scholarly journals A SETI survey of the Vela region using the Murchison Widefield Array: Orders of magnitude expansion in search space

Author(s):  
C. D. Tremblay ◽  
S. J. Tingay

Abstract Following the results of our previous low-frequency searches for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), directed towards the Galactic Centre and the Orion Molecular Cloud (Galactic Anticentre), we report a new large-scale survey towards the Vela region with the lowest upper limits thus far obtained with the MWA. Using the MWA in the frequency range 98–128 MHz over a 17-h period, a $400\,\textrm{deg}^{2}$ field centred on the Vela Supernova Remnant was observed with a frequency resolution of 10 kHz. Within this field, there are six known exoplanets. At the positions of these exoplanets, we searched for narrow-band signals consistent with radio transmissions from intelligent civilisations. No unknown signals were found with a 5 $\sigma$ detection threshold. In total, across this work plus our two previous surveys, we have now examined 75 known exoplanets at low frequencies. In addition to the known exoplanets, we have included in our analysis the calculation of the Effective Isotropic Radiated Power (EIRP) upper limits towards over 10 million stellar sources in the Vela field with known distances from Gaia (assuming a 10-kHz transmission bandwidth). Using the methods of Wright, Kanodia, & Lubar (2018) to describe an eight-dimensional parameter space for SETI searches, our survey achieves the largest search fraction yet, two orders of magnitude higher than the previous highest (our MWA Galactic Anticentre survey), reaching a search fraction of $\ \sim2\,{\times}\,10^{-16}$ . We also compare our results to previous SETI programs in the context of the $\mbox{EIRP}_{\textrm{min}}$ —Transmitter Rate plane. Our results clearly continue to demonstrate that SETI has a long way to go. But, encouragingly, the MWA SETI surveys also demonstrate that large-scale SETI surveys, in particular for telescopes with a large field-of-view, can be performed commensally with observations designed primarily for astrophysical purposes.

Author(s):  
N. Hurley-Walker ◽  
P. J. Hancock ◽  
T. M. O. Franzen ◽  
J. R. Callingham ◽  
A. R. Offringa ◽  
...  

Abstract This work makes available a further $2\,860~\text{deg}^2$ of the GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky Murchison Widefield Array (GLEAM) survey, covering half of the accessible galactic plane, across 20 frequency bands sampling 72–231 MHz, with resolution $4\,\text{arcmin}-2\,\text{arcmin}$ . Unlike previous GLEAM data releases, we used multi-scale CLEAN to better deconvolve large-scale galactic structure. For the galactic longitude ranges $345^\circ < l < 67^\circ$ , $180^\circ < l < 240^\circ$ , we provide a compact source catalogue of 22 037 components selected from a 60-MHz bandwidth image centred at 200 MHz, with RMS noise $\approx10-20\,\text{mJy}\,\text{beam}^{-1}$ and position accuracy better than 2 arcsec. The catalogue has a completeness of 50% at ${\approx}120\,\text{mJy}$ , and a reliability of 99.86%. It covers galactic latitudes $1^\circ\leq|b|\leq10^\circ$ towards the galactic centre and $|b|\leq10^\circ$ for other regions, and is available from Vizier; images covering $|b|\leq10^\circ$ for all longitudes are made available on the GLEAM Virtual Observatory (VO).server and SkyView.


Author(s):  
Mengyao Xue ◽  
N. D. R. Bhat ◽  
S. E. Tremblay ◽  
S. M. Ord ◽  
C. Sobey ◽  
...  

AbstractThe Murchison Widefield Array, and its recently developed Voltage Capture System, facilitates extending the low-frequency range of pulsar observations at high-time and -frequency resolution in the Southern Hemisphere, providing further information about pulsars and the ISM. We present the results of an initial time-resolved census of known pulsars using the Murchison Widefield Array. To significantly reduce the processing load, we incoherently sum the detected powers from the 128 Murchison Widefield Array tiles, which yields ~10% of the attainable sensitivity of the coherent sum. This preserves the large field-of-view (~450 deg2 at 185 MHz), allowing multiple pulsars to be observed simultaneously. We developed a WIde-field Pulsar Pipeline that processes the data from each observation and automatically folds every known pulsar located within the beam. We have detected 50 pulsars to date, 6 of which are millisecond pulsars. This is consistent with our expectation, given the telescope sensitivity and the sky coverage of the processed data (~17 000 deg2). For 10 pulsars, we present the lowest frequency detections published. For a subset of the pulsars, we present multi-frequency pulse profiles by combining our data with published profiles from other telescopes. Since the Murchison Widefield Array is a low-frequency precursor to the Square Kilometre Array, we use our census results to forecast that a survey using the low-frequency component of the Square Kilometre Array Phase 1 can potentially detect around 9 400 pulsars.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peiran Zhang ◽  
Joseph Rufo ◽  
Chuyi Chen ◽  
Jianping Xia ◽  
Zhenhua Tian ◽  
...  

AbstractThe ability to precisely manipulate nano-objects on a large scale can enable the fabrication of materials and devices with tunable optical, electromagnetic, and mechanical properties. However, the dynamic, parallel manipulation of nanoscale colloids and materials remains a significant challenge. Here, we demonstrate acoustoelectronic nanotweezers, which combine the precision and robustness afforded by electronic tweezers with versatility and large-field dynamic control granted by acoustic tweezing techniques, to enable the massively parallel manipulation of sub-100 nm objects with excellent versatility and controllability. Using this approach, we demonstrated the complex patterning of various nanoparticles (e.g., DNAs, exosomes, ~3 nm graphene flakes, ~6 nm quantum dots, ~3.5 nm proteins, and ~1.4 nm dextran), fabricated macroscopic materials with nano-textures, and performed high-resolution, single nanoparticle manipulation. Various nanomanipulation functions, including transportation, concentration, orientation, pattern-overlaying, and sorting, have also been achieved using a simple device configuration. Altogether, acoustoelectronic nanotweezers overcome existing limitations in nano-manipulation and hold great potential for a variety of applications in the fields of electronics, optics, condensed matter physics, metamaterials, and biomedicine.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1274
Author(s):  
Loau Al-Bahrani ◽  
Mehdi Seyedmahmoudian ◽  
Ben Horan ◽  
Alex Stojcevski

Few non-traditional optimization techniques are applied to the dynamic economic dispatch (DED) of large-scale thermal power units (TPUs), e.g., 1000 TPUs, that consider the effects of valve-point loading with ramp-rate limitations. This is a complicated multiple mode problem. In this investigation, a novel optimization technique, namely, a multi-gradient particle swarm optimization (MG-PSO) algorithm with two stages for exploring and exploiting the search space area, is employed as an optimization tool. The M particles (explorers) in the first stage are used to explore new neighborhoods, whereas the M particles (exploiters) in the second stage are used to exploit the best neighborhood. The M particles’ negative gradient variation in both stages causes the equilibrium between the global and local search space capabilities. This algorithm’s authentication is demonstrated on five medium-scale to very large-scale power systems. The MG-PSO algorithm effectively reduces the difficulty of handling the large-scale DED problem, and simulation results confirm this algorithm’s suitability for such a complicated multi-objective problem at varying fitness performance measures and consistency. This algorithm is also applied to estimate the required generation in 24 h to meet load demand changes. This investigation provides useful technical references for economic dispatch operators to update their power system programs in order to achieve economic benefits.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Soren Wainio-Theberge ◽  
Annemarie Wolff ◽  
Georg Northoff

AbstractSpontaneous neural activity fluctuations have been shown to influence trial-by-trial variation in perceptual, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes. However, the complex electrophysiological mechanisms by which these fluctuations shape stimulus-evoked neural activity remain largely to be explored. Employing a large-scale magnetoencephalographic dataset and an electroencephalographic replication dataset, we investigate the relationship between spontaneous and evoked neural activity across a range of electrophysiological variables. We observe that for high-frequency activity, high pre-stimulus amplitudes lead to greater evoked desynchronization, while for low frequencies, high pre-stimulus amplitudes induce larger degrees of event-related synchronization. We further decompose electrophysiological power into oscillatory and scale-free components, demonstrating different patterns of spontaneous-evoked correlation for each component. Finally, we find correlations between spontaneous and evoked time-domain electrophysiological signals. Overall, we demonstrate that the dynamics of multiple electrophysiological variables exhibit distinct relationships between their spontaneous and evoked activity, a result which carries implications for experimental design and analysis in non-invasive electrophysiology.


Author(s):  
T. M. O. Franzen ◽  
N. Hurley-Walker ◽  
S. V. White ◽  
P. J. Hancock ◽  
N. Seymour ◽  
...  

Abstract We present the South Galactic Pole (SGP) data release from the GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky Murchison Widefield Array (GLEAM) survey. These data combine both years of GLEAM observations at 72–231 MHz conducted with the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) and cover an area of 5 113 $\mathrm{deg}^{2}$ centred on the SGP at $20^{\mathrm{h}} 40^{\mathrm{m}} < \mathrm{RA} < 05^{\mathrm{h}} 04^{\mathrm{m}}$ and $-48^{\circ} < \mathrm{Dec} < -2^{\circ} $ . At 216 MHz, the typical rms noise is ${\approx}5$ mJy beam–1 and the angular resolution ${\approx}2$ arcmin. The source catalogue contains a total of 108 851 components above $5\sigma$ , of which 77% have measured spectral indices between 72 and 231 MHz. Improvements to the data reduction in this release include the use of the GLEAM Extragalactic catalogue as a sky model to calibrate the data, a more efficient and automated algorithm to deconvolve the snapshot images, and a more accurate primary beam model to correct the flux scale. This data release enables more sensitive large-scale studies of extragalactic source populations as well as spectral variability studies on a one-year timescale.


2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Umberto Villa ◽  
Noemi Petra ◽  
Omar Ghattas

We present an extensible software framework, hIPPYlib, for solution of large-scale deterministic and Bayesian inverse problems governed by partial differential equations (PDEs) with (possibly) infinite-dimensional parameter fields (which are high-dimensional after discretization). hIPPYlib overcomes the prohibitively expensive nature of Bayesian inversion for this class of problems by implementing state-of-the-art scalable algorithms for PDE-based inverse problems that exploit the structure of the underlying operators, notably the Hessian of the log-posterior. The key property of the algorithms implemented in hIPPYlib is that the solution of the inverse problem is computed at a cost, measured in linearized forward PDE solves, that is independent of the parameter dimension. The mean of the posterior is approximated by the MAP point, which is found by minimizing the negative log-posterior with an inexact matrix-free Newton-CG method. The posterior covariance is approximated by the inverse of the Hessian of the negative log posterior evaluated at the MAP point. The construction of the posterior covariance is made tractable by invoking a low-rank approximation of the Hessian of the log-likelihood. Scalable tools for sample generation are also discussed. hIPPYlib makes all of these advanced algorithms easily accessible to domain scientists and provides an environment that expedites the development of new algorithms.


2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (S291) ◽  
pp. 375-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Desvignes ◽  
Ismaël Cognard ◽  
David Champion ◽  
Patrick Lazarus ◽  
Patrice Lespagnol ◽  
...  

AbstractWe present an ongoing survey with the Nançay Radio Telescope at L-band. The targeted area is 74° ≲ l < 150° and 3.5° < |b| < 5°. This survey is characterized by a long integration time (18 min), large bandwidth (512 MHz) and high time and frequency resolution (64 μs and 0.5 MHz) giving a nominal sensitivity limit of 0.055 mJy for long period pulsars. This is about 2 times better than the mid-latitude HTRU survey, and is designed to be complementary with current large scale surveys. This survey will be more sensitive to transients (RRATs, intermittent pulsars), distant and faint millisecond pulsars as well as scintillating sources (or any other kind of radio faint sources) than all previous short-integration surveys.


Author(s):  
Luca Accorsi ◽  
Daniele Vigo

In this paper, we propose a fast and scalable, yet effective, metaheuristic called FILO to solve large-scale instances of the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem. Our approach consists of a main iterative part, based on the Iterated Local Search paradigm, which employs a carefully designed combination of existing acceleration techniques, as well as novel strategies to keep the optimization localized, controlled, and tailored to the current instance and solution. A Simulated Annealing-based neighbor acceptance criterion is used to obtain a continuous diversification, to ensure the exploration of different regions of the search space. Results on extensively studied benchmark instances from the literature, supported by a thorough analysis of the algorithm’s main components, show the effectiveness of the proposed design choices, making FILO highly competitive with existing state-of-the-art algorithms, both in terms of computing time and solution quality. Finally, guidelines for possible efficient implementations, algorithm source code, and a library of reusable components are open-sourced to allow reproduction of our results and promote further investigations.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samier Pierre ◽  
Raguenel Margaux ◽  
Darche Gilles

Abstract Solving the equations governing multiphase flow in geological formations involves the generation of a mesh that faithfully represents the structure of the porous medium. This challenging mesh generation task can be greatly simplified by the use of unstructured (tetrahedral) grids that conform to the complex geometric features present in the subsurface. However, running a million-cell simulation problem using an unstructured grid on a real, faulted field case remains a challenge for two main reasons. First, the workflow typically used to construct and run the simulation problems has been developed for structured grids and needs to be adapted to the unstructured case. Second, the use of unstructured grids that do not satisfy the K-orthogonality property may require advanced numerical schemes that preserve the accuracy of the results and reduce potential grid orientation effects. These two challenges are at the center of the present paper. We describe in detail the steps of our workflow to prepare and run a large-scale unstructured simulation of a real field case with faults. We perform the simulation using four different discretization schemes, including the cell-centered Two-Point and Multi-Point Flux Approximation (respectively, TPFA and MPFA) schemes, the cell- and vertex-centered Vertex Approximate Gradient (VAG) scheme, and the cell- and face-centered hybrid Mimetic Finite Difference (MFD) scheme. We compare the results in terms of accuracy, robustness, and computational cost to determine which scheme offers the best compromise for the test case considered here.


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