1,338 research outputs found
RAPTOR observations of delayed explosive activity in the high-redshift gamma-ray burst GRB 060206
The RAPid Telescopes for Optical Response (RAPTOR) system at Los Alamos
National Laboratory observed GRB 060206 starting 48.1 minutes after gamma-ray
emission triggered the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) on-board the Swift
satellite. The afterglow light curve measured by RAPTOR shows a spectacular
re-brightening by ~1 mag about 1 h after the trigger and peaks at R ~ 16.4 mag.
Shortly after the onset of the explosive re-brightening the OT doubled its flux
on a time-scale of about 4 minutes. The total R-band fluence received from GRB
060206 during this episode is 2.3e-9 erg/cm2. In the rest frame of the burst (z
= 4.045) this yields an isotropic equivalent energy release of ~0.7e50 erg in
just a narrow UV band 130 +/- 22 nm. We discuss the implications of RAPTOR
observations for untriggered searches for fast optical transients and studies
of GRB environments at high redshift.Comment: Submitted to ApJ Letter
Differentiation of the facial-vestibulocochlear ganglionic complex in human embryos of developmental stages 13–15
A study was made on 18 embryos of developmental stages 13–15 (5th week).
Serial sections made in horizontal, frontal, and sagittal planes were stained
with routine histological methods and some of them were treated with silver.
In embryos of stage 13, the otic vesicle is at the rhombomere 5, and close to
the vesicle is the facial-vestibulocochlear ganglionic complex in which the geniculate,
vestibular, and cochlear ganglion may be discerned. These ganglia are
well demarcated in embryos of stage 14. In the last investigated stage (15th)
the nerve fibres of the ganglia reach the common afferent tract
Limits on I-band microvariability of the Galactic Bulge Miras
We search for microvariability in a sample of 485 Mira variables with high
quality I-band light curves from the second generation Optical Gravitational
Lensing Experiment (OGLE-II). Rapid variations with amplitudes in the ~0.2-1.1
mag range lasting hours to days were discovered in Hipparcos data by de Laverny
et al. (1998). Our search is primarily sensitive to events with time-scales of
about 1 day, but retains a few percent efficiency (per object) for detecting
unresolved microvariability events as short as 2 hours. We do not detect any
candidate events. Assuming that the distribution of the event time profiles is
identical to that from the Hipparcos light curves we derive the 95% confidence
level upper limit of 0.038 per year per star for the rate of such events (1 per
26 years per average object of the ensemble). The high event rates of the order
of 1 per year per star implied by the Hipparcos study in the H_P band are
excluded with high confidence by the OGLE-II data in the I band. Our
non-detection could still be explained by much redder spectral response of the
I filter compared to the H_P band or by population differences between the
bulge and the solar neighborhood. In any case, the OGLE-II I-band data provide
the first limit on the rate of the postulated microvariability events in Mira
stars and offer new quantitative constraints on their properties. Similar
limits are obtained for other pulse shapes and a range of the assumed
time-scales and size-frequency distributions.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap
Excitonic luminescence of the I-intercalated HfS
Photoluminescence from bulk HfS grown by the chemical vapor transport
(CVT) method is reported. A series of emission lines is apparent at low
temperature in the energy range of 1.4 - 1.5 eV. Two groups of the observed
excitonic transitions followed by their replicas involving acoustic and optical
phonons are distinguished using classical intensity correlation analysis. The
emission is attributed to the recombination of excitons bound to iodine (I)
molecules intercalated between layers of HfS. The I molecules are
introduced to the crystal during the growth as halogen transport agents in the
CVT growth process. Their presence in the crystal is confirmed by secondary ion
mass spectroscopy.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure
Decision level ensemble method for classifying multi-media data
In the digital era, the data, for a given analytical task, can be collected in different formats, such as text, images and audio etc. The data with multiple formats are called multimedia data. Integrating and fusing multimedia datasets has become a challenging task in machine learning and data mining. In this paper, we present heterogeneous ensemble method that combines multi-media datasets at the decision level. Our method consists of several components, including extracting the features from multimedia datasets that are not represented by features, modelling independently on each of multimedia datasets, selecting models based on their accuracy and diversity and building the ensemble at the decision level. Hence our method is called decision level ensemble method (DLEM). The method is tested on multimedia data and compared with other heterogeneous ensemble based methods. The results show that the DLEM outperformed these methods significantly
Microlensing Event MOA-2007-BLG-400: Exhuming the Buried Signature of a Cool, Jovian-Mass Planet
We report the detection of the cool, Jovian-mass planet MOA-2007-BLG-400Lb.
The planet was detected in a high-magnification microlensing event (with peak
magnification A_max = 628) in which the primary lens transited the source,
resulting in a dramatic smoothing of the peak of the event. The angular extent
of the region of perturbation due to the planet is significantly smaller than
the angular size of the source, and as a result the planetary signature is also
smoothed out by the finite source size. Thus the deviation from a single-lens
fit is broad and relatively weak (~ few percent). Nevertheless, we demonstrate
that the planetary nature of the deviation can be unambiguously ascertained
from the gross features of the residuals, and detailed analysis yields a fairly
precise planet/star mass ratio of q = 0.0026+/-0.0004, in accord with the large
significance (\Delta\chi^2=1070) of the detection. The planet/star projected
separation is subject to a strong close/wide degeneracy, leading to two
indistinguishable solutions that differ in separation by a factor of ~8.5.
Upper limits on flux from the lens constrain its mass to be M < 0.75 M_Sun
(assuming it is a main-sequence star). A Bayesian analysis that includes all
available observational constraints indicates a primary in the Galactic bulge
with a mass of ~0.2-0.5 M_Sun and thus a planet mass of ~ 0.5-1.3 M_Jupiter.
The separation and equilibrium temperature are ~0.6-1.1AU (~5.3-9.7AU) and
~103K (~34K) for the close (wide) solution. If the primary is a main-sequence
star, follow-up observations would enable the detection of its light and so a
measurement of its mass and distance.Comment: 30 pages, 6 figures, Submitted to Ap
Diversity of vegetation dominated by selected grass species on coal-mine spoil heaps in terms of reclamation of post-industrial areas
Published by Polish Society of Ecological Engineering (PTIE). This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence.
The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.12911/22998993/93870© 2018, Polish Society of Ecological Engineering (PTIE). Grasses have a considerable potential for the adaptation to various, often extreme, habitat conditions. The aim of the work was to present the vegetation diversity of the coal-mine spoil heaps with the dominant share of grasses and to identify the main factors responsible for this diversity in the aspect of post-industrial land reclamation. The communities differ in reference to the species preferences to light, moisture, soil fertility and reaction, which is reflected in the wide variety of microhabitats in the area. It was shown that the increase in the abundance of certain grass species, including Calamagrostis epigejos, Festuca rubra, Festuca arundinacea, Phragmites australis, has a significant negative impact on the species richness, species diversity and the uniformity of distribution of species of the plant community. Preliminary analyses revealed that on post-mining waste, the biomass production of the dominant species is negatively correlated with biodiversity. The knowledge about the biology and ecology of grass species, as well as on the assembly rules may be used in the reclamation of degraded areas. Gaining the knowledge about the vegetation diversity of the coal-mine spoil heaps with the dominant share of grasses can be useful in planning the reclamation works, taking into account natural processes, which leads to the creation of a permanent vegetation cover at a given site, protecting it against water or wind erosion. In the future these areas may provide a number of important ecosystem services.Published versio
Cosmic Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory: a global network of detectors to probe contemporary physics mysteries
In the past few years, cosmic-rays beyond the GZK cut-off ( eV) have been detected by leading collaborations such as Pierre Auger
Observatory. Such observations raise many questions as to how such energies can
be reached and what source can possibly produce them. Although at lower
energies, mechanisms such as Fermi acceleration in supernovae front shocks seem
to be favored, top-down scenarios have been proposed to explain the existence
of ultra-high energy cosmic-rays: the decay of super-massive long-lived
particles produced in the early Universe may yield to a flux of ultra-high
energy photons. Such photons might be presently generating so called
super-preshowers, an extended cosmic-ray shower with a spatial distribution
that can be as wide as the Earth diameter. The Cosmic Ray Extremely Distributed
Observatory (CREDO) mission is to find such events by means of a network of
detectors spread around the globe. CREDO's strategy is to connect existing
detectors and create a worldwide network of cosmic-ray observatories. Moreover,
citizen-science constitutes an important pillar of our approach. By helping our
algorithms to recognize detection patterns and by using smartphones as
individual cosmic-ray detectors, non-scientists can participate in scientific
discoveries and help unravel some of the deepest mysteries in physics.Comment: excited QCD Conference, CREDO Collaboration, 7 pages, 3 figure
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