Neutrino Propagation Through Matter

We discuss a simple approach to solve the transport equation for high-energy neutrinos in media of any thickness. We present illustrative results obtained with some specific models for the initial spectra of muon neutrinos and antineutrinos propagating through a normal cold medium

Synthetic perspective optical flow: Influence on pilot control tasks

One approach used to better understand the impact of visual flow on control tasks has been to use synthetic perspective flow patterns. Such patterns are the result of apparent motion across a grid or random dot display. Unfortunately, the optical flow so generated is based on a subset of the flow information that exists in the real world. The danger is that the resulting optical motions may not generate the visual flow patterns useful for actual flight control. Researchers conducted a series of studies directed at understanding the characteristics of synthetic perspective flow that support various pilot tasks. In the first of these, they examined the control of altitude over various perspective grid textures (Johnson et al., 1987). Another set of studies was directed at studying the head tracking of targets moving in a 3-D coordinate system. These studies, parametric in nature, utilized both impoverished and complex virtual worlds represented by simple perspective grids at one extreme, and computer-generated terrain at the other. These studies are part of an applied visual research program directed at understanding the design principles required for the development of instruments displaying spatial orientation information. The experiments also highlight the need for modeling the impact of spatial displays on pilot control tasks

Pre-storm NmF2 enhancements at middle latitudes: delusion or reality?

A critical analysis of recent publications devoted to the NmF2 pre-storm enhancements is performed. There are no convincing arguments that the observed cases of NmF2 enhancements at middle and sub-auroral latitudes bear a relation to the following magnetic storms. In all cases considered the NmF2 pre-storm enhancements were due to previous geomagnetic storms, moderate auroral activity or they presented the class of positive quiet time events (Q-disturbances). Therefore, it is possible to conclude that there is no such an effect as the pre-storm NmF2 enhancement as a phenomenon inalienably related to the following magnetic storm. The observed nighttime NmF2 enhancements at subauroral latitudes may result from plasma transfer from the plasma ring area by meridional thermospheric wind. Enhanced plasmaspheric fluxes into the nighttime F2-region resulted from westward substorm-associated electric fields is another possible source of nighttime NmF2 enhancements. Daytime positive Q-disturbances occurring under very low geomagnetic activity level may be related to the dayside cusp activity

Thermospheric Parameters during Ionospheric G-Conditions

For the first time thermospheric parameters (neutral composition, exospheric temperature and vertical plasma drift related to thermospheric winds) have been inferred for ionospheric G-conditions observed with Millstone Hill ISR on 11–13 September 2005; 13 June 2005, and 15 July 2012. The earlier developed method to extract a consistent set of thermospheric parameters from ionospheric observations has been revised to solve the problem in question. In particular CHAMP/STAR and GOCE neutral gas density observations were included into the retrieval process. It was found that G-condition days were distinguished by enhanced exospheric temperature and decreased by ~2 times of the column atomic oxygen abundance in a comparison to quiet reference days, the molecular nitrogen column abundance being practically unchanged. The inferred upward plasma drift corresponds to strong ~90 m/s equatorward thermospheric wind presumably related to strong auroral heating on G-condition days

Linear Theory of Electron-Plasma Waves at Arbitrary Collisionality

The dynamics of electron-plasma waves are described at arbitrary collisionality by considering the full Coulomb collision operator. The description is based on a Hermite-Laguerre decomposition of the velocity dependence of the electron distribution function. The damping rate, frequency, and eigenmode spectrum of electron-plasma waves are found as functions of the collision frequency and wavelength. A comparison is made between the collisionless Landau damping limit, the Lenard-Bernstein and Dougherty collision operators, and the electron-ion collision operator, finding large deviations in the damping rates and eigenmode spectra. A purely damped entropy mode, characteristic of a plasma where pitch-angle scattering effects are dominant with respect to collisionless effects, is shown to emerge numerically, and its dispersion relation is analytically derived. It is shown that such a mode is absent when simplified collision operators are used, and that like-particle collisions strongly influence the damping rate of the entropy mode.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication on Journal of Plasma Physic

Ionospheric precursors for crustal earthquakes in Italy

Crustal earthquakes with magnitude 6.0&gt;M&ge;5.5 observed in Italy for the period 1979–2009 including the last one at L'Aquila on 6 April 2009 were considered to check if the earlier obtained relationships for ionospheric precursors for strong Japanese earthquakes are valid for the Italian moderate earthquakes. The ionospheric precursors are based on the observed variations of the sporadic E-layer parameters (<I>h</I>'Es, <I>fb</I>Es) and <I>fo</I>F2 at the ionospheric station Rome. Empirical dependencies for the seismo-ionospheric disturbances relating the earthquake magnitude and the epicenter distance are obtained and they have been shown to be similar to those obtained earlier for Japanese earthquakes. The dependences indicate the process of spreading the disturbance from the epicenter towards periphery during the earthquake preparation process. Large lead times for the precursor occurrence (up to 34 days for M=5.8–5.9) tells about a prolong preparation period. A possibility of using the obtained relationships for the earthquakes prediction is discussed

Thermospheric parameters' long-term variations over the period including the 24/25 solar cycle minimum. Whether the CO2 increase effects are seen?

Abstract The CO2 concentration has been increasing for more than five decades reaching ~29 % at present with respect to the pre-industrial era. The largest CO2 cooling effects in the thermosphere are predicted for solar minimum conditions. A comparison of solar minima in 1954/1964 to the recent one in 2019 was used to check at the quantitative level the theoretical predictions and the validity of the CO2 cooling hypothesis. June monthly median noontime ionospheric observations at Moscow, Rome, and Slough/Chilton were used to infer neutral gas density ρ, exospheric temperature Tex, height of the F2-layer maximum hmF2, and total solar EUV flux for the (1954–2020) period. Solar and geomagnetic activity was shown to explain ~99 % of the whole variability in the retrieved neutral gas density and Tex during the (1958–2020) period resulting in statistically insignificant residual linear trends. A comparison of 1954/1964 to 2019 solar minima does not confirm the theoretically predicted decrease of ~21 % in ρ, ~15 K in Tex, and ~7 km in hmF2 related to a 29 % increase of the CO2 abundance. The main conclusion: despite continuous CO2 increase in the Earth's atmosphere long-term variations of thermospheric parameters are controlled by solar and geomagnetic activity

Application of a new vector mode solver to optical fiber-based plasmonic sensors

Our analytical method uses a linear combination of the Hankel functions H1 and H2 to represent the field in the gold region of a fiber-based plasmonic sensor. This method is applied for different structures made from three, four and five layers. When the analyte is distilled water, the difference between the resonant wavelengths calculated with the finite element method and the analytical method is very small (0.00 nm for three layers, 0.19 nm for four layers and 0.07 nm for five layers with two gold layers). The important characteristics of the Bessel and Hankel functions at the loss matching point are analyzed

High-power multi-emitter modules with fiber Bragg grating stabilization

The paper reports on the wavelength stabilization of high-power laser diode multi-emitter modules using as the external reflectors fiber Bragg gratings that are directly inscribed into the large mode area module delivery fiber using a femtosecond laser. Experiments have been carried out in a 200 μm fiber at 976 nm, but the approach can be extended at other fiber diameters and wavelengths. The results have demonstrated an effective stabilization over a broad driving current range, with power penalties in line or slightly lower than those of more traditional architectures that make use of discrete components, such as volume Bragg gratings, but with the advantage of not requiring the alignment of additional elements

A Comparison of Different Topic Modeling Methods through a Real Case Study of Italian Customer Care

The paper deals with the analysis of conversation transcriptions between customers and agents in a call center of a customer care service. The objective is to support the analysis of text transcription of human-to-human conversations, to obtain reports on customer problems and complaints, and on the way an agent has solved them. The aim is to provide customer care service with a high level of efficiency and user satisfaction. To this aim, topic modeling is considered since it facilitates insightful analysis from large documents and datasets, such as a summarization of the main topics and topic characteristics. This paper presents a performance comparison of four topic modeling algorithms: (i) Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA); (ii) Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF); (iii) Neural-ProdLDA (Neural LDA) and Contextualized Topic Models (CTM). The comparison study is based on a database containing real conversation transcriptions in Italian Natural Language. Experimental results and different topic evaluation metrics are analyzed in this paper to determine the most suitable model for the case study. The gained knowledge can be exploited by practitioners to identify the optimal strategy and to perform and evaluate topic modeling on Italian natural language transcriptions of human-to-human conversations. This work can be an asset for grounding applications of topic modeling and can be inspiring for similar case studies in the domain of customer care quality