190,623 research outputs found
Newly discovered brown dwarfs not seen in microlensing time scale frequency distribution?
The 2-Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) (Skrutskie et al. 1997) and the DEep Near
Infrared Survey of the southern sky (DENIS) (Epchtein et al. 1997) have
revealed a heretofore unknown population of free brown dwarfs that has extended
the local mass function down to as small as 0.01M_sun (Reid et al. 1999). If
this local proportion of brown dwarfs extends throughout the Galaxy---in
particular in the Galactic bulge---one expects an increase in the predicted
fraction of short time scale microlensing events in directions toward the
Galactic bulge. Zhao et al.(1996) have indicated that a mass function with
30-60% of the lens mass in brown dwarfs is not consistent with empirical
microlensing data. Here we show that even the much lower mass fraction (~ 10%)
of brown dwarfs inferred from the new discoveries appears inconsistent with the
data. The added brown dwarfs do indeed increase the expected number of short
time scale events, but they appear to drive the peak in the time scale
frequency distribution to time scales smaller than that observed, and do not
otherwise match the observed distribution. A reasonably good match to the
empirical data (Alcock et al. 1996) is obtained by increasing the fraction of
stars in the range 0.08<m<0.7M_sun considerably above that deduced from several
star counts. However, all inferences from microlensing about the appropriate
stellar mass function must be qualified by the meagerness of the microlensing
data and the uncertainties in the Galactic model.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. PS file using aas2pp4.sty. To appear in ApJ
Letter
Probability of Detecting a Planetary Companion during a Microlensing Event
The probability of detecting a planetary companion of a lensing star during a
microlensing event toward the Galactic center, averaged over all relevant event
and galactic parameters, when the planet-star mass ratio has a
maximum exceeding 10% at an orbit semimajor axis near 1.5 AU for a uniform
distribution of impact parameters. The maximum probability is raised to more
than 20% for a distribution of source-lens impact parameters that is determined
by the efficiency of event detection. The averaging procedures are carefully
defined, and they determinine the dependence of the detection probabilities on
several properties of the Galaxy. The probabilities scale approximately as
. A planet is assumed detectable if the perturbation of the single
lens light curve exceeds for at least 20 consecutive photometric
points sometime during the event. Two meter telescopes with 60 second
integrations in I-band with high time resolution photometry throughout the
duration of an ongoing event are assumed. The probabilities are derived as a
function of , where they remain significant for AU. Dependence of
the detection probabilities on the lens mass function, luminosity function of
the source stars as modified by extinction, distribution of source-lens impact
parameters, and the line of sight to the source are also determined, and the
probabilities are averaged over the distribution of the projected planet
position, the lens mass function, the distribution of impact parameters, the
lens and source distances as weighted by their distributions along the line of
sight and over the -band apparent luminosity function of the sources. The
extraction of the probabilility as a function of for a particular from
empirical data is indicated.Comment: 32 pages, 20 figures, In Press, ApJ, Latex format with aas2pp4 forma
Coherent Graphene Devices: Movable Mirrors, Buffers and Memories
We theoretically report that, at a sharp electrostatic step potential in
graphene, massless Dirac fermions can obtain Goos-H\"{a}nchen-like shifts under
total internal reflection. Based on these results, we study the coherent
propagation of the quasiparticles along a sharp graphene \emph{p-n-p} waveguide
and derive novel dispersion relations for the guided modes. Consequently,
coherent graphene devices (e.g. movable mirrors, buffers and memories) induced
only by the electric field effect can be proposed.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure
Exploring the rationale of enlightened shareholder value in the realm of UK company law â the path dependence perspective
Despite conventional beliefs in the predominance of shareholder value, a broader agenda of stakeholder consideration has been advocated in the UK by the recently-introduced ESV principle â the overriding corporate objective in the new company law regime. In this paper, the efficiency of this principle in terms of stakeholder enhancement is challenged through an interdisciplinary analysis. Through a critical review of the ESV principle, it is discovered that stakeholder enhancement practices in the context of the 2006 company law regime are still for the fundamental goal of shareholder value maximisation, and that their enlightened impact has been fairly limited in practice. Furthermore, by revisiting the interrelationships between UK economic, political and cultural factors with the predominance objective of shareholder value maximisation in the Companies Act 2006, it is discovered that the enlightened effect of this new approach in the company law regime is in fact impeded by strong, persistent forces deriving from shareholder-oriented particulars. Providing insight into the future direction of corporate governance practice, the paper concludes the rationale behind the shareholder-oriented ESV principle, and further suggests the continuing predominance of shareholder value in UK corporate governance
Estimating the characteristics of runoff inflow into Lake Gojal in ungauged, highly glacierized upper Hunza River Basin, Pakistan
Motivated by the potential flood outburst of Lake Gojal in the ungauged highly glacierized (27%) upper Hunza River Basin (HRB) in Pakistan that was dammed by a massive landslide on 4 January 2010, we attempt to analyze the characteristics of water inflow to the lake employing remote sensing data, two hydrological models, and sparsely observed data. One of the models (Model I) is a monthly degree-day model, while another (Model II) is the variable infiltration capacity (VIC) model. The mixture of glacier runoff output from Model I and runoff over unglacierized areas calculated by Model II has a similar seasonal variation pattern as that estimated from data recorded at a downstream station. This suggests that glacier runoff is the main source (87%) of runoff inflow into the lake. A sensitivity analysis suggests that the water inflow to the lake is highly sensitive to an increase in air temperature. Runoff in May is predicted to sharply increase by 15% to more than two-fold if the air temperature increases by 1 to 7, but it is predicted to increase only from 9% to 34% if the precipitation increases by 10% to 40%. The results suggested that the water inflow into Lake Gojal will not sharply rise even if there is heavy rain, and it needs to be in caution if the air temperature sharply increases. Analysis on long-term air temperature record indicates that the water inflow into the lake in May 2010 was probably less than average owing to the relatively low air temperature. Consequently, the flood outburst did not occur before the completion of the spillway on 29 May 2010. © 2013 China University of Geosciences and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
Self-consistent models of triaxial galaxies in MOND gravity
The Bekenstein-Milgrom gravity theory with a modified Poisson equation is
tested here for the existence of triaxial equilibrium solutions. Using the
non-negative least square method, we show that self-consistent triaxial
galaxies exist for baryonic models with a mild density cusp . Self-consistency is achieved for a wide range of central
concentrations, , representing
low-to-high surface brightness galaxies. Our results demonstrate for the first
time that the orbit superposition technique is fruitful for constructing galaxy
models beyond Newtonian gravity, and triaxial cuspy galaxies might exist
without the help of Cold dark Matter.Comment: 19 pages, 1 table, 7 figures, Accepted for publication in Ap
Multi-view Regularized Gaussian Processes
Gaussian processes (GPs) have been proven to be powerful tools in various
areas of machine learning. However, there are very few applications of GPs in
the scenario of multi-view learning. In this paper, we present a new GP model
for multi-view learning. Unlike existing methods, it combines multiple views by
regularizing marginal likelihood with the consistency among the posterior
distributions of latent functions from different views. Moreover, we give a
general point selection scheme for multi-view learning and improve the proposed
model by this criterion. Experimental results on multiple real world data sets
have verified the effectiveness of the proposed model and witnessed the
performance improvement through employing this novel point selection scheme
Exact heat kernel on a hypersphere and its applications in kernel SVM
Many contemporary statistical learning methods assume a Euclidean feature
space. This paper presents a method for defining similarity based on
hyperspherical geometry and shows that it often improves the performance of
support vector machine compared to other competing similarity measures.
Specifically, the idea of using heat diffusion on a hypersphere to measure
similarity has been previously proposed, demonstrating promising results based
on a heuristic heat kernel obtained from the zeroth order parametrix expansion;
however, how well this heuristic kernel agrees with the exact hyperspherical
heat kernel remains unknown. This paper presents a higher order parametrix
expansion of the heat kernel on a unit hypersphere and discusses several
problems associated with this expansion method. We then compare the heuristic
kernel with an exact form of the heat kernel expressed in terms of a uniformly
and absolutely convergent series in high-dimensional angular momentum
eigenmodes. Being a natural measure of similarity between sample points
dwelling on a hypersphere, the exact kernel often shows superior performance in
kernel SVM classifications applied to text mining, tumor somatic mutation
imputation, and stock market analysis
On Graph Stream Clustering with Side Information
Graph clustering becomes an important problem due to emerging applications
involving the web, social networks and bio-informatics. Recently, many such
applications generate data in the form of streams. Clustering massive, dynamic
graph streams is significantly challenging because of the complex structures of
graphs and computational difficulties of continuous data. Meanwhile, a large
volume of side information is associated with graphs, which can be of various
types. The examples include the properties of users in social network
activities, the meta attributes associated with web click graph streams and the
location information in mobile communication networks. Such attributes contain
extremely useful information and has the potential to improve the clustering
process, but are neglected by most recent graph stream mining techniques. In
this paper, we define a unified distance measure on both link structures and
side attributes for clustering. In addition, we propose a novel optimization
framework DMO, which can dynamically optimize the distance metric and make it
adapt to the newly received stream data. We further introduce a carefully
designed statistics SGS(C) which consume constant storage spaces with the
progression of streams. We demonstrate that the statistics maintained are
sufficient for the clustering process as well as the distance optimization and
can be scalable to massive graphs with side attributes. We will present
experiment results to show the advantages of the approach in graph stream
clustering with both links and side information over the baselines.Comment: Full version of SIAM SDM 2013 pape
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