1,721,251 research outputs found

    A multiscale method for gamma/h discrimination in extensive air showers

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    We present a new method for the identification of extensive air showers initiated by different primaries. The method uses the multiscale concept and is based on the analysis of multifractal behaviour and lacunarity of secondary particle distributions together with a properly designed and trained artificial neural network. The separation technique is particularly suited for being applied when the topology of the particle distribution in the shower front is as largely detailed as possible. Here, our method is discussed and applied to a set of fully simulated vertical showers in the experimental framework of ARGO-YBJ, taking advantage of both the space and time distribution of the detected secondary particles in the shower front, to obtain hadron to gamma primary separation in EAS analysis. We show that the presented approach gives very good results, leading, in the 1-10 Tev energy range, to an improvement of the discrimination power with respect to the existing figures for extended shower detectors. The technique shows up to be very promising and its application may have important astrophysical prospects in different experimental environment of extended air shower study

    Application of Machine and Deep Learning Methods to the Analysis of IACTs Data

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    The Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov technique opened a previously inaccessible window for the study of astrophysical sources of radiation in the very high-energy regime (TeV) and is playing a significant role in the discovery and characterization of very high-energy gamma-ray emitters. However, the data collected by Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) are highly dominated, even for the most powerful sources, by the overwhelming background due to cosmic-ray nuclei and cosmic-ray electrons. For this reason, the analysis of IACTs data demands a highly efficient background rejection technique able to discriminate gamma-ray induced signal. On the other hand, the analysis of ring images produced by muons in an IACT provides a powerful and precise method to calibrate the overall optical throughput and monitor the telescope optical point-spread function. A robust muon tagger to collect large and highly pure samples of muon events is therefore required for calibration purposes. Gamma/hadron discrimination and muon tagging through Machine and Deep Learning techniques are the main topics of the present work

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    Wavelet analysis ultra-thin metasurface for hypersonic flow control

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    Metasurfaces are one of the new frontier of material science and engineering, finding widespread applications in a number of fields, including acoustics and aeroacoustics. In the present paper we propose a novel metasurface specifically fabricated for the hypersonic flow transition control, together with a new strategy for metasurface characterization in the ultrasonic regime. Instead of a conventional porous layer, the metasurface here presented consists in a flat plate with a set of regularly distributed sharp slots. We experimentally observed that such a geometry significantly reduces the wall reflection coefficient, which is known to play a fundamental role in the boundary layer transition phenomenon. Numerical simulations led us to interpret the incident wave scattering as the underlying mechanism related to the observed reflection coefficient reduction. The metasurface characterization has been carried out by comparing the conventional reflection coefficient in the Fourier domain with an innovative wavelet transform-based strategy. As an overall result, the surface geometry here proposed has been shown to offer a twofold advantage: i) it is more effective in ultrasonic incident wave control with respect to conventional porous layers, ii) it needs less manufacturing time, a primary requirement of this type of technology. More interesting, we have put in evidence how a multiresolution approach, like that here proposed, can be highly promising as characterization tool for further metasurfaces with a more complex and multi-scale geometry, being wavelets able to capture the multiscale behaviour of the reflected wave, overcoming the well-known limits of Fourier-based strategies of data analysis

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more sophisticated methods
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