Cosmic Neutrino Last Scattering Surface

Neutrinos decoupled from the rest of the cosmic plasma when the Universe was less than one second old, far earlier than the photons which decoupled at t=380,000 years. Surprisingly, though, the last scattering surface of the neutrinos is much closer to us than that of the photons. Here we calculate the properties of the last scattering surfaces of the three species of neutrinos.Comment: Important reference to earlier work of Bisnovatyi-Kogan and Seidov added, and mis-spelling of Opher reference correcte

Landscape Agency and Evenki-Iakut Reindeer Husbandry Along the Zhuia River, Eastern Siberia

This article is dedicated to the memory of Vasilii Nikolaeich Maksimov who drowned with his son while crossing the Zhuia River in 2012. The field research and laboratory analysis for this article was sponsored mainly by a grant from the Research Council of Norway (NFR 179316) within the multinational research framework “BOREAS: Histories from the North” organized by the European Science Foundation EUROCORES programme. A portion of the laboratory work, and the time for writing an analysis was made possible by an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC AdG 295458). The research could not have been carried out without the in-kind support, equipment and expertise of the Irkutsk State Technological University and the logistical support of the mining enterprise ‘Svetlyi’ based in Bodaibo. We are grateful to Iurii Vasil’evich Zharkov of the goldmining company Vitim and his uncle Iurii Alekseevich Zharkov of Svetlyi Ltd for professionally and reliably arranging ground transport for us and our equipment to and from the banks of the Zhuia River. We are also grateful to Iurii Konstantinovich Polititsyn, a lifetime resident of Svetlyi, who gave advice on sites of previous Evenki occupation and whose family helped us to navigate the river and organise the fieldwork. For this article, DGA was the principal investigator of the two grants, participated in most of the fieldwork, and composed this English text consulting Russian-language drafts prepared by EMI and OPV. EMI organized the fieldwork, conducted the trench digging, and prepared preliminary versions of the maps. OPV participated in the fieldwork, collected botanical samples, and participated in the interpretation of the pollen diagrams. ML participated in the fieldwork and conducted the phosphate analysis. The arduous work of identifying and counting the pollen grains, fungal spores and charcoal fragments was done by NVK in her laboratory in Irkutsk. We are indebted to our colleagues Drs. Ed Schofield and Dmitryi Mauquoy of the School of Geosciences at the University of Aberdeen for drafting the pollen diagrams and constructing the age-depth model and to Paul Ledger and Ilse Kamerling, also of the University of Aberdeen, for helping draft the final versions of the maps and figures.Peer reviewedPostprin

Enrichment and ranking of the YouTube tag space and integration with the Linked Data cloud

The increase of personal digital cameras with video functionality and video-enabled camera phones has increased the amount of user-generated videos on the Web. People are spending more and more time viewing online videos as a major source of entertainment and “infotainment”. Social websites allow users to assign shared free-form tags to user-generated multimedia resources, thus generating annotations for objects with a minimum amount of effort. Tagging allows communities to organise their multimedia items into browseable sets, but these tags may be poorly chosen and related tags may be omitted. Current techniques to retrieve, integrate and present this media to users are deficient and could do with improvement. In this paper, we describe a framework for semantic enrichment, ranking and integration of web video tags using Semantic Web technologies. Semantic enrichment of folksonomies can bridge the gap between the uncontrolled and flat structures typically found in user-generated content and structures provided by the Semantic Web. The enhancement of tag spaces with semantics has been accomplished through two major tasks: a tag space expansion and ranking step; and through concept matching and integration with the Linked Data cloud. We have explored social, temporal and spatial contexts to enrich and extend the existing tag space. The resulting semantic tag space is modelled via a local graph based on co-occurrence distances for ranking. A ranked tag list is mapped and integrated with the Linked Data cloud through the DBpedia resource repository. Multi-dimensional context filtering for tag expansion means that tag ranking is much easier and it provides less ambiguous tag to concept matching

Prediction of the Heartwood Content of Pine Logs

The heartwood content of pine is discussed in terms of age, size, and shape of the log. The physical properties of heartwood and sapwood were analyzed. An exact formula was developed for the volume proportion of heartwood as a function of mass density of the log. A formula for the area proportion of heartwood within a cross section at the upper end of a log as a function of the volume proportion of heartwood within the log is given. The two formulae are combined to a predictive model of the heartwood content within a pine log

Verification of band offsets and electron effective masses in GaAsN/GaAs quantum wells : Spectroscopic experiment versus 10-band k.p modeling

Optical transitions in GaAs1-xNx/GaAs quantum wells (QWs) have been probed by two complementary techniques, modulation spectroscopy in a form of photoreflectance and surface photovoltage spectroscopy. Transition energies in QWs of various widths and N contents have been compared with the results of band structure calculations based on the 10-band k.p Hamiltonian. Due to the observation of higher order transitions in the measured spectra, the band gap discontinuities at the GaAsN/GaAs interface and the electron effective masses could be determined, both treated as semi-free parameters to get the best matching between the theoretical and experimental energies. We have obtained the chemical conduction band offset values of 86% for x = 1.2% and 83% for x = 2.2%, respectively. For these determined band offsets, the electron effective masses equal to about 0.09 m(o) in QWs with 1.2% N and 0.15 m(o) for the case of larger N content of 2.2%.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Monitoring asthma in childhood : symptoms, exacerbations and quality of life

Acknowledgements The Task Force members and their affiliations are as follows. Paul L.P. Brand: Princess Amalia Children’s Centre, Isala Hospital, Zwolle, and UMCG Postgraduate School of Medicine, University Medical Centre and University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands; Mika J. Mäkelä: Skin and Allergy Hospital, Helsinki University Hospital, Helsinki, Finland; Stanley J. Szefler: Children’s Hospital Colorado and University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine, Denver, CO, USA; Thomas Frischer: Dept of Paediatrics and Paediatric Surgery, Wilhelminenspital, Vienna, Austria; David Price: Dept of Primary Care Respiratory Medicine, Academic Primary Care, Division of Applied Health Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK; Eugenio Baraldi: Women’s and Children’s Health Dept, Unit of Respiratory Medicine and Allergy, University of Padova, Padova, Italy; Kai-Hakon Carlsen: Dept of Paediatrics, Women and Children’s Division, University of Oslo, and Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway; Ernst Eber: Respiratory and Allergic Disease Division, Dept of Paediatrics and Adolescence Medicine, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria; Gunilla Hedlin: Dept of Women’s and Children’s Health and Centre for Allergy Research, Karolinska Institutet, and Astrid Lindgren Children’s hospital, Stockholm, Sweden; Neeta Kulkarni: Leicestershire Partnership Trust and Dept of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK; Christiane Lex: Dept of Paediatric Cardiology and Intensive Care Medicine, Division of Paediatric Respiratory Medicine, University Hospital Goettingen, Goettingen, Germany; Karin C. Lødrup Carlsen: Dept of Paediatrics, Women and Children’s Division, Oslo University Hospital, and Dept of Paediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway; Eva Mantzouranis: Dept of Paediatrics, University Hospital of Heraklion, University of Crete, Heraklion, Greece; Alexander Moeller: Division of Respiratory Medicine, University Children’s Hospital Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; Ian Pavord: Dept of Respiratory Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK; Giorgio Piacentini: Paediatric Section, Dept of Life and Reproduction Sciences, University of Verona, Verona, Italy; Mariëlle W. Pijnenburg: Dept Paediatrics/Paediatric Respiratory Medicine, Erasmus MC - Sophia Children’s Hospital, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Bart L. Rottier: Dept of Pediatric Pulmonology and Allergology, GRIAC Research Institute, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands; Sejal Saglani: Leukocyte Biology and Respiratory Paediatrics, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, London, UK; Peter D. Sly: Queensland Children’s Medical Research Institute, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia; Steve Turner: Dept of Paediatrics, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK; Edwina Wooler: Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital, Brighton, UK.Peer reviewedPublisher PD