Effect of the North Equatorial Counter Current on the generation and propagation of internal solitary waves off the Amazon shelf (SAR observations)

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery from the Amazon shelf break region in the tropical west Atlantic reveals for the first time the two-dimensional horizontal structure of an intense Internal Solitary Wave (ISW) field, whose first surface manifestations are detected several hundred kilometres away from the nearest forcing bathymetry. Composite maps and an energy budget analysis (provided from the Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model - HYCOM) help to identify two major ISW pathways emanating from the steep slopes of a small promontory (or headland) near 44 degrees W and 0 degrees N, which are seen to extend for over 500 km into the open ocean. Further analysis in the SAR reveals propagation speeds above 3 ms(-1), which are amongst the fastest ever recorded. The main characteristics of the ISWs are further discussed based on a statistical analysis, and seasonal variability is found for one of the ISW sources. This seasonal variability is discussed in light of the North Equatorial Counter Current. The remote appearance of the ISW sea surface manifestations is explained by a late disintegration of the internal tide (IT), which is further investigated based on the SAR data and climatological monthly means (for stratification and currents). Acknowledging the possibility of a late disintegration of the IT may help explain the remote-sensing views of other ISWs in the world's oceans

SAR IMAGING OF WAVE TAILS: RECOGNITION OF SECOND MODE INTERNAL WAVE PATTERNS AND SOME MECHANISMS OF THEIR FORMATION

Mode-2 internal waves are usually not as energetic as larger mode-1 Internal Solitary Waves (ISWs), but they have attracted a great deal of attention in recent years because they have been identified as playing a significant role in mixing shelf waters [1]. This mixing is particularly effective for mode-2 ISWs because the location of these waves in the middle of the pycnocline plays an important role in eroding the barrier between the base of the surface mixed layer and the stratified deep layer below. An urgent problem in physical oceanography is therefore to account for the magnitude and distribution of ISW-driven mixing, including mode-2 ISWs. Several generation mechanisms of mode-2 ISWs have been identified. These include: (1) mode-1 ISWs propagating onshore (shoaling) and entering the breaking instability stage, or propagating over a steep sill; (2) a mode-1 ISW propagating offshore (antishoaling) over steep slopes of the shelf break, and undergoing modal transformation; (3) intrusion of the whole head of a gravity current into a three-layer fluid; (4) impingement of an internal tidal beam on the pycnocline, itself emanating from critical bathymetry; (5) nonlinear disintegration of internal tide modes; (6) lee wave mechanism. In this paper we provide methods to identify internal wave features denominated Wave Tails in SAR images of the ocean surface, which are many times associated with second mode internal waves. The SAR case studies that are presented portray evidence of the aforementioned generation mechanisms, and we further discuss possible methods to discriminate between the various types of mode-2 ISWs in SAR images, that emerge from these physical mechanisms. Some of the SAR images correspond to numerical simulations with the MITgcm in fully nonlinear and nonhydrostatic mode and in a 2D configuration with realistic stratification, bathymetry and other environmental conditions. Results of a global survey with some of these observations are presented, including: the Mascarene Ridge of the Indian Ocean; South China Sea; Andaman Sea; tropical Atlantic off the Amazon shelf break, Bay of Biscay of the western European margin; etc. The survey included the following SAR missions: ERS-1/2; Envisat and TerraSAR-X

LAITOR - Literature Assistant for Identification of Terms co-Occurrences and Relationships

BACKGROUND: Biological knowledge is represented in scientific literature that often describes the function of genes/proteins (bioentities) in terms of their interactions (biointeractions). Such bioentities are often related to biological concepts of interest that are specific of a determined research field. Therefore, the study of the current literature about a selected topic deposited in public databases, facilitates the generation of novel hypotheses associating a set of bioentities to a common context. RESULTS: We created a text mining system (LAITOR: Literature Assistant for Identification of Terms co-Occurrences and Relationships) that analyses co-occurrences of bioentities, biointeractions, and other biological terms in MEDLINE abstracts. The method accounts for the position of the co-occurring terms within sentences or abstracts. The system detected abstracts mentioning protein-protein interactions in a standard test (BioCreative II IAS test data) with a precision of 0.82-0.89 and a recall of 0.48-0.70. We illustrate the application of LAITOR to the detection of plant response genes in a dataset of 1000 abstracts relevant to the topic. CONCLUSIONS: Text mining tools combining the extraction of interacting bioentities and biological concepts with network displays can be helpful in developing reasonable hypotheses in different scientific backgrounds

The Harris-Luck criterion for random lattices

The Harris-Luck criterion judges the relevance of (potentially) spatially correlated, quenched disorder induced by, e.g., random bonds, randomly diluted sites or a quasi-periodicity of the lattice, for altering the critical behavior of a coupled matter system. We investigate the applicability of this type of criterion to the case of spin variables coupled to random lattices. Their aptitude to alter critical behavior depends on the degree of spatial correlations present, which is quantified by a wandering exponent. We consider the cases of Poissonian random graphs resulting from the Voronoi-Delaunay construction and of planar, ``fat'' $\phi^3$ Feynman diagrams and precisely determine their wandering exponents. The resulting predictions are compared to various exact and numerical results for the Potts model coupled to these quenched ensembles of random graphs.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables, REVTeX 4. Version as published, one figure added for clarification, minor re-wordings and typo cleanu

Search for displaced vertices arising from decays of new heavy particles in 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS

We present the results of a search for new, heavy particles that decay at a significant distance from their production point into a final state containing charged hadrons in association with a high-momentum muon. The search is conducted in a pp-collision data sample with a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 33 pb^-1 collected in 2010 by the ATLAS detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. Production of such particles is expected in various scenarios of physics beyond the standard model. We observe no signal and place limits on the production cross-section of supersymmetric particles in an R-parity-violating scenario as a function of the neutralino lifetime. Limits are presented for different squark and neutralino masses, enabling extension of the limits to a variety of other models.Comment: 8 pages plus author list (20 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version to appear in Physics Letters

Measurement of the polarisation of W bosons produced with large transverse momentum in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS experiment

This paper describes an analysis of the angular distribution of W->enu and W->munu decays, using data from pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2010, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 35 pb^-1. Using the decay lepton transverse momentum and the missing transverse energy, the W decay angular distribution projected onto the transverse plane is obtained and analysed in terms of helicity fractions f0, fL and fR over two ranges of W transverse momentum (ptw): 35 < ptw < 50 GeV and ptw > 50 GeV. Good agreement is found with theoretical predictions. For ptw > 50 GeV, the values of f0 and fL-fR, averaged over charge and lepton flavour, are measured to be : f0 = 0.127 +/- 0.030 +/- 0.108 and fL-fR = 0.252 +/- 0.017 +/- 0.030, where the first uncertainties are statistical, and the second include all systematic effects.Comment: 19 pages plus author list (34 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables, revised author list, matches European Journal of Physics C versio