters. In a reciprocal transplant experiment we repeatedly sampled hemolymph from adult Pacific oysters to differentiate population from site-specific effects during six months of in situ incubation in the field. We characterized virulence phenotypes and genomic diversity based on multilocus sequence typing in a total of 70 Vibrio strains. Based on controlled infection experiments we could show that strains with the ability to colonize healthy adult oysters can also have the potential to induce high mortality rates on larvae. Diversity and abundance of Vibrio varied significantly over time with highest values during and after spawning season. Vibrio communities from transplanted and stationary oysters converged over time, indicating that communities were not population specific, but rather assemble from the surrounding environment forming communities, some of which can persist over longer period
An Environmental Analysis of Illinois Coal Entry into the Transportation Market
Using Illinois coal in transportation has varied environmental consequences. This study calculated the total CO2 emissions from gasoline and eight other vehicle propulsion methods (VPMs) involving Illinois coal. VPMs of Ultra Super Critical electrical cycle (USC), Integrated Gasification Combined electrical Cycle (IGCC), Pulverized coal in a Sub-Critical electrical cycle (PSC), and electricity from a hydrogen fuel cell emitted the lowest CO2. VPMs using Illinois coal to produce ethanol, butanol, and IGCC/ethanol emitted CO2 comparable to gasoline. The VPM of Fischer-Tropsch (FT) diesel emitted the most CO2. It was concluded that energy efficiency and CO2 offset from agricultural growth and by-products were the most influential factors of CO2 emissions
The CoRoT B-type binary HD50230: a prototypical hybrid pulsator with g-mode period and p-mode frequency spacings
B-type stars are promising targets for asteroseismic modelling, since their
frequency spectrum is relatively simple.
We deduce and summarise observational constraints for the hybrid pulsator,
HD50230, earlier reported to have deviations from a uniform period spacing of
its gravity modes. The combination of spectra and a high-quality light curve
measured by the CoRoT satellite allow a combined approach to fix the position
of HD50230 in the HR diagram.
To describe the observed pulsations, classical Fourier analysis was combined
with short-time Fourier transformations and frequency spacing analysis
techniques. Visual spectra were used to constrain the projected rotation rate
of the star and the fundamental parameters of the target. In a first
approximation, the combined information was used to interpret multiplets and
spacings to infer the true surface rotation rate and a rough estimate of the
inclination angle.
We identify HD50230 as a spectroscopic binary and characterise the two
components. We detect the simultaneous presence of high-order g modes and
low-order p and g-modes in the CoRoT light curve, but were unable to link them
to line profile variations in the spectroscopic time series. We extract the
relevant information from the frequency spectrum, which can be used for seismic
modelling, and explore possible interpretations of the pressure mode spectrum.Comment: 26 pages, 12+6 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and
Astrophysic
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