Hydrology of Southwestern Connecticut

Guidebook for field trips in Connecticut: New England Intercollegiate Geological Conference 60th annual meeting, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, October 25-27, 1968: Trip B-

Goodness-of-fit tests of Gaussianity: constraints on the cumulants of the MAXIMA data

In this work, goodness-of-fit tests are adapted and applied to CMB maps to detect possible non-Gaussianity. We use Shapiro-Francia test and two Smooth goodness-of-fit tests: one developed by Rayner and Best and another one developed by Thomas and Pierce. The Smooth tests test small and smooth deviations of a prefixed probability function (in our case this is the univariate Gaussian). Also, the Rayner and Best test informs us of the kind of non-Gaussianity we have: excess of skewness, of kurtosis, and so on. These tests are optimal when the data are independent. We simulate and analyse non-Gaussian signals in order to study the power of these tests. These non-Gaussian simulations are constructed using the Edgeworth expansion, and assuming pixel-to-pixel independence. As an application, we test the Gaussianity of the MAXIMA data. Results indicate that the MAXIMA data are compatible with Gaussianity. Finally, the values of the skewness and kurtosis of MAXIMA data are constrained by |S| \le 0.035 and |K| \le 0.036 at the 99% confidence level.Comment: New Astronomy Reviews, in pres

Goodness-of-Fit Tests to study the Gaussianity of the MAXIMA data

Goodness-of-Fit tests, including Smooth ones, are introduced and applied to detect non-Gaussianity in Cosmic Microwave Background simulations. We study the power of three different tests: the Shapiro-Francia test (1972), the uncategorised smooth test developed by Rayner and Best(1990) and the Neyman's Smooth Goodness-of-fit test for composite hypotheses (Thomas and Pierce 1979). The Smooth Goodness-of-Fit tests are designed to be sensitive to the presence of ``smooth'' deviations from a given distribution. We study the power of these tests based on the discrimination between Gaussian and non-Gaussian simulations. Non-Gaussian cases are simulated using the Edgeworth expansion and assuming pixel-to-pixel independence. Results show these tests behave similarly and are more powerful than tests directly based on cumulants of order 3, 4, 5 and 6. We have applied these tests to the released MAXIMA data. The applied tests are built to be powerful against detecting deviations from univariate Gaussianity. The Cholesky matrix corresponding to signal (based on an assumed cosmological model) plus noise is used to decorrelate the observations previous to the analysis. Results indicate that the MAXIMA data are compatible with Gaussianity.Comment: MNRAS, in pres

Minimal model for aeolian sand dunes

We present a minimal model for the formation and migration of aeolian sand dunes. It combines a perturbative description of the turbulent wind velocity field above the dune with a continuum saltation model that allows for saturation transients in the sand flux. The latter are shown to provide the characteristic length scale. The model can explain the origin of important features of dunes, such as the formation of a slip face, the broken scale invariance, and the existence of a minimum dune size. It also predicts the longitudinal shape and aspect ratio of dunes and heaps, their migration velocity and shape relaxation dynamics. Although the minimal model employs non-local expressions for the wind shear stress as well as for the sand flux, it is simple enough to serve as a very efficient tool for analytical and numerical investigations and to open up the way to simulations of large scale desert topographies.Comment: 19 pages, 22 figure

"Dark energy" in the Local Void

The unexpected discovery of the accelerated cosmic expansion in 1998 has filled the Universe with the embarrassing presence of an unidentified "dark energy", or cosmological constant, devoid of any physical meaning. While this standard cosmology seems to work well at the global level, improved knowledge of the kinematics and other properties of our extragalactic neighborhood indicates the need for a better theory. We investigate whether the recently suggested repulsive-gravity scenario can account for some of the features that are unexplained by the standard model. Through simple dynamical considerations, we find that the Local Void could host an amount of antimatter ($\sim5\times10^{15}\,M_\odot$) roughly equivalent to the mass of a typical supercluster, thus restoring the matter-antimatter symmetry. The antigravity field produced by this "dark repulsor" can explain the anomalous motion of the Local Sheet away from the Local Void, as well as several other properties of nearby galaxies that seem to require void evacuation and structure formation much faster than expected from the standard model. At the global cosmological level, gravitational repulsion from antimatter hidden in voids can provide more than enough potential energy to drive both the cosmic expansion and its acceleration, with no need for an initial "explosion" and dark energy. Moreover, the discrete distribution of these dark repulsors, in contrast to the uniformly permeating dark energy, can also explain dark flows and other recently observed excessive inhomogeneities and anisotropies of the Universe.Comment: 6 pages, accepted as a Letter to the Editor by Astrophysics and Space Scienc

Structural identifiability analyses of candidate models for in vitro Pitavastatin hepatic uptake

In this paper a review of the application of four different techniques (a version of the similarity transformation approach for autonomous uncontrolled systems, a non-differential input/output observable normal form approach, the characteristic set differential algebra and a recent algebraic input/output relationship approach) to determine the structural identifiability of certain in vitro nonlinear pharmacokinetic models is provided. The Organic Anion Transporting Polypeptide (OATP) substrate, Pitavastatin, is used as a probe on freshly isolated animal and human hepatocytes. Candidate pharmacokinetic non-linear compartmental models have been derived to characterise the uptake process of Pitavastatin. As a prerequisite to parameter estimation, structural identifiability analyses are performed to establish that all unknown parameters can be identified from the experimental observations available

Dual Vortex Theory of Strongly Interacting Electrons: Non-Fermi Liquid to the (Hard) Core

As discovered in the quantum Hall effect, a very effective way for strongly-repulsive electrons to minimize their potential energy is to aquire non-zero relative angular momentum. We pursue this mechanism for interacting two-dimensional electrons in zero magnetic field, by employing a representation of the electrons as composite bosons interacting with a Chern-Simons gauge field. This enables us to construct a dual description in which the fundamental constituents are vortices in the auxiliary boson fields. The resulting formalism embraces a cornucopia of possible phases. Remarkably, superconductivity is a generic feature, while the Fermi liquid is not -- prompting us to conjecture that such a state may not be possible when the interactions are sufficiently strong. Many aspects of our earlier discussions of the nodal liquid and spin-charge separation find surprising incarnations in this new framework.Comment: Modified dicussion of the hard-core model, correcting several mistake