Missing baryons and the soft X-ray background

The X-ray background intensity around Lick count galaxies and rich clusters of galaxies is investigated in three ROSAT energy bands. It is found that the X-ray enhancements surrounding concentrations of galaxies exhibit significantly softer spectrum than the standard cluster emission and the average extragalactic background. The diffuse soft emission accompanying the galaxies is consistent with the thermal emission of the hot gas postulated first by the Cen & Ostriker hydrodynamic simulations. Our estimates of the gas temperature - although subject to large uncertainties - averaged over several Mpc scales are below 1 keV, which is substantially below the temperature of the intra-cluster gas, but consistent with temperatures predicted for the local intergalactic medium. It is pointed out that the planned ROSITA mission would be essential for our understanding of the diffuse thermal component of the background.Comment: AA accepted, 6 pages, incl. 4 figure

Zaidi Ya Kitu Chenye Mwanzo Hafifu? Kuibuka Kwa Taasisi Jamii Kama Dhana Mpya Ya Maendeleo

This paper sets out findings from a baseline study of 50 applications for grants from the Global Fund for Community Foundations. The paper uses information gained from the processes of assessing the grants to learn lessons about the state of the field, what it can contribute in terms of outcomes and impact, and hypotheses in taking forward work of this nature. The paper suggests that community philanthropy may have an important role to play in creating a new paradigm for development

Methods of measuring residual stresses in components

Residual stresses occur in many manufactured structures and components. Large number of investigations have been carried out to study this phenomenon and its effect on the mechanical characteristics of these components. Over the years, different methods have been developed to measure residual stress for different types of components in order to obtain reliable assessment. The various specific methods have evolved over several decades and their practical applications have greatly benefited from the development of complementary technologies, notably in material cutting, full-field deformation measurement techniques, numerical methods and computing power. These complementary technologies have stimulated advances not only in measurement accuracy and reliability, but also in range of application; much greater detail in residual stresses measurement is now available. This paper aims to classify the different residual stresses measurement methods and to provide an overview of some of the recent advances in this area to help researchers on selecting their techniques among destructive, semi destructive and non destructive techniques depends on their application and the availabilities of those techniques. For each method scope, physical limitation, advantages and disadvantages are summarized. In the end this paper indicates some promising directions for future developments

Visual Comfort Assessment for Stereoscopic Image Retargeting

In recent years, visual comfort assessment (VCA) for 3D/stereoscopic content has aroused extensive attention. However, much less work has been done on the perceptual evaluation of stereoscopic image retargeting. In this paper, we first build a Stereoscopic Image Retargeting Database (SIRD), which contains source images and retargeted images produced by four typical stereoscopic retargeting methods. Then, the subjective experiment is conducted to assess four aspects of visual distortion, i.e. visual comfort, image quality, depth quality and the overall quality. Furthermore, we propose a Visual Comfort Assessment metric for Stereoscopic Image Retargeting (VCA-SIR). Based on the characteristics of stereoscopic retargeted images, the proposed model introduces novel features like disparity range, boundary disparity as well as disparity intensity distribution into the assessment model. Experimental results demonstrate that VCA-SIR can achieve high consistency with subjective perception

Mantiki katika miiko ya mfumo-mlo ya jamii ya Wandendeule

Makala hii inajadili miiko inayohusiana na mfumo-mlo katika jamii ya Wandendeule. Shabaha kuu ni kubainisha mantiki (kama kipengele kimojawapo cha falsafa) iliyomo ndani ya miiko. Swali kuu lililoongoza uchunguzi na mjadala wa kwenye makala hii ni: miiko kama kipengele cha kiutamaduni ina mantiki gani katika maisha ya wanajamii husika? Makala imejiegemeza katika mkabala wa kitaamuli. Data za makala hii zilipatikana kwa kutumia njia tatu ambazo ni udurusu wa nyaraka, usaili, pamoja na ushuhudiaji. Matokeo ya uchunguzi yanaonesha kuwa miiko yote inayohusu mfumo-mlo inayotumiwa na jamii ya Wandendeule hujikita katika mantiki fulani inayoshikilia seti ya 'kweli’  zinazoongoza maisha yao. Hii ni kwa sababu miiko hiyo huakisi uhalisi wa miktadha ya kimazingira (kijiografia), kijamii na kifikra (mawanda ya fikra zao kuhusu ulimwengu)

Empirical stationary correlations for semi-supervised learning on graphs

In semi-supervised learning on graphs, response variables observed at one node are used to estimate missing values at other nodes. The methods exploit correlations between nearby nodes in the graph. In this paper we prove that many such proposals are equivalent to kriging predictors based on a fixed covariance matrix driven by the link structure of the graph. We then propose a data-driven estimator of the correlation structure that exploits patterns among the observed response values. By incorporating even a small fraction of observed covariation into the predictions, we are able to obtain much improved prediction on two graph data sets.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-AOAS293 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Validation of Matching

We introduce a technique to compute probably approximately correct (PAC) bounds on precision and recall for matching algorithms. The bounds require some verified matches, but those matches may be used to develop the algorithms. The bounds can be applied to network reconciliation or entity resolution algorithms, which identify nodes in different networks or values in a data set that correspond to the same entity. For network reconciliation, the bounds do not require knowledge of the network generation process