On the Hierarchical Preconditioning of the PMCHWT Integral Equation on Simply and Multiply Connected Geometries

We present a hierarchical basis preconditioning strategy for the Poggio-Miller-Chang-Harrington-Wu-Tsai (PMCHWT) integral equation considering both simply and multiply connected geometries.To this end, we first consider the direct application of hierarchical basis preconditioners, developed for the Electric Field Integral Equation (EFIE), to the PMCHWT. It is notably found that, whereas for the EFIE a diagonal preconditioner can be used for obtaining the hierarchical basis scaling factors, this strategy is catastrophic in the case of the PMCHWT since it leads to a severly ill-conditioned PMCHWT system in the case of multiply connected geometries. We then proceed to a theoretical analysis of the effect of hierarchical bases on the PMCHWT operator for which we obtain the correct scaling factors and a provably effective preconditioner for both low frequencies and mesh refinements. Numerical results will corroborate the theory and show the effectiveness of our approach

On the singular values decoupling in the Singular Spectrum Analysis of volcanic tremor at Stromboli

The well known strombolian activity at Stromboli volcano is occasionally interrupted by rarer episodes of paroxysmal activity which can lead to considerable hazard for Stromboli inhabitants and tourists. On 5 April 2003 a powerful explosion, which can be compared in size with the latest one of 1930, covered with bombs a good part of the normally tourist-accessible summit area. This explosion was not forecasted, although the island was by then effectively monitored by a dense deployment of instruments. After having tackled in a previous paper the problem of highlighting the timescale of preparation of this event, we investigate here the possibility of highlighting precursors in the volcanic tremor continuously recorded by a short period summit seismic station. We show that a promising candidate is found by examining the degree of coupling between successive singular values that result from the Singular Spectrum Analysis of the raw seismic data. We suggest therefore that possible anomalies in the time evolution of this parameter could be indicators of volcano instability to be taken into account e.g. in a bayesian eruptive scenario evaluator. Obviously, further (and possibly forward) testing on other cases is needed to confirm the usefulness of this parameter

Orbit determination of Transneptunian objects and Centaurs for the prediction of stellar occultations

The prediction of stellar occultations by Transneptunian objects and Centaurs is a difficult challenge that requires accuracy both in the occulted star position as for the object ephemeris. Until now, the most used method of prediction involving tens of TNOs/Centaurs was to consider a constant offset for the right ascension and for the declination with respect to a reference ephemeris. This offset is determined as the difference between the most recent observations of the TNO and the reference ephemeris. This method can be successfully applied when the offset remains constant with time. This paper presents an alternative method of prediction based on a new accurate orbit determination procedure, which uses all the available positions of the TNO from the Minor Planet Center database plus sets of new astrometric positions from unpublished observations. The orbit determination is performed through a numerical integration procedure (NIMA), in which we develop a specific weighting scheme. The NIMA method was applied for 51 selected TNOs/Centaurs. For this purpose, we have performed about 2900 new observations during 2007-2014. Using NIMA, we succeed in predicting the stellar occultations of 10 TNOs and 3 Centaurs between 2013 and 2015. By comparing the NIMA and JPL ephemerides, we highlighted the variation of the offset between them with time. Giving examples, we show that the constant offset method could not accurately predict 6 out of the 13 observed positive occultations successfully predicted by NIMA. The results indicate that NIMA is capable of efficiently refine the orbits of these bodies. Finally, we show that the astrometric positions given by positive occultations can help to further refine the orbit of the TNO and consequently the future predictions. We also provide the unpublished observations of the 51 selected TNOs and their ephemeris in a usable format by the SPICE library.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, accepted in A&

EgoIR: ontology-based information retrieval intended for eGovernment

The eGovernment is a field of applications for the Semantic Web. The eGovernment also is becoming an important research area and faces considerable challenges to achieve interoperability because of the semantic differences of interpretation, complexity and width of scope. It is however an open question how to apply these techniques fruitfully in the eGovernment domain. This paper addresses the importance of providing a semantic application that, within the eGovernment domain, is capable of dealing with the issue of the retrieval of government documentation in a timely and accurate way. In this paper, we present an approach ontology-based for retrieving government information

Semantic based P2P System for local e-Government

The Electronic Government is an emerging field of applications for the Semantic Web where ontologies are becoming an important research technology. The e-Government faces considerable challenges to achieve interoperability given the semantic differences of interpretation, omplexity and width of scope. This paper addresses the importance of providing an infrastructure capable of dealing with issues such as: communications between public administrations across government and retrieval of official and non official documents in a timely, secure and accurate way at the back office. A semantic peer-to-peer approach is proposed to enhance the information management at the e-Government domain; this approach is integrated with a Government Information Retrieval system and it reuses the EGO Model which can be deployed within the e-Government context

Short-term variability of a sample of 29 trans-Neptunian objects and Centaurs

We present results of 6 years of observations, reduced and analyzed with the same tools in a systematic way. We report completely new data for 15 objects, for 5 objects we present a new analysis of previously published results plus additional data and for 9 objects we present a new analysis of data already published. Lightcurves, possible rotation periods and photometric amplitudes are reported for all of them. The photometric variability is smaller than previously thought: the mean amplitude of our sample is 0.1mag and only around 15% of our sample has a larger variability than 0.15mag. The smaller variability than previously thought seems to be a bias of previous observations. We find a very weak trend of faster spinning objects towards smaller sizes, which appears to be consistent with the fact that the smaller objects are more collisionally evolved, but could also be a specific feature of the Centaurs, the smallest objects in our sample. We also find that the smaller the objects, the larger their amplitude, which is also consistent with the idea that small objects are more collisionally evolved and thus more deformed. Average rotation rates from our work are 7.5h for the whole sample, 7.6h for the TNOs alone and 7.3h for the Centaurs. All of them appear to be somewhat faster than what one can derive from a compilation of the scientific literature and our own results. Maxwellian fits to the rotation rate distribution give mean values of 7.5h (for the whole sample) and 7.3h (for the TNOs only). Assuming hydrostatic equilibrium we can determine densities from our sample under the additional assumption that the lightcurves are dominated by shape effects, which is likely not realistic. The resulting average density is 0.92g/cm^3 which is not far from the density constraint that one can derive from the apparent spin barrier that we observe.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&

Efficient solvability of Hamiltonians and limits on the power of some quantum computational models

We consider quantum computational models defined via a Lie-algebraic theory. In these models, specified initial states are acted on by Lie-algebraic quantum gates and the expectation values of Lie algebra elements are measured at the end. We show that these models can be efficiently simulated on a classical computer in time polynomial in the dimension of the algebra, regardless of the dimension of the Hilbert space where the algebra acts. Similar results hold for the computation of the expectation value of operators implemented by a gate-sequence. We introduce a Lie-algebraic notion of generalized mean-field Hamiltonians and show that they are efficiently ("exactly") solvable by means of a Jacobi-like diagonalization method. Our results generalize earlier ones on fermionic linear optics computation and provide insight into the source of the power of the conventional model of quantum computation.Comment: 6 pages; no figure