Mass of Galaxies in Pairs

We have compared the frequency distribution of the dynamical observedquantity log (V _z ² r _p), for a sample of 46 pairs of elliptical galaxies, to the distribution of this quantity obtained from numerical simulations of pairs of galaxies. From such an analysis, where we have considered the structure of the galaxies and its influence in the orbital evolution of the system, we have obtained the characteristic mass and the mass-luminosity ratio for the sample. Our results show that the hypothesis of point-mass in elliptical orbits is, for this sample, an approximation as good as the model that takes into account the structure of the galaxies. The statistical method used here gives an estimate of a more reliable mass, it minimizes the contamination of spurious pairs and it considers adequately the contribution of the physical pairs. We have obtained a characteristic mass to the 46 elliptical pairs of 1.68 × 10¹² ± 7.01 ×10¹¹ M_⊙ with M/L = 17.6 ± 7.3 (H ₀ = 60 km s^-1Mpc^-1). This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Getting Lost in Cities: Spatial Patterns of Phonetically Confusing Street Names

A large street network is likely to contain duplicated or similar sounding street names. These conflicts can cause confusion in communication between people or in machine‐human interaction. Municipal authorities have begun to see the importance of uncovering these existing street name conflicts and mitigating future ones, for improved record keeping, emergency response, etc. However the commonly used Soundex phonetic algorithm is generally considered to produce poor similarity results in terms of uncovering street name conflicts. This study reports on a new fusion algorithm that combines phonetic methods and approximate string matching for street names, weighted by street type suffix (Avenue, Boulevard, Court, etc.), to quantitatively measure the collision/confusion potential presented by a pair of streets. This algorithm is then applied to the entire street network in Greater Melbourne, Australia, and the pattern of collisions at various spatial scales, and within municipalities, is mapped. The goal of this work is to produce better tools that can aid policy makers, administrators and industries dealing with location‐based services to make better decisions when assigning and disambiguating street names.     

Global distribution of the intensity and frequency of hourly precipitation and their responses to ENSO

Climate Dynamics - We investigate the global distribution of hourly precipitation and its connections with the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) using both satellite precipitation...     

大气变量物理分解原理及其在区域暴雨分析中的应用

观测的全球大气变量可以物理分解为4个部分:纬圈平均的对称气候、非对称气候、纬圈平均的瞬变对称扰动和非对称扰动。文章用欧洲中期天气预报中心(ECMWF)ERA Interim全球再分析资料(0.75°×0.75°)介绍大气瞬变扰动量中的扰动风提取方法及其在区域暴雨分析中的应用。结果表明:用欧洲高分辨率再分析资料物理分解得到的扰动气流能够较好地反映暴雨的落区和风与雨之间的关系,如暴雨带位于低层大气扰动气流的辐合线上和稳定的暴雨带两侧扰动气流多呈对峙的辐合状态。     

2018年湖南省农村自然灾害社会脆弱性测度

农村社会发展状况与自然灾害发生频率和强度息息相关,提高农村自然灾害社会脆弱性对农村社会发展及实现乡村振兴战略具有重要作用。以湖南省各地级市州农村为研究对象,从敏感性和恢复力两个维度建立社会脆弱性指标评价体系,采用熵值法、模糊综合评价法和函数法测算敏感性、恢复力和脆弱性指数,分析2018年湖南省农村自然灾害社会脆弱性。结果表明,湖南省农村社会脆弱性空间分异特征明显,呈现“东低西高”的分布格局;多数地区的农村社会脆弱性处于低位水平,地区分异显著,具有两极分化分布特点,张家界地区最高,长沙和衡阳地区最低。在中低社会脆弱性的农村,恢复力指数对社会脆弱性贡献最大,其中最为显著的便是社会公共事业的建设水平和基础设施的完善水平。在高社会脆弱性的农村,敏感性指数对社会脆弱性贡献度最大。     

InFOCμS Hard X-ray Imaging Telescope

InFOCμS is a new generation balloon-borne hard X-ray telescope with focusing optics and spectroscopy. We had a successful 22.5-hour flight from Fort Sumner, NM on September 16,17, 2004. In this paper, we present the performance of the hard X-ray telescope, which consists of a depth-graded platinum/carbon multilayer mirror and a CdZnTe detector. The telescope has an effective area of 49 cm² at 30 keV, an angular resolution of 2.4 arcmin (HPD), and a field of view of 11 arcmin (FWHM) depending on energies. The CdZnTe detector is configured with a 12 × 12 segmented array of detector pixels. The pixels are 2 mm square, and are placed on 2.1 mm centers. An averaged energy resolution is 4.4 keV at 60 keV and its standard deviation is 0.36 keV over 128 pixels. The detector is surrounded by a 3-cm thick CsI anti coincidence shield to reduce background from particles and photons not incident along the mirror focal direction. The inflight background is 2.9 × 10⁻⁴ cts cm⁻² sec⁻¹ keV⁻¹ in the 20–50 keV band.     

Performance of Jacobi preconditioning in Krylov subspace solution of finite element equations

This paper examines the performance of the Jacobi preconditioner when used with two Krylov subspace iterative methods. The number of iterations needed for convergence was shown to be different for drained, undrained and consolidation problems, even for similar condition number. The differences were due to differences in the eigenvalue distribution, which cannot be completely described by the condition number alone. For drained problems involving large stiffness ratios between different material zones, ill‐conditioning is caused by these large stiffness ratios. Since Jacobi preconditioning operates on degrees‐of‐freedom, it effectively homogenizes the different spatial sub‐domains. The undrained problem, modelled as a nearly incompressible problem, is much more resistant to Jacobi preconditioning, because its ill‐conditioning arises from the large stiffness ratios between volumetric and distortional deformational modes, many of which involve the similar spatial domains or sub‐domains. The consolidation problem has two sets of degrees‐of‐freedom, namely displacement and pore pressure. Some of the eigenvalues are displacement dominated whereas others are excess pore pressure dominated. Jacobi preconditioning compresses the displacement‐dominated eigenvalues in a similar manner as the drained problem, but pore‐pressure‐dominated eigenvalues are often over‐scaled. Convergence can be accelerated if this over‐scaling is recognized and corrected for. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Obliquity‐dominated glacio‐eustatic sea level change in the early Oligocene: evidence from the shallow marine siliciclastic Rupelian stratotype (Boom Formation,Belgium)

Our results prove that glacio‐eustatic sea level oscillations in the early Oligocene were dominantly obliquity controlled with additional influence of the ∼100‐ and 405‐kyr eccentricity cycles. This was derived from spectral analysis of resistivity records from an extended downhole section of the Boom Clay succession in Belgium, that reveals a prevailing obliquity control on the laterally persistent metre‐scale alternations of shallow marine silt‐ and claystones in the Rupelian historical stratotype succession. These direct measurements of sea level variations in a shallow marine setting corroborate that variations with similar frequencies in benthonic oxygen isotope records from the open ocean indeed reflect, at least partly, ice volume change. A very tentative astronomical tuning has been established for the Boom Clay succession which awaits future confirmation with the addition of more accurate age calibration points.