524 research outputs found
Approximate geospatial joins with precision guarantees
Geospatial joins are a core building block of con-
nected mobility applications. An especially challenging problem
are joins between streaming points and static polygons. Since
points are not known beforehand, they cannot be indexed.
Nevertheless, points need to be mapped to polygons with low
latencies to enable real-time feedback.
We present an approximate geospatial join that guarantees
a user-defined precision. Our technique uses a quadtree-based
hierarchical grid to approximate polygons and stores these
approximations in a specialized radix tree. Our approach can
perform up to several orders of magnitude faster than existing
techniques while providing sufficiently precise results for many
applications
Adaptive geospatial joins for modern hardware
Geospatial joins are a core building block of connected
mobility applications. An especially challenging problem
are joins between streaming points and static polygons. Since
points are not known beforehand, they cannot be indexed.
Nevertheless, points need to be mapped to polygons with low
latencies to enable real-time feedback.
We present an adaptive geospatial join that uses true hit
filtering to avoid expensive geometric computations in most
cases. Our technique uses a quadtree-based hierarchical grid
to approximate polygons and stores these approximations in a
specialized radix tree. We emphasize on an approximate version
of our algorithm that guarantees a user-defined precision. The
exact version of our algorithm can adapt to the expected point
distribution by refining the index. We optimized our implementation
for modern hardware architectures with wide SIMD vector
processing units, including Intelâs brand new Knights Landing.
Overall, our approach can perform up to two orders of magnitude
faster than existing techniques
Power-law persistence and trends in the atmosphere: A detailed study of long temperature records
We use several variants of the detrended fluctuation analysis to study the
appearance of long-term persistence in temperature records, obtained at 95
stations all over the globe. Our results basically confirm earlier studies. We
find that the persistence, characterized by the correlation C(s) of temperature
variations separated by s days, decays for large s as a power law, C(s) ~
s^(-gamma). For continental stations, including stations along the coastlines,
we find that gamma is always close to 0.7. For stations on islands, we find
that gamma ranges between 0.3 and 0.7, with a maximum at gamma = 0.4. This is
consistent with earlier studies of the persistence in sea surface temperature
records where gamma is close to 0.4. In all cases, the exponent gamma does not
depend on the distance of the stations to the continental coastlines. By
varying the degree of detrending in the fluctuation analysis we obtain also
information about trends in the temperature records.Comment: 5 pages, 4 including eps figure
Conductance Peak Height Correlations for a Coulomb-Blockaded Quantum Dot in a Weak Magnetic Field
We consider statistical correlations between the heights of conductance peaks
corresponding to two different levels in a Coulomb-blockaded quantum dot.
Correlations exist for two peaks at the same magnetic field if the field does
not fully break time-reversal symmetry as well as for peaks at different values
of a magnetic field that fully breaks time-reversal symmetry. Our results are
also relevant to Coulomb-blockade conductance peak height statistics in the
presence of weak spin-orbit coupling in a chaotic quantum dot.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, REVTeX 4, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Adaptive main-memory indexing for high-performance point-polygon joins
Connected mobility applications rely heavily on geospatial joins that associate point data, such as locations of Uber cars, to static polygonal regions, such as city neighborhoods. These joins typically involve expensive geometric computations, which makes it hard to provide an interactive user experience. In this paper, we propose an adaptive polygon index that leverages true hit fltering to avoid expensive geometric computations in most cases. In particular, our approach closely approximates polygons by combining quadtrees with true hit filtering, and stores these approximations in a query-effcient radix tree. Based on this index, we introduce two geospatial join algorithms: an approximate one that guarantees a user-defined precision, and an exact one that adapts to the expected point distribution. In summary, our technique outperforms existing CPU-based joins by up to two orders of magnitude and is competitive with state-of-the-art GPU implementations
Correlation effects in ionic crystals: I. The cohesive energy of MgO
High-level quantum-chemical calculations, using the coupled-cluster approach
and extended one-particle basis sets, have been performed for (Mg2+)n (O2-)m
clusters embedded in a Madelung potential. The results of these calculations
are used for setting up an incremental expansion for the correlation energy of
bulk MgO. This way, 96% of the experimental cohesive energy of the MgO crystal
is recovered. It is shown that only 60% of the correlation contribution to the
cohesive energy is of intra-ionic origin, the remaining part being caused by
van der Waals-like inter-ionic excitations.Comment: LaTeX, 20 pages, no figure
Cassiopeia A, Cygnus A, Taurus A, and Virgo A at ultra-low radio frequencies
Context. The four persistent radio sources in the northern sky with the highest flux density at metre wavelengths are Cassiopeia A, Cygnus A, Taurus A, and Virgo A; collectively they are called the A-team. Their flux densities at ultra-low frequencies (< 100 MHz) can reach several thousands of janskys, and they often contaminate observations of the low-frequency sky by interfering with image processing. Furthermore, these sources are foreground objects for all-sky observations hampering the study of faint signals, such as the cosmological 21 cm line from the epoch of reionisation. Aims. We aim to produce robust models for the surface brightness emission as a function of frequency for the A-team sources at ultra-low frequencies. These models are needed for the calibration and imaging of wide-area surveys of the sky with low-frequency interferometers. This requires obtaining images at an angular resolution better than 15\u2033 with a high dynamic range and good image fidelity. Methods. We observed the A-team with the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) at frequencies between 30 MHz and 77 MHz using the Low Band Antenna system. We reduced the datasets and obtained an image for each A-team source. Results. The paper presents the best models to date for the sources Cassiopeia A, Cygnus A, Taurus A, and Virgo A between 30 MHz and 77 MHz. We were able to obtain the aimed resolution and dynamic range in all cases. Owing to its compactness and complexity, observations with the long baselines of the International LOFAR Telescope will be required to improve the source model for Cygnus A further
LOFAR 144-MHz follow-up observations of GW170817
This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 494, Issue 4, June 2020, Pages 5110â5117, ©: 2020 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present low-radio-frequency follow-up observations of AT 2017gfo, the electromagnetic counterpart of GW170817, which was the first binary neutron star merger to be detected by Advanced LIGO-Virgo. These data, with a central frequency of 144 MHz, were obtained with LOFAR, the Low-Frequency Array. The maximum elevation of the target is just 13.7 degrees when observed with LOFAR, making our observations particularly challenging to calibrate and significantly limiting the achievable sensitivity. On time-scales of 130-138 and 371-374 days after the merger event, we obtain 3 upper limits for the afterglow component of 6.6 and 19.5 mJy beam, respectively. Using our best upper limit and previously published, contemporaneous higher-frequency radio data, we place a limit on any potential steepening of the radio spectrum between 610 and 144 MHz: the two-point spectral index . We also show that LOFAR can detect the afterglows of future binary neutron star merger events occurring at more favourable elevations.Peer reviewe
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