514 research outputs found
Variability in low Mars atmosphere's HO concentration stimulated by solar cycle activity
Mars' thin, CO-rich atmosphere poses a unique puzzle involving
composition, climate history, and habitability. This work explores the
intrincate relationship between Mars' atmospheric variations and dynamic solar
activity patterns. We focus on periodic oscillations in HO vapor and the
Pectinton solar flux index in the = 10.7 cm radio band, around the
characteristic 11-year solar cycle. Periodic Mars activity was studied using
data from Mars Express' SPICAM instrument spanning 2004-2018. The Lomb-Scargle
Periodogram method was applied to analyze the power spectra of both signals
around this period, calibrated using peaks associated with the seasonal Martian
cycle. This method was validated by analyzing power spectra of chemical species
abundances in Earth's atmosphere, obtained from the NRLMSISE 00 empirical model
provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Model
executions reproduced chemical abundance data for various atmospheric species
(N, O, N, H, Ar, and He) at two reference heights (upper mesosphere
and low ionosphere) over a 1961-2021 time span. Results suggest a connection
between variability in HO vapor concentration in Mars' atmosphere and
fluctuations in the Pectinton solar flux index. We propose the Lomb-Scargle
Periodogram method as a heuristic for studying oscillatory activity in
planetary atmospheres with non-uniformly sampled data. While our results
provide valuable insights, further analysis, cross-referencing with data from
different orbiters, is required to deepen our understanding of these findings
in the fields of planetary climatology and atmospheric physics.Comment: 25 pages, 24 figures. Submitted to MNRA
Differential hippocampal shapes in posterior cortical atrophy patients: A comparison with control and typical AD subjects.
Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) is a neurodegenerative syndrome characterized by predominant visual deficits and parieto-occipital atrophy, and is typically associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology. In AD, assessment of hippocampal atrophy is widely used in diagnosis, research, and clinical trials; its utility in PCA remains unclear. Given the posterior emphasis of PCA, we hypothesized that hippocampal shape measures may give additional group differentiation information compared with whole-hippocampal volume assessments. We investigated hippocampal volume and shape in subjects with PCA (n = 47), typical AD (n = 29), and controls (n = 48). Hippocampi were outlined on MRI scans and their 3D meshes were generated. We compared hippocampal volume and shape between disease groups. Mean adjusted hippocampal volumes were ∼8% smaller in PCA subjects (P < 0.001) and ∼22% smaller in tAD subject (P < 0.001) compared with controls. Significant inward deformations in the superior hippocampal tail were observed in PCA compared with controls even after adjustment for hippocampal volume. Inward deformations in large areas of the hippocampus were seen in tAD subjects compared with controls and PCA subjects, but only localized shape differences remained after adjusting for hippocampal volume. The shape differences observed, even allowing for volume differences, suggest that PCA and tAD are each associated with different patterns of hippocampal tissue loss that may contribute to the differential range and extent of episodic memory dysfunction in the two groups. Hum Brain Mapp, 2015. © 2015 The Authors Human Brain Mapping Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc
`Oumuamua as a messenger from the Local Association
7 pages, one table, two figures, accepted for publication by ApJL. © 2018. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.With a hyperbolic trajectory around the Sun, 'Oumuamua is the first confirmed interstellar object. However, its origin is poorly known. By simulating the orbits of 0.23 million local stars, we find 109 encounters with periastron less than 5 pc. 'Oumuamua's low peculiar velocity is suggestive of its origin from a young stellar association with similar velocity. In particular, we find that 'Oumuamua would have had slow encounters with at least five young stars belonging to the Local Association, thus suggesting these as plausible sites for formation and ejection. In addition to an extremely elongated shape, the available observational data for 'Oumuamua indicates a red color, suggestive of a potentially organic-rich and activity-free surface. These characteristics seem consistent with formation through energetic collisions between planets and debris objects in the middle part of a young stellar system. We estimate an abundance of at least 6.0 × 10 -3 au -3 for such interstellar objects with mean diameter larger than 100 m and find that it is likely that most of them will be ejected into the Galactic halo. Our Bayesian analysis of the available light curves indicates a rotation period of 6.96 +1.45 -0.39, which is consistent with the estimation by Meech et al. and shorter than those in other literature. The codes and results are available on GitHub (https://github.com/phillippro/Oumuamua).Peer reviewe
Pulsar acceleration by asymmetric emission of sterile neutrinos
A convincing explanation for the observed pulsar large peculiar velocities is
still missing. We argue that any viable particle physics solution would most
likely involve the resonant production of a non-interacting neutrino of
mass --50 keV. We propose a model where anisotropic magnetic
field configurations strongly bias the resonant spin flavour precession of tau
antineutrinos into . For internal magnetic fields B_{int} \gsim
10^{15} G a - transition magnetic moment of the order of
Bohr magnetons is required. The asymmetric emission of from
the core can produce sizeable natal kicks and account for recoil velocities of
several hundred kilometers per second.Comment: 14 pages, AASTEX, 2 figures (uses epsfig). Minor typos corrected.
Added acknowledgments to the funding institutes BID and Colciencia
Dynamically balanced online random forests for interactive scribble-based segmentation
Interactive scribble-and-learning-based segmentation is attractive for its good performance and reduced number of user interaction. Scribbles for foreground and background are often imbalanced. With the arrival of new scribbles,the imbalance ratio may change largely. Failing to deal with imbalanced training data and a changing imbalance ratio may lead to a decreased sensitivity and accuracy for segmentation. We propose a generic Dynamically Balanced Online Random Forest (DyBa ORF) to deal with these problems,with a combination of a dynamically balanced online Bagging method and a tree growing and shrinking strategy to update the random forests. We validated DyBa ORF on UCI machine learning data sets and applied it to two different clinical applications: 2D segmentation of the placenta from fetal MRI and adult lungs from radiographic images. Experiments show it outperforms traditional ORF in dealing with imbalanced data with a changing imbalance ratio,while maintaining a comparable accuracy and a higher efficiency compared with its offline counterpart. Our results demonstrate that DyBa ORF is more suitable than existing ORF for learning-based interactive image segmentation
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