Where Are the r-modes? Chandra Observations of Millisecond Pulsars

We present the results of {\it Chandra} observations of two non-accreting millisecond pulsars, PSRs J1640$+$2224 (J1640) and J1709$+$2313 (J1709), with low inferred magnetic fields and spin-down rates in order to constrain their surface temperatures, obtain limits on the amplitude of unstable $r$-modes in them, and make comparisons with similar limits obtained for a sample of accreting low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) neutron stars. We detect both pulsars in the X-ray band for the first time. They are faint, with inferred soft X-ray fluxes ($0.3-3$ keV) of $\approx$ $6\times10^{-15}$ and $3\times 10^{-15}$ erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$ for J1640 and J1709, respectively. Spectral analysis assuming hydrogen atmosphere emission gives global effective temperature upper limits ($90\%$ confidence) of $3.3 - 4.3 \times 10^5$ K for J1640 and $3.6 - 4.7 \times 10^5$ K for J1709, where the low end of the range corresponds to canonical neutron stars ($M=1.4 M_{\odot}$), and the upper end corresponds to higher-mass stars ($M=2.21 M_{\odot}$). Under the assumption that $r$-mode heating provides the thermal support, we obtain dimensionless $r$-mode amplitude upper limits of $3.2 - 4.8 \times 10^{-8}$ and $1.8 - 2.8 \times 10^{-7}$ for J1640 and J1709, respectively, where again the low end of the range corresponds to lower-mass, canonical neutron stars ($M=1.4 M_{\odot}$). These limits are about an order of magnitude lower than those we derived previously for a sample of LMXBs, except for the accreting millisecond X-ray pulsar (AMXP) SAX J1808.4$-$3658, which has a comparable amplitude limit to J1640 and J1709.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, published in Ap

Examining the opportunities of importing LED Lighting from China to New Zealand

The aim of my research was to undertake a feasibility study on how to diversify a China LED business in New Zealand. This research focuses on the feasibility study of associating with the LED lighting market. The primary analysis consisted of interviewing the owner of the particular business. Because it was a feasibility study it was not necessary to interview customers; I used a qualitative method to gain information. The overall results outline that the company has a professional team in their group, but they do not have a good foreign platform that can sell their products. The owner has sufficient funding himself to open up a branch in New Zealand., He will use his money to invest in prospective properties with a high return. The discussion was about the artificial lighting bulb which is taking up roughly 20% of the world’s energy consumption. However, more energy efficient LED lights can be an alternative to replace that 70 % of other lights. The conclusion was that most lighting companies have started manufacturing LED lights, and certain Chinese manufacturers are entering the market with cheaper LED products. LED does contain some poisonous substances such as gallium arsenide. The quantity of this substance is very small and thus LED can be considered as a greener alternative to fluorescent lamps. The recommendations could be people should pay more attention to LED bulbs in that they are energy saving and environmentally sound, which it is a good way to protect the environment

X-ray Burst Oscillations: From Flame Spreading to the Cooling Wake

Type I X-ray bursts are thermonuclear flashes observed from the surfaces of accreting neutron stars (NSs) in Low Mass X-ray Binaries. Oscillations have been observed during the rise and/or decay of some of these X-ray bursts. Those seen during the rise can be well explained by a spreading hot spot model, but large amplitude oscillations in the decay phase remain mysterious because of the absence of a clear-cut source of asymmetry. To date there have not been any quantitative studies that consistently track the oscillation amplitude both during the rise and decay (cooling tail) of bursts. Here we compute the light curves and amplitudes of oscillations in X-ray burst models that realistically account for both flame spreading and subsequent cooling. We present results for several such "cooling wake" models, a "canonical" cooling model where each patch on the NS surface heats and cools identically, or with a latitude-dependent cooling timescale set by the local effective gravity, and an "asymmetric" model where parts of the star cool at significantly different rates. We show that while the canonical cooling models can generate oscillations in the tails of bursts, they cannot easily produce the highest observed modulation amplitudes. Alternatively, a simple phenomenological model with asymmetric cooling can achieve higher amplitudes consistent with the observations.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, Accepted for publication in ApJ, Additional calculations and discussion compared to v

A Taxonomy for Management and Optimization of Multiple Resources in Edge Computing

Edge computing is promoted to meet increasing performance needs of data-driven services using computational and storage resources close to the end devices, at the edge of the current network. To achieve higher performance in this new paradigm one has to consider how to combine the efficiency of resource usage at all three layers of architecture: end devices, edge devices, and the cloud. While cloud capacity is elastically extendable, end devices and edge devices are to various degrees resource-constrained. Hence, an efficient resource management is essential to make edge computing a reality. In this work, we first present terminology and architectures to characterize current works within the field of edge computing. Then, we review a wide range of recent articles and categorize relevant aspects in terms of 4 perspectives: resource type, resource management objective, resource location, and resource use. This taxonomy and the ensuing analysis is used to identify some gaps in the existing research. Among several research gaps, we found that research is less prevalent on data, storage, and energy as a resource, and less extensive towards the estimation, discovery and sharing objectives. As for resource types, the most well-studied resources are computation and communication resources. Our analysis shows that resource management at the edge requires a deeper understanding of how methods applied at different levels and geared towards different resource types interact. Specifically, the impact of mobility and collaboration schemes requiring incentives are expected to be different in edge architectures compared to the classic cloud solutions. Finally, we find that fewer works are dedicated to the study of non-functional properties or to quantifying the footprint of resource management techniques, including edge-specific means of migrating data and services.Comment: Accepted in the Special Issue Mobile Edge Computing of the Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing journa

Formal Verification of Input-Output Mappings of Tree Ensembles

Recent advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence are now being considered in safety-critical autonomous systems where software defects may cause severe harm to humans and the environment. Design organizations in these domains are currently unable to provide convincing arguments that their systems are safe to operate when machine learning algorithms are used to implement their software. In this paper, we present an efficient method to extract equivalence classes from decision trees and tree ensembles, and to formally verify that their input-output mappings comply with requirements. The idea is that, given that safety requirements can be traced to desirable properties on system input-output patterns, we can use positive verification outcomes in safety arguments. This paper presents the implementation of the method in the tool VoTE (Verifier of Tree Ensembles), and evaluates its scalability on two case studies presented in current literature. We demonstrate that our method is practical for tree ensembles trained on low-dimensional data with up to 25 decision trees and tree depths of up to 20. Our work also studies the limitations of the method with high-dimensional data and preliminarily investigates the trade-off between large number of trees and time taken for verification

Omnidirectionally Bending to the Normal in epsilon-near-Zero Metamaterials

Contrary to conventional wisdom that light bends away from the normal at the interface when it passes from high to low refractive index media, here we demonstrate an exotic phenomenon that the direction of electromagnetic power bends towards the normal when light is incident from arbitrary high refractive index medium to \epsilon-near-zero metamaterial. Moreover, the direction of the transmitted beam is close to the normal for all angles of incidence. In other words, the electromagnetic power coming from different directions in air or arbitrary high refractive index medium can be redirected to the direction almost parallel to the normal upon entering the \epsilon-near-zero metamaterial. This phenomenon is counterintuitive to the behavior described by conventional Snell's law and resulted from the interplay between \epsilon-near-zero and material loss. This property has potential applications in communications to increase acceptance angle and energy delivery without using optical lenses and mechanical gimbals