Detection of lithium in nearby young late-M dwarfs

Late M-type dwarfs in the solar neighborhood include a mixture of very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs which is difficult to disentangle due to the lack of constraints on their age such as trigonometric parallax, lithium detection and space velocity. We search for young brown dwarf candidates among a sample of 28 nearby late-M dwarfs with spectral types between M5.0 and M9.0, and we also search for debris disks around three of them. Based on theoretical models, we used the color $I-J$, the $J$-band absolute magnitude and the detection of the Li I 6708 $\AA$ doublet line as a strong constraint to estimate masses and ages of our targets. For the search of debris disks, we observed three targets at submillimeter wavelength of 850 $\mu$m. We report here the first clear detections of lithium absorption in four targets and a marginal detection in one target. Our mass estimates indicate that two of them are young brown dwarfs, two are young brown dwarf candidates and one is a young very low-mass star. The closest young field brown dwarf in our sample at only $\sim$15 pc is an excellent benchmark for further studying physical properties of brown dwarfs in the range 100$-$150 Myr. We did not detect any debris disks around three late-M dwarfs, and we estimated upper limits to the dust mass of debris disks around them.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Assessment of seasonal winter temperature forecast errors in the regcm model over northern Vietnam

This study verified the seasonal six-month forecasts for winter temperatures for northern Vietnam in 1998–2018 using a regional climate model (RegCM4) with the boundary conditions of the climate forecast system Version 2 (CFSv2) from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). First, different physical schemes (land-surface process, cumulus, and radiation parameterizations) in RegCM4 were applied to generate 12 single forecasts. Second, the simple ensemble forecasts were generated through the combinations of those different physical formulations. Three subclimate regions (R1, R2, R3) of northern Vietnam were separately tested with surface observations and a reanalysis dataset (Japanese 55-year reanalysis (JRA55)). The highest sensitivity to the mean monthly temperature forecasts was shown by the land-surface parameterizations (the biosphere−atmosphere transfer scheme (BATS) and community land model version 4.5 (CLM)). The BATS forecast groups tended to provide forecasts with lower temperatures than the actual observations, while the CLM forecast groups tended to overestimate the temperatures. The forecast errors from single forecasts could be clearly reduced with ensemble mean forecasts, but ensemble spreads were less than those root-mean-square errors (RMSEs). This indicated that the ensemble forecast was underdispersed and that the direct forecast from RegCM4 needed more postprocessing

AGV Trajectory Control Based on Laser Sensor Navigation

Autonomous Guided Vehicle Systems (AGVs) are used to transport goods and products in manufacturing fields where navigation can be done in a structured environment. In order to track the given trajectory, a tracking control based on Lyapunov stability theory is introduced. The use of the nonlinear Lyapunov technique provides robustness for load disturbance and sensor noise. To apply Lyapunov\u27s theorem, the kinematic model of AGV is given. To recognize its position in indoor environment, in this paper, a laser sensor device NAV200 is used to detect the AGV position in real-time. For simulation and experiment, software and hardware are described. The AGV consists of 4 wheels with two passive wheels and two driving wheels. A controller is developed based on industrial computer. The effectiveness of the proposed controller is proved by simulation and experimental results.[AGV Trajectory Control, Laser Sensor Navigation

Flat Energy-Histogram Simulation of the Phase Transition in an Ising Fully Frustrated Lattice

We show in this paper the results on the phase transition of the so-called fully frustrated simple cubic lattice with the Ising spin model. We use here the Monte Carlo method with the flat energy-histogram Wang-Landau technique which is very powerful to detect weak first-order phase transition. We show that the phase transition is clearly of first order, providing a definite answer to a question raised 25 years ago.Comment: Submitted for publicatio

Resource Competition on Integral Polymatroids

We study competitive resource allocation problems in which players distribute their demands integrally on a set of resources subject to player-specific submodular capacity constraints. Each player has to pay for each unit of demand a cost that is a nondecreasing and convex function of the total allocation of that resource. This general model of resource allocation generalizes both singleton congestion games with integer-splittable demands and matroid congestion games with player-specific costs. As our main result, we show that in such general resource allocation problems a pure Nash equilibrium is guaranteed to exist by giving a pseudo-polynomial algorithm computing a pure Nash equilibrium.Comment: 17 page

Poultry trading behaviours in Vietnamese live bird markets as risk factors for avian influenza infection in chickens

Vietnamese poultry are host to co‐circulating subtypes of avian influenza viruses, including H5N1 and H9N2, which pose a great risk to poultry productivity and to human health. AIVs circulate throughout the poultry trade network in Vietnam, with live bird markets being an integral component to this network. Traders at LBMs exhibit a variety of trading practices, which may influence the transmission of AIVs. We identified trading practices that impacted on AIV prevalence in chickens marketed in northern Vietnamese LBMs. We generated sequencing data for 31 H9N2 and 2 H5N6 viruses. Viruses isolated in the same LBM or from chickens sourced from the same province were genetically closer than viruses isolated in different LBMs or from chickens sourced in different provinces. The position of a vendor in the trading network impacted on their odds of having AIV infected chickens. Being a retailer and purchasing chickens from middlemen was associated with increased odds of infection, whereas odds decreased if vendors purchased chickens directly from large farms. Odds of infection were also higher for vendors having a greater volume of ducks unsold per day. These results indicate how the spread of AIVs is influenced by the structure of the live poultry trading network