2,069 research outputs found
Detection and Removal of Artifacts in Astronomical Images
Astronomical images from optical photometric surveys are typically
contaminated with transient artifacts such as cosmic rays, satellite trails and
scattered light. We have developed and tested an algorithm that removes these
artifacts using a deep, artifact free, static sky coadd image built up through
the median combination of point spread function (PSF) homogenized, overlapping
single epoch images. Transient artifacts are detected and masked in each single
epoch image through comparison with an artifact free, PSF-matched simulated
image that is constructed using the PSF-corrected, model fitting catalog from
the artifact free coadd image together with the position variable PSF model of
the single epoch image. This approach works well not only for cleaning single
epoch images with worse seeing than the PSF homogenized coadd, but also the
traditionally much more challenging problem of cleaning single epoch images
with better seeing. In addition to masking transient artifacts, we have
developed an interpolation approach that uses the local PSF and performs well
in removing artifacts whose widths are smaller than the PSF full width at half
maximum, including cosmic rays, the peaks of saturated stars and bleed trails.
We have tested this algorithm on Dark Energy Survey Science Verification data
and present performance metrics. More generally, our algorithm can be applied
to any survey which images the same part of the sky multiple times.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy and
Computin
A Massively Parallel Algorithm for the Approximate Calculation of Inverse p-th Roots of Large Sparse Matrices
We present the submatrix method, a highly parallelizable method for the
approximate calculation of inverse p-th roots of large sparse symmetric
matrices which are required in different scientific applications. We follow the
idea of Approximate Computing, allowing imprecision in the final result in
order to be able to utilize the sparsity of the input matrix and to allow
massively parallel execution. For an n x n matrix, the proposed algorithm
allows to distribute the calculations over n nodes with only little
communication overhead. The approximate result matrix exhibits the same
sparsity pattern as the input matrix, allowing for efficient reuse of allocated
data structures.
We evaluate the algorithm with respect to the error that it introduces into
calculated results, as well as its performance and scalability. We demonstrate
that the error is relatively limited for well-conditioned matrices and that
results are still valuable for error-resilient applications like
preconditioning even for ill-conditioned matrices. We discuss the execution
time and scaling of the algorithm on a theoretical level and present a
distributed implementation of the algorithm using MPI and OpenMP. We
demonstrate the scalability of this implementation by running it on a
high-performance compute cluster comprised of 1024 CPU cores, showing a speedup
of 665x compared to single-threaded execution
Modeling the effect of striped bass (Morone saxatilis) on the population viability of Sacramento River winter-run chinook salmon (Onchorhynchus tshawytscha)
We estimated the impact of striped bass (Morone saxatilis) predation on winter-run chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) with a Bayesian population dynamics model using striped bass and winter-run chinook salmon population abundance data. Winter-run chinook salmon extinction and recovery probabilities under different future striped bass abundance levels were estimated by simulating from the posterior distribution of model parameters. The model predicts that if the striped bass population declines to 512,000 adults as expected in the absence of stocking, winter-run chinook salmon will have about a 28% chance of quasi-extinction (defined as three consecutive spawning runs of fewer than 200 adults) within 50 years. If stocking stabilizes the striped bass population at 700,000 adults, the predicted quasi-extinction probability is 30%. A more ambitious stocking program that maintains a population of 3 million adult striped bass would increase the predicted quasi-extinction probability to 55%. Extinction probability, but not recovery probability, was fairly insensitive to assumptions about density dependence. We conclude that winter-run chinook salmon face a serious extinction risk without augmentation of the striped bass population and that substantial increases in striped bass abundance could significantly increase the threat to winter-run chi-nook salmon if not mitigated by increasing winter chinook salmon survival in some other way
On the maximum number of minimum total dominating sets in forests
We propose the conjecture that every tree with order at least and
total domination number has at most
minimum total dominating sets. As a relaxation of this conjecture, we show that
every forest with order , no isolated vertex, and total domination
number has at most minimum total dominating sets
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