— We discuss the current interpretations of the Swift GRB X-ray afterglows, mainly focusing on the sharp decline at the prompt tail emission, and the shallow decay afterward, which is then followed by the conventional pre-Swift decay behavior, and the possible X-ray flares during the latter two stages. We emphasize the role of the central engine in interpreting the GRB afterglows. PACS 98.70.Rz...

We present the discovery of two distinct classes in the Swift short duration gamma-ray bursts (S-GRBs) from the X-Ray Telescope (XRT) X-ray afterglow light curve. We find that about 40% of the Swift S-GRBs have an X-ray afterglow light curves which only lasts less than 104 seconds after the burst trigger (hereafter short-lived S-GRBs). On the other hand, another 60% of S-GRBs have a long lastin...

With the growth of product search engines such as pricegrabber.com, web vendors have many more casual visitors. This research examines how web vendors may foster “swift trust” as a means to convert casual visitors to paying customers. We examine whether perceptions of website’s appearance features (normality, social presence and third-party links) and functionality features (security, privacy, ...

Introduction Imaging of samples with very short T2 requires data acquisition to start immediately after excitation. In the SWIFT technique [1] this is accomplished by playing out a gapped frequency-swept pulse while concurrently acquiring data during the gaps. At the same time gradients are applied permanently and stepped in a 3D radial mode. Thus SWIFT combines the short-T2 capability of the s...

The thermal Doppler Michelson interferometer is the primary element of a proposed limb-viewing satellite instrument called SWIFT (Stratospheric Wind Interferometer for Transport studies). SWIFT is intended to measure stratospheric wind velocities in the altitude range of 15-45 km. SWIFT also uses narrowband tandem etalon filters made of germanium to select a line out of the thermal spectrum. Th...

Since GRBs fade rapidly, it is important to publish accurate, precise positions at early times. For Swift-detected bursts, the best promptly available position is most commonly the X-ray Telescope (XRT) position. We present two processes, developed by the Swift team at Leicester, which are now routinely used to improve the precision and accuracy of the XRT positions reported by the Swift team. ...

Information flow analysis is a widely-adopted technique in software testing and malware analysis. For information flow analysis, a system-level emulator equipped with dynamic information flow tracking capability, DIFT, is needed. However, its effectiveness comes at a price of severe performance degradation due to interleaved system emulation and DIFT analysis. In this paper, a decoupled system-...

We review recent observations of short-hard gamma-ray bursts and their afterglows. The launch and successful ongoing operations of the Swift satellite, along with several localizations from the High-Energy Transient Explorer mission, have provoked a revolution in short-burst studies: first, by quickly providing high-quality positions to observers; and second, via rapid and sustained observation...

We predict the redshift of the first observable (i.e., in our past light cone) Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) and calculate the GRB-rate redshift distribution of the Population III stars at very early times (z = 20 − 60). Using the last 2 years of data from Swift we place an upper limit on the efficiency (ηGRB) of GRB production per solar mass from the first generation of stars. We find that the first o...

SWIFT J1756.9-2508 is one of the few accreting millisecond pulsars (AMPs) discovered to date. We report here the results of our analysis of its aperiodic X-ray variability, as measured with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer during the 2007 outburst of the source. We detect strong (∼35%) flat-topped broadband noise throughout the outburst with low characteristic frequencies (∼0.1 Hz). This makes S...