Stony Brook University

About: Stony Brook University is a education organization based out in Stony Brook, New York, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 32534 authors who have published 68218 publications receiving 3035131 citations. The organization is also known as: State University of New York at Stony Brook & SUNY Stony Brook.

Molecular Evidence for Deep Precambrian Divergences Among Metazoan Phyla

Abstract: A literal reading of the fossil record suggests that the animal phyla diverged in an “explosion” near the beginning of the Cambrian period. Calibrated rates of molecular sequence divergence were used to test this hypothesis. Seven independent data sets suggest that invertebrates diverged from chordates about a billion years ago, about twice as long ago as the Cambrian. Protostomes apparently diverged from chordates well before echinoderms, which suggests a prolonged radiation of animal phyla. These conclusions apply specifically to divergence times among phyla; the morphological features that characterize modern animal body plans, such as skeletons and coeloms, may have evolved later.

Collective Opinion Spam Detection: Bridging Review Networks and Metadata

Abstract: Online reviews capture the testimonials of "real" people and help shape the decisions of other consumers. Due to the financial gains associated with positive reviews, however, opinion spam has become a widespread problem, with often paid spam reviewers writing fake reviews to unjustly promote or demote certain products or businesses. Existing approaches to opinion spam have successfully but separately utilized linguistic clues of deception, behavioral footprints, or relational ties between agents in a review system.In this work, we propose a new holistic approach called SPEAGLE that utilizes clues from all metadata (text, timestamp, rating) as well as relational data (network), and harness them collectively under a unified framework to spot suspicious users and reviews, as well as products targeted by spam. Moreover, our method can efficiently and seamlessly integrate semi-supervision, i.e., a (small) set of labels if available, without requiring any training or changes in its underlying algorithm. We demonstrate the effectiveness and scalability of SPEAGLE on three real-world review datasets from Yelp.com with filtered (spam) and recommended (non-spam) reviews, where it significantly outperforms several baselines and state-of-the-art methods. To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest scale quantitative evaluation performed to date for the opinion spam problem.

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Cosmological Parameters from Three Seasons of Data

Abstract: We present constraints on cosmological and astrophysical parameters from high-resolution microwave background maps at 148 GHz and 218 GHz made by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in three seasons of observations from 2008 to 2010. A model of primary cosmological and secondary foreground parameters is fit to the map power spectra and lensing deflection power spectrum, including contributions from both the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (tSZ) effect and the kinematic Sunyaev-Zeldovich (kSZ) effect, Poisson and correlated anisotropy from unresolved infrared sources, radio sources, and the correlation between the tSZ effect and infrared sources. The power l2Cl/2π of the thermal SZ power spectrum at 148 GHz is measured to be 3.4±1.4 μK2 at l = 3000, while the corresponding amplitude of the kinematic SZ power spectrum has a 95% confidence level upper limit of 8.6 μK2. Combining ACT power spectra with the WMAP 7-year temperature and polarization power spectra, we find excellent consistency with the LCDM model. We constrain the number of effective relativistic degrees of freedom in the early universe to be Neff = 2.79±0.56, in agreement with the canonical value of Neff = 3.046 for three massless neutrinos. We constrain the sum of the neutrino masses to be Σmν < 0.39 eV at 95% confidence when combining ACT and WMAP 7-year data with BAO and Hubble constant measurements. We constrain the amount of primordial helium to be Yp = 0.225±0.034, and measure no variation in the fine structure constant α since recombination, with α/α0 = 1.004±0.005. We also find no evidence for any running of the scalar spectral index, dns/dln k = −0.004±0.012.

Bulk properties of the medium produced in relativistic heavy-ion collisions from the beam energy scan program

Abstract: © 2017 American Physical Society. We present measurements of bulk properties of the matter produced in Au+Au collisions at sNN=7.7,11.5,19.6,27, and 39 GeV using identified hadrons (π±, K±, p, and p) from the STAR experiment in the Beam Energy Scan (BES) Program at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). Midrapidity (|y| < 0.1) results for multiplicity densities dN/dy, average transverse momenta (pT), and particle ratios are presented. The chemical and kinetic freeze-out dynamics at these energies are discussed and presented as a function of collision centrality and energy. These results constitute the systematic measurements of bulk properties of matter formed in heavy-ion collisions over a broad range of energy (or baryon chemical potential) at RHIC.

Zircon U-Pb Geochronology Links the End-Triassic Extinction with the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province

Abstract: The end-Triassic extinction is characterized by major losses in both terrestrial and marine diversity, setting the stage for dinosaurs to dominate Earth for the next 136 million years. Despite the approximate coincidence between this extinction and flood basalt volcanism, existing geochronologic dates have insufficient resolution to confirm eruptive rates required to induce major climate perturbations. Here, we present new zircon uranium-lead (U-Pb) geochronologic constraints on the age and duration of flood basalt volcanism within the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province. This chronology demonstrates synchroneity between the earliest volcanism and extinction, tests and corroborates the existing astrochronologic time scale, and shows that the release of magma and associated atmospheric flux occurred in four pulses over about 600,000 years, indicating expansive volcanism even as the biologic recovery was under way.