42,476 research outputs found
Reliability, Sufficiency, and the Decomposition of Proper Scores
Scoring rules are an important tool for evaluating the performance of
probabilistic forecasting schemes. In the binary case, scoring rules (which are
strictly proper) allow for a decomposition into terms related to the resolution
and to the reliability of the forecast. This fact is particularly well known
for the Brier Score. In this paper, this result is extended to forecasts for
finite--valued targets. Both resolution and reliability are shown to have a
positive effect on the score. It is demonstrated that resolution and
reliability are directly related to forecast attributes which are desirable on
grounds independent of the notion of scores. This finding can be considered an
epistemological justification of measuring forecast quality by proper scores. A
link is provided to the original work of DeGroot et al (1982), extending their
concepts of sufficiency and refinement. The relation to the conjectured
sharpness principle of Gneiting et al (2005a) is elucidated.Comment: v1: 9 pages; submitted to International Journal of Forecasting v2: 12
pages; Significant change of contents; stronger focus on decomposition;
Extensive comments on and extensions of earlier work, in particular
sufficienc
The Detection of Anomalous Dust Emission in the Nearby Galaxy NGC 6946
We report on the Ka-band (26-40 GHz) emission properties for 10 star-forming
regions in the nearby galaxy NGC 6946. From a radio spectral decomposition, we
find that the 33 GHz flux densities are typically dominated by thermal
(free-free) radiation. However, we also detect excess Ka-band emission for an
outer-disk star-forming region relative to what is expected given existing
radio, submillimeter, and infrared data. Among the 10 targeted regions,
measurable excess emission at 33 GHz is detected for half of them, but in only
one region is the excess found to be statistically significant
(). We interpret this as the first likely detection of so
called `anomalous' dust emission outside of the Milky Way. We find that models
explaining this feature as the result of dipole emission from rapidly rotating
ultrasmall grains are able to reproduce the observations for reasonable
interstellar medium conditions. While these results suggest that the use of
Ka-band data as a measure of star formation activity in external galaxies may
be complicated by the presence of anomalous dust, it is unclear how significant
a factor this will be for globally integrated measurements as the excess
emission accounts for \la10% of the total Ka-band flux density from all 10
regions.Comment: 6 pages; Accepted to ApJ Letter
PassGAN: A Deep Learning Approach for Password Guessing
State-of-the-art password guessing tools, such as HashCat and John the
Ripper, enable users to check billions of passwords per second against password
hashes. In addition to performing straightforward dictionary attacks, these
tools can expand password dictionaries using password generation rules, such as
concatenation of words (e.g., "password123456") and leet speak (e.g.,
"password" becomes "p4s5w0rd"). Although these rules work well in practice,
expanding them to model further passwords is a laborious task that requires
specialized expertise. To address this issue, in this paper we introduce
PassGAN, a novel approach that replaces human-generated password rules with
theory-grounded machine learning algorithms. Instead of relying on manual
password analysis, PassGAN uses a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to
autonomously learn the distribution of real passwords from actual password
leaks, and to generate high-quality password guesses. Our experiments show that
this approach is very promising. When we evaluated PassGAN on two large
password datasets, we were able to surpass rule-based and state-of-the-art
machine learning password guessing tools. However, in contrast with the other
tools, PassGAN achieved this result without any a-priori knowledge on passwords
or common password structures. Additionally, when we combined the output of
PassGAN with the output of HashCat, we were able to match 51%-73% more
passwords than with HashCat alone. This is remarkable, because it shows that
PassGAN can autonomously extract a considerable number of password properties
that current state-of-the art rules do not encode.Comment: This is an extended version of the paper which appeared in NeurIPS
2018 Workshop on Security in Machine Learning (SecML'18), see
https://github.com/secml2018/secml2018.github.io/raw/master/PASSGAN_SECML2018.pd
Timing by Stellar Pulsations as an Exoplanet Discovery Method
The stable oscillations of pulsating stars can serve as accurate timepieces,
which may be monitored for the influence of exoplanets. An external companion
gravitationally tugs the host star, causing periodic changes in pulsation
arrival times. This method is most sensitive to detecting substellar companions
around the hottest pulsating stars, especially compact remnants like white
dwarfs and hot subdwarfs, as well as delta Scuti variables (A stars). However,
it is applicable to any pulsating star with sufficiently stable oscillations.
Care must be taken to ensure that the changes in pulsation arrival times are
not caused by intrinsic stellar variability; an external, light-travel-time
effect from an exoplanet identically affects all pulsation modes. With more
long-baseline photometric campaigns coming online, this method is yielding new
detections of substellar companions.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures: Invited review to appear in 'Handbook of
Exoplanets,' Springer Reference Works, edited by Hans J. Deeg and Juan
Antonio Belmont
Improvements in Cd stable isotope analysis achieved through use of liquid–liquid extraction to remove organic residues from Cd separates obtained by extraction chromatography
Organic compounds released from resins that are commonly employed for trace element separations are known to have a detrimental impact on the quality of isotopic analyses by MC-ICP-MS. A recent study highlighted that such effects can be particularly problematic for Cd stable isotope measurements (M. Gault-Ringold and C. H. Stirling, J. Anal. At. Spectrom., 2012, 27, 449–459). In this case, the final stage of sample purification commonly applies extraction chromatography with Eichrom TRU resin, which employs particles coated with octylphenyl-N,N-di-isobutyl carbamoylphosphine oxide (CMPO) dissolved in tri-n-butyl phosphate (TBP). During chromatography, it appears that some of these compounds are eluted alongside Cd and cannot be removed by evaporation due to their high boiling points. When aliquots of the zero-ε reference material were processed through the purification procedure, refluxed in concentrated HNO(3) and analyzed at minimum dilution (in 1 ml 0.1 M HNO(3)), they yielded Cd isotopic compositions (ε(114/110)Cd = 4.6 ± 3.4, 2SD, n = 4) that differed significantly from the expected value, despite the use of a double spike technique to correct for instrumental mass fractionation. This result was accompanied by a 35% reduction in instrumental sensitivity for Cd. With increasing dilution of the organic resin residue, both of these effects are reduced and they are insignificant when the eluted Cd is dissolved in ≥3 ml 0.1 M HNO(3). Our results, furthermore, indicate that the isotopic artefacts are most likely related to anomalous mass bias behavior. Previous studies have shown that perchloric acid can be effective at avoiding such effects (Gault-Ringold and Stirling, 2012; K. C. Crocket, M. Lambelet, T. van de Flierdt, M. Rehkämper and L. F. Robinson, Chem. Geol., 2014, 374–375, 128–140), presumably by oxidizing the resin-derived organics, but there are numerous disadvantages to its use. Here we show that liquid–liquid extraction with n-heptane removes the organic compounds, dramatically improving quality of the Cd isotope data for samples that are analyzed at or close to minimum dilution factors. This technique is quick, simple and may be of use prior to analysis of other isotope systems where similar resins are employed
On the boundaries of solvability and unsolvability in tag systems. Theoretical and Experimental Results
Several older and more recent results on the boundaries of solvability and
unsolvability in tag systems are surveyed. Emphasis will be put on the
significance of computer experiments in research on very small tag systems
Characterizing Cosmic-Ray Propagation in Massive Star-forming Regions: The Case of 30 Doradus and the Large Magellanic Cloud
Using infrared, radio, and γ-ray data, we investigate the propagation characteristics of cosmic-ray (CR) electrons and nuclei in the 30 Doradus (30 Dor) star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) using a phenomenological model based on the radio-far-infrared correlation within galaxies. Employing a correlation analysis, we derive an average propagation length of ~100-140 pc for ~3 GeV CR electrons resident in 30 Dor from consideration of the radio and infrared data. Assuming that the observed γ-ray emission toward 30 Dor is associated with the star-forming region, and applying the same methodology to the infrared and γ-ray data, we estimate a ~20 GeV propagation length of 200-320 pc for the CR nuclei. This is approximately twice as large as for ~3 GeV CR electrons, corresponding to a spatial diffusion coefficient that is ~4 times higher, scaling as (R/GV)δ with δ ≈ 0.7-0.8 depending on the smearing kernel used in the correlation analysis. This value is in agreement with the results found by extending the correlation analysis to include ~70 GeV CR nuclei traced by the 3-10 GeV γ-ray data (δ ≈ 0.66 ± 0.23). Using the mean age of the stellar populations in 30 Dor and the results from our correlation analysis, we estimate a diffusion coefficient D_R ≈ (0.9-1.0) × 10^(27)(R/GV)0.7 cm^(2) s^(–1). We compare the values of the CR electron propagation length and surface brightness for 30 Dor and the LMC as a whole with those of entire disk galaxies. We find that the trend of decreasing average CR propagation distance with increasing disk-averaged star formation activity holds for the LMC, and extends down to single star-forming regions, at least for the case of 30 Dor
The Radio Continuum-Star Formation Rate Relation in WSRT SINGS Galaxies
This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for published in The Astronomical Journal. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-6256/147/5/103.We present a study of the spatially resolved radio continuum–star formation rate (RC–SFR) relation using stateof-the-art star formation tracers in a sample of 17 THINGS galaxies. We use SFR surface density (ΣSFR) maps created by a linear combination of GALEX far-UV (FUV) and Spitzer 24μm maps. We use RC maps at λλ22 and 18 cm from the WSRT SINGS survey and Hα emission maps to correct for thermal RC emission. We compare azimuthally averaged radial profiles of the RC and FUV/mid-IR (MIR) based ΣSFR maps and study pixel-by-pixel correlations at fixed linear scales of 1.2 and 0.7 kpc. The ratio of the integrated SFRs from the RC emission to that of the FUV/MIR-based SF tracers is Rint = 0.78 ± 0.38, consistent with the relation by Condon. We find a tight correlation between the radial profiles of the radio and FUV/MIR-based ΣSFR for the entire extent of the disk. The ratio R of the azimuthally averaged radio to FUV/MIR-based ΣSFR agrees with the integrated ratio and has only quasi-random fluctuations with galactocentric radius that are relatively small (25%). Pixel-by-pixel plots show a tight correlation in log-log diagrams of radio to FUV/MIR-based ΣSFR, with a typical standard deviation of a factor of two. Averaged over our sample we find (ΣSFR)RC ∝ (ΣSFR) 0.63±0.25 hyb , implying that data points with high ΣSFR are relatively radio dim, whereas the reverse is true for low ΣSFR. We interpret this as a result of spectral aging of cosmic-ray electrons (CREs), which are diffusing away from the star formation sites where they are injected into the interstellar medium. This is supported by our finding that the radio spectral index is a second parameter in pixel-by-pixel plots: those data points dominated by young CREs are relatively radio dim, while those dominated by old CREs are slightly more RC bright than what would be expected from a linear extrapolation. We studied the ratio R of radio to FUV/MIR-based integrated SFR as a function of global galaxy parameters and found no clear correlation. This suggests that we can use RC emission as a universal star formation tracer for galaxies with a similar degree of accuracy as other tracers, if we restrict ourselves to global or azimuthally averaged measurements. We can reconcile our finding of an almost linear RC–SFR relation and sub-linear resolved (on 1 kpc scale) RC–ΣSFR relation by proposing a non-linear magnetic field–SFR relation, B ∝ SFR0.30±0.02 hyb , which holds both globally and locally.Peer reviewe
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