scholarly journals Sparse Bayesian mass-mapping with uncertainties: Full sky observations on the celestial sphere

2020 ◽  
Vol 500 (4) ◽  
pp. 5436-5452
Author(s):  
M A Price ◽  
J D McEwen ◽  
L Pratley ◽  
T D Kitching

ABSTRACT To date weak gravitational lensing surveys have typically been restricted to small fields of view, such that the flat-sky approximation has been sufficiently satisfied. However, with Stage IV surveys (e.g. LSST and Euclid) imminent, extending mass-mapping techniques to the sphere is a fundamental necessity. As such, we extend the sparse hierarchical Bayesian mass-mapping formalism presented in previous work to the spherical sky. For the first time, this allows us to construct maximum a posteriori spherical weak lensing dark-matter mass-maps, with principled Bayesian uncertainties, without imposing or assuming Gaussianty. We solve the spherical mass-mapping inverse problem in the analysis setting adopting a sparsity promoting Laplace-type wavelet prior, though this theoretical framework supports all log-concave posteriors. Our spherical mass-mapping formalism facilitates principled statistical interpretation of reconstructions. We apply our framework to convergence reconstruction on high resolution N-body simulations with pseudo-Euclid masking, polluted with a variety of realistic noise levels, and show a significant increase in reconstruction fidelity compared to standard approaches. Furthermore, we perform the largest joint reconstruction to date of the majority of publicly available shear observational data sets (combining DESY1, KiDS450, and CFHTLens) and find that our formalism recovers a convergence map with significantly enhanced small-scale detail. Within our Bayesian framework we validate, in a statistically rigorous manner, the community’s intuition regarding the need to smooth spherical Kaiser-Squires estimates to provide physically meaningful convergence maps. Such approaches cannot reveal the small-scale physical structures that we recover within our framework.

2019 ◽  
Vol 492 (1) ◽  
pp. 394-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
M A Price ◽  
X Cai ◽  
J D McEwen ◽  
M Pereyra ◽  
T D Kitching ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Until recently, mass-mapping techniques for weak gravitational lensing convergence reconstruction have lacked a principled statistical framework upon which to quantify reconstruction uncertainties, without making strong assumptions of Gaussianity. In previous work, we presented a sparse hierarchical Bayesian formalism for convergence reconstruction that addresses this shortcoming. Here, we draw on the concept of local credible intervals (cf. Bayesian error bars) as an extension of the uncertainty quantification techniques previously detailed. These uncertainty quantification techniques are benchmarked against those recovered via Px-MALA – a state-of-the-art proximal Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm. We find that, typically, our recovered uncertainties are everywhere conservative (never underestimate the uncertainty, yet the approximation error is bounded above), of similar magnitude and highly correlated with those recovered via Px-MALA. Moreover, we demonstrate an increase in computational efficiency of $\mathcal {O}(10^6)$ when using our sparse Bayesian approach over MCMC techniques. This computational saving is critical for the application of Bayesian uncertainty quantification to large-scale stage IV surveys such as LSST and Euclid.


2020 ◽  
Vol 496 (3) ◽  
pp. 3973-3990
Author(s):  
Sut-Ieng Tam ◽  
Richard Massey ◽  
Mathilde Jauzac ◽  
Andrew Robertson

ABSTRACT We quantify the performance of mass mapping techniques on mock imaging and gravitational lensing data of galaxy clusters. The optimum method depends upon the scientific goal. We assess measurements of clusters’ radial density profiles, departures from sphericity, and their filamentary attachment to the cosmic web. We find that mass maps produced by direct (KS93) inversion of shear measurements are unbiased, and that their noise can be suppressed via filtering with mrlens. Forward-fitting techniques, such as lenstool, suppress noise further, but at a cost of biased ellipticity in the cluster core and overestimation of mass at large radii. Interestingly, current searches for filaments are noise-limited by the intrinsic shapes of weakly lensed galaxies, rather than by the projection of line-of-sight structures. Therefore, space-based or balloon-based imaging surveys that resolve a high density of lensed galaxies could soon detect one or two filaments around most clusters.


2021 ◽  
Vol 124 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.F. Dewey ◽  
E.S. Kiseeva ◽  
J.A. Pearce ◽  
L.J. Robb

Abstract Space probes in our solar system have examined all bodies larger than about 400 km in diameter and shown that Earth is the only silicate planet with extant plate tectonics sensu stricto. Venus and Earth are about the same size at 12 000 km diameter, and close in density at 5 200 and 5 500 kg.m-3 respectively. Venus and Mars are stagnant lid planets; Mars may have had plate tectonics and Venus may have had alternating ca. 0.5 Ga periods of stagnant lid punctuated by short periods of plate turnover. In this paper, we contend that Earth has seen five, distinct, tectonic periods characterized by mainly different rock associations and patterns with rapid transitions between them; the Hadean to ca. 4.0 Ga, the Eo- and Palaeoarchaean to ca. 3.1 Ga, the Neoarchaean to ca. 2.5 Ga, the Proterozoic to ca. 0.8 Ga, and the Neoproterozoic and Phanerozoic. Plate tectonics sensu stricto, as we know it for present-day Earth, was operating during the Neoproterozoic and Phanerozoic, as witnessed by features such as obducted supra-subduction zone ophiolites, blueschists, jadeite, ruby, continental thin sediment sheets, continental shelf, edge, and rise assemblages, collisional sutures, and long strike-slip faults with large displacements. From rock associations and structures, nothing resembling plate tectonics operated prior to ca. 2.5 Ga. Archaean geology is almost wholly dissimilar from Proterozoic-Phanerozoic geology. Most of the Proterozoic operated in a plate tectonic milieu but, during the Archaean, Earth behaved in a non-plate tectonic way and was probably characterised by a stagnant lid with heat-loss by pluming and volcanism, together with diapiric inversion of tonalite-trondjemite-granodiorite (TTG) basement diapirs through sinking keels of greenstone supracrustals, and very minor mobilism. The Palaeoarchaean differed from the Neoarchaean in having a more blobby appearance whereas a crude linearity is typical of the Neoarchaean. The Hadean was probably a dry stagnant lid Earth with the bulk of its water delivered during the late heavy bombardment, when that thin mafic lithosphere was fragmented to sink into the asthenosphere and generate the copious TTG Ancient Grey Gneisses (AGG). During the Archaean, a stagnant unsegmented, lithospheric lid characterised Earth, although a case can be made for some form of mobilism with “block jostling”, rifting, compression and strike-slip faulting on a small scale. We conclude, following Burke and Dewey (1973), that there is no evidence for subduction on a global scale before about 2.5 Ga, although there is geochemical evidence for some form of local recycling of crustal material into the mantle during that period. After 2.5 Ga, linear/curvilinear deformation belts were developed, which “weld” cratons together and palaeomagnetism indicates that large, lateral, relative motions among continents had begun by at least 1.88 Ga. The “boring billion”, from about 1.8 to 0.8 Ga, was a period of two super-continents (Nuna, also known as Columbia, and Rodinia) characterised by substantial magmatism of intraplate type leading to the hypothesis that Earth had reverted to a single plate planet over this period; however, orogens with marginal accretionary tectonics and related magmatism and ore genesis indicate that plate tectonics was still taking place at and beyond the bounds of these supercontinents. The break-up of Rodinia heralded modern plate tectonics from about 0.8 Ga. Our conclusions are based, almost wholly, upon geological data sets, including petrology, ore geology and geochemistry, with minor input from modelling and theory.


Atmosphere ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald Lohmann

The ongoing world-wide increase of installed photovoltaic (PV) power attracts notice to weather-induced PV power output variability. Understanding the underlying spatiotemporal volatility of solar radiation is essential to the successful outlining and stable operation of future power grids. This paper concisely reviews recent advances in the characterization of irradiance variability, with an emphasis on small spatial and temporal scales (respectively less than about 10 km and 1 min), for which comprehensive data sets have recently become available. Special attention is given to studies dealing with the quantification of variability using such unique data, the analysis and modeling of spatial smoothing, and the evaluation of temporal averaging.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lukas Krasauskas ◽  
Jörn Ungermann ◽  
Peter Preusse ◽  
Felix Friedl-Vallon ◽  
Andreas Zahn ◽  
...  

<p>We present measurements of ozone, water vapour and nitric acid in the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere (UTLS) over North Atlantic and Europe. The measurements were acquired with the Gimballed Limb Observer for Radiance Imaging of the Atmosphere (GLORIA) during the Wave Driven Isentropic Exchange (WISE) campaign in October 2017. GLORIA is an airborne limb imager capable of acquiring both 2-D data sets (curtains along the flight path) and, when the carrier aircraft is flying around the observed air mass, spatially highly resolved 3-D tomographic data. We show a case study of a Rossby wave (RW) breaking event observed during two subsequent flights two days apart. RW breaking is known to steepen tracer gradients and facilitate stratosphere-troposphere exchange (STE). Our measurements reveal complex spatial structures in stratospheric tracers (ozone and nitric acid) with multiple vertically stacked filaments. Backward trajectory analysis is used to demonstrate that these features are related to several previous Rossby wave breaking events and that the small-scale structure of the UTLS in the Rossby wave breaking region, which is otherwise very hard to observe, can be understood as stirring and mixing of air masses of tropospheric and stratospheric origin. It is also shown that a strong nitric acid enhancement observed just above the tropopause is likely a result of NO<sub>x</sub> production by lightning activity. The measurements showed signatures of enhanced mixing between stratospheric and tropospheric air near the polar jet with some transport of water vapour into the stratosphere. Some of the air masses seen in 3-D data were encountered again two days later, stretched to very thin filament (horizontal thickness down to 30 km at some altitudes) rich in stratospheric tracers. This repeated measurement allowed us to directly observe and analyse the progress of mixing processes in a thin filament over two days. Our results provide direct insight into small-scale dynamics of the UTLS in the Rossby wave breaking region, witch is of great importance to understanding STE and poleward transport in the UTLS.</p>


Author(s):  
Anteneh Ayanso ◽  
Paulo B. Goes ◽  
Kumar Mehta

Relational databases have increasingly become the basis for a wide range of applications that require efficient methods for exploratory search and retrieval. Top-k retrieval addresses this need and involves finding a limited number of records whose attribute values are the closest to those specified in a query. One of the approaches in the recent literature is query-mapping which deals with converting top-k queries into equivalent range queries that relational database management systems (RDBMSs) normally support. This approach combines the advantages of simplicity as well as practicality by avoiding the need for modifications to the query engine, or specialized data structures and indexing techniques to handle top-k queries separately. This paper reviews existing query-mapping techniques in the literature and presents a range query estimation method based on cost modeling. Experiments on real world and synthetic data sets show that the cost-based range estimation method performs at least as well as prior methods and avoids the need to calibrate workloads on specific database contents.


2021 ◽  
pp. 127-144
Author(s):  
Priscilla Alderson

Adverse mortality and morbidity effects of the huge oil spills in Bayelsa State, Niger Delta, illustrate the value of critical realism’s four planes of social being for organising complex findings and for combining large- and small-scale data sets. These planes cover every aspect of being human: bodies in relation to nature; interpersonal relations; larger social relations and structures; and inner human being in the mental-social-embodied personality. Chapter 5 also considers critical realist approaches to managing data-analysis: laminated systems analysis; interdisciplinary research and policy-making; critical realist theories about interdisciplinarity; overcoming barriers to interdisciplinarity, and interdisciplinary commitments. The detailed examples are about improving the physical health of people with a diagnosis of serious mental illness, and feminist-informed counselling after sexual assault.


1990 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 262-272
Author(s):  
William Miller

Paleontologists have lavished much time and energy on description and explanation of large-scale patterns in the fossil record (e.g., mass extinctions, histories of monophyletic taxa, deployment of major biogeographic units), while paying comparatively little attention to biologic patterns preserved only in local stratigraphic sequences. Interpretation of the large-scale patterns will always be seen as the chief justification for the science of paleontology, but solving problems framed by long time spans and large areas is rife with tenuous inference and patterns are prone to varied interpretation by different investigators using virtually the same data sets (as in the controversy over ultimate cause of the terminal Cretaceous extinctions). In other words, the large-scale patterns in the history of life are the true philosophical property of paleontology, but there will always be serious problems in attempting to resolve processes that transpired over millions to hundreds-of-millions of years and encompassed vast areas of seafloor or landscape. By contrast, less spectacular and more commonplace changes in local habitats (often related to larger-scale events and cycles) and attendant biologic responses are closer to our direct experience of the living world and should be easier to interpret unequivocally. These small-scale responses are reflected in the fossil record at the scale of local outcrops.


2020 ◽  
Vol 500 (1) ◽  
pp. 684-695
Author(s):  
Aabha Monga ◽  
Rahul Sharma ◽  
Jiajia Liu ◽  
Consuelo Cid ◽  
Wahab Uddin ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT The partial eruption of a filament channel with bifurcated substructures is investigated using data sets obtained from both ground-based and space-borne facilities. Small-scale flux reconnection/cancellation events in the region triggered the pile-up of ambient magnetic field, observed as bright extreme ultraviolet (EUV) loops in close proximity to the filament channel. This led to the formation of a V-shaped cusp structure at the site of interaction between the coalesced EUV loops and the filament channel, with the presence of distinct plasmoid structures and associated bidirectional flows. Analysis of imaging data from SDO/AIA further suggests vertical splitting of the filament structure into two substructures. The perturbed upper branch of the filament structure rose up and erupted with the onset of an energetic GOES M1.4 flare at 04:30 ut on 2015 January 28. The estimated twist number and squashing factor obtained from non-linear force free-field extrapolation of the magnetic field data support the vertical split in the filament structure with high twist in the upper substructure. The loss in equilibrium of the upper branch due to torus instability implies that this is a potential triggering mechanism for the observed partial eruption.


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