No Arabic abstract
V893 Sco is a recently rediscovered bright eclipsing dwarf nova below the period gap. Most recently, Mason et al. (2001) proposed an idea that V893 Sco is an ER UMa-type dwarf nova. From the analysis of our CCD observations and reports to VSNET, we show that V893 Sco bears no similar characters with ER UMa stars. We propose that the arguments in Mason et al. (2001), including the evolutionary status of ER UMa star as inferred from the observation of V893 Sco, need to be reconsidered.
ER UMa stars are a recently recognized small subgroup of SU UMa-type dwarf novae, which are characterized by the extremely high outburst frequency and short (19--48 d) supercycles. From the current thermal-tidal disk instability scheme, they are considered to be high mass-transfer SU UMa-type dwarf novae, and comprise a link to permanent superhumpers below the period gap. They do not only provide an opportunity to test the applicability of thermal-tidal instability model but also pose problems on the origin of high mass-transfer in short orbital-period cataclysmic variables. A historical review of this subgroup and recent topics of ER UMa stars, the unique pattern of superhump evolution and the helium ER UMa analog (CR Boo), are also discussed.
The nature of the progenitor star (or system) for the Type IIn supernova (SN) subclass remains uncertain. While there are direct imaging constraints on the progenitors of at least four Type IIn supernovae, one of them being SN 2010jl, ambiguities remain in the interpretation of the unstable progenitors and the explosive events themselves. A blue source in pre-explosion HST/WFPC2 images falls within the 5 sigma astrometric error circle derived from post-explosion ground-based imaging of SN 2010jl. At the time the ground-based astrometry was published, however, the SN had not faded sufficiently for post-explosion HST follow-up observations to determine a more precise astrometric solution and/or confirm if the pre-explosion source had disappeared, both of which are necessary to ultimately disentangle the possible progenitor scenarios. Here we present HST/WFC3 imaging of the SN 2010jl field obtained in 2014 and 2015, when the SN had faded sufficiently to allow for new constraints on the progenitor. The SN, which is still detected in the new images, is offset by 0.099 +/- 0.008 (24 +/- 2 pc) from the underlying and extended source of emission that contributes at least partially, if not entirely, to the blue source previously suggested as the candidate progenitor in the WFPC2 data. This point alone rules out the possibility that the blue source in the pre-explosion images is the exploding star, but may instead suggest an association with a young (<5-6 Myr) cluster and still argues for a massive (>30 solar masses) progenitor. We obtain new upper limits on the flux from a single star at the SN position in the pre-explosion WFPC2 and Spitzer/IRAC images that may ultimately be used to constrain the progenitor properties.
We study both numerically and analytically the possibility of using an adiabatic passage control method to construct a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) for Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) in the time domain, in exact one-to-one correspondence with the traditional optical MZI that involves two beam splitters and two mirrors. The interference fringes one obtains from such a minimum-disturbance set up clearly demonstrates that, fundamentally, an atom laser is not monochromatic due to interatomic interactions. We also consider how the amount of entanglement in the system correlates to the interference fringes.
LAMOST J202629.80+423652.0 has been recently classified as a new symbiotic star containing a long-period Mira, surrounded by dust (D-type) and displaying in the optical spectra high ionization emission lines, including the Raman-scattered OVI at 6825 Ang. We have observed LAMOST J202629.80+423652.0 photometrically in the BVRI bands and spectroscopically over the 3500-8000 Ang range. We have found it to be a normal G8IV sub-giant star, deprived of any emission line in its spectrum, and reddened by E(B-V)=0.35 mag. Combining our photometry with data from all-sky patrol surveys, we find LAMOST J202629.80+423652.0 to be non variable, so not pulsating as a Mira. We have compiled from existing sources its spectral energy distribution, extending well into the mid-Infrared, and found it completely dominated by the G8IV photospheric stellar emission, without any sign of circumstellar dust. We therefore conclude that LAMOST J202629.80+423652.0 is not a symbiotic star, nor it is pulsating or been enshrouded in dust.
Attention mechanisms play a central role in NLP systems, especially within recurrent neural network (RNN) models. Recently, there has been increasing interest in whether or not the intermediate representations offered by these modules may be used to explain the reasoning for a models prediction, and consequently reach insights regarding the models decision-making process. A recent paper claims that `Attention is not Explanation (Jain and Wallace, 2019). We challenge many of the assumptions underlying this work, arguing that such a claim depends on ones definition of explanation, and that testing it needs to take into account all elements of the model, using a rigorous experimental design. We propose four alternative tests to determine when/whether attention can be used as explanation: a simple uniform-weights baseline; a variance calibration based on multiple random seed runs; a diagnostic framework using frozen weights from pretrained models; and an end-to-end adversarial attention training protocol. Each allows for meaningful interpretation of attention mechanisms in RNN models. We show that even when reliable adversarial distributions can be found, they dont perform well on the simple diagnostic, indicating that prior work does not disprove the usefulness of attention mechanisms for explainability.