Multiwavelength Comparison of Modeled and Measured Remote Tropospheric Aerosol Backscatter Over Pacific Ocean

Aerosol concentrations and size distributions in the middle and upper troposphere over the remote Pacific Ocean were measured with a forward scattering spectrometer probe (FSSP) on the NASA DC-8 aircraft during NASA's Global Backscatter Experiment (GLOBE) in May-June 1990. The FSSP size channels were recalibrated based on refractive index estimates from flight-level aerosol volatility measurements with a collocated laser optical particle counter (LOPC). The recalibrated FSSP size distributions were averaged over 100-s intervals, fitted with lo-normal distributions and used to calculate aerosol backscatter coefficients at selected wavelengths. The FSSP-derived backscatter estimates were averaged over 300-s intervals to reduce large random fluctuations. The smoothed FSSP aerosol backscatter coefficients were then compared with LOPC-derived backscatter values and with backscatter measured at or near flight level from four lidar systems operating at 0.53, 1.06, 9.11, 9.25, and 10.59 micrometers. Agreement between FSSP-derived and lidar-measured backscatter was generally best at flight level in homogeneous aerosol fields and at high backscatter values. FSSP data often underestimated low backscatter values especially at the longer wavelengths due to poor counting statistics for larger particles (greater than 0.8 micrometers diameter) that usually dominate aerosol backscatter at these wavelengths. FSSP data also underestimated backscatter at shorter wavelengths when particles smaller than the FSSP lower cutoff diameter (0.35 micrometers) made significant contributions to the total backscatter

The Orbital Period of the Optical/X-Ray Burster X1735-444 (V926 Sco)

We present extensive CCD photometry of the optical counterpart of X1735–444 which reveals the orbital period of the system. It is periodically variable with a period of 4.654 hr and a full amplitude of 0.15 mag. The mean modulation is quasi-sinusoidal; there are, however, also significant intrinsic deviations from the mean light curve

Calculating the Expected Value of Sample Information in Practice: Considerations from Three Case Studies

Investing efficiently in future research to improve policy decisions is an important goal. Expected Value of Sample Information (EVSI) can be used to select the specific design and sample size of a proposed study by assessing the benefit of a range of different studies. Estimating EVSI with the standard nested Monte Carlo algorithm has a notoriously high computational burden, especially when using a complex decision model or when optimizing over study sample sizes and designs. Therefore, a number of more efficient EVSI approximation methods have been developed. However, these approximation methods have not been compared and therefore their relative advantages and disadvantages are not clear. A consortium of EVSI researchers, including the developers of several approximation methods, compared four EVSI methods using three previously published health economic models. The examples were chosen to represent a range of real-world contexts, including situations with multiple study outcomes, missing data, and data from an observational rather than a randomized study. The computational speed and accuracy of each method were compared, and the relative advantages and implementation challenges of the methods were highlighted. In each example, the approximation methods took minutes or hours to achieve reasonably accurate EVSI estimates, whereas the traditional Monte Carlo method took weeks. Specific methods are particularly suited to problems where we wish to compare multiple proposed sample sizes, when the proposed sample size is large, or when the health economic model is computationally expensive. All the evaluated methods gave estimates similar to those given by traditional Monte Carlo, suggesting that EVSI can now be efficiently computed with confidence in realistic examples.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

All-Sky spectrally matched UBVRI-ZY and u'g'r'i'z' magnitudes for stars in the Tycho2 catalog

We present fitted UBVRI-ZY and u'g'r'i'z' magnitudes, spectral types and distances for 2.4M stars, derived from synthetic photometry of a library spectrum that best matches the Tycho2 BtVt, NOMAD Rn and 2MASS JHK_{2/S} catalog magnitudes. We present similarly synthesized multi-filter magnitudes, types and distances for 4.8M stars with 2MASS and SDSS photometry to g<16 within the Sloan survey region, for Landolt and Sloan primary standards, and for Sloan Northern (PT) and Southern secondary standards. The synthetic magnitude zeropoints for BtVt, UBVRI, ZvYv, JHK_{2/S}, JHK_{MKO}, Stromgren uvby, Sloan u'g'r'i'z' and ugriz are calibrated on 20 calspec spectrophotometric standards. The UBVRI and ugriz zeropoints have dispersions of 1--3%, for standards covering a range of color from -0.3 < V-I < 4.6; those for other filters are in the range 2--5%. The spectrally matched fits to Tycho2 stars provide estimated 1-sigma errors per star of ~0.2, 0.15, 0.12, 0.10 and 0.08 mags respectively in either UBVRI or u'g'r'i'z'; those for at least 70% of the SDSS survey region to g<16 have estimated 1-sigma errors per star of ~0.2, 0.06, 0.04, 0.04, 0.05 in u'g'r'i'z' or UBVRI. The density of Tycho2 stars, averaging about 60 stars per square degree, provides sufficient stars to enable automatic flux calibrations for most digital images with fields of view of 0.5 degree or more. Using several such standards per field, automatic flux calibration can be achieved to a few percent in any filter, at any airmass, in most workable observing conditions, to facilitate inter-comparison of data from different sites, telescopes and instruments.Comment: 36 pages, 30 figures, 3 printed tables, several electronic tables, accepted PASP Dec 201

The Frequency of Binary Stars in the Core of 47 Tucanae

Differential time series photometry has been derived for 46422 main-sequence stars in the core of 47 Tucanae. The observations consisted of near-continuous 160-s exposures alternating between the F555W and F814W filters for 8.3 days in 1999 July with WFPC2 on the Hubble Space Telescope. Using Fourier and other search methods, eleven detached eclipsing binaries and fifteen W UMa stars have been discovered, plus an additional ten contact or near-contact non-eclipsing systems. After correction for non-uniform area coverage of the survey, the observed frequencies of detached eclipsing binaries and W UMa's within 90 arcseconds of the cluster center are 0.022% and 0.031% respectively. The observed detached eclipsing binary frequency, the assumptions of a flat binary distribution with log period and that the eclipsing binaries with periods longer than about 4 days have essentially their primordial periods, imply an overall binary frequency of 13 +/- 6 %. The observed W UMa frequency and the additional assumptions that W UMa's have been brought to contact according to tidal circularization and angular momentum loss theory and that the contact binary lifetime is 10^{9} years, imply an overall binary frequency of 14 +/- 4 %. An additional 71 variables with periods from 0.4 - 10 days have been found which are likely to be BY Draconis stars in binary systems. The radial distribution of these stars is the same as that of the eclipsing binaries and W UMa stars and is more centrally concentrated than average stars, but less so than the blue straggler stars. A distinct subset of six of these stars fall in an unexpected domain of the CMD, comprising what we propose to call red stragglers.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal, 65 pages including 26 figure