An Automatic Method for Detecting Transients and Variable Sources in AST3 Survey Based on Image Subtraction and Random Forest

AST3-2 (the second Antarctic Survey Telescope) is located in Antarctic Dome A, the loftiest ice dome on the Antarctic Plateau. It produces a huge amount of observational data which require a more efficient data reduction program to be developed. Also the data transmission in Antarctica is much difficult, thus it is necessary to perform data reduction and detect variable and transient sources remotely and automatically in Antarctica, but this attempt is restricted by the unsatisfactory performance of the low power consumption computer in Antarctica. For realizing this purpose, to develop a new method based on the existing image subtraction method and random forest algorithm, taking the AST3-2 2016 dataset as the test sample, becomes an alternative choice. This method performs image subtraction on the dataset, then applies the principle component analysis to extract the features of residual images. Random forest is used as a machine learning classifier, and in the test a recall rate of 97% is resulted for the positive sample. Our work has verified the feasibility and accuracy of this method, and finally found out a batch of candidates for variable stars in the AST3-2 2016 dataset.     

城镇化与生态环境耦合的动态模拟——研究进展与展望

Urbanization and eco-environment coupling is a research hotspot.Dynamic simulation of urbanization and eco-environment coupling needs to be improved because the processes of coupling are complex and statistical methods are limited.Systems science and cross-scale coupling allow us to define the coupled urbanization and eco-environment system as an open complex giant system with multiple feedback loops.We review the current state of dynamic simulation of urbanization and eco-environment coupling and find that:(1)The use of dynamic simulation is an increasing trend,the relevant theory is being developed,and modeling processes are being improved;(2)Dynamic simulation technology has become diversified,refined,intelligent and integrated;(3)Simulation is mainly performed for three aspects of the coupling,multiple regions and multiple elements,local coupling and telecoupling,and regional synergy.However,we also found some shortcomings:(1)Basic theories are inadequately developed and insufficiently integrated;(2)The methods of unifying systems and sharing data are behind the times;(3)Coupling relations and the dynamic characteristics of the main driving elements are not fully understood or completely identified.Additionally,simulation of telecoupling does not quantify parameters and is not systemically unified,and therefore cannot be used to represent spatial synergy.In the future,we must promote communication between research networks,technology integration and data sharing to identify the processes governing change in coupled relations and in the main driving elements in urban agglomerations.Finally,we must build decision support systems to plan and ensure regional sustainable urbanization.     

不同饲养方式对乌鳢(Ophiocephalus argus)肠道微生物群落结构差异及种类多样性的影响

以乌鳢(Ophiocephalus argus)为研究对象,采用不同日粮饲喂,试验W1组饲喂冰鲜鱼,试验W2组饲喂畜禽内脏。12周后,取肠道内容物,利用16S rDNA技术研究投喂不同饲粮的乌鳢肠道生物群落结构差异和微生物多样性,分别获得W1组和W2组乌鳢肠道细菌有效序列51124和39298条。结果分析表明;W1组和W2组物种注释(operational taxonomic unit,OTU)数目分别为2631和4114条,分类地位明确的细菌种类分别隶属5个属和49个属,W1组和W2组乌鳢肠道细菌种类差异很大。W1组乌鳢肠道细菌的优势类群是邻单胞菌属(Plesiomonas)、狭义梭菌属(Clostridium sensu stricto)、鲸蜡菌属(Cetobacterium);W2组乌鳢肠道细菌的优势类群是狭义梭菌属(Clostridium sensu stricto)、邻单胞菌属(Plesiomonas)、Spartobacteria、甲基副球菌属(Methyloparacoccus)、杆菌属(Alsobacter)、Saccharibacteria、分支杆菌属(Mycobacterium)。W2组乌鳢肠道细菌香农指数高于W1组乌鳢肠道细菌,表明前者肠道细菌多样性大于后者。本实验揭示了畜禽内脏饲喂乌鳢肠道细菌的群落种类多样性、OTU丰富度和物种总数均高于冰鲜鱼饲喂乌鳢;W1组肠道有益菌OTU丰富度大于W2组,且W2组还存在一些潜在致病菌。本研究为乌鳢的健康养殖和后续肠道微生物资源的挖掘提供了理论依据。     

A multiple shooting approach for the numerical treatment of stellar structure and evolution

We present a new numerical method for solving the system of partial differential equations describing the structure and evolution of a spherically symmetric star. As usual, we employ the transversal method of lines in order to split the equations into a coupled spatial and temporal part. The novel features of the algorithm are the following: (a) Instead of using the Lagrangian picture we formulate the system of partial differential equations in the Eulerian picture. (b) We reformulate the equations of stellar structure as a multipoint boundary-value problem. By means of this reformulation the rather clumsy iterative matching procedure of stellar atmosphere and interior is avoided. (c) The multipoint boundary-value problem is solved by the multiple shooting method. This approach not only ensures a high accuracy of the stellar models calculated at each time step but also allows the free boundaries inside the star due to different energy transport mechanisms to be located exactly. (d) The time derivatives involved in the stellar-structure equations are discretized implicitly to second order accuracy. Moreover, at each time step, the chemical abundances are determined by using a sophisticated update procedure. In this way, a high accuracy is achieved with respect to the integration in time. The algorithm has turned out to be exceedingly reliable and numerically accurate. This is shown by the evolution of a 1 M_⊙ star up to the hydrogen-shell burning phase. In this example, the virial theorem, the law of mass conservation, and the law of energy conservation is fulfilled to a hitherto unattainable degree of accuracy. Since the multiple shooting method, which is at the heart of our approach, is a perfect example of a parallel algorithm, the computational speed of the algorithm might be substantially improved provided easy-to-program, high-performance parallel computers with sufficiently many processors become available in the near future.     

Peaks of People: Using Topographic Prominence as a Method for Determining the Ranked Significance of Population Centers

This article borrows a statistical method from physical geography—topographical prominence—to suggest a new technique for measuring the relative significance or rank of population centers. Unlike raw population measures, prominence gives consideration to both the spatial intensity of concentrated population areas as well as the spatial dependence or independence of neighboring settlement clusters in relation to one another. We explain how to apply the topographic prominence calculation method to gridded population data and examine its practical utility through case studies of several U.S. states. We then discuss some ways in which parametric choices about point-to-surface transformations can result in considerably different outcomes and offer further suggestions for conceptualizing and measuring population center significance.     

Research on Parallel Algorithms for uv-faceting Imaging

The uv-faceting imaging is one of the widely used large field of view imaging technologies, and will be adopted for the data processing of the low-frequency array in the first stage of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA1). Due to the scale of the raw data of SKA1 is unprecedentedly large, the efficiency of data processing directly using the original uv-faceting imaging will be very low. Therefore, a uv-faceting imaging algorithm based on the MPI (Message Passing Interface)+OpenMP (Open Multi-Processing) and a uv-faceting imaging algorithm based on the MPI+CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) are proposed. The most time-consuming data reading and gridding in the algorithm are optimized in parallel. The verification results show that the results of the proposed two algorithms are basically consistent with that obtained by the current mainstream data processing software CASA (Common Astronomy Software Applications), which indicates that the proposed two algorithms are basically correct. Further analysis of the accuracy and total running time shows that the MPI+CUDA method is better than the MPI+OpenMP method in both the correctness rate and running speed. The performance test results show that the proposed algorithms are effective and have certain extensibility.     

Study of Star/Galaxy Classification Based on the XGBoost Algorithm

Machine learning has achieved great success in many areas today. The lifting algorithm has a strong ability to adapt to various scenarios with a high accuracy, and has played a great role in many fields. But in astronomy, the application of lifting algorithms is still rare. In response to the low classification accuracy of the dark star/galaxy source set in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), a new research result of machine learning, eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), has been introduced. The complete photometric data set is obtained from the SDSS-DR7, and divided into a bright source set and a dark source set according to the star magnitude. Firstly, the ten-fold cross-validation method is used for the bright source set and the dark source set respectively, and the XGBoost algorithm is used to establish the star/galaxy classification model. Then, the grid search and other methods are used to adjust the XGBoost parameters. Finally, based on the galaxy classification accuracy and other indicators, the classification results are analyzed, by comparing with the models of function tree (FT), Adaptive boosting (Adaboost), Random Forest (RF), Gradient Boosting Decision Tree (GBDT), Stacked Denoising AutoEncoders (SDAE), and Deep Belief Nets (DBN). The experimental results show that, the XGBoost improves the classification accuracy of galaxies in the dark source classification by nearly 10% as compared to the function tree algorithm, and improves the classification accuracy of sources with the darkest magnitudes in the dark source set by nearly 5% as compared to the function tree algorithm. Compared with other traditional machine learning algorithms and deep neural networks, the XGBoost also has different degrees of improvement.     

Research on the Methods of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation for Active Hydrogen Maserstwo

Active hydrogen maser is the main frequency standard for establishing and maintaining the time scale. It has the characteristics of high short-term stability and low phase noise. At present, it plays an increasingly important role in the international atomic time (TAI) and various local time scales. Firstly, in combination with the internal state parameters of an active hydrogen maser, the correlation between the internal state parameters and the comparison data of a hydrogen maser is analyzed, and a method for the performance monitoring of a hydrogen maser is proposed. Secondly, according to the characteristics of hydrogen maser performance, a method for evaluating the performance of a hydrogen maser is given. The hydrogen maser performance includes mainly two aspects, namely the frequency stability and predictability. The performances of two types of active hydrogen masers (CH1-75 and MHM-2010) are evaluated by this method. The correlation analysis of the atomic clock state parameters and comparison data shows that the state parameter monitoring can effectively predict the variation of the hydrogen maser performance. The evaluation results of atomic clock frequency stability and predictability show that the atomic clock with a higher medium-and-long term frequency stability has a better predictability. There are two methods for the predictability evaluation, one is based on the data published by BIPM (Bureau International des Poids et Measures), and another one is based on the quadratic model. Both methods are consistent with the weights published by BIPM. Therefore, the two methods can be used as a quantitative method to evaluate the predictability of a hydrogen maser.     

A method for aligning the plastic scintillator detector on DAMPE

The Plastic Scintillator Detector(PSD) onboard the DArk Matter Particle Explorer(DAMPE)is designed to measure cosmic ray charge(Z) and to act as a veto detector for gamma ray identification.To fully exploit the charge identification potential of PSD and to enhance its capability to identify gamma ray events, we develop an alignment method for the PSD. The path length of a given track in the volume of a PSD bar is derived taking into account the shift and rotation alignment corrections. By examining energy spectra of corner-passing events and fully contained events, position shifts and rotations of all PSD bars are obtained, and are found to be on average about 1 mm and 0.0015 radian respectively. To validate the alignment method, we introduce artificial shifts and rotations of PSD bars into the detector simulation.These shift and rotation parameters can be recovered successfully by the alignment procedure. As a result of the PSD alignment procedure, the charge resolution of the PSD is improved from 4% to 8%, depending on the nuclei.     

Method‐dependent influence of environmental variables on reef fish assemblages when comparing trap and video surveys

Despite substantial survey effort and a large body of literature on abiotic and biotic factors in temperate reef ecosystems, knowledge of the complex and interactive effects of environmental variables on those communities is limited. Various survey methods have been developed to study environmental predictors of biodiversity, but there remains a gap in our understanding of how survey results are influenced by environmental factors. Here, we surveyed the fish assemblage associated with southeastern U.S. temperate marine reefs with simultaneous, paired trap, and camera gears throughout a ~50,000 km² area during 2011–2013 and assessed the influence of environmental variables on the trap‐ and video‐surveyed assemblages. Predictor variables in the multivariate general linear models included depth, temperature, month, year, location, substrate relief, percent sessile biota, biota type, and turbidity. Depth and latitude had the greatest influence on the fish assemblage for both gears. The influence of habitat variables differed between methods and percent biota explained more variation in the fish assemblage when assessed by traps, while substrate relief and biota type explained more variation in the fish assemblage when assessed by video. In general, habitat complexity was positively related to the abundance of fishes in the video survey, but there was a negative relationship in the trap survey. Differences between gears were species‐specific and the influences of environmental variables were similar for some species such as Haemulon plumierii and Hyporthodus niveatus. The methods presented here can be used to assess method‐dependent differences in fish assemblages, which is a necessary precursor to assess the effect of environmental variables on the accuracy of surveys.