Facets and Typed Relations as Tools for Reasoning Processes in Information Retrieval

Faceted arrangement of entities and typed relations for representing different associations between the entities are established tools in knowledge representation. In this paper, a proposal is being discussed combining both tools to draw inferences along relational paths. This approach may yield new benefit for information retrieval processes, especially when modeled for heterogeneous environments in the Semantic Web. Faceted arrangement can be used as a se-lection tool for the semantic knowledge modeled within the knowledge repre-sentation. Typed relations between the entities of different facets can be used as restrictions for selecting them across the facets

On-disc observations of flux rope formation prior to its eruption

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are one of the primary manifestations of solar activity and can drive severe space weather effects. Therefore, it is vital to work towards being able to predict their occurrence. However, many aspects of CME formation and eruption remain unclear, including whether magnetic flux ropes are present before the onset of eruption and the key mechanisms that cause CMEs to occur. In this work, the pre-eruptive coronal configuration of an active region that produced an interplanetary CME with a clear magnetic flux rope structure at 1 AU is studied. A forward-S sigmoid appears in extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) data two hours before the onset of the eruption (SOL2012-06-14), which is interpreted as a signature of a right-handed flux rope that formed prior to the eruption. Flare ribbons and EUV dimmings are used to infer the locations of the flux rope footpoints. These locations, together with observations of the global magnetic flux distribution, indicate that an interaction between newly emerged magnetic flux and pre-existing sunspot field in the days prior to the eruption may have enabled the coronal flux rope to form via tether-cutting-like reconnection. Composition analysis suggests that the flux rope had a coronal plasma composition, supporting our interpretation that the flux rope formed via magnetic reconnection in the corona. Once formed, the flux rope remained stable for two hours before erupting as a CME

Assessment of the physical disturbance of the northern European Continental shelf seabed by waves and currents

Natural seabed disturbance was quantified by estimating the number of days in a year that movement of the seabed occurred due to waves and currents. Disturbance over gravel substrates was based on the concept of a critical threshold for bed movement. For mud substrates disturbance was assessed on the basis of bed failure under extreme hydrodynamic stress. For sand beds the disturbance frequency was calculated by reference to the predicted occurrence of small scale bedforms using established relationships for estimating ripple and megaripple height. The method was applied to the northern European Continental Shelf (48°N to 58.5°N and 10°W to 10°E) using modelled annual wave and current forcing with a temporal resolution of one hour and spatial resolution of approximately 11 km. Highest levels of disturbance occurred in areas of high tidal stress where dune/megaripple type bedforms were predicted and in shallow regions exposed to waves with large fetch. However, the detailed distribution of disturbance showed a complex relationship between water depth, tidal stress, wave fetch and grain size. An assessment of the uncertainty in the results was made by use of a simple Monte Carlo approach. In most locations this indicated a large uncertainty in disturbance frequency values suggesting that present predictive relationships need improvement if assessments of natural disturbance are to be made with confidence. Nevertheless the results give a broad understanding of the location and intensity of natural physical bed disturbance and the ability to compare the relative intensity between different regions. This has applications to management of the seabed where human impacts have to be assessed in the context of the underlying natural disturbance. Recommendations are given for further research that might help decrease the uncertainty in natural disturbance prediction

Dependence of direct detection signals on the WIMP velocity distribution

The signals expected in WIMP direct detection experiments depend on the ultra-local dark matter distribution. Observations probe the local density, circular speed and escape speed, while simulations find velocity distributions that deviate significantly from the standard Maxwellian distribution. We calculate the energy, time and direction dependence of the event rate for a range of velocity distributions motivated by recent observations and simulations, and also investigate the uncertainty in the determination of WIMP parameters. The dominant uncertainties are the systematic error in the local circular speed and whether or not the MW has a high density dark disc. In both cases there are substantial changes in the mean differential event rate and the annual modulation signal, and hence exclusion limits and determinations of the WIMP mass. The uncertainty in the shape of the halo velocity distribution is less important, however it leads to a 5% systematic error in the WIMP mass. The detailed direction dependence of the event rate is sensitive to the velocity distribution. However the numbers of events required to detect anisotropy and confirm the median recoil direction do not change substantially.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures, v2 version to appear in JCAP, minor change

Superheavy Dark Matter with Discrete Gauge Symmetries

We show that there are discrete gauge symmetries protect naturally heavy X particles from decaying into the ordinary light particles in the supersymmetric standard model. This makes the proposal very attractive that the superheavy X particles constitute a part of the dark matter in the present universe. It is more interesting that there are a class of discrete gauge symmetries which naturally accommodate a long-lived unstable X particle. We find that in some discrete Z_{10} models, for example, a superheavy X particle has lifetime \tau_X \simeq 10^{11}-10^{26} years for its mass M_X \simeq 10^{13}-10^{14} GeV. This long lifetime is guaranteed by the absence of lower dimensional operators (of light particles) couple to the X. We briefly discuss a possible explanation for the recently observed ultra-high-energy cosmic ray events by the decay of this unstable X particle.Comment: 9 pages, Late

Entropy of semiclassical measures for nonpositively curved surfaces

We study the asymptotic properties of eigenfunctions of the Laplacian in the case of a compact Riemannian surface of nonpositive sectional curvature. We show that the Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy of a semiclassical measure for the geodesic flow is bounded from below by half of the Ruelle upper bound. We follow the same main strategy as in the Anosov case (arXiv:0809.0230). We focus on the main differences and refer the reader to (arXiv:0809.0230) for the details of analogous lemmas.Comment: 20 pages. This note provides a detailed proof of a result announced in appendix A of a previous work (arXiv:0809.0230, version 2

On Signatures of Twisted Magnetic Flux Tube Emergence

Recent studies of NOAA active region 10953, by Okamoto {\it et al.} ({\it Astrophys. J. Lett.} {\bf 673}, 215, 2008; {\it Astrophys. J.} {\bf 697}, 913, 2009), have interpreted photospheric observations of changing widths of the polarities and reversal of the horizontal magnetic field component as signatures of the emergence of a twisted flux tube within the active region and along its internal polarity inversion line (PIL). A filament is observed along the PIL and the active region is assumed to have an arcade structure. To investigate this scenario, MacTaggart and Hood ({\it Astrophys. J. Lett.} {\bf 716}, 219, 2010) constructed a dynamic flux emergence model of a twisted cylinder emerging into an overlying arcade. The photospheric signatures observed by Okamoto {\it et al.} (2008, 2009) are present in the model although their underlying physical mechanisms differ. The model also produces two additional signatures that can be verified by the observations. The first is an increase in the unsigned magnetic flux in the photosphere at either side of the PIL. The second is the behaviour of characteristic photospheric flow profiles associated with twisted flux tube emergence. We look for these two signatures in AR 10953 and find negative results for the emergence of a twisted flux tube along the PIL. Instead, we interpret the photospheric behaviour along the PIL to be indicative of photospheric magnetic cancellation driven by flows from the dominant sunspot. Although we argue against flux emergence within this particular region, the work demonstrates the important relationship between theory and observations for the successful discovery and interpretation of signatures of flux emergence.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Solar Physic

Barred Galaxies in the Coma Cluster

We use ACS data from the HST Treasury survey of the Coma cluster (z~0.02) to study the properties of barred galaxies in the Coma core, the densest environment in the nearby Universe. This study provides a complementary data point for studies of barred galaxies as a function of redshift and environment. From ~470 cluster members brighter than M_I = -11 mag, we select a sample of 46 disk galaxies (S0--Im) based on visual classification. The sample is dominated by S0s for which we find an optical bar fraction of 47+/-11% through ellipse fitting and visual inspection. Among the bars in the core of the Coma cluster, we do not find any very large (a_bar > 2 kpc) bars. Comparison to other studies reveals that while the optical bar fraction for S0s shows only a modest variation across low-to-intermediate density environments (field to intermediate-density clusters), it can be higher by up to a factor of ~2 in the very high-density environment of the rich Coma cluster core.Comment: Proceedings of the Bash symposium, to appear in the Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series, eds. L. Stanford, L. Hao, Y. Mao, J. Gree

A new wrinkle on the enhancon

We generalize the basic enhancon solution of Johnson, Peet and Polchinski by constructing solutions without spherical symmetry. A careful consideration of boundary conditions at the enhancon surface indicates that the interior of the supergravity solution is still flat space in the general case. We provide some explicit analytic solutions where the enhancon locus is a prolate or oblate sphere.Comment: 19 pages, no figure