938 research outputs found
Secondary Electron Yield Measurements of Fermilab's Main Injector Vacuum Vessel
We discuss the progress made on a new installation in Fermilab's Main
Injector that will help investigate the electron cloud phenomenon by making
direct measurements of the secondary electron yield (SEY) of samples irradiated
in the accelerator. In the Project X upgrade the Main Injector will have its
beam intensity increased by a factor of three compared to current operations.
This may result in the beam being subject to instabilities from the electron
cloud. Measured SEY values can be used to further constrain simulations and aid
our extrapolation to Project X intensities. The SEY test-stand, developed in
conjunction with Cornell and SLAC, is capable of measuring the SEY from samples
using an incident electron beam when the samples are biased at different
voltages. We present the design and manufacture of the test-stand and the
results of initial laboratory tests on samples prior to installation.Comment: 3 pp. 3rd International Particle Accelerator Conference (IPAC 2012)
20-25 May 2012, New Orleans, Louisian
Current and projected global distribution of Phytophthora cinnamomi, one of the world's worst plant pathogens
Globally, Phytophthora cinnamomi is listed as one of the 100 worst invasive alien species and active management is required to reduce impact and prevent spread in both horticulture and natural ecosystems. Conversely, there are regions thought to be suitable for the pathogen where no disease is observed. We developed a climex model for the global distribution of P. cinnamomi based on the pathogen's response to temperature and moisture and by incorporating extensive empirical evidence on the presence and absence of the pathogen. The climex model captured areas of climatic suitability where P. cinnamomi occurs that is congruent with all available records. The model was validated by the collection of soil samples from asymptomatic vegetation in areas projected to be suitable by the model for which there were few records. DNA was extracted, and the presence or absence of P. cinnamomi was determined by high-throughput sequencing (HTS). While not detected using traditional isolation methods, HTS detected P. cinnamomi at higher elevations in eastern Australia and central Tasmania as projected by the climex model. Further support for the climex model was obtained using the large data set from south-west Australia where the proportion of positive records in an area is related to the Ecoclimatic Index value for the same area. We provide for the first time a comprehensive global map of the current P. cinnamomi distribution, an improved climex model of the distribution, and a projection to 2080 of the distribution with predicted climate change. This information provides the basis for more detailed regional-scale modelling and supports risk assessment for governments to plan management of this important soil-borne plant pathogen
Finite Element Convergence for the Joule Heating Problem with Mixed Boundary Conditions
We prove strong convergence of conforming finite element approximations to
the stationary Joule heating problem with mixed boundary conditions on
Lipschitz domains in three spatial dimensions. We show optimal global
regularity estimates on creased domains and prove a priori and a posteriori
bounds for shape regular meshes.Comment: Keywords: Joule heating problem, thermistors, a posteriori error
analysis, a priori error analysis, finite element metho
The Five Factor Model of personality and evaluation of drug consumption risk
The problem of evaluating an individual's risk of drug consumption and misuse
is highly important. An online survey methodology was employed to collect data
including Big Five personality traits (NEO-FFI-R), impulsivity (BIS-11),
sensation seeking (ImpSS), and demographic information. The data set contained
information on the consumption of 18 central nervous system psychoactive drugs.
Correlation analysis demonstrated the existence of groups of drugs with
strongly correlated consumption patterns. Three correlation pleiades were
identified, named by the central drug in the pleiade: ecstasy, heroin, and
benzodiazepines pleiades. An exhaustive search was performed to select the most
effective subset of input features and data mining methods to classify users
and non-users for each drug and pleiad. A number of classification methods were
employed (decision tree, random forest, -nearest neighbors, linear
discriminant analysis, Gaussian mixture, probability density function
estimation, logistic regression and na{\"i}ve Bayes) and the most effective
classifier was selected for each drug. The quality of classification was
surprisingly high with sensitivity and specificity (evaluated by leave-one-out
cross-validation) being greater than 70\% for almost all classification tasks.
The best results with sensitivity and specificity being greater than 75\% were
achieved for cannabis, crack, ecstasy, legal highs, LSD, and volatile substance
abuse (VSA).Comment: Significantly extended report with 67 pages, 27 tables, 21 figure
Branch-and-lift algorithm for deterministic global optimization in nonlinear optimal control
This paper presents a branch-and-lift algorithm for solving optimal control problems with smooth nonlinear dynamics and potentially nonconvex objective and constraint functionals to guaranteed global optimality. This algorithm features a direct sequential method and builds upon a generic, spatial branch-and-bound algorithm. A new operation, called lifting, is introduced, which refines the control parameterization via a Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization process, while simultaneously eliminating control subregions that are either infeasible or that provably cannot contain any global optima. Conditions are given under which the image of the control parameterization error in the state space contracts exponentially as the parameterization order is increased, thereby making the lifting operation efficient. A computational technique based on ellipsoidal calculus is also developed that satisfies these conditions. The practical applicability of branch-and-lift is illustrated in a numerical example. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York
Reionization by active sources and its effects on the cosmic microwave background
We investigate the possible effects of reionization by active sources on the
cosmic microwave background. We concentrate on the sources themselves as the
origin of reionization, rather than early object formation, introducing an
extra period of heating motivated by the active character of the perturbations.
Using reasonable parameters, this leads to four possibilities depending on the
time and duration of the energy input: delayed last scattering, double last
scattering, shifted last scattering and total reionization. We show that these
possibilities are only very weakly constrained by the limits on spectral
distortions from the COBE FIRAS measurements. We illustrate the effects of
these reionization possibilities on the angular power spectrum of temperature
anisotropies and polarization for simple passive isocurvature models and simple
coherent sources, observing the difference between passive and active models.
Finally, we comment on the implications of this work for more realistic active
sources, such as causal white noise and topological defect models. We show for
these models that non-standard ionization histories can shift the peak in the
CMB power to larger angular scales.Comment: 21 pages LaTeX with 11 eps figures; replaced with final version
accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Partial-wave analysis of the eta pi+ pi- system produced in the reaction pi-p --> eta pi+ pi- n at 18 GeV/c
A partial-wave analysis of 9082 eta pi+ pi- n events produced in the reaction
pi- p --> eta pi+ pi- n at 18.3 GeV/c has been carried out using data from
experiment 852 at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The data are dominated by
J^{PC} = 0^{-+} partial waves consistent with observation of the eta(1295) and
the eta(1440). The mass and width of the eta(1295) were determined to be 1282
+- 5 MeV and 66 +- 13 Mev respectively while the eta(1440) was observed with a
mass of 1404 +- 6 MeV and width of 80 +- 21 MeV. Other partial waves of
importance include the 1++ and the 1+- waves. Results of the partial wave
analysis are combined with results of other experiments to estimate f1(1285)
branching fractions. These values are considerably different from current
values determined without the aid of amplitude analyses.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figure
A partial wave analysis of the system produced in charge exchange collisions
A partial wave analysis of the of the system produced in the
charge exchange reaction: at an incident momentum of
is presented as a function of invariant mass,
, and momentum transfer squared, , from the incident
to the outgoing system.Comment: 24 pages total,8 pages text, 14 figures, 1 table. Submitted to Phys
Rev
Machine Learning in Automated Text Categorization
The automated categorization (or classification) of texts into predefined
categories has witnessed a booming interest in the last ten years, due to the
increased availability of documents in digital form and the ensuing need to
organize them. In the research community the dominant approach to this problem
is based on machine learning techniques: a general inductive process
automatically builds a classifier by learning, from a set of preclassified
documents, the characteristics of the categories. The advantages of this
approach over the knowledge engineering approach (consisting in the manual
definition of a classifier by domain experts) are a very good effectiveness,
considerable savings in terms of expert manpower, and straightforward
portability to different domains. This survey discusses the main approaches to
text categorization that fall within the machine learning paradigm. We will
discuss in detail issues pertaining to three different problems, namely
document representation, classifier construction, and classifier evaluation.Comment: Accepted for publication on ACM Computing Survey
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