4,242 research outputs found
The Resilience of Sensation in Urban Planning
This article examines how sensation and affect make different kinds of resilience meaningful to communities. Through a case study, we analyze public deliberation about a proposal to expand interstates in Tampa, Florida. We describe how evidence introduced by opposing sides foregrounded conflicting sensory experiences. The resulting sensoriums upheld different aspects of the city’s identity as worth maintaining. Drawing from recent scholarship defining resilience as something that can always be done otherwise, we suggest that resilience is better understood as entangled with public affect. We argue that a key point for rhetorical intervention in city planning is considering which futures and visions of resilience are being imagined for publics
Zeeman Relaxation of Cold Atomic Iron and Nickel in Collisions with 3He
We have measured the ratio of the diffusion cross-section to the angular
momentum reorientation cross-section in the colliding Fe-3He and Ni-3He
systems. Nickel (Ni) and iron (Fe) atoms are introduced via laser ablation into
a cryogenically cooled experimental cell containing cold (< 1 K) 3He buffer
gas. Elastic collisions rapidly cool the translational temperature of the
ablated atoms to the helium temperature. The cross-section ratio is extracted
by measuring the decays of the atomic Zeeman sublevels. For our experimental
conditions, thermal energy is comparable to the Zeeman splitting. As a result,
thermal excitations between Zeeman sublevels significantly impact the observed
decay. To determine the cross-section ratio accurately, we introduce a model of
Zeeman state dynamics that includes thermal excitations. We find the
cross-section ratio for Ni-3He = 5 x 10^3 and Fe-3He <= 3 x 10^3 at 0.75 K in a
0.8 T magnetic field. These measurements are interpreted in the context of
submerged shell suppression of spin relaxation as studied previously in
transition metals and rare earth atoms.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures; submitted to Phys. Rev.
Detection of Water Vapor in the Thermal Spectrum of the Non-Transiting Hot Jupiter upsilon Andromedae b
The upsilon Andromedae system was the first multi-planet system discovered
orbiting a main sequence star. We describe the detection of water vapor in the
atmosphere of the innermost non-transiting gas giant ups~And~b by treating the
star-planet system as a spectroscopic binary with high-resolution, ground-based
spectroscopy. We resolve the signal of the planet's motion and break the
mass-inclination degeneracy for this non-transiting planet via deep combined
flux observations of the star and the planet. In total, seven epochs of Keck
NIRSPEC band observations, three epochs of Keck NIRSPEC short wavelength
band observations, and three epochs of Keck NIRSPEC long wavelength
band observations of the ups~And~system were obtained. We perform a multi-epoch
cross correlation of the full data set with an atmospheric model. We measure
the radial projection of the Keplerian velocity ( = 55 9 km/s), true
mass ( = 1.7 ), and orbital inclination \big(
= 24 4\big), and determine that the planet's opacity structure
is dominated by water vapor at the probed wavelengths. Dynamical simulations of
the planets in the ups~And~system with these orbital elements for ups~And~b
show that stable, long-term (100 Myr) orbital configurations exist. These
measurements will inform future studies of the stability and evolution of the
ups~And~system, as well as the atmospheric structure and composition of the hot
Jupiter.Comment: Accepted to A
Ground- and Space-based Detection of the Thermal Emission Spectrum of the Transiting Hot Jupiter KELT-2Ab
We describe the detection of water vapor in the atmosphere of the transiting
hot Jupiter KELT-2Ab by treating the star-planet system as a spectroscopic
binary with high-resolution, ground-based spectroscopy. We resolve the signal
of the planet's motion with deep combined flux observations of the star and the
planet. In total, six epochs of Keck NIRSPEC -band observations were
obtained, and the full data set was subjected to a cross correlation analysis
with a grid of self-consistent atmospheric models. We measure a radial
projection of the Keplerian velocity, , of 148 7 km s,
consistent with transit measurements, and detect water vapor at 3.8. We
combine NIRSPEC -band data with IRAC secondary eclipse data to
further probe the metallicity and carbon-to-oxygen ratio of KELT-2Ab's
atmosphere. While the NIRSPEC analysis provides few extra constraints on the
data, it does provide roughly the same constraints on metallicity and
carbon-to-oxygen ratio. This bodes well for future investigations of the
atmospheres of non-transiting hot Jupiters.Comment: accepted to A
Learning Shape Priors for Single-View 3D Completion and Reconstruction
The problem of single-view 3D shape completion or reconstruction is
challenging, because among the many possible shapes that explain an
observation, most are implausible and do not correspond to natural objects.
Recent research in the field has tackled this problem by exploiting the
expressiveness of deep convolutional networks. In fact, there is another level
of ambiguity that is often overlooked: among plausible shapes, there are still
multiple shapes that fit the 2D image equally well; i.e., the ground truth
shape is non-deterministic given a single-view input. Existing fully supervised
approaches fail to address this issue, and often produce blurry mean shapes
with smooth surfaces but no fine details.
In this paper, we propose ShapeHD, pushing the limit of single-view shape
completion and reconstruction by integrating deep generative models with
adversarially learned shape priors. The learned priors serve as a regularizer,
penalizing the model only if its output is unrealistic, not if it deviates from
the ground truth. Our design thus overcomes both levels of ambiguity
aforementioned. Experiments demonstrate that ShapeHD outperforms state of the
art by a large margin in both shape completion and shape reconstruction on
multiple real datasets.Comment: ECCV 2018. The first two authors contributed equally to this work.
Project page: http://shapehd.csail.mit.edu
Evolutionary Dynamics of the Short-Nosed Fruit Bat, \u3ci\u3eCynopterus sphinx \u3c/i\u3e (Pteropodidae): Inferences from the Spatial Scale of Genetic and Phenotypic Differentiation
We report the results of a population-genetic study of the short-nosed fruit bat, Cynopterus sphinx (Pteropodidae). The purpose of our study was to assess the relative importance of drift, gene flow, and spatially varying selection in shaping patterns of genetic and phenotypic variation across a latitudinal climatic gradient in peninsular India. At a microgeographic scale, polygynous mating resulted in a substantial reduction of effective population size. However, at a macrogeographic scale, rates of migration were sufficiently high to prevent a pronounced degree of stochastic differentiation via drift. Spatial analysis of genetic and phenotypic differentiation revealed that clinal variation in body size of C. sphinx cannot be explained by a neutral model of isolation by distance. The geographic patterning of morphometric variation is most likely attributable to spatially varying selection and/or the direct influence of latitudinally ordered environmental effects. The combined analysis of genetic and phenotypic variation indicates that recognized subspecies of C. sphinx in peninsular India represent arbitrary subdivisions of a continuous spectrum of clinal size variation
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Identification of antiviral roles for the exon-junction complex and nonsense-mediated decay in flaviviral infection.
West Nile virus (WNV) is an emerging mosquito-borne flavivirus, related to dengue virus and Zika virus. To gain insight into host pathways involved in WNV infection, we performed a systematic affinity-tag purification mass spectrometry (APMS) study to identify 259 WNV-interacting human proteins. RNA interference screening revealed 26 genes that both interact with WNV proteins and influence WNV infection. We found that WNV, dengue and Zika virus capsids interact with a conserved subset of proteins that impact infection. These include the exon-junction complex (EJC) recycling factor PYM1, which is antiviral against all three viruses. The EJC has roles in nonsense-mediated decay (NMD), and we found that both the EJC and NMD are antiviral and the EJC protein RBM8A directly binds WNV RNA. To counteract this, flavivirus infection inhibits NMD and the capsid-PYM1 interaction interferes with EJC protein function and localization. Depletion of PYM1 attenuates RBM8A binding to viral RNA, suggesting that WNV sequesters PYM1 to protect viral RNA from decay. Together, these data suggest a complex interplay between the virus and host in regulating NMD and the EJC
Maximum elastic deformations of relativistic stars
We present a method for calculating the maximum elastic quadrupolar
deformations of relativistic stars, generalizing the previous Newtonian,
Cowling approximation integral given by [G. Ushomirsky et al., Mon. Not. R.
Astron. Soc. 319, 902 (2000)]. (We also present a method for Newtonian gravity
with no Cowling approximation.) We apply these methods to the m = 2 quadrupoles
most relevant for gravitational radiation in three cases: crustal deformations,
deformations of crystalline cores of hadron-quark hybrid stars, and
deformations of entirely crystalline color superconducting quark stars. In all
cases, we find suppressions of the quadrupole due to relativity compared to the
Newtonian Cowling approximation, particularly for compact stars. For the crust
these suppressions are up to a factor ~6, for hybrid stars they are up to ~4,
and for solid quark stars they are at most ~2, with slight enhancements instead
for low mass stars. We also explore ranges of masses and equations of state
more than in previous work, and find that for some parameters the maximum
quadrupoles can still be very large. Even with the relativistic suppressions,
we find that 1.4 solar mass stars can sustain crustal quadrupoles of a few
times 10^39 g cm^2 for the SLy equation of state or close to 10^40 g cm^2 for
equations of state that produce less compact stars. Solid quark stars of 1.4
solar masses can sustain quadrupoles of around 10^44 g cm^2. Hybrid stars
typically do not have solid cores at 1.4 solar masses, but the most massive
ones (~2 solar masses) can sustain quadrupoles of a few times 10^41 g cm^2 for
typical microphysical parameters and a few times 10^42 g cm^2 for extreme ones.
All of these quadrupoles assume a breaking strain of 0.1 and can be divided by
10^45 g cm^2 to yield the fiducial "ellipticities" quoted elsewhere.Comment: 21 pages, 11 figures, version accepted by PRD, including the
corrected maximum hybrid star quadrupoles (from the erratum to the shear
modulus calculation) and the corrected binding energy computatio
Evidence for the Direct Detection of the Thermal Spectrum of the Non-Transiting Hot Gas Giant HD 88133 b
We target the thermal emission spectrum of the non-transiting gas giant HD
88133 b with high-resolution near-infrared spectroscopy, by treating the planet
and its host star as a spectroscopic binary. For sufficiently deep summed flux
observations of the star and planet across multiple epochs, it is possible to
resolve the signal of the hot gas giant's atmosphere compared to the brighter
stellar spectrum, at a level consistent with the aggregate shot noise of the
full data set. To do this, we first perform a principal component analysis to
remove the contribution of the Earth's atmosphere to the observed spectra.
Then, we use a cross-correlation analysis to tease out the spectra of the host
star and HD 88133 b to determine its orbit and identify key sources of
atmospheric opacity. In total, six epochs of Keck NIRSPEC L band observations
and three epochs of Keck NIRSPEC K band observations of the HD 88133 system
were obtained. Based on an analysis of the maximum likelihood curves calculated
from the multi-epoch cross correlation of the full data set with two
atmospheric models, we report the direct detection of the emission spectrum of
the non-transiting exoplanet HD 88133 b and measure a radial projection of the
Keplerian orbital velocity of 40 15 km/s, a true mass of
1.02, a nearly face-on orbital inclination of
15, and an atmosphere opacity structure at high
dispersion dominated by water vapor. This, combined with eleven years of radial
velocity measurements of the system, provides the most up-to-date ephemeris for
HD 88133.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures; accepted for publication in Ap
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