12023 research outputs found
Sort by
The General Circulation of the Tropical Atmosphere and Climate Changes
Get PDFI examine the general circulation of the tropical atmosphere and climate changes. First, the response of the zonal surface temperature gradients and zonally asymmetric tropical overturning circulations (Walker circulations) to substantial changes in the longwave optical depth of the atmosphere in an idealized general circulation model (GCM) is compared with scaling theories. Second, the response of the hydrological cycle and monsoonal Hadley circulations to changes in top-of-atmosphere insolation associated with orbital precession is examined in an idealized GCM.
Zonal surface temperature gradients and Walker circulations are examined over a wide range of climates simulated by varying the optical thickness in an idealized atmospheric GCM with a climate-invariant zonally asymmetric ocean energy flux. The tropical zonal surface temperature gradient and Walker circulation generally decrease as the climate warms in the GCM simulations. A scaling relationship based on a two-term balance in the surface energy budget accounts for the changes in the zonally asymmetric component of the GCM-simulated surface temperature gradients. A scaling estimate for the Walker circulation based on differential changes (precipitation rates and saturation specific humidity) in the hydrological cycle accounts for the GCM simulations provided locally averaged quantities are used in the estimate.
The results of atmospheric GCM simulations with varied top-of-atmosphere insolation are analyzed to constrain orbitally-forced changes in the tropical atmospheric circulations and precipitation. When the perihelion is varied between solstices, there is more annual-mean precipitation in the hemisphere in which perihelion occurs during the summer solstice. In aquaplanet simulations, this is primarily associated with thermodynamic changes: there is a correlation between the seasonal cycle of the perturbed water vapor and the seasonal cycle of the Hadley circulation convergence. The monsoonal Hadley circulation does not respond to insolation gradients in a simple manner, as the atmosphere’s energy stratification changes. An idealized continent that has a simple treatment of land surface hydrology and inhomogeneous heat capacity allows an assessment of how land-sea contrasts can mediate the response to orbital precession. In these simulations, the response of precipitation to orbital precession depends on changes in the atmospheric circulation, which strengthens when perihelion occurs in the summer of the hemisphere with the land region. The changes in atmospheric circulation are related to changes in both the top-of-atmosphere energy balance and the thermodynamic properties of the surface.</p
A Nearly-Quadratic Gap Between Adaptive and Non-Adaptive Property Testers
Get PDFWe show that for all integers t ≥ 8 and arbitrarily small ε > 0, there exists a graph property Π (which depends on ε) such that ε-testing Π has non-adaptive query complexity Q = Θ(q2-2/t), where q = Õ(ε-1) is the adaptive query complexity. This resolves the question of how beneficial adaptivity is, in the context of proximity-dependent properties ([GR07]). This also gives evidence that the canonical transformation of Goldreich and Trevisan ([GT03]) is essentially optimal when converting an adaptive property tester into a non-adaptive property tester.
To do so, we consider the property of being decomposable into a disjoint union of subgraphs, each of which is a (possibly unbalanced) blow-up of a given base-graph H. In [GR09], Goldreich and Ron proved that when H is a simple t-cycle, the non-adaptive query complexity is Ω(ε-2+2/t, even under the promise that G has maximum degree O(εN). In this thesis, we prove a matching upper bound for the non-adaptive complexity and a tight (up to a polylogarithmic factor) upper bound on the adaptive complexity.
Specifically, we show that for all H, testing whether G is a collection of blow-ups of H and has maximum degree O(εN) requires only O(ε-1lg3ε-1) adaptive queries or O(ε-2+1/(δ+2)+ε-2+2/W) non-adaptive queries, where δ = Δ(H) is the maximum degree of H and W< |H|2 is a bound on the size of witnesses against H.</p
On the Weil-étale Cohomology of S-Integers
Get PDFWe generalize the Lichtenbaum's prototype of Weil-étale cohomology to S-integers and study its relation to the Tate sequences. In the final part, we present a more natural way to define Weil-étale cohomology for one-dimensional arithmetic schemes motivated by a dual quasi-isomorphism between Weil-étale cohomology and étale cohomology
Integrated Circuit Signal Generation and Detection Techniques for Microwave and Sub-Millimeter Wave Signals
Get PDFThe unabated reduction of device feature sizes in semiconductor processes, particularly in complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) processes, has served as the enabling factor behind integrated electronic systems of ever increasing complexity and speeds. As a result, former niche market applications, such as the global-positioning system (GPS), cellular telephony or powerful general purpose computers, have expanded into the field of consumer electronics with tremendous impact on the daily lives of millions of people. It is, therefore, only logical that the future will bring new applications to the mass market that today only exist as niche applications.
Systems operating in the millimeter wave frequency range are an example of a current niche market, with current research striving to fully integrate such systems using advanced semiconductor processing technology. Electromagnetic waves at these frequencies become comparable in size to the electronics circuits. This opens the possibility for novel design approaches that were traditionally not available to integrated circuit radio-frequency designers. On the other hand, the increase in the number of available devices also brings with it new challenges due to increasing variability in device performance. Self-correcting techniques for integrated circuits that offset this increased variability are therefore also highly desirable.
In this dissertation, we explore the above issues on several fronts. We will first present a phase-locked loop synthesizer that auto-corrects its spurious output tones as an example of circuits that correct for a parasitic effect by leveraging the availability of many active devices to construct a digital feedback loop. We will then focus on the effort to operate CMOS integrated circuits in the terahertz regime by developing a solid design foundation for converting signals to frequencies beyond the maximum power gain frequency〖 f〗_max. We will use the insights gained to develop and explore two designs generating power at these high frequencies as proofs of concept. Finally, we will focus on the passive electromagnetic components of such high frequency systems and present a novel way of designing electromagnetic structures that are comparable to the wavelength size in integrated systems by introducing the third physical dimension into the design process for integrated electromagnetic structures.</p
Vanishing Results for Hall-Littlewood Polynomials
Get PDFIt is well-known that if one integrates a Schur function indexed by a partition λ over the symplectic (resp. orthogonal) group, the integral vanishes unless all parts of λ have even multiplicity (resp. all parts of λ are even). In a recent work of Rains and Vazirani, Macdonald polynomial generalizations of these identities and several others were developed and proved using Hecke algebra techniques. However at q=0 (the Hall-Littlewood level), these approaches do not directly work; this obstruction was the motivation for this thesis. We investigate three related projects in chapters 2-4 (the first chapter consists of an introduction to the thesis). In the second chapter, we develop a combinatorial technique for proving the results of Rains and Vazirani at q=0. This approach allows us to generalize some of those results in interesting ways and leads us to a finite-dimensional analog of a recent result of Warnaar, involving the Rogers-Szego polynomials. In the third chapter, we provide a new construction for Koornwinder polynomials at q=0, allowing these polynomials to be viewed as Hall-Littlewood polynomials of type BC. This is a first step in building the analogy between the Macdonald and Koornwinder families at the q=0 limit. We use this construction in conjunction with the combinatorial technique of the previous chapter to prove some vanishing results of Rains and Vazirani for Koornwinder polynomials at q=0. In the fourth chapter, we provide an interpretation for vanishing results for Hall-Littlewood polynomials using p-adic representation theory; it is an analog of the Schur case. This p-adic approach allows us to generalize our original vanishing results. In particular, we exhibit a t-analog of a classical vanishing result for Schur functions due to Littlewood and Weyl; our vanishing condition is in terms of Hall polynomials and Littlewood-Richardson coefficients
Classification of Sub-10 nm Aerosol: Theory, Instrument Development, and Experiment
Get PDFThe large diffusion coefficients of sub-10 nm aerosol have posed a long-standing challenge to the aerosol community; to understand nucleation and early growth, there is a need for methods such as those presented here that transmit a strong, high resolution signal of classified charged aerosol to the detector. I introduce a framework for comparison of the Flagan Laboratory classifiers to other instruments, and I show why our instruments perform favorably relative to these alternatives. Reducing the size of the classification region reduces the effect of diffusion on performance and will ultimately enable the development of personal health monitors. The deployment of our instruments to the Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets experiment at CERN motivated a deeper look into detector performance and design for extreme operating conditions. I caution about the possible interference of ion nucleation with measurements and introduce a process for optimizing detector performance at arbitrary temperature. My experience with aerosol classifications has inspired the invention of separation methods for related fields; I conclude by describing methods for the high resolution separation of gas ions and of aqueous particles such as proteins and antibodies
Using Clumped Isotopes and Radiocarbon to Characterize Rapid Climate Change During the Last Glacial Cycle
Get PDFWe generated records of carbonate clumped isotopes and radiocarbon in deep-sea corals to investigate the role of the deep ocean during rapid climate change events. First we calibrated the carbonate clumped isotope thermometer in modern deep-sea corals. We examined 11 specimens of three species of deep-sea corals and one species of a surface coral spanning a total range in growth temperature of 2–25°C. We find that skeletal carbonate from deep-sea corals shows the same relationship of Δ47 to temperature as does inorganic calcite. We explore several reasons why the clumped isotope compositions of deep-sea coral skeletons exhibit no evidence of a vital effect despite having large conventional isotopic vital effects.
We also used a new dating technique, called the reconnaissance dating method to investigate the ecological response of deep-sea coral communities in the North Atlantic and Southern Ocean to both glaciation and rapid climate change. We find that the deep-sea coral populations of D. dianthus in both the North Atlantic and the Southern Ocean expand at times of rapid climate change. The most important factors for controlling deep-sea coral distributions are likely climatically driven changes in productivity, [O2] and [CO32-].
We take 14 deep-sea corals that we had dated to the Younger Dryas (YD) and Heinrich 1 (H1), two rapid climate change events during the last deglaciation and make U-series dates and measure clumped isotopes in them. We find that temperatures during the YD and H1 are cooler than modern and that H1 exhibits warming with depth. We place our record in the context of atmospheric and marine benthic Δ14C, δ13C, and δ18O records during the deglaciation to understand the role of the deep North Atlantic during the deglaciation.
We also investigated the role of climate change in the distribution of terrestrial megafauna. To help with this, we also developed a method for compound-specific radiocarbon dating of hydroxyproline extracted from bones in the La Brea Tar Pits. We find that the radiocarbon chronologies of megafauna from several locations around the world, including the La Brea Tar Pits, exhibit an increase in abundance of megafauna during Heinrich events.</p
Combinatorial Regression and Improved Basis Pursuit for Sparse Estimation
Get PDFSparse representations accurately model many real-world data sets. Some form of sparsity is conceivable in almost every practical application, from image and video processing, to spectral sensing in radar detection, to bio-computation and genomic signal processing. Modern statistics and estimation theory have come up with ways for efficiently accounting for sparsity in enhanced information retrieval systems. In particular, \emph{compressed sensing} and \emph{matrix rank minimization} are two newly born branches of dimensionality reduction techniques, with very promising horizons. Compressed sensing addresses the reconstruction of sparse signals from ill-conditioned linear measurements, a mathematical problem that arises in practical applications in one of the following forms: model fitting (regression), analog data compression, sub-Nyquist sampling, and data privacy. Low-rank matrix estimation addresses the reconstruction of multi-dimensional data (matrices) with strong coherence properties (low rank) under restricted sensing. This model is motivated by modern problems in machine learning, dynamic systems, and quantum computing.
This thesis provides an in-depth study of recent developments in the fields of compressed sensing and matrix rank minimization, and sets forth new directions for improved sparse recovery techniques. The contributions are threefold: the design of combinatorial structures for sparse encoding, the development of improved recovery algorithms, and extension of sparse vector recovery techniques to other problems.
We propose combinatorial structures for the measurement matrix that facilitate compressing sparse analog signal representations with better guarantees than any of the currently existing architectures. Our constructions are mostly deterministic and are based on ideas from expander graphs, LDPC error-correcting codes and combinatorial separators.
We propose novel reconstruction algorithms that are amenable to the combinatorial structures we study, and have various advantages over the conventional convex optimization techniques for sparse recovery. In addition, we separately study the convex optimization Basis Pursuit method for compressed sensing, and propose regularization schemes that expand the success domain for such algorithms. Our studies contain rigorous analysis, numerical simulations, and examples from practical applications.
Lastly, we extend some of our proposed techniques to low-rank matrix estimation and channel coding. These generalizations lead to the development of a novel and fast reconstruction algorithm for matrix rank minimization, and a modified regularized linear-programming-based decoding algorithm for detecting codewords of a linear LDPC code during an erroneous communication.</p
Scheduling for Heavy-Tailed and Light-Tailed Workloads in Queueing Systems
Get PDFIn much of classical queueing theory, workloads are assumed to be light-tailed, with job sizes being described using exponential or phase type distributions. However, over the past two decades, studies have shown that several real-world workloads exhibit heavy-tailed characteristics. As a result, there has been a strong interest in studying queues with heavy-tailed workloads. So at this stage, there is a large body of literature on queues with light-tailed workloads, and a large body of literature on queues with heavy-tailed workloads. However, heavy-tailed workloads and light-tailed workloads differ considerably in their behavior, and these two types of workloads are rarely studied jointly.
In this thesis, we design scheduling policies for queueing systems, considering both heavy-tailed as well as light-tailed workloads. The motivation for this line of work is twofold. First, since real world workloads can be heavy-tailed or light-tailed, it is desirable to design schedulers that are robust in their performance to distributional assumptions on the workload. Second, there might be scenarios where a heavy-tailed and a light-tailed workload interact in a queueing system. In such cases, it is desirable to design schedulers that guarantee fairness in resource allocation for both workload types.
In this thesis, we study three models involving the design of scheduling disciplines for both heavy-tailed as well as light-tailed workloads. In Chapters 3 and 4, we design schedulers that guarantee robust performance across heavy-tailed and light-tailed workloads. In Chapter 5, we consider a setting in which a heavy-tailed and a light-tailed workload complete for service. In this setting, we design scheduling policies that guarantee good response time tail performance for both workloads, while also maintaining throughput optimality.</p
Topics in Galaxy Evolution: Early Star Formation and Quenching
Get PDFIn this thesis, we present three projects designed to shed light on yet unanswered questions on galaxy formation and evolution. The first two concern a sample of UV-bright starburst galaxies in the local universe (z~0.2). These objects are remarkably similar to star-forming galaxies that were abundant at high redshifts (2<z<3) - the Lyman break galaxies - and can help explain the very distinctive properties observed at such epochs. Thus, these galaxies are denominated Lyman break analogs, or LBAs.
First, we describe a survey of kinematics of the nebular gas in such objects, and how that can help explain the formation process, including gas assembly, in these starbursts. We show strong evidence that the gas kinematics resemble those observed at high redshifts. However, by artificially manipulating our observations to mimic our objects at greater distances, we show how low resolution and signal-to-noise ratios can lead to erroneous conclusions, in particular when attempting to diagnose mergers as the origin of the starburst.
Then, we present results from a pilot survey to study the cold, molecular gas reservoir in such objects. Again, we show that the observed properties are analogous to those observed at high redshift, in particular with respect to baryonic gas fractions in the galaxy, higher than normally found in low-extinction objects in the local universe. Furthermore, we show how gas surface density and star-formation surface density follow the same relation as local galaxies, albeit at much higher values.
Finally, we discuss an observational project designed to measure the mass flux density from the blue sequence to the red sequence across the so-called green valley. We obtain the deepest spectra ever observed of green valley galaxies at intermediate redshifts (z~0.8) in order to measure spectral features from which we can measure the star formation histories of individual galaxies. We measure a mass flux ratio that is higher than observed in the local universe, indicating the red sequence was growing faster when the universe was half its present age than today.</p