4,616 research outputs found
UK open source crime data: accuracy and possibilities for research
In the United Kingdom, since 2011 data regarding individual police recorded crimes have been made openly available to the public via the police.uk website. To protect the location privacy of victims these data are obfuscated using geomasking techniques to reduce their spatial accuracy. This paper examines the spatial accuracy of the police.uk data to determine at what level(s) of spatial resolution – if any – it is suitable for analysis in the context of theory testing and falsification, evaluation research, or crime analysis. Police.uk data are compared to police recorded data for one large metropolitan Police Force and spatial accuracy is quantified for four different levels of geography across five crime types. Hypotheses regarding systematic errors are tested using appropriate statistical approaches, including methods of maximum likelihood. Finally, a “best-fit” statistical model is presented to explain the error as well as to develop a model that can correct it. The implications of the findings for researchers using the police.uk data for spatial analysis are discussed
New measurements of the cosmic infrared background fluctuations in deep Spitzer/IRAC survey data and their cosmological implications
We extend previous measurements of cosmic infrared background (CIB)
fluctuations to ~ 1 deg using new data from the Spitzer Extended Deep Survey.
Two fields, with depths of ~12 hr/pixel over 3 epochs, are analyzed at 3.6 and
4.5 mic. Maps of the fields were assembled using a self-calibration method
uniquely suitable for probing faint diffuse backgrounds. Resolved sources were
removed from the maps to a magnitude limit of AB mag ~ 25, as indicated by the
level of the remaining shot noise. The maps were then Fourier-transformed and
their power spectra were evaluated. Instrumental noise was estimated from the
time-differenced data, and subtracting this isolates the spatial fluctuations
of the actual sky. The power spectra of the source-subtracted fields remain
identical (within the observational uncertainties) for the three epochs
indicating that zodiacal light contributes negligibly to the fluctuations.
Comparing to 8 mic power spectra shows that Galactic cirrus cannot account for
the fluctuations. The signal appears isotropically distributed on the sky as
required for an extragalactic origin. The CIB fluctuations continue to diverge
to > 10 times those of known galaxy populations on angular scales out to < 1
deg. The low shot noise levels remaining in the diffuse maps indicate that the
large scale fluctuations arise from the spatial clustering of faint sources
well below the confusion noise. The spatial spectrum of these fluctuations is
in reasonable agreement with an origin in populations clustered according to
the standard cosmological model (LCDM) at epochs coinciding with the first
stars era.Comment: ApJ, to be publishe
Rotational Doppler Effect in Magnetic Resonance
We compute the shift in the frequency of the spin resonance in a solid that
rotates in the field of a circularly polarized electromagnetic wave. Electron
spin resonance, nuclear magnetic resonance, and ferromagnetic resonance are
considered. We show that contrary to the case of the rotating LC circuit, the
shift in the frequency of the spin resonance has strong dependence on the
symmetry of the receiver. The shift due to rotation occurs only when rotational
symmetry is broken by the anisotropy of the gyromagnetic tensor, by the shape
of the body, or by magnetocrystalline anisotropy. General expressions for the
resonance frequency and power absorption are derived and implications for
experiment are discussed.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure
Gravitational Self-Force Correction to the Binding Energy of Compact Binary Systems
Using the first law of binary black-hole mechanics, we compute the binding
energy E and total angular momentum J of two non-spinning compact objects
moving on circular orbits with frequency Omega, at leading order beyond the
test-particle approximation. By minimizing E(Omega) we recover the exact
frequency shift of the Schwarzschild innermost stable circular orbit induced by
the conservative piece of the gravitational self-force. Comparing our results
for the coordinate invariant relation E(J) to those recently obtained from
numerical simulations of comparable-mass non-spinning black-hole binaries, we
find a remarkably good agreement, even in the strong-field regime. Our findings
confirm that the domain of validity of perturbative calculations may extend
well beyond the extreme mass-ratio limit.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure; matches the published versio
Mid-Infrared Galaxy Morphology Along the Hubble Sequence
The mid-infrared emission from 18 nearby galaxies imaged with the IRAC
instrument on Spitzer Space Telescope samples the spatial distributions of the
reddening-free stellar photospheric emission and the warm dust in the ISM.
These two components provide a new framework for galaxy morphological
classification, in which the presence of spiral arms and their emission
strength relative to the starlight can be measured directly and with high
contrast. Four mid-infrared classification methods are explored, three of which
are based on quantitative global parameters (colors, bulge-to-disk ratio)
similar to those used in the past for optical studies; in this limited sample,
all correlate well with traditional B-band classification. We suggest reasons
why infrared classification may be superior to optical classification.Comment: ApJS (in press), Spitzer Space Telescope Special Issue; 13 pages,
LaTeX (or Latex, etc); Figure 1ab is large, color plate; full-resolution
plates in .pdf format available at
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/irac/publications
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