179 research outputs found
Hierarchical Gaussian process mixtures for regression
As a result of their good performance in practice and their desirable analytical properties, Gaussian process regression models are becoming increasingly of interest in statistics, engineering and other fields. However, two major problems arise when the model is applied to a large data-set with repeated measurements. One stems from the systematic heterogeneity among the different replications, and the other is the requirement to invert a covariance matrix which is involved in the implementation of the model. The dimension of this matrix equals the sample size of the training data-set. In this paper, a Gaussian process mixture model for regression is proposed for dealing with the above two problems, and a hybrid Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm is used for its implementation. Application to a real data-set is reported
Research informed sustainable development through art and design pedagogic practices
This paper explores a pedagogic case study, which embeds academic research activity into a masters level unit of study. Students were invited to work alongside the LiFE âLiving in Future Ecologiesâ research group at Manchester School of Art to collaboratively investigate themes for sustainable development within a city context. Pomona Island, a brownfield site on the boarders of Manchester, Salford and Trafford presented a context for complex issues of local government, and questions of international relevance on resilience and responsible urban planning. Through learning about the landscape and sensitive ecology of the island, students and researchers explored notions of context, climate, visions for future living, the opportunities and the responsibility of art and design practices in steering social reasoning within a neoliberal system. This paper presents a carefully considered enquiry-based framework, analysing academic questioning that has enabled the transformation of the ephemeral and immaterial into a methodology to address misguided political agendas. The paper articulates the different methods used to embed research practice in the learning environment. This type of project also fully illustrates innovative learning and teaching methods as ways in which art and design practices can uniquely engage with and stimulate thinking to influence and nurture change. Through presenting responses from a psychogeographical walk for Manchester European City of Science in July 2016, a conversational, transformative tool for learning was developed. Reflections on the project further evaluate the multi-disciplinary interpretations, already collated in a collaborative publication with the Pomona community and publisher Gaia Project
Scattering statistics of rock outcrops: Model-data comparisons and Bayesian inference using mixture distributions
The probability density function of the acoustic field amplitude scattered by
the seafloor was measured in a rocky environment off the coast of Norway using
a synthetic aperture sonar system, and is reported here in terms of the
probability of false alarm. Interpretation of the measurements focused on
finding appropriate class of statistical models (single versus two-component
mixture models), and on appropriate models within these two classes. It was
found that two-component mixture models performed better than single models.
The two mixture models that performed the best (and had a basis in the physics
of scattering) were a mixture between two K distributions, and a mixture
between a Rayleigh and generalized Pareto distribution. Bayes' theorem was used
to estimate the probability density function of the mixture model parameters.
It was found that the K-K mixture exhibits significant correlation between its
parameters. The mixture between the Rayleigh and generalized Pareto
distributions also had significant parameter correlation, but also contained
multiple modes. We conclude that the mixture between two K distributions is the
most applicable to this dataset.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, Accepted to the Journal of the Acoustical
Society of Americ
A Multi-telescope Campaign on FRB 121102: Implications for the FRB Population
We present results of the coordinated observing campaign that made the first
subarcsecond localization of a Fast Radio Burst, FRB 121102. During this
campaign, we made the first simultaneous detection of an FRB burst by multiple
telescopes: the VLA at 3 GHz and the Arecibo Observatory at 1.4 GHz. Of the
nine bursts detected by the Very Large Array at 3 GHz, four had simultaneous
observing coverage at other observatories. We use multi-observatory constraints
and modeling of bursts seen only at 3 GHz to confirm earlier results showing
that burst spectra are not well modeled by a power law. We find that burst
spectra are characterized by a ~500 MHz envelope and apparent radio energy as
high as erg. We measure significant changes in the apparent
dispersion between bursts that can be attributed to frequency-dependent
profiles or some other intrinsic burst structure that adds a systematic error
to the estimate of DM by up to 1%. We use FRB 121102 as a prototype of the FRB
class to estimate a volumetric birth rate of FRB sources Mpc yr, where is the number of bursts per
source over its lifetime. This rate is broadly consistent with models of FRBs
from young pulsars or magnetars born in superluminous supernovae or long
gamma-ray bursts, if the typical FRB repeats on the order of thousands of times
during its lifetime.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures. Submitted to AAS Journal
Radio continuum observations of Class I protostellar disks in Taurus: constraining the greybody tail at centimetre wavelengths
We present deep 1.8 cm (16 GHz) radio continuum imaging of seven young
stellar objects in the Taurus molecular cloud. These objects have previously
been extensively studied in the sub-mm to NIR range and their SEDs modelled to
provide reliable physical and geometrical parametres.We use this new data to
constrain the properties of the long-wavelength tail of the greybody spectrum,
which is expected to be dominated by emission from large dust grains in the
protostellar disk. We find spectra consistent with the opacity indices expected
for such a population, with an average opacity index of beta = 0.26+/-0.22
indicating grain growth within the disks. We use spectra fitted jointly to
radio and sub-mm data to separate the contributions from thermal dust and radio
emission at 1.8 cm and derive disk masses directly from the cm-wave dust
contribution. We find that disk masses derived from these flux densities under
assumptions consistent with the literature are systematically higher than those
calculated from sub-mm data, and meet the criteria for giant planet formation
in a number of cases.Comment: submitted MNRA
The QUIJOTE experiment: project overview and first results
QUIJOTE (Q-U-I JOint TEnerife) is a new polarimeter aimed to characterize the
polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background and other Galactic and
extragalactic signals at medium and large angular scales in the frequency range
10-40 GHz. The multi-frequency (10-20~GHz) instrument, mounted on the first
QUIJOTE telescope, saw first light on November 2012 from the Teide Observatory
(2400~m a.s.l). During 2014 the second telescope has been installed at this
observatory. A second instrument at 30~GHz will be ready for commissioning at
this telescope during summer 2015, and a third additional instrument at 40~GHz
is now being developed. These instruments will have nominal sensitivities to
detect the B-mode polarization due to the primordial gravitational-wave
component if the tensor-to-scalar ratio is larger than r=0.05.Comment: To appear in "Highlights of Spanish Astrophysics VIII", Proceedings
of the XI Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society, Teruel,
Spain (2014
"Author! Author!" : Shakespeare and biography
Original article can be found at: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t714579626~db=all Copyright Informa / Taylor & Francis Group. DOI: 10.1080/17450910902764454Since 1996, not a year has passed without the publication of at least one Shakespeare biography. Yet for many years the place of the author in the practice of understanding literary works has been problematized, and even on occasions eliminated. Criticism reads the âworksâ, and may or may not refer to an author whose âlifeâ contributed to their meaning. Biography seeks the author in the works, the personality that precedes the works and gives them their characteristic shape and meaning. But the form of literary biography addresses the unusual kind of âlifeâ that puts itself into âworksâ, and this is particularly challenging where the âworksâ predominate massively over the salient facts of the âlifeâ. This essay surveys the current terrain of Shakespeare biography, and considers the key questions raised by the medium: can we know anything of Shakespeare's âpersonalityâ from the facts of his life and the survival of his works? What is the status of the kind of speculation that inevitably plays a part in biographical reconstruction? Are biographers in the end telling us as much about themselves as they tell us about Shakespeare?Peer reviewe
A blind detection of a large, complex, Sunyaev--Zel'dovich structure
We present an interesting Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) detection in the first of
the Arcminute Microkelvin Imager (AMI) 'blind', degree-square fields to have
been observed down to our target sensitivity of 100{\mu}Jy/beam. In follow-up
deep pointed observations the SZ effect is detected with a maximum peak
decrement greater than 8 \times the thermal noise. No corresponding emission is
visible in the ROSAT all-sky X-ray survey and no cluster is evident in the
Palomar all-sky optical survey. Compared with existing SZ images of distant
clusters, the extent is large (\approx 10') and complex; our analysis favours a
model containing two clusters rather than a single cluster. Our Bayesian
analysis is currently limited to modelling each cluster with an ellipsoidal or
spherical beta-model, which do not do justice to this decrement. Fitting an
ellipsoid to the deeper candidate we find the following. (a) Assuming that the
Evrard et al. (2002) approximation to Press & Schechter (1974) correctly gives
the number density of clusters as a function of mass and redshift, then, in the
search area, the formal Bayesian probability ratio of the AMI detection of this
cluster is 7.9 \times 10^4:1; alternatively assuming Jenkins et al. (2001) as
the true prior, the formal Bayesian probability ratio of detection is 2.1
\times 10^5:1. (b) The cluster mass is MT,200 = 5.5+1.2\times 10^14h-1M\odot.
(c) Abandoning a physical model with num- -1.3 70 ber density prior and instead
simply modelling the SZ decrement using a phenomenological {\beta}-model of
temperature decrement as a function of angular distance, we find a central SZ
temperature decrement of -295+36 {\mu}K - this allows for CMB primary
anisotropies, receiver -15 noise and radio sources. We are unsure if the
cluster system we observe is a merging system or two separate clusters.Comment: accepted MNRAS. 12 pages, 9 figure
- âŠ