Search

Neutral hydrogen (HI) intensity mapping (IM) surveys are considered a promising tool for investigating the expansion history of the Universe. In this work, we explore the potential of MeerKAT HI IM observations in interferometer mode to estimate the power spectrum and constrain cosmological parameters within typical dark energy models. We employ an approach called the "delay spectrum," which allows us to separate the weak HI signal from foreground contamination in the frequency domain. Our findings indicate that the choice of survey fields significantly impacts the fractional errors on the power spectrum ($\Delta P/P$) within a limited observational time of 10 hours. As the integration time increases from 10 hours to 10,000 hours, $\Delta P/P$ progressively decreases until cosmic variance begins to dominate. For a total observation time of 10,000 hours, the lowest $\Delta P/P$ at low $k$ can be achieved by tracking 100 points for MeerKAT L-band (900-1200 MHz) and 10 points for MeerKAT UHF-band (580-1000 MHz). Next, we assess the performance of HI IM in constraining typical dark energy models. We find that MeerKAT HI IM survey in interferometer mode demonstrates limited capability in constraining the dark-energy equation of state, even when combined with Planck data., Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures; accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

We present a forecast of the cosmological parameter estimation using fast radio bursts (FRBs) from the upcoming Square Kilometre Array (SKA), focusing on the issues of dark energy, the Hubble constant, and baryon density. We simulate $10^5$ and $10^6$ localized FRBs from a 10-year SKA observation, and find that: (i) using $10^6$ FRB data alone can tightly constrain dark-energy equation of state parameters better than CMB+BAO+SNe, providing an independent cosmological probe to explore dark energy; (ii) combining the FRB data with gravitational-wave standard siren data from 10-year observation with the Einstein Telescope, the Hubble constant can be constrained to a sub-percent level, serving as a powerful low-redshift probe; (iii) using $10^6$ FRB data can constrain the baryon density $\Omega_{\rm b}h$ to a precision of $\sim 0.1\%$. Our results indicate that SKA-era FRBs will provide precise cosmological measurements to shed light on both dark energy and the missing baryon problem, and help resolve the Hubble tension., Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures; accepted for publication in Science China-Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) have been found in great numbers but the physical mechanism of these sources is still a mystery. The redshift evolutions of the FRB energy distribution function and the volumetric rate shed light on revealing the origin of the FRBs. However, such estimations rely on the dispersion measurement (DM)-redshift ($z$) relationship. A few of FRBs detected recently show large excess DM beyond the expectation from the cosmological and Milky Way contributions, which indicates large spread of DM from their host galaxies. In this work, we adopt the lognormal distributed $\rm DM_{host}$ model and estimate the energy function using the non-repeating FRBs selected from the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME)/FRB Catalog 1. By comparing the lognormal distributed $\rm DM_{host}$ model to the constant $\rm DM_{host}$ model, the FRB energy function results are consistent within the measurement uncertainty. We also estimate the volumetric rate of the non-repeating FRBs in three different redshift bins. The volumetric rate shows that the trend is consistent with the stellar-mass density redshift evolution. Since the lognormal distributed $\rm DM_{host}$ model increases the measurement errors, the inference of FRBs tracking the stellar-mass density is nonetheless undermined., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) stands as a pivotal source for studying weak gravitational lensing. While the lensed CMB aids in constraining cosmological parameters, it simultaneously smooths the original CMB's features. The angular power spectrum of the unlensed CMB showcases sharper acoustic peaks and more pronounced damping tails, enhancing the precision of inferring cosmological parameters that influence these aspects. Although delensing diminishes the $B$-mode power spectrum, it facilitates the pursuit of primordial gravitational waves and enables a lower variance reconstruction of lensing and additional sources of secondary CMB anisotropies. In this work, we explore the potential of deep learning techniques, specifically the U-Net++ algorithm, to play a pivotal role in CMB delensing. We analyze three fields, namely $T$, $Q$, and $U$ sky maps, present the angular power spectra of the CMB delensed $TT$, $EE$, $BB$, and $TE$, and compare them with the unlensed CMB angular power spectra. Our findings reveal that the angular power spectrum of the lensed CMB, processed by U-Net++, closely aligns with that of the unlensed CMB. Thus, U-Net++ based CMB delensing proves to be effective in mitigating the impacts of weak gravitational lensing, paving the way for enhancing the CMB delensing power spectrum in forthcoming CMB experiments. The code utilized for this analysis is available on GitHub., Comment: 15 pages, 13 figures

We present a forecast of the cosmological parameter estimation using fast radio bursts (FRBs) from the upcoming Square Kilometre Array (SKA), focusing on the issues of dark energy, the Hubble constant, and baryon density. We simulate $10^5$ and $10^6$ localized FRBs from a 10-year SKA observation, and find that: (i) using $10^6$ FRB data alone can tightly constrain dark-energy equation of state parameters better than CMB+BAO+SNe, providing an independent cosmological probe to explore dark energy; (ii) combining the FRB data with gravitational-wave standard siren data from 10-year observation with the Einstein Telescope, the Hubble constant can be constrained to a sub-percent level, serving as a powerful low-redshift probe; (iii) using $10^6$ FRB data can constrain the baryon density $\Omega_{\rm b}h$ to a precision of $\sim 0.1\%$. Our results indicate that SKA-era FRBs will provide precise cosmological measurements to shed light on both dark energy and the missing baryon problem, and help resolve the Hubble tension., Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures; accepted for publication in Science China-Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy

We present the early science results from a blind search of the extragalactic HI 21-cm absorption lines at z $\leqslant$ 0.09 with the drift-scan observation of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). We carried out the search using the data collected in 643.8 hours by the ongoing Commensal Radio Astronomy FasT Survey (CRAFTS), which spans a sky area of 3155 deg$^{2}$ and covers 44827 radio sources with a flux density greater than 12 mJy. Due to the radio frequency interference (RFI), only the relatively clean data in the frequency range of 1.3-1.45 GHz are used in the present work. Under the assumption of $T_{s}/c_{f}$ = 100 K, the total completeness-corrected comoving absorption path length spanned by our data and sensitive to Damped Lyman $\alpha$ Absorbers (DLAs) are $\Delta X^{inv}$ = 8.33$\times10^3$ ($\Delta z^{inv} = 7.81\times10^{3}$) for intervening absorption. For associated absorption, the corresponding values are $\Delta X^{asc}$ = 12.8 ($\Delta z^{asc} = 11.9$). Three known HI absorbers (UGC 00613, 3C 293 and 4C +27.14) and two new HI absorbers (towards NVSS J231240-052547 and NVSS J053118+315412) are detected blindly. We fit the HI profiles with multi-components Gaussian functions and calculate the redshift (0.063, 0.066), width, flux density, optical depth and HI column densities for each absorption. Our results demonstrate the power of FAST in blindly searching HI absorbers. For absorption towards NVSS J231240-052547, the optical counterparts are faint and currently lack existing spectra. The most likely interpretation is that a radio-loud active galactic nucleus (AGN) is faint in the optical as the background source, with a faint optical absorber in between. NVSS J053118+315412 exhibits an associated absorption with a complex profile, which may suggest unsettled gas structures or gas accretion onto the supermassive black hole (SMBH)., Comment: 18 pages, 19 figures

This work presents the initial results of the drift-scan observation for the neutral hydrogen (HI) intensity mapping survey with the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). The data analyzed in this work were collected in night observations from 2019 through 2021. The primary findings are based on 28 hours of drift-scan observation carried out over seven nights in 2021, which covers $60\,{\rm deg}^2$ sky area. Our main findings are: (i) Our calibration strategy can successfully correct both the temporal and bandpass gain variation over the $4$-hour drift-scan observation. (ii) The continuum maps of the surveyed region are made with frequency resolution of $28$ kHz and pixel area of $2.95\,{\rm arcmin}^2$. The pixel noise levels of the continuum maps are slightly higher than the forecast assuming $T_{\rm sys}=20\,{\rm K}$, which are $36.0$ mK (for 10.0 s integration time) at the $1050$--$1150$ MHz band, and $25.9$ mK (for 16.7 s integration time) at the $1323$--$1450$ MHz band, respectively. (iii) The flux-weighted differential number count is consistent with the NRAO-VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) catalog down to the confusion limit $\sim7\,{\rm mJy}/{\rm beam}^{-1}$. (iv) The continuum flux measurements of the sources are consistent with that found in the literature. The difference in the flux measurement of $81$ isolated NVSS sources is about $6.3\%$. Our research offers a systematic analysis for the FAST HI intensity mapping drift-scan survey and serves as a helpful resource for further cosmology and associated galaxies sciences with the FAST drift-scan survey., Comment: 26 pages, 26 figures, and 4 tables

In neutral hydrogen (HI) galaxy survey, a significant challenge is to identify and extract the HI galaxy signal from observational data contaminated by radio frequency interference (RFI). For a drift-scan survey, or more generally a survey of a spatially continuous region, in the time-ordered spectral data, the HI galaxies and RFI all appear as regions which extend an area in the time-frequency waterfall plot, so the extraction of the HI galaxies and RFI from such data can be regarded as an image segmentation problem, and machine learning methods can be applied to solve such problems. In this study, we develop a method to effectively detect and extract signals of HI galaxies based on a Mask R-CNN network combined with the PointRend method. By simulating FAST-observed galaxy signals and potential RFI impacts, we created a realistic data set for the training and testing of our neural network. We compared five different architectures and selected the best-performing one. This architecture successfully performs instance segmentation of HI galaxy signals in the RFI-contaminated time-ordered data (TOD), achieving a precision of 98.64% and a recall of 93.59%., Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures, 1 tables. Accepted for publication in RAA

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) have been found in great numbers but the physical mechanism of these sources is still a mystery. The redshift evolutions of the FRB energy distribution function and the volumetric rate shed light on revealing the origin of the FRBs. However, such estimations rely on the dispersion measurement (DM)-redshift ($z$) relationship. A few of FRBs detected recently show large excess DM beyond the expectation from the cosmological and Milky Way contributions, which indicates large spread of DM from their host galaxies. In this work, we adopt the lognormal distributed $\rm DM_{host}$ model and estimate the energy function using the non-repeating FRBs selected from the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME)/FRB Catalog 1. By comparing the lognormal distributed $\rm DM_{host}$ model to the constant $\rm DM_{host}$ model, the FRB energy function results are consistent within the measurement uncertainty. We also estimate the volumetric rate of the non-repeating FRBs in three different redshift bins. The volumetric rate shows that the trend is consistent with the stellar-mass density redshift evolution. Since the lognormal distributed $\rm DM_{host}$ model increases the measurement errors, the inference of FRBs tracking the stellar-mass density is nonetheless undermined., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures

Blind cleaning methods are currently the preferred strategy for handling foreground contamination in single-dish HI intensity mapping surveys. Despite the increasing sophistication of blind techniques, some signal loss will be inevitable across all scales. Constructing a corrective transfer function using mock signal injection into the contaminated data has been a practice relied on for HI intensity mapping experiments. However, assessing whether this approach is viable for future intensity mapping surveys where precision cosmology is the aim, remains unexplored. In this work, using simulations, we validate for the first time the use of a foreground transfer function to reconstruct power spectra of foreground-cleaned low-redshift intensity maps and look to expose any limitations. We reveal that even when aggressive foreground cleaning is required, which causes ${>}\,50\%$ negative bias on the largest scales, the power spectrum can be reconstructed using a transfer function to within sub-percent accuracy. We specifically outline the recipe for constructing an unbiased transfer function, highlighting the pitfalls if one deviates from this recipe, and also correctly identify how a transfer function should be applied in an auto-correlation power spectrum. We validate a method that utilises the transfer function variance for error estimation in foreground-cleaned power spectra. Finally, we demonstrate how incorrect fiducial parameter assumptions (up to ${\pm}100\%$ bias) in the generation of mocks, used in the construction of the transfer function, do not significantly bias signal reconstruction or parameter inference (inducing ${<}\,5\%$ bias in recovered values)., Comment: 25 pages, 20 figures. See Figure 4 for the main demonstration of the transfer function's performance for reconstructing signal loss from foreground cleaning. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

We present and compare several methods to mitigate time-correlated (1/f) noise within the HI intensity mapping component of the MeerKAT Large Area Synoptic Survey (MeerKLASS). By simulating scan strategies, the HI signal, foreground emissions, white and correlated noise, we assess the ability of various data processing pipelines to recover the power spectrum of HI brightness temperature fluctuations. We use MeerKAT pilot data to assess the level of 1/f noise expected for the MeerKLASS survey and use these measurements to create realistic levels of time-correlated noise for our simulations. We find the time-correlated noise component within the pilot data to be between 10 and 20 times higher than the white noise level at the scale of k = 0.04 Mpc^-1. Having determined that the MeerKAT 1/f noise is partially correlated across all the frequency channels, we employ Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) as a technique to remove both the 1/f noise and Galactic foregrounds but find that over-cleaning results in the removal of HI power at large (angular and radial) scales; a power loss of 40 per cent is seen for a 3-mode SVD clean at the scale of k = 0.04 Mpc^-1. We compare the impact of map-making using weighting by the full noise covariance (i.e. including a 1/f component), as opposed to just a simple unweighted binning, finding that including the time-correlated noise information reduces the excess power added by 1/f noise by up to 30 per cent., Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, accepted by MNRAS. This replacement features updated simulations which now include foreground emissions, telescope slew time and a receiver and elevation-dependant temperature contribution to each receiver which changes over frequency

Neutral hydrogen (HI) intensity mapping (IM) surveys are considered a promising tool for investigating the expansion history of the Universe. In this work, we explore the potential of MeerKAT HI IM observations in interferometer mode to estimate the power spectrum and constrain cosmological parameters within typical dark energy models. We employ an approach called the "delay spectrum," which allows us to separate the weak HI signal from foreground contamination in the frequency domain. Our findings indicate that the choice of survey fields significantly impacts the fractional errors on the power spectrum ($\Delta P/P$) within a limited observational time of 10 hours. As the integration time increases from 10 hours to 10,000 hours, $\Delta P/P$ progressively decreases until cosmic variance begins to dominate. For a total observation time of 10,000 hours, the lowest $\Delta P/P$ at low $k$ can be achieved by tracking 100 points for MeerKAT L-band (900-1200 MHz) and 10 points for MeerKAT UHF-band (580-1000 MHz). Next, we assess the performance of HI IM in constraining typical dark energy models. We find that MeerKAT HI IM survey in interferometer mode demonstrates limited capability in constraining the dark-energy equation of state, even when combined with Planck data., Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures; accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

In the neutral hydrogen (HI) intensity mapping (IM) survey, the foreground contamination on the cosmological signals is extremely severe, and the systematic effects caused by radio telescopes themselves further aggravate the difficulties in subtracting foreground. In this work, we investigate whether the deep learning method, concretely the 3D U-Net algorithm here, can play a crucial role in foreground subtraction when considering the systematic effect caused by the telescope primary beam. We consider two beam models, i.e., the Gaussian beam model as a simple case and the Cosine beam model as a sophisticated case. To make a comparison, and also a combination, with the U-Net method, we also employ the traditional principal component analysis (PCA) method in the foreground subtraction. We find that, in the case of the Gaussian beam, both the PCA and U-Net methods can effectively clean the foreground, but in the case of the Cosine beam, U-Net performs much better than PCA in cleaning the foreground. In order to show how well the PCA and U-Net methods can recover the HI signals, we also derive the angular power spectra, as well as the 2D power spectrum of HI after performing the foreground subtractions. It is found that, in the case of Gaussian beam, the concordance with the original HI map using U-Net is better than that using PCA by $27.4\%$, and in the case of Cosine beam, the concordance using U-Net is better than that using PCA by $144.7\%$. Therefore, the U-Net based foreground subtraction can efficiently eliminate the telescope primary beam effect and shed new light on recovering the HI power spectrum for future HI IM experiments., Comment: 17 pages, 12 figures

Animal models of X-linked juvenile retinoschisis (XLRS) are valuable tools for understanding basic biochemical function of retinoschisin (RS1) protein and to investigate outcomes of preclinical efficacy and toxicity studies. In order to work with an eye larger than mouse, we generated and characterized an Rs1h-/y knockout rat model created by removing exon 3. This rat model expresses no normal RS1 protein. The model shares features of an early onset and more severe phenotype of human XLRS. The morphologic pathology includes schisis cavities at postnatal day 15 (p15), photoreceptors that are misplaced into the subretinal space and OPL, and a reduction of photoreceptor cell numbers by p21. By 6 mo age only 1-3 rows of photoreceptors nuclei remain, and the inner/outer segment layers and the OPL shows major changes. Electroretinogram recordings show functional loss with considerable reduction of both the a-wave and b-wave by p28, indicating early age loss and dysfunction of photoreceptors. The ratio of b-/a-wave amplitudes indicates impaired synaptic transmission to bipolar cells in addition. Supplementing the Rs1h-/y exon3-del retina with normal human RS1 protein using AAV8-RS1 delivery improved the retinal structure. This Rs1h-/y rat model provides a further tool to explore underlying mechanisms of XLRS pathology and to evaluate therapeutic intervention for the XLRS condition.

Animal models of X-linked juvenile retinoschisis (XLRS) are valuable tools for understanding basic biochemical function of retinoschisin (RS1) protein and to investigate outcomes of preclinical efficacy and toxicity studies. In order to work with an eye larger than mouse, we generated and characterized an Rs1h-/y knockout rat model created by removing exon 3. This rat model expresses no normal RS1 protein. The model shares features of an early onset and more severe phenotype of human XLRS. The morphologic pathology includes schisis cavities at postnatal day 15 (p15), photoreceptors that are misplaced into the subretinal space and OPL, and a reduction of photoreceptor cell numbers by p21. By 6 mo age only 1-3 rows of photoreceptors nuclei remain, and the inner/outer segment layers and the OPL shows major changes. Electroretinogram recordings show functional loss with considerable reduction of both the a-wave and b-wave by p28, indicating early age loss and dysfunction of photoreceptors. The ratio of b-/a-wave amplitudes indicates impaired synaptic transmission to bipolar cells in addition. Supplementing the Rs1h-/y exon3-del retina with normal human RS1 protein using AAV8-RS1 delivery improved the retinal structure. This Rs1h-/y rat model provides a further tool to explore underlying mechanisms of XLRS pathology and to evaluate therapeutic intervention for the XLRS condition.

The 21 cm intensity mapping (IM) technique provides us with an efficient way to observe the cosmic large-scale structure (LSS). From the LSS data, one can use the baryon acoustic oscillation and redshift space distortion to trace the expansion and growth history of the universe, and thus measure the dark energy parameters. In this paper, we make a forecast for cosmological parameter estimation with the synergy of three 21 cm IM experiments. Specifically, we adopt a novel joint survey strategy, FAST ($0

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) can be used to measure the Hubble constant by employing the Macquart relation. However, at present, only a small number of FRB events are localized to their host galaxies with known redshifts. In this paper, we develop a Bayesian method to statistically measure the Hubble constant using unlocalized FRBs and galaxy catalog data, which makes it possible to constrain cosmological parameters by using a large number of FRB data without known redshift information. Using the six FRB events observed by ASKAP combined with the big bang nucleosynthesis result, we obtain $H_0=71.7^{+8.8}_{-7.4}$ km s$^{-1}$ Mpc$^{-1}$ in the simulation-based case and $H_0=71.5^{+10.0}_{-8.1}$ km s$^{-1}$ Mpc$^{-1}$ in the observation-based case ($68\%$ highest-density interval), assuming different host galaxy population parameters. We also estimate that in the next few years, using thousands of FRBs could achieve a $3\%$ precision on the random error of the Hubble constant., Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) can be used to measure the Hubble constant by employing the Macquart relation. However, at present, only a small number of FRB events are localized to their host galaxies with known redshifts. In this paper, we develop a Bayesian method to statistically measure the Hubble constant using unlocalized FRBs and galaxy catalog data, which makes it possible to constrain cosmological parameters by using a large number of FRB data without known redshift information. Using the six FRB events observed by ASKAP combined with the big bang nucleosynthesis result, we obtain $H_0=71.7^{+8.8}_{-7.4}$ km s$^{-1}$ Mpc$^{-1}$ in the simulation-based case and $H_0=71.5^{+10.0}_{-8.1}$ km s$^{-1}$ Mpc$^{-1}$ in the observation-based case ($68\%$ highest-density interval), assuming different host galaxy population parameters. We also estimate that in the next few years, using thousands of FRBs could achieve a $3\%$ precision on the random error of the Hubble constant., Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures

The neutral hydrogen (HI) intensity mapping (IM) survey is regarded as a promising approach for cosmic large-scale structure (LSS) studies. A major issue for the HI IM survey is to remove the bright foreground contamination. A key to successfully remove the bright foreground is to well control or eliminate the instrumental effects. In this work, we consider the instrumental effect of polarization leakage and use the U-Net approach, a deep learning-based foreground removal technique, to eliminate the polarization leakage effect. The thermal noise is assumed to be a subdominant factor compared with the polarization leakage for future HI IM surveys and ignored in this analysis. In this method, the principal component analysis (PCA) foreground subtraction is used as a preprocessing step for the U-Net foreground subtraction. Our results show that the additional U-Net processing could either remove the foreground residual after the conservative PCA subtraction or compensate for the signal loss caused by the aggressive PCA preprocessing. Finally, we test the robustness of the U-Net foreground subtraction technique and show that it is still reliable in the case of existing constraint error on HI fluctuation amplitude., Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures; accepted for publication in MNRAS

The 21 cm intensity mapping (IM) technique provides us with an efficient way to observe the cosmic large-scale structure (LSS). From the LSS data, one can use the baryon acoustic oscillation and redshift space distortion to trace the expansion and growth history of the universe, and thus measure the dark energy parameters. In this paper, we make a forecast for cosmological parameter estimation with the synergy of three 21 cm IM experiments. Specifically, we adopt a novel joint survey strategy, FAST ($0

Gravitational waves (GWs) from compact binary coalescences encode the absolute luminosity distances of GW sources. Once the redshifts of GW sources are known, one can use the distance-redshift relation to constrain cosmological parameters. One way to obtain the redshifts is to localize GW sources by GW observations and then use galaxy catalogs to determine redshifts from a statistical analysis of redshift information of the potential host galaxies, commonly referred to as the dark siren method. The third-generation (3G) GW detectors are planned to work in the 2030s and will observe numerous compact binary coalescences. Using these GW events as dark sirens requires high-quality galaxy catalogs from future sky survey projects. The China Space Station Telescope (CSST) will be launched in 2024 and will observe billions of galaxies within a 17500 deg$^2$ survey area with redshift up to $z\sim 4$, providing photometric and spectroscopic galaxy catalogs. In this work, we simulate the CSST galaxy catalogs and the 5-year GW data from the 3G GW detectors and combine them to infer the Hubble constant ($H_0$). Our results show that the measurement precision of $H_0$ could reach the sub-percent level, meeting the standard of precision cosmology. We conclude that the synergy between CSST and the 3G GW detectors is of great significance in measuring the Hubble constant., Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures; accepted for publication in Science China Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy

The Galactic center $\gamma$-ray excess, detected by the Fermi-LAT, is a very attractive tentative signal from dark matter annihilation. Searching for associated synchrotron emissions can test the dark matter interpretation for this excess. We geared the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) towards Coma Berenices (a dwarf Spheroidal galaxy) for 2-hours of observation, and found no significant continuum radio emission, which could { put constraints on the dark matter annihilation cross section}, from our target. We set very stringent annihilation cross-section constraints, with roughly an order of magnitude improvement over a large range of masses compared with previous radio searches. The dark matter scenario for the Galactic center $\gamma$-ray excess is in tension with the FAST observation for reasonable choices of astrophysical factors. But considering the large uncertainty on astrophysical parameters, such as the magnetic field, the diffusion coefficient, and the diffusion radius, and on DM halo parameters, the dark matter interpretation for the excess could still survive. Further radio observations by the FAST and other radio telescopes may reveal more about the dark matter properties., Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, 1 table

We present a detection of correlated clustering between MeerKAT radio intensity maps and galaxies from the WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey. We find a $7.7\sigma$ detection of the cross-correlation power spectrum, the amplitude of which is proportional to the product of the HI density fraction ($\Omega_{\rm HI}$), HI bias ($b_{\rm HI}$) and the cross-correlation coefficient ($r$). We therefore obtain the constraint $\Omega_{\rm HI} b_{\rm HI} r\,{=}\,[0.86\,{\pm}\,0.10\,({\rm stat})\,{\pm}\,0.12\,({\rm sys})]\,{\times}\,10^{-3}$, at an effective scale of $k_{\rm eff}\,{\sim}\,0.13\,h\,{\rm Mpc}^{-1}$. The intensity maps were obtained from a pilot survey with the MeerKAT telescope, a 64-dish pathfinder array to the SKA Observatory (SKAO). The data were collected from 10.5 hours of observations using MeerKAT's L-band receivers over six nights covering the 11hr field of WiggleZ, in the frequency range $1015-973\,{\rm MHz}$ (0.400$\,{<}\,z\,{<}\,$0.459 in redshift). This detection is the first practical demonstration of the multi-dish auto-correlation intensity mapping technique for cosmology. This marks an important milestone in the roadmap for the cosmology science case with the full SKAO., Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures. See Fig.5 for the main result, showing the cross-power spectrum between MeerKAT and WiggleZ, revealing the 7.7\sigma detection. v2 is the version accepted for publication by MNRAS. The main changes from v1 were in introducing the radio intensity mapping data

We present the science case for surveys with the Tianlai dish array interferometer tuned to the $\left[ 1300, 1400 \right] \mathrm{MHz}$ frequency range. Starting from a realistic generation of mock visibility data according to the survey strategy, we reconstruct a map of the sky and perform a foreground subtraction. We show that a survey of the North Celestial Polar cap during a year of observing time and covering an area of $150 \, \mathrm{deg^2}$ would reach a sensitivity of $ 1.5-2 \, \mathrm{mK} $ per $1 \, \mathrm{MHz} \times 0.25^2 \, \mathrm{deg^2 }$ voxel and be marginally impacted by mode-mixing. Tianlai would be able to detect a handful $(\sim 10)$ of nearby massive \HI clumps as well as a very strong cross-correlation signal of 21\,cm intensity maps with the North Celestial Cap Survey optical galaxies. We have also studied the performance of a mid-latitude survey, covering $\sim 1500 \, \mathrm{deg^2}$ centered on a declination of $\delta=55^\circ$, which overlaps the Sloan Digital Sky Survey footprint. Despite a higher noise level for the mid-latitude survey, as well as significant distortions due to mode mixing, Tianlai would be able to detect a highly significant cross-correlation between the 21\,cm signal and the Sloan spectroscopic galaxy sample. Using the extragalactic signals from either or both of these surveys, it will be possible to assess the impact of calibration uncertainties, antenna pattern uncertainties, sources of noise, and mode mixing for future surveys requiring higher sensitivity., Comment: 20 pages, 22 figures. Submitted to MNRAS

In the neutral hydrogen (HI) intensity mapping (IM) survey, the foreground contamination on the cosmological signals is extremely severe, and the systematic effects caused by radio telescopes themselves further aggravate the difficulties in subtracting foreground. In this work, we investigate whether the deep learning method, concretely the 3D U-Net algorithm here, can play a crucial role in foreground subtraction when considering the systematic effect caused by the telescope's primary beam. We consider two beam models, i.e., the Gaussian beam model as a simple case and the Cosine beam model as a sophisticated case. The traditional principal component analysis (PCA) method is employed as a comparison and, more importantly, as the preprocessing step for the U-Net method to reduce the sky map dynamic range. We find that in the case of the Gaussian beam, the PCA method can effectively clean the foreground. However, the PCA method cannot handle the systematic effect induced by the Cosine beam, and the additional U-Net method can improve the result significantly. In order to show how well the PCA and U-Net methods can recover the HI signals, we also derive the HI angular power spectra, as well as the HI 2D power spectra, after performing the foreground subtractions. It is found that, in the case of Gaussian beam, the concordance with the original HI map using U-Net is better than that using PCA by $27.4\%$, and in the case of Cosine beam, the concordance using U-Net is better than that using PCA by $144.8\%$. Therefore, the U-Net based foreground subtraction can efficiently eliminate the telescope primary beam effect and shed new light on recovering the HI power spectrum for future HI IM experiments., Comment: 19 pages, 13 figures

21cm intensity mapping experiments are bringing an influx of high spectral resolution observational data in the $\sim100$ MHz $- 1$ GHz regime. We use pilot $971-1075$ MHz data from MeerKAT in single-dish mode, recently used to test the calibration and data reduction scheme of the upcoming MeerKLASS survey, to probe the spectral index of diffuse synchrotron emission below 1 GHz within $145^{\circ} < \alpha < 180^{\circ}$, $-1^{\circ} < \delta < 8^{\circ}$. Through comparisons with data from the OVRO Long Wavelength Array and the Maipu and MU surveys, we find an average spectral index of $-2.75 < \beta < -2.71$ between 45 and 1055 MHz. By fitting for spectral curvature with a spectral index of the form $\beta + c \, {\rm{ln}}(\nu / 73~{\rm MHz})$, we measure $\beta = -2.55 \pm 0.13$ and $c = -0.12 \pm 0.05$ within our target field. Our results are in good agreement (within $1\sigma$) with existing measurements from experiments such as ARCADE2 and EDGES. These results show the calibration accuracy of current data and demonstrate that MeerKLASS will also be capable of achieving a secondary science goal of probing the interstellar medium., Comment: 17 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS. Updated to match published paper (additional references and acknowledgements)

We investigate the 1/f noise of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) receiver system using drift-scan data from an intensity mapping pilot survey. All the 19 beams have 1/f fluctuations with similar structures. Both the temporal and the 2D power spectrum densities are estimated. The correlations directly seen in the time series data at low frequency $f$ are associated with the sky signal, perhaps due to a coupling between the foreground and the system response. We use Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) to subtract the foreground. By removing the strongest components, the measured 1/f noise power can be reduced significantly. With 20 modes subtraction, the knee frequency of the 1/f noise in a 10 MHz band is reduced to $1.8 \times 10^{-3}\Hz$, well below the thermal noise over 500-seconds time scale. The 2D power spectra show that the 1/f-type variations are restricted to a small region in the time-frequency space and the correlations in frequency can be suppressed with SVD modes subtraction. The residual 1/f noise after the SVD mode subtraction is uncorrelated in frequency, and a simple noise diode frequency-independent calibration of the receiver gain at 8s interval does not affect the results. The 1/f noise can be important for HI intensity mapping, we estimate that the 1/f noise has a knee frequency $(f_{k}) \sim$ 6 $\times$ 10$^{-4}$Hz, and time and frequency correlation spectral indices $(\alpha) \sim 0.65$, $(\beta) \sim 0.8$ after the SVD subtraction of 30 modes. This can bias the HI power spectrum measurement by 10 percent., Comment: 13 pages,17 figures, MNRAS accepted

Human and animal retinal optical coherence tomography (OCT) images show a hyporeflective band (HB) between the photoreceptor tip and retinal pigment epithelium layers whose mechanisms are unclear. In mice, HB magnitude and the external limiting membrane-retinal pigment epithelium (ELM-RPE) thickness appear to be dependent on light exposure, which is known to alter photoreceptor mitochondria respiration. Here, we test the hypothesis that these two OCT biomarkers are linked to metabolic activity of the retina. Acetazolamide, which acidifies the subretinal space, had no significant impact on HB magnitude but produced ELM-RPE thinning. Mitochondrial stimulation with 2,4-dinitrophenol reduced both HB magnitude and ELM-RPE thickness in parallel, and also reduced F-actin expression in the same retinal region, but without altering ERG responses. For mice strains with relatively lower (C57BL/6J) or higher (129S6/ev) rod mitochondrial efficacy, light-induced changes in HB magnitude and ELM-RPE thickness were correlated. Humans, analyzed from published data captured with a different protocol, showed a similar light-dark change pattern in HB magnitude as in the mice. Our results indicate that mitochondrial respiration underlies changes in HB magnitude upstream of the pH-sensitive ELM-RPE thickness response. These two distinct OCT biomarkers could be useful indices for non-invasively evaluating photoreceptor mitochondrial metabolic activity.

21cm intensity mapping experiments are bringing an influx of high spectral resolution observational data in the $\sim100$ MHz $- 1$ GHz regime. We use pilot $971-1075$ MHz data from MeerKAT in single-dish mode, recently used to test the calibration and data reduction scheme of the upcoming MeerKLASS survey, to probe the spectral index of diffuse synchrotron emission below 1 GHz within $145^{\circ} < \alpha < 180^{\circ}$, $-1^{\circ} < \delta < 8^{\circ}$. Through comparisons with data from the OVRO Long Wavelength Array and the Maipu and MU surveys, we find an average spectral index of $-2.75 < \beta < -2.71$ between 45 and 1055 MHz. By fitting for spectral curvature with a spectral index of the form $\beta + c \, {\rm{ln}}(\nu / 73~{\rm MHz})$, we measure $\beta = -2.55 \pm 0.13$ and $c = -0.12 \pm 0.05$ within our target field. Our results are in good agreement (within $1\sigma$) with existing measurements from experiments such as ARCADE2 and EDGES. These results show the calibration accuracy of current data and demonstrate that MeerKLASS will also be capable of achieving a secondary science goal of probing the interstellar medium., Comment: 17 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS. Updated to match published paper (additional references and acknowledgements)

We investigate the 1/f noise of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) receiver system using drift-scan data from an intensity mapping pilot survey. All the 19 beams have 1/f fluctuations with similar structures. Both the temporal and the 2D power spectrum densities are estimated. The correlations directly seen in the time series data at low frequency $f$ are associated with the sky signal, perhaps due to a coupling between the foreground and the system response. We use Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) to subtract the foreground. By removing the strongest components, the measured 1/f noise power can be reduced significantly. With 20 modes subtraction, the knee frequency of the 1/f noise in a 10 MHz band is reduced to $1.8 \times 10^{-3}\Hz$, well below the thermal noise over 500-seconds time scale. The 2D power spectra show that the 1/f-type variations are restricted to a small region in the time-frequency space and the correlations in frequency can be suppressed with SVD modes subtraction. The residual 1/f noise after the SVD mode subtraction is uncorrelated in frequency, and a simple noise diode frequency-independent calibration of the receiver gain at 8s interval does not affect the results. The 1/f noise can be important for HI intensity mapping, we estimate that the 1/f noise has a knee frequency $(f_{k}) \sim$ 6 $\times$ 10$^{-4}$Hz, and time and frequency correlation spectral indices $(\alpha) \sim 0.65$, $(\beta) \sim 0.8$ after the SVD subtraction of 30 modes. This can bias the HI power spectrum measurement by 10 percent., Comment: 13 pages,17 figures, MNRAS accepted

The Tianlai Cylinder Pathfinder is a radio interferometer array designed to test techniques for 21 cm intensity mapping in the post-reionization Universe, with the ultimate aim of mapping the large scale structure and measuring cosmological parameters such as the dark energy equation of state. Each of its three parallel cylinder reflectors is oriented in the north-south direction, and the array has a large field of view. As the Earth rotates, the northern sky is observed by drift scanning. The array is located in Hongliuxia, a radio-quiet site in Xinjiang, and saw its first light in September 2016. In this first data analysis paper for the Tianlai cylinder array, we discuss the sub-system qualification tests, and present basic system performance obtained from preliminary analysis of the commissioning observations during 2016-2018. We show typical interferometric visibility data, from which we derive the actual beam profile in the east-west direction and the frequency band-pass response. We describe also the calibration process to determine the complex gains for the array elements, either using bright astronomical point sources, or an artificial on site calibrator source, and discuss the instrument response stability, crucial for transit interferometry. Based on this analysis, we find a system temperature of about 90 K, and we also estimate the sensitivity of the array., Comment: 28 pages, 30 figures

The nature of the time correlated noise component (the 1/f noise) of single dish radio telescopes is critical to the detectability of the HI signal in intensity mapping experiments. In this paper, we present the 1/f noise properties of the MeerKAT receiver system using South Celestial Pole (SCP) tracking data. We estimate both the temporal power spectrum density and the 2D power spectrum density for each of the antennas and polarizations. We apply Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) to the dataset and show that, by removing the strongest components, the 1/f noise can be drastically reduced, indicating that it is highly correlated in frequency. Without SVD mode subtraction, the knee frequency over a $20\,$MHz integration is higher than $0.1\,\rm Hz$; with just $2$~mode subtraction, the knee frequency is reduced to $\sim 3\times 10^{-3}\,{\rm Hz}$, indicating that the system induced 1/f-type variations are well under the thermal noise fluctuations over a few hundred seconds time scales. The 2D power spectrum shows that the 1/f-type variations are restricted to a small region in the time-frequency space, either with long wavelength correlations in frequency or in time. This gives a wide range of cosmological scales where the 21cm signal can be measured without further need to calibrate the gain time fluctuations. Finally, we demonstrate that a simple power spectrum parameterization is sufficient to describe the data and provide fitting parameters for both the 1D and 2D power spectrum., Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures

While most purpose-built 21cm intensity mapping experiments are close-packed interferometer arrays, general-purpose dish arrays should also be capable of measuring the cosmological 21cm signal. This can be achieved most efficiently if the array is used as a collection of scanning autocorrelation dishes rather than as an interferometer. As a first step towards demonstrating the feasibility of this observing strategy, we show that we are able to successfully calibrate dual-polarisation autocorrelation data from 64 MeerKAT dishes in the L-band (856-1712 MHz, 4096 channels), with 10.5 hours of data retained from six nights of observing. We describe our calibration pipeline, which is based on multi-level RFI flagging, periodic noise diode injection to stabilise gain drifts and an absolute calibration based on a multi-component sky model. We show that it is sufficiently accurate to recover maps of diffuse celestial emission and point sources over a 10 deg x 30 deg patch of the sky overlapping with the WiggleZ 11hr field. The reconstructed maps have a good level of consistency between per-dish maps and external datasets, with the estimated thermal noise limited to 1.4 x the theoretical noise level (~ 2 mK). The residual maps have rms amplitudes below 0.1 K, corresponding to <1% of the model temperature. The reconstructed Galactic HI intensity map shows excellent agreement with the Effelsberg-Bonn HI Survey, and the flux of the radio galaxy 4C+03.18 is recovered to within 3.6%, which demonstrates that the autocorrelation can be successfully calibrated to give the zero-spacing flux and potentially help in the imaging of MeerKAT interferometric data. Our results provide a positive indication towards the feasibility of using MeerKAT and the future SKA to measure the HI intensity mapping signal and probe cosmology on degree scales and above., Comment: 24 pages, 34 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

The Tianlai project is a 21cm intensity mapping experiment aimed at detecting dark energy by measuring the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) features in the large scale structure power spectrum. This experiment provides an opportunity to test the data processing methods for cosmological 21cm signal extraction, which is still a great challenge in current radio astronomy research. The 21cm signal is much weaker than the foregrounds and easily affected by the imperfections in the instrumental responses. Furthermore, processing the large volumes of interferometer data poses a practical challenge. We have developed a data processing pipeline software called {\tt tlpipe} to process the drift scan survey data from the Tianlai experiment. It performs offline data processing tasks such as radio frequency interference (RFI) flagging, array calibration, binning, and map-making, etc. It also includes utility functions needed for the data analysis, such as data selection, transformation, visualization and others. A number of new algorithms are implemented, for example the eigenvector decomposition method for array calibration and the Tikhonov regularization for $m$-mode analysis. In this paper we describe the design and implementation of the {\tt tlpipe} and illustrate its functions with some analysis of real data. Finally, we outline directions for future development of this publicly code., Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication on Astronomy and Computing

The Tianlai Dish Pathfinder Array is a radio interferometer designed to test techniques for 21~cm intensity mapping in the post-reionization universe as a means for measuring large-scale cosmic structure. It performs drift scans of the sky at constant declination. We describe the design, calibration, noise level, and stability of this instrument based on the analysis of about $\sim 5 \%$ of 6,200 hours of on-sky observations through October, 2019. Beam pattern determinations using drones and the transit of bright sources are in good agreement, and compatible with electromagnetic simulations. Combining all the baselines, we make maps around bright sources and show that the array behaves as expected. A few hundred hours of observations at different declinations have been used to study the array geometry and pointing imperfections, as well as the instrument noise behaviour. We show that the system temperature is below 80~K for most feed antennas, and that noise fluctuations decrease as expected with integration time, at least up to a few hundred seconds. Analysis of long integrations, from 10 nights of observations of the North Celestial Pole, yielded visibilities with amplitudes of 20-30~mK, consistent with the expected signal from the NCP radio sky with $<10\,$mK precision for $1 ~\mathrm{MHz} \times 1~ \mathrm{min}$ binning. Hi-pass filtering the spectra to remove smooth spectrum signal yields a residual consistent with zero signal at the $0.5\,$mK level., Comment: 30 pages, 38 figures

The nature of the time correlated noise component (the 1/f noise) of single dish radio telescopes is critical to the detectability of the HI signal in intensity mapping experiments. In this paper, we present the 1/f noise properties of the MeerKAT receiver system using South Celestial Pole (SCP) tracking data. We estimate both the temporal power spectrum density and the 2D power spectrum density for each of the antennas and polarizations. We apply Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) to the dataset and show that, by removing the strongest components, the 1/f noise can be drastically reduced, indicating that it is highly correlated in frequency. Without SVD mode subtraction, the knee frequency over a $20\,$MHz integration is higher than $0.1\,\rm Hz$; with just $2$~mode subtraction, the knee frequency is reduced to $\sim 3\times 10^{-3}\,{\rm Hz}$, indicating that the system induced 1/f-type variations are well under the thermal noise fluctuations over a few hundred seconds time scales. The 2D power spectrum shows that the 1/f-type variations are restricted to a small region in the time-frequency space, either with long wavelength correlations in frequency or in time. This gives a wide range of cosmological scales where the 21cm signal can be measured without further need to calibrate the gain time fluctuations. Finally, we demonstrate that a simple power spectrum parameterization is sufficient to describe the data and provide fitting parameters for both the 1D and 2D power spectrum., Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures

The Tianlai Cylinder Pathfinder is a radio interferometer array designed to test techniques for 21 cm intensity mapping in the post-reionization Universe, with the ultimate aim of mapping the large scale structure and measuring cosmological parameters such as the dark energy equation of state. Each of its three parallel cylinder reflectors is oriented in the north-south direction, and the array has a large field of view. As the Earth rotates, the northern sky is observed by drift scanning. The array is located in Hongliuxia, a radio-quiet site in Xinjiang, and saw its first light in September 2016. In this first data analysis paper for the Tianlai cylinder array, we discuss the sub-system qualification tests, and present basic system performance obtained from preliminary analysis of the commissioning observations during 2016-2018. We show typical interferometric visibility data, from which we derive the actual beam profile in the east-west direction and the frequency band-pass response. We describe also the calibration process to determine the complex gains for the array elements, either using bright astronomical point sources, or an artificial on site calibrator source, and discuss the instrument response stability, crucial for transit interferometry. Based on this analysis, we find a system temperature of about 90 K, and we also estimate the sensitivity of the array., Comment: 28 pages, 30 figures

A key challenge in ecology is to understand the relationships between organismal traits and ecosystem processes. Here, with a novel dataset of leaf length and width for 10 480 woody dicots in China and 2374 in North America, we show that the variation in community mean leaf size is highly correlated with the variation in climate and ecosystem primary productivity, independent of plant life form. These relationships likely reflect how natural selection modifies leaf size across varying climates in conjunction with how climate influences canopy total leaf area. We find that the leaf size‒primary productivity functions based on the Chinese dataset can predict productivity in North America and vice‐versa. In addition to advancing understanding of the relationship between a climate‐driven trait and ecosystem functioning, our findings suggest that leaf size can also be a promising tool in palaeoecology for scaling from fossil leaves to palaeo‐primary productivity of woody ecosystems.

The Tianlai Pathfinder is designed to demonstrate the feasibility of using a wide field of view radio interferometers to map the density of neutral hydrogen in the Universe after the Epoch of Reionizaton. This approach, called 21~cm intensity-mapping, promises an inexpensive means for surveying the large-scale structure of the cosmos. The Tianlai Pathfinder presently consists of an array of three, 15~m $\times$ 40~m cylinder telescopes and an array of sixteen, 6~m diameter dish antennas located in a radio-quiet part of western China. The two types of arrays were chosen to determine the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. The primary goal of the Pathfinder is to make 3D maps by surveying neutral hydrogen over large areas of the sky %$20,000 {\rm deg}^2$ in two different redshift ranges: first at $1.03 > z > 0.78$ ($700 - 800$~MHz) and later at $0.21 > z > 0.12$ ($1170 - 1270$~MHz). The most significant challenge to $21$~cm intensity-mapping is the removal of strong foreground radiation that dwarfs the cosmological signal. It requires exquisite knowledge of the instrumental response, i.e. calibration. In this paper, we provide an overview of the status of the Pathfinder and discuss the details of some of the analysis that we have carried out to measure the beam function of both arrays. We compare electromagnetic simulations of the arrays to measurements, discuss measurements of the gain and phase stability of the instrument, and provide a brief overview of the data processing pipeline., Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures

Current screening tests for type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) identify less than 50% of undiagnosed T2DM patients and provide no information about how the disease will develop in prediabetic patients. Here, twenty-nine protein glycation sites were quantified after tryptic digestion of plasma samples at the peptide level using tandem mass spectrometry and isotope-labelled peptides as internal standard. The glycation degrees were determined in three groups, i.e., 48 patients with a duration of T2DM exceeding ten years, 48 non-diabetic individuals matched for gender, BMI, and age, and 20 prediabetic men. In long-term controlled diabetic patients, 27 glycated peptides were detected at significantly higher levels, providing moderate diagnostic accuracies (ACCs) from 61 to 79%, allowing a subgrouping of patients in three distinct clusters. Moreover, a feature set of one glycated peptides and six established clinical parameters provided an ACC of 95%. The same number of clusters was identified in prediabetic males (ACC of 95%) using a set of eight glycation sites (mostly from serum albumin). All patients present in one cluster showed progression of prediabetic state or advanced towards diabetes in the following five years. Overall, the studied glycation sites appear to be promising biomarkers for subgrouping prediabetic patients to estimate their risk for the development of T2DM.

Current screening tests for type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) identify less than 50% of undiagnosed T2DM patients and provide no information about how the disease will develop in prediabetic patients. Here, twenty-nine protein glycation sites were quantified after tryptic digestion of plasma samples at the peptide level using tandem mass spectrometry and isotope-labelled peptides as internal standard. The glycation degrees were determined in three groups, i.e., 48 patients with a duration of T2DM exceeding ten years, 48 non-diabetic individuals matched for gender, BMI, and age, and 20 prediabetic men. In long-term controlled diabetic patients, 27 glycated peptides were detected at significantly higher levels, providing moderate diagnostic accuracies (ACCs) from 61 to 79%, allowing a subgrouping of patients in three distinct clusters. Moreover, a feature set of one glycated peptides and six established clinical parameters provided an ACC of 95%. The same number of clusters was identified in prediabetic males (ACC of 95%) using a set of eight glycation sites (mostly from serum albumin). All patients present in one cluster showed progression of prediabetic state or advanced towards diabetes in the following five years. Overall, the studied glycation sites appear to be promising biomarkers for subgrouping prediabetic patients to estimate their risk for the development of T2DM.

The Tianlai Pathfinder is designed to demonstrate the feasibility of using a wide field of view radio interferometers to map the density of neutral hydrogen in the Universe after the Epoch of Reionizaton. This approach, called 21~cm intensity-mapping, promises an inexpensive means for surveying the large-scale structure of the cosmos. The Tianlai Pathfinder presently consists of an array of three, 15~m $\times$ 40~m cylinder telescopes and an array of sixteen, 6~m diameter dish antennas located in a radio-quiet part of western China. The two types of arrays were chosen to determine the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. The primary goal of the Pathfinder is to make 3D maps by surveying neutral hydrogen over large areas of the sky %$20,000 {\rm deg}^2$ in two different redshift ranges: first at $1.03 > z > 0.78$ ($700 - 800$~MHz) and later at $0.21 > z > 0.12$ ($1170 - 1270$~MHz). The most significant challenge to $21$~cm intensity-mapping is the removal of strong foreground radiation that dwarfs the cosmological signal. It requires exquisite knowledge of the instrumental response, i.e. calibration. In this paper, we provide an overview of the status of the Pathfinder and discuss the details of some of the analysis that we have carried out to measure the beam function of both arrays. We compare electromagnetic simulations of the arrays to measurements, discuss measurements of the gain and phase stability of the instrument, and provide a brief overview of the data processing pipeline., Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures

The adhesion strength, antibacterial property, biocompatibility and corrosion resistance of implant coating materials remain challenging. In this study, a novel silver-doped hydroxyapatite/calcium silicate (AgHA/CS) layer was deposited on Ti modified with TiO2 nanotube (TN) through electrodeposition (ED) combined with anodisation. The TN under layer possessed a compact structure and diameter of approximately 100 nm. The AgHA/CS overlayer presented a porous structure and pore size distribution of 30–50 μm. Ag was incorporated into HA coating to improve the antimicrobial properties. Si was added as a second binary element to offset the potential cytotoxicity of Ag. Results highlight that Si4+ and Ag+ could be evenly incorporated into the AgHA/CS coating. The adhesion strength of AgHA/CS/TN significantly increased because of the interlocking of the roughened surface with bioceramic particles that entered into the voids of the TiO2 nanotubes. Potentiodynamic polarisation and electrochemical impedance spectrum tests revealed that the corrosion resistance increased after AgHA/CS/TN coating. The coating with the highest corrosion resistance also demonstrated excellent wettability (contact angle, 0°) and apatite-forming ability under bioactivity test. Cytotoxicity tests indicated that the AgHA/CS/TN coating enabled higher cell viability compared with the uncoated sample. In addition, the HA and AgHA/CS/TNA coatings considerably improved cell differentiation ability than that of the uncoated sample. The as-prepared AgHA/CS/TN biocomposite coatings effectively prevented the proliferation and biofilm formation of Staphylococcus aureus. With their superior mechanical properties, satisfactory osseo-integrative potential and excellent antibacterial properties, AgHA/CS/TN multifunctional biomaterials exhibit potential for orthopaedic surgeries. © 2016 Elsevier B.V.

In this paper, we apply our sky map reconstruction method for transit type interferometers to the Tianlai cylinder array. The method is based on the spherical harmonic decomposition, and can be applied to cylindrical array as well as dish arrays and we can compute the instrument response, synthesised beam, transfer function and the noise power spectrum. We consider cylinder arrays with feed spacing larger than half wavelength, and as expected, we find that the arrays with regular spacing have grating lobes which produce spurious images in the reconstructed maps. We show that this problem can be overcome, using arrays with different feed spacing on each cylinder. We present the reconstructed maps, and study the performance in terms of noise power spectrum, transfer function and beams for both regular and irregular feed spacing configurations., Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures, accepted by RAA

In this paper, we apply our sky map reconstruction method for transit type interferometers to the Tianlai cylinder array. The method is based on the spherical harmonic decomposition, and can be applied to cylindrical array as well as dish arrays and we can compute the instrument response, synthesised beam, transfer function and the noise power spectrum. We consider cylinder arrays with feed spacing larger than half wavelength, and as expected, we find that the arrays with regular spacing have grating lobes which produce spurious images in the reconstructed maps. We show that this problem can be overcome, using arrays with different feed spacing on each cylinder. We present the reconstructed maps, and study the performance in terms of noise power spectrum, transfer function and beams for both regular and irregular feed spacing configurations., Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures, accepted by RAA

Combining the latest Planck, Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), and baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) data, we exploit the recent cosmic microwave background (CMB) B-mode power spectra data released by the BICEP2 collaboration to constrain the cosmological parameters of the $\Lambda$CDM model, esp. the primordial power spectra parameters of the scalar and the tensor modes, $n_s,\alpha_s, r, n_t$. We obtained constraints on the parameters for a lensed $\Lambda$CDM model using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) technique, the marginalized $68\%$ bounds are $r = 0.1043\pm_{0.0914}^{0.0307}$, $n_s = 0.9617\pm_{0.0061}^{ 0.0061}$, $\alpha_s = -0.0175\pm_{0.0097}^{0.0105}$, $n_t = 0.5198\pm_{0.4579}^{0.4515}$. We found that a blue tilt for $n_t$ is favored slightly, but it is still well consistent with flat or even red tilt. Our $r$ value is slightly smaller than the one obtained by the BICEP team, as we allow $n_t$ as a free parameter without imposing the single-field slow roll inflation consistency relation. If we impose this relation, $r=0.2130\pm_{0.0609}^{0.0446}$. For most other parameters, the best fit values and measurement errors are not altered much by the introduction of the BICEP2 data.

Combining the latest Planck, Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), and baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) data, we exploit the recent cosmic microwave background (CMB) B-mode power spectra data released by the BICEP2 collaboration to constrain the cosmological parameters of the $\Lambda$CDM model, esp. the primordial power spectra parameters of the scalar and the tensor modes, $n_s,\alpha_s, r, n_t$. We obtained constraints on the parameters for a lensed $\Lambda$CDM model using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) technique, the marginalized $68\%$ bounds are $r = 0.1043\pm_{0.0914}^{0.0307}$, $n_s = 0.9617\pm_{0.0061}^{ 0.0061}$, $\alpha_s = -0.0175\pm_{0.0097}^{0.0105}$, $n_t = 0.5198\pm_{0.4579}^{0.4515}$. We found that a blue tilt for $n_t$ is favored slightly, but it is still well consistent with flat or even red tilt. Our $r$ value is slightly smaller than the one obtained by the BICEP team, as we allow $n_t$ as a free parameter without imposing the single-field slow roll inflation consistency relation. If we impose this relation, $r=0.2130\pm_{0.0609}^{0.0446}$. For most other parameters, the best fit values and measurement errors are not altered much by the introduction of the BICEP2 data.

Sanchez and Lacombe have ever developed a lattice fluid theory based on a well-defined statistical mechanical model. Taking the lattice fluid as a candidate of dark energy, we investigate the cosmic evolution of this fluid. Using the combined observational data of Type Ia Supernova (SNe Ia), Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) and Observational Hubble Data (OHD), we find the best fit value of the parameter in the model, $A = -0.3_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$. Then the cosmological implications of the model are presented., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures

Sanchez and Lacombe have ever developed a lattice fluid theory based on a well-defined statistical mechanical model. Taking the lattice fluid as a candidate of dark energy, we investigate the cosmic evolution of this fluid. Using the combined observational data of Type Ia Supernova (SNe Ia), Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) and Observational Hubble Data (OHD), we find the best fit value of the parameter in the model, $A = -0.3_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$. Then the cosmological implications of the model are presented., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures