Performance considerations for the application of the lossless browse and residual model

A hybrid lossless compression model employing both the (lossy) JPEG DCT algorithm and one of a selection of lossless image compression methods has been tested. The hybrid model decomposes the original image into a low-loss quick-look browse and a residual image. The lossless compression methods tested in the model are Huffman, arithmetic, LZW, lossless JPEG, and diagonal coding. For both the direct and the hybrid application of these lossless methods, the compression ratios (CR's) are calculated and compared on three test images. For each lossless method tested, the hybrid model had no more than a nominal loss in compression efficiency relative to the direct approach. In many cases, the hybrid model provided a significant compression gain. When used in the hybrid model, lossless JPEG outperformed the other lossless methods over a broad range of browse image qualities

Performance considerations for the application of the lossless browse and residual model

A hybrid lossless compression model employing both the (lossy) JPEG DCT algorithm and one of a selection of lossless image compression methods has been tested. The hybrid model decomposes the original image into a low-loss quick-look browse and a residual image. The lossless compression methods tested in the model are Huffman, arithmetic, LZW, lossless JPEG, and diagonal coding. For both the direct and the hybrid application of these lossless methods, the compression ratios (CR's) are calculated and compared on three test images. For each lossless method tested, the hybrid model had no more than a nominal loss in compression efficiency relative to the direct approach. In many cases, the hybrid model provided a significant compression gain. When used in the hybrid model, lossless JPEG outperformed the other lossless methods over a broad range of browse image qualities.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Data Recovery at 41MI96 in Mills County, Texas

Prehistoric site 41MI96 in Mills County, Texas was subjected to archeological data recovery excavations by staff archeologists from the Archeological Studies Program of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) in May 1999. This work followed an initial environmental review by TxDOT personnel that concluded that a proposed bridge replacement and associated realignment of a county road (CSJ: 0923- 23-011) had a high probability to impact previously unrecorded archeological sites. Subsequently, an archeological impact evaluation was conducted by TxDOT staff archeologists, under the direction of Dr. G. Lain Ellis. TxDOT investigations were conducted under Texas Antiquities Committee Permit No. 2193 to perform data recovery efforts at 41MI96 prior to development impacts. In 2012, TRC Environmental Corporation (TRC) of Austin was contracted by the Environmental Affairs Division of TxDOT through Work Authorization 57-109SA003 to conduct analysis on the recovered remains and complete a technical report of TxDOT’s field investigations and TRC’s laboratory findings in fulfillment of TxDOTs’ Antiquities permit. Data recovery excavations consisted of the excavation of four mechanical trenches across two creek terraces (T1 and T2) and hand-excavations in two small blocks (Blocks 1 and 2) within the TxDOT right-of-way on the northwestern side of the project area. Hand-excavations in both blocks were initiated to target newly discovered burned rock concentrations encountered in the bottom of backhoe scrapings. A total 5.5 m3 of manualexcavation was completed, which was comprised of 16 total 1-by-1 m units, 11 in Block 1, and 5 in Block 2. Cultural materials were dominated by ca. 602 burned rocks and 2,846 pieces of lithic debitage, 89 informal and formal tools, but lacked diagnostic artifacts and faunal material. Six small, intact burned rock features were identified in Block 1 and were the focus of laboratory analyses. The scattered burned rocks and debitage from Block 2 were only tabulated and discussed in a general way, as TxDOT personnel believed they were in mixed context. The six small burned rock features ranged in size from 33 to 100 cm in diameter and represented four intact heating elements (two with basins and two without), plus two small burned rock discard piles. Radiocarbon dating of organic residues in nine burned rocks from five intact features indicates multiple occupations over a span of roughly 700 years from 820 to 1450 B.P. (cal A.D. 560 to 1270). The lack of recorded depth measurements for cultural materials, combined with limited sediment deposition between the successive occupations, prevented isolation of individual occupational episodes. The lack of discernible vertical separation in the prehistoric occupations reflects slow soil aggregation during this period, likely lengthy surface exposure and possible erosion between events, and soil conditions which may also account for a near absence of charcoal and other organic materials such as vertebrate remains. Four technical analyses (radiocarbon dating, starch grain, lipid residue, and high-powered usewear) focused on a limited suite of chipped stone tools, associated lithic debitage, and burned rocks collected from five of the six intact features in Block 1 in the T2 terrace. Starch grain analysis on fragments of 20 burned rocks from five features and 20 chipped stone tools from around the features in Block 1 yielded positive results from 47.5 percent of the specimens. Of considerable interest is the documentation, in addition to multiple grass species, of grains of the tropical cultigen maize (Zea mays) on two burned rocks each, from Features 2 and 3, plus on two edge-modified tools in the vicinity of those two features. One specific burned rock with a gelatinized maize starch grain on it was directly AMS dated to 980 ± 30 B.P. or cal A.D. 1020 to 1150. Some identified maize starch grains had been damaged through grinding, heating, and/or boiling, evidence of processing as a food resource. This indicates use of maize as a food resource in central Texas a number of centuries earlier than previously suspected. Lipid residue analysis on portions of the same 20 burned rocks from those five features yielded residues in 100 percent of the samples. The results indicate that both plant and animal products were present on all the rocks, with large herbivore lipids (likely bison or deer) present on at least one rock, and oily seed lipids present on at least three rocks. Residues from conifer wood products, here likely juniper trees, were present on 60 percent of the rocks, and indicate at least one specific wood species used to heat the rocks. High-powered microscopic use-wear analyses on 15 chert tools (11 edge-modified flakes, 2 biface fragments, and 2 complete choppers) revealed their use in processing wood, plants, bone, and hide as well as unspecified soft and hard materials. The sparse frequency of formal chipped stone tools likely reflects the limited area investigated and also the possibility that these occupations reflect low-intensity and short-term camps that focused on preparing and cooking a few food resources in heating facilities and the manipulation of other perishable resources. The lipid and starch analyses of the burned rocks provides important information concerning the resources cooked by the rocks in these small burned rock features, most significantly the presence of maize and wild native grasses. These resources would have gone unidentified without these specialized analyses. Continued use of these two analytical techniques on suites of burned rocks from other features/sites in and around central Texas will provide an empirical basis for identifying changes in subsistence patterns over time and across geographical space. It is also notable that direct radiocarbon dating of organic residues contained within the porous sandstone burned rocks here has succeeded in providing satisfactory chronological control for the features and site, strongly indicating that this technique can be beneficially employed in the future in cases where other organics such as wood charcoal, charred seeds/nuts, and/or bone are unavailable for absolute dating. In 1999 the Texas Historical Commission accepted TxDOT’s field investigations as sufficient and concurred with TxDOT’s recommendation that no further work was necessary under Texas Antiquities Committee Permit No. 2193. Parts of site 41MI96 outside the current TxDOT right-of-way have not been fully evaluated. Based on the present findings and the excavated intact features in Block 1, it appears that potentially eligible deposits may be present beyond the current right-of-way. If TxDOT further expands this county road, it is recommended that those areas at 41MI96 be evaluated prior to surface modifications related to that project

Hemipelvic osteomyelitis in a hemodialysis patient associated with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia

Proper management of infected tunneled-cuffed catheters (TCC) is essential in order to avoid catastrophic consequences for the patient. Hematogenous dissemination of infection can result in serious secondary infections, including infective endocarditis, osteomyelitis, and epidural abscess. Pelvic osteomyelitis is an extremely rare condition in adults with no reported cases of infection localized to more than one pelvic bone at a time. We present a case of a hemodialysis patient who developed osteomyelitis of the entire right hemipelvis due to MRSA bacteremia after repeated attempts at TCC salvage

The NINJA-2 project: detecting and characterizing gravitational waveforms modelled using numerical binary black hole simulations

The Numerical INJection Analysis (NINJA) project is a collaborative effort between members of the numerical relativity and gravitational-wave (GW) astrophysics communities. The purpose of NINJA is to study the ability to detect GWs emitted from merging binary black holes (BBH) and recover their parameters with next-generation GW observatories. We report here on the results of the second NINJA project, NINJA-2, which employs 60 complete BBH hybrid waveforms consisting of a numerical portion modelling the late inspiral, merger, and ringdown stitched to a post-Newtonian portion modelling the early inspiral. In a ‘blind injection challenge’ similar to that conducted in recent Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Virgo science runs, we added seven hybrid waveforms to two months of data recoloured to predictions of Advanced LIGO (aLIGO) and Advanced Virgo (AdV) sensitivity curves during their first observing runs. The resulting data was analysed by GW detection algorithms and 6 of the waveforms were recovered with false alarm rates smaller than 1 in a thousand years. Parameter-estimation algorithms were run on each of these waveforms to explore the ability to constrain the masses, component angular momenta and sky position of these waveforms. We find that the strong degeneracy between the mass ratio and the BHs’ angular momenta will make it difficult to precisely estimate these parameters with aLIGO and AdV. We also perform a large-scale Monte Carlo study to assess the ability to recover each of the 60 hybrid waveforms with early aLIGO and AdV sensitivity curves. Our results predict that early aLIGO and AdV will have a volume-weighted average sensitive distance of 300 Mpc (1 Gpc) for 10M⊙ + 10M⊙ (50M⊙ + 50M⊙) BBH coalescences. We demonstrate that neglecting the component angular momenta in the waveform models used in matched-filtering will result in a reduction in sensitivity for systems with large component angular momenta. This reduction is estimated to be up to ∼15% for 50M⊙ + 50M⊙ BBH coalescences with almost maximal angular momenta aligned with the orbit when using early aLIGO and AdV sensitivity curves

Implementation of an F-statistic all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves in Virgo VSR1 data

We present an implementation of the -statistic to carry out the first search in data from the Virgo laser interferometric gravitational wave detector for periodic gravitational waves from a priori unknown, isolated rotating neutron stars. We searched a frequency f0 range from 100 Hz to 1 kHz and the frequency dependent spindown f1 range from Hz s−1 to zero. A large part of this frequency–spindown space was unexplored by any of the all-sky searches published so far. Our method consisted of a coherent search over two-day periods using the -statistic, followed by a search for coincidences among the candidates from the two-day segments. We have introduced a number of novel techniques and algorithms that allow the use of the fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithm in the coherent part of the search resulting in a fifty-fold speed-up in computation of the -statistic with respect to the algorithm used in the other pipelines. No significant gravitational wave signal was found. The sensitivity of the search was estimated by injecting signals into the data. In the most sensitive parts of the detector band more than 90% of signals would have been detected with dimensionless gravitational-wave amplitude greater tha

The Ursinus Weekly, February 15, 1973

Girls win first meet in new Elliott Pool • 1973 Arts Festival has much to offer • Student Union to open Monday, February 19 • Editorial: Monday to Thursday • First Semester Dean\u27s List • Film review: The Philosopher king • Meistersingers plan busy Spring series • Mermaids sink Temple • U.C. hosts soccer tourney • Win some; Lose one • Bears un-hooped • Forfeits costly; Bear matmen splithttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/weekly/1096/thumbnail.jp

A Gravitational-wave Measurement of the Hubble Constant Following the Second Observing Run of Advanced LIGO and Virgo

This paper presents the gravitational-wave measurement of the Hubble constant (H0) using the detections from the first and second observing runs of the Advanced LIGO and Virgo detector network. The presence of the transient electromagnetic counterpart of the binary neutron star GW170817 led to the first standard-siren measurement of H0. Here we additionally use binary black hole detections in conjunction with galaxy catalogs and report a joint measurement. Our updated measurement is H0 = - 69+8 16 km s−1 Mpc−1 (68.3% of the highest density posterior interval with a flat-in-log prior) which is an improvement by a factor of 1.04 (about 4%) over the GW170817-only value of - 69+8 17 km s−1 Mpc−1. A significant additional contribution currently comes from GW170814, a loud and well-localized detection from a part of the sky thoroughly covered by the Dark Energy Survey. With numerous detections anticipated over the upcoming years, an exhaustive understanding of other systematic effects are also going to become increasingly important. These results establish the path to cosmology using gravitational-wave observations with and without transient electromagnetic counterparts

GW190425: Observation of a Compact Binary Coalescence with Total Mass ∼ 3.4 M⊙

On 2019 April 25, the LIGO Livingston detector observed a compact binary coalescence with signal-to-noise ratio 12.9. The Virgo detector was also taking data that did not contribute to detection due to a low signal-to-noise ratio, but were used for subsequent parameter estimation. The 90% credible intervals for the component masses range from to (– if we restrict the dimensionless component spin magnitudes to be smaller than 0.05). These mass parameters are consistent with the individual binary components being neutron stars. However, both the source-frame chirp mass and the total mass of this system are significantly larger than those of any other known binary neutron star (BNS) system. The possibility that one or both binary components of the system are black holes cannot be ruled out from gravitational-wave data. We discuss possible origins of the system based on its inconsistency with the known Galactic BNS population. Under the assumption that the signal was produced by a BNS coalescence, the local rate of neutron star mergers is updated to 250–2810

Improved Analysis of GW150914 Using a Fully Spin-Precessing Waveform Model

This paper presents updated estimates of source parameters for GW150914, a binary black-hole coalescence event detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in 2015 [Abbott et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 061102 (2016).]. Abbott et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 241102 (2016).] presented parameter estimation of the source using a 13-dimensional, phenomenological precessing-spin model (precessing IMRPhenom) and an 11-dimensional nonprecessing effective-one-body (EOB) model calibrated to numerical-relativity simulations, which forces spin alignment (nonprecessing EOBNR). Here, we present new results that include a 15-dimensional precessing-spin waveform model (precessing EOBNR) developed within the EOB formalism. We find good agreement with the parameters estimated previously [Abbott et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 241102 (2016).], and we quote updated component masses of 35+5−3M⊙ and 30+3−4M ⊙ (where errors correspond to 90% symmetric credible intervals). We also present slightly tighter constraints on the dimensionless spin magnitudes of the two black holes, with a primary spin estimate < 0.65 and a secondary spin estimate < 0.75 at 90% probability. Abbott et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 241102 (2016).] estimated the systematic parameter-extraction errors due to waveform-model uncertainty by combining the posterior probability densities of precessing IMRPhenom and nonprecessing EOBNR. Here, we find that the two precessing-spin models are in closer agreement, suggesting that these systematic errors are smaller than previously quoted