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Projections of global mean temperature changes (ΔT) in the future are associated with intrinsic uncertainties. Much climate policy discourse has been guided by "current knowledge" of the ΔTs uncertainty, ignoring the likely future reductions of the uncertainty, because a mechanism for predicting these reductions is lacking. By using simulations of Global Climate Models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 ensemble as pseudo past and future observations, we estimate how fast and in what way the uncertainties of ΔT can decline when the current observation network of surface air temperature is maintained. At least in the world of pseudo observations under the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), we can drastically reduce more than 50% of the ΔTs uncertainty in the 2040 s by 2029, and more than 60% of the ΔTs uncertainty in the 2090 s by 2049. Under the highest forcing scenario of RCPs, we can predict the true timing of passing the 2 °C (3 °C) warming threshold 20 (30) years in advance with errors less than 10 years. These results demonstrate potential for sequential decision-making strategies to take advantage of future progress in understanding of anthropogenic climate change.

We have identified a very interesting Lyα emitter (LAE), whose Lyα emission line has an extremely large observed equivalent width of EW0 = 436+422 - 149 Å, which corresponds to an extraordinarily large intrinsic rest-frame equivalent width of EWint 0 = 872 +844 - 298 Å after the average intergalactic absorption correction. The object was spectroscopically confirmed to be a real LAE by its apparent asymmetric Lyα line profile detected at z = 6.538. The continuum emission of the object was definitely detected in our deep z′-band image; thus, its EW0 was reliably determined. Follow-up deep near-infrared spectroscopy revealed emission lines of neither He II λ1640 as an apparent signature of Population III (Pop III) nor C IV λ1549 as proof of an active nucleus. No detection of the short-lived He II λ1640 line is not necessarily inconsistent with the interpretation that the underlying stellar population of the object is dominated by Pop III. We found that the observed extremely large EW0 of the Lyα emission and the upper limit on the EW0 of the He II λ1640 emission can be explained by population synthesis models favoring a very young age less than 2-4 Myr and massive metal-poor (Z < 10 -5) or even metal-free stars. The observed large EW0 of Lyα is insufficiently explained by Population I/II synthesis models with Z ≥ 10 -3. However, we cannot conclusively rule out the possibility that this object is composed of a normal stellar population with a clumpy dust distribution, which could enhance the Lyα EW0, though its significance is still unclear. © 2012. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved..

We report the discovery of a protocluster at z∼6 containing at least eight cluster member galaxies with spectroscopic confirmations in the wide-field image of the Subaru Deep Field (SDF). The overdensity of the protocluster is significant at the 6σ level, based on the surface number density of i′-dropout galaxies. The overdense region covers 6′ × 6′ (14 Mpc × 14 Mpc in comoving units at z = 6) and includes 30 i′-dropout galaxies. Follow-up spectroscopy revealed that 15 of these are real z 6 galaxies (5.7 < z < 6.3). Of these 15, 8 are clustering in a narrow redshift range (Δz < 0.05 centered at z = 6.01), corresponding to a seven-fold increase in number density over the average in redshift space. We found no significant difference in the observed properties, such as Lyα luminosities and UV continuum magnitudes, between the eight protocluster members and the seven non-members. The velocity dispersion of the eight protocluster members is 647 ± 124 km s-1, which is about three times higher than that predicted by the standard cold dark matter model. This discrepancy could be attributed to the distinguishing three-dimensional distribution of the eight protocluster members. We discuss two possible explanations for this discrepancy: either the protocluster is already mature, with old galaxies at the center, or it is still immature and composed of three subgroups merging to become a larger cluster. In either case, this concentration of z = 6.01 galaxies in the SDF may be one of the first sites of formation of a galaxy cluster in the universe. © © 2012. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

We carried out extended spectroscopic confirmations of Lyα emitters (LAEs) at z = 6.5 and 5.7 in the Subaru Deep Field. Now, the total number of spectroscopically confirmed LAEs is 45 and 54 at z = 6.5 and 5.7, respectively, and at least 81% (70%) of our photometric candidates at z = 6.5 (5.7) have been spectroscopically identified as real LAEs. We made careful measurements of the Lyα luminosity, both photometrically and spectroscopically, to accurately determine the Lyα and rest-UV luminosity functions (LFs). The substantially improved evaluation of the Lyα LF at z = 6.5 shows an apparent deficit from z = 5.7 at least at the bright end, and a possible decline even at the faint end, though small uncertainties remain. The rest-UV LFs at z = 6.5 and 5.7 are in good agreement, at least at the bright end, in clear contrast to the differences seen in the Lyα LF. These results imply an increase in the neutral fraction of the intergalactic medium from z = 5.7 to 6.5. The rest-frame equivalent width (EW0) distribution at z = 6.5 seems to be systematically smaller than z = 5.7, and it shows an extended tail toward larger EW0. The bright end of the rest-UV LF can be reproduced from the observed Lyα LF and a reasonable EW0-UV luminosity relation. Integrating this rest-UV LF provides the first measurement of the contribution of LAEs to the photon budget required for reionization. The derived UV LF suggests that the fractional contribution of LAEs to the photon budget among Lyman break galaxies significantly increases toward faint magnitudes. Low-luminosity LAEs could dominate the ionizing photon budget, though this inference depends strongly on the uncertain faint-end slope of the Lyα LF. © 2011. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

SUMMARY: The built‐in inspection is very important for quality control in precision cutting by throw‐away tip. We propose a new automatic inspection method for tool ware of industrial devices. We first do contrast enhancement of the ware image and then segment the cutting ware region by using Otsu thresholding method from the enhanced image. The area of the cutting ware region is used as a measure of cutting ware degree. Experimental results show that the proposed method is effective for automatic inspection of throw‐away tips in precision cutting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]