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