The multi-faceted Type II-L supernova 2014G from pre-maximum to nebular phase

We present multi-band ultraviolet, optical, and near-infrared photometry, along with visual-wavelength spectroscopy, of supernova (SN) 2014G in the nearby galaxy NGC 3448 (25 Mpc). The early-phase spectra show strong emission lines of the high ionisation species He II/N IV/C IV during the first 2-3 d after explosion, traces of a metal-rich CSM probably due to pre-explosion mass loss events. These disappear by day 9 and the spectral evolution then continues matching that of normal Type II SNe. The post-maximum light curve declines at a rate typical of Type II-L class. The extensive photometric coverage tracks the drop from the photospheric stage and constrains the radioactive tail, with a steeper decline rate than that expected from the $^{56}$Co decay if $\gamma$-rays are fully trapped by the ejecta. We report the appearance of an unusual feature on the blue-side of H$\alpha$ after 100 d, which evolves to appear as a flat spectral feature linking H$\alpha$ and the O I doublet. This may be due to interaction of the ejecta with a strongly asymmetric, and possibly bipolar CSM. Finally, we report two deep spectra at ~190 and 340 d after explosion, the latter being arguably one of the latest spectra for a Type II-L SN. By modelling the spectral region around the Ca II, we find a supersolar Ni/Fe production. The strength of the O I $\lambda\lambda$6300,6363 doublet, compared with synthetic nebular spectra, suggests a progenitor with a zero-age main-sequence mass between 15 and 19 M$_\odot$.Comment: 24 pages, 14 figure

Near-infrared evolution of the equatorial ring of SN 1987A

We use adaptive-optics imaging and integral field spectroscopy from the Very Large Telescope, together with images from the \emph{Hubble Space Telescope}, to study the near-infrared (NIR) evolution of the equatorial ring (ER) of SN~1987A. We study the NIR line and continuum flux and morphology over time in order to lay the groundwork for \emph{James Webb Space Telescope} observations of the system. We also study the differences in the interacting ring structure and flux between optical, NIR and other wavelengths, and between line and continuum emission, to constrain the underlying physical processes. Mostly the evolution is similar in the NIR and optical. The morphology of the ER has been skewed toward the west side (with roughly 2/3 of the NIR emission originating there) since around 2010. A steady decline in the ER flux, broadly similar to the MIR and the optical, is ongoing since roughly this time as well. The expansion velocity of the ER hotspots in the NIR is fully consistent with the optical. However, continuum emission forms roughly 70 per cent of the NIR luminosity, and is relatively stronger outside the hotspot-defined extent of the ER than the optical emission or NIR line emission since 2012--2013, suggesting a faster-expanding continuum component. We find that this outer NIR emission can have a significant synchrotron contribution. Even if emission from hot ($\sim$2000~K) dust is dominant within the ER, the mass of this dust must be vanishingly small (a few $\times10^{-12}$~M$_\odot$) compared to the total dust mass in the ER ($\gtrsim10^{-5}$~M$_\odot$) to account for the observed $HKs$ flux. The NIR continuum emission, however, expands slower than the more diffuse 180-K dust emission that dominates in the MIR, indicating a different source, and the same hot dust component cannot account for the $J$-band emission.Comment: 17 pages, 17 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

SNhunt151: An explosive event inside a dense cocoon

Indexación: Scopus.We thank S. Spiro, R. Rekola, A. Harutyunyan, and M. L. Graham for their help with the observations. We are grateful to the collaboration of Massimo Conti, Giacomo Guerrini, Paolo Rosi, and Luz Marina Tinjaca Ramirez from the Osservatorio Astronomico Provinciale di Montarrenti. The staffs at the different observatories provided excellent assistance with the observations.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement No. 267251, ‘Astronomy Fellowships in Italy’ (AstroFIt)’. NE-R acknowledges financial support from MIUR PRIN 2010-2011, ‘The Dark Universe and the Cosmic Evolution of Baryons: From Current Surveys to Euclid’. NE-R, AP, SB, LT, MT, and GP are partially supported by the PRIN-INAF 2014 (project ‘Transient Universe: Unveiling New Types of Stellar Explosions with PESSTO’). GP acknowledges support provided by the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics (MAS) through grant IC120009 of the Programa Iniciativa Cientíifica Milenio del Ministerio de Economía, Fomento y Turismo de Chile. TK acknowledges financial support from the Emil Aaltonen Foundation. CRTS was supported by the NSF grants AST-0909182, AST-1313422, and AST-1413600. AVF is grateful for generous financial assistance from the Christopher R. Redlich Fund, the TABASGO Foundation, the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science (UC Berkeley), and NASA/HST grant GO-14668 from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by AURA, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555. The work of AVF was conducted in part at the Aspen Center for Physics, which is supported by NSF grantPHY-1607611; he thanks the Center for its hospitality during the neutron stars workshop in June and July 2017. NE-R acknowledges the hospitality of the ‘Institut de Ciències de l'Espai (CSIC), where this work was completed.This research is based on observations made with the Nordic Optical Telescope, operated by the Nordic Optical Telescope Scientific Association at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, Spain, of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias; the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), installed in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, on the island of La Palma; the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG), operated on the island of La Palma by the Fundaci Galileo Galilei of the INAF (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica) at the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias; the Liverpool Telescope, operated on the island of La Palma by Liverpool John Moores University in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias with financial support from the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council; the 1.82-m Copernico Telescope and the Schmidt 67/92 cm of INAF-Asiago Observatory; the Catalina Real Time Survey (CRTS) Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) 0.7-m Schmidt Telescope; and the Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO) network. This work is also based in part on archival data obtained with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the Data Archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555; the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA (support was provided by NASA through an award issued by JPL/Caltech); and the Swift telescope.This work has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with NASA.SNhunt151 was initially classified as a supernova (SN) impostor (nonterminal outburst of a massive star). It exhibited a slow increase in luminosity, lasting about 450 d, followed by a major brightening that reaches M V ≈ -18 mag. No source is detected to M V ≳ -13 mag in archival images at the position of SNhunt151 before the slow rise. Low-to-mid-resolution optical spectra obtained during the pronounced brightening show very little evolution, being dominated at all times by multicomponent Balmer emission lines, a signature of interaction between the material ejected in the new outburst and the pre-existing circumstellar medium. We also analysed mid-infrared images from the Spitzer Space Telescope, detecting a source at the transient position in 2014 and 2015. Overall, SNhunt151 is spectroscopically a Type IIn SN, somewhat similar to SN 2009ip. However, there are also some differences, such as a slow pre-discovery rise, a relatively broad light-curve peak showing a longer rise time (~50 d), and a slower decline, along with a negligible change in the temperature around the peak (T ≤ 10 4 K). We suggest that SNhunt151 is the result of an outburst, or an SN explosion, within a dense circumstellar nebula, similar to those embedding some luminous blue variables like η Carinae and originating from past mass-loss events. © 2017 The Author(s).https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/475/2/2614/479530

Assessment of goal-directed behavior and prospective memory in adult ADHD with an online 3D videogame simulating everyday tasks

The diagnosis of ADHD is based on real-life attentional-executive deficits, but they are harder to detect in adults than in children and objective quantitative measures reflecting these everyday problems are lacking. We developed an online version of EPELI 3D videogame for naturalistic and scalable assessment of goal-directed action and prospective memory in adult ADHD. In EPELI, participants perform instructed everyday chores in a virtual apartment from memory. Our pre-registered hypothesis predicted weaker EPELI performances in adult ADHD compared to controls. The sample comprised 112 adults with ADHD and 255 neurotypical controls comparable in age (mean 31, SD = 8 years), gender distribution (71% females) and educational level. Using web-browser, the participants performed EPELI and other cognitive tasks, including Conner’s Continuous Performance Test (CPT). They also filled out questionnaires probing everyday executive performance and kept a 5-day diary of everyday prospective memory errors. Self-reported strategy use in the EPELI game was also examined. The ADHD participants’ self-ratings indicated clearly more everyday executive problems than in the controls. Differences in the EPELI game were mostly seen in the ADHD participants’ higher rates of task-irrelevant actions. Gender differences and a group × gender interaction was found in the number of correctly performed tasks, indicating poorer performance particularly in ADHD males. Discriminant validity of EPELI was similar to CPT. Strategy use strongly predicted EPELI performance in both groups. The results demonstrate the feasibility of EPELI for online assessment and highlight the role of impulsivity as a distinctive everyday life problem in adult ADHD.</p

The host galaxy and late-time evolution of the Super-Luminous Supernova PTF12dam

Super-luminous supernovae of type Ic have a tendency to occur in faint host galaxies which are likely to have low mass and low metallicity. PTF12dam is one of the closest and best studied super-luminous explosions that has a broad and slowly fading lightcurve similar to SN 2007bi. Here we present new photometry and spectroscopy for PTF12dam from 200-500 days (rest-frame) after peak and a detailed analysis of the host galaxy (SDSS J142446.21+461348.6 at z = 0.107). Using deep templates and image subtraction we show that the full lightcurve can be fit with a magnetar model if escape of high-energy gamma rays is taken into account. The full bolometric lightcurve from -53 to +399 days (with respect to peak) cannot be fit satisfactorily with the pair-instability models. An alternative model of interaction with a dense CSM produces a good fit to the data although this requires a very large mass (~ 13 M_sun) of hydrogen free CSM. The host galaxy is a compact dwarf (physical size ~ 1.9 kpc) and with M_g = -19.33 +/- 0.10, it is the brightest nearby SLSN Ic host discovered so far. The host is a low mass system (2.8 x 10^8 M_sun) with a star-formation rate (5.0 M_sun/year), which implies a very high specific star-formation rate (17.9 Gyr^-1). The remarkably strong nebular lines provide detections of the [O III] \lambda 4363 and [O II] \lambda\lambda 7320,7330 auroral lines and an accurate oxygen abundance of 12 + log(O/H) = 8.05 +/- 0.09. We show here that they are at the extreme end of the metallicity distribution of dwarf galaxies and propose that low metallicity is a requirement to produce these rare and peculiar supernovae.Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures, 8 tables, accepted for publication to MNRA

Kepler423b: a half-Jupiter mass planet transiting a very old solar-like star

We report the spectroscopic confirmation of the Kepler object of interest KOI-183.01 (Kepler-423b), a half-Jupiter mass planet transiting an old solar-like star every 2.7 days. Our analysis is the first to combine the full Kepler photometry (quarters 1-17) with high-precision radial velocity measurements taken with the FIES spectrograph at the Nordic Optical Telescope. We simultaneously modelled the photometric and spectroscopic data-sets using Bayesian approach coupled with Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling. We found that the Kepler pre-search data conditioned (PDC) light curve of KOI-183 exhibits quarter-to-quarter systematic variations of the transit depth, with a peak-to-peak amplitude of about 4.3 % and seasonal trends reoccurring every four quarters. We attributed these systematics to an incorrect assessment of the quarterly variation of the crowding metric. The host star KOI-183 is a G4 dwarf with $M_\star=0.85\pm0.04$ M_\rm{Sun}, $R_\star=0.95\pm0.04$ R_\rm{Sun}, $T_\mathrm{eff}=5560\pm80$ K, $[M/H]=-0.10\pm0.05$ dex, and with an age of $11\pm2$ Gyr. The planet KOI-183b has a mass of $M_\mathrm{p}=0.595\pm0.081$ M$_\mathrm{Jup}$ and a radius of $R_\mathrm{p}=1.192\pm0.052$ R$_\mathrm{Jup}$, yielding a planetary bulk density of $\rho_\mathrm{p}=0.459\pm0.083$ g/cm$^{3}$. The radius of KOI-183b is consistent with both theoretical models for irradiated coreless giant planets and expectations based on empirical laws. The inclination of the stellar spin axis suggests that the system is aligned along the line of sight. We detected a tentative secondary eclipse of the planet at a 2-$\sigma$ confidence level ($\Delta F_{\mathrm{ec}}=14.2\pm6.6$ ppm) and found that the orbit might have a small non-zero eccentricity of $e=0.019^{+0.028}_{-0.014}$. With a Bond albedo of $A_\mathrm{B}=0.037\pm0.019$, KOI-183b is one of the gas-giant planets with the lowest albedo known so far.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures, 5 tables. Accepted for publication in A&A. Planet designation changed from KOI-183b to Kepler-423

Miksi musiikkia tutkitaan ja opetetaan?:asiantuntijoiden käsityksiä musiikintutkimuksen, musiikkikasvatuksen ja yhteiskunnan välisistä suhteista

Tiivistelmä. Tutkimuksemme tavoitteena on selvittää musiikintutkijoiden käsityksiä siitä, miksi musiikkia tutkitaan ja opetetaan. Musiikintutkimuksen ja -opetuksen nähdään olevan vahvasti kytköksissä toisiinsa, sillä opetuksen tulee pohjautua tieteelliselle tiedolle. Tutkimus ja opetus ovat myös vuorovaikutuksessa yhteiskunnan kanssa, sillä yhteiskunta tarjoaa taloudellista tukea tutkimukselle ja tutkijat tuottavat tietoa yhteiskunnan hyödynnettäväksi. Yhteiskunnan muutosten myötä tutkijoille avautuu uusia tutkimuskohteita, joita tutkimalla saadaan jälleen ajankohtaista tieteellistä tietoa uusista ilmiöistä. Tutkimusaiheemme kattaa koko musiikintutkimuksen kentän, ja pyrimme tutkielmamme teoreettisessa viitekehyksessä tuomaan esille aikaisemmin tehtyjä tutkimustuloksia mahdollisimman laajasti. Käsittelemme musiikin merkityksiä sekä yksilöllisestä että yhteisöllisestä näkökulmasta, ja tarkastelemme musiikin fyysisiä, psyykkisiä ja sosiaalisia vaikutuksia. Koska musiikki joutuu usein perustelemaan asemaansa oppiaineena, haluamme tuoda jokaiseen lukuun myös musiikkikasvatuksellisen näkökulman. Lisäksi tarkastelemme ilmiötä filosofisesta näkökulmasta, jolloin esiin nousevat kysymykset musiikin arvosta ja siitä, nähdäänkö se välineenä jonkin saavuttamiseen vai itsessään arvokkaana ilmiönä. Tutkimuksemme metodologisena lähtökohtana on fenomenografia, sillä pyrimme selvittämään haastateltavien käsityksiä tutkittavasta ilmiöstä. Halusimme ajankohtaista, asiantuntevaa ja monipuolista tietoa tutkimuksemme aineistoksi, minkä vuoksi valitsimme haastateltaviksi musiikintutkimuksen professoreita. Aineistonkeruumenetelmänä hyödynsimme teemahaastattelua, mikä mahdollisti haastattelujen etenemisen yksityiskohtaisten kysymysten sijaan väljempien teemojen varassa mahdollistaen haastateltavan vapaamman ilmaisun ja sen myötä myös laajemman aineiston syntymisen. Poimimme litteroiduista haastatteluista tutkimuskysymystemme kannalta merkittävät ilmaukset, joita luokittelemalla muodostimme aineistomme analyysin rungon. Analyysin perusteella yhteiskunnan ja taloudellisen tuen rooli sekä musiikintutkimuksessa että -opetuksessa korostuu. Musiikintutkimusta on lähes jokaisessa suomalaisessa yliopistossa, mutta haastatellut kokevat sen olevan vaikeuksissa mahdollisten säästötoimenpiteiden takia. Tutkijoiden mielestä musiikki on merkityksellinen ja moniulotteinen ilmiö, jota täytyy tutkia ja jonka tulisi näkyä yhteiskunnassa laajemmin. Teknologisoitunut yhteiskunta ja musiikkikulttuurien muutokset ovat vaikuttaneet siihen, millaisena ilmiönä musiikki nähdään. Tutkijoiden mielestä yhteiskunta odottaa musiikintutkimuksen ja -opetuksen tuottavan mitattavaa tulosta. He eivät näe musiikilla ja sen opetuksella olevan suoraa välitöntä vaikutusta, minkä takia mitattavia tuloksia on vaikea saavuttaa ja kausaalisuhteita vaikea todistaa. Musiikki voi olla väline päämäärien saavuttamiseen, mutta haastatellut tutkijat eivät halua korostaa pelkästään musiikin välinearvoja. Lähes jokaiselle haastatellulle musiikilla on myös itseisarvo. Tutkijat kokevat yksimielisesti musiikin kuuluvan yleissivistävään opetukseen. Tutkijat näkevät musiikin sivistävinä piirteinä erityisesti oman kulttuurin välittämisen ja kehittämisen, itsetuntemuksen sekä yksilön omaksi itseksi kasvamisen ympäristöön suhteutettuna. Lisäksi tietämys ja kokemus musiikista mahdollistavat musiikista nauttimisen ja hyvän musiikkisuhteen syntymisen, minkä myötä yksilöllä on mahdollisuus käyttää musiikkia osana arkeaan, hyvinvointiaan ja tunteidenkäsittelyään. Jotta musiikinopetus olisi toimivaa ja ajankohtaista, opettajan tulee huomioida opetussuunnitelman asettamat tavoitteet, nuorten oma maailma, teknologisoitunut yhteiskunta, oppiaineiden välinen integraatio sekä vähäisten tuntimäärien tehokas hyödyntäminen. Musiikinopetuksen edistäminen tutkimuksellisten tulosten avulla vaikuttaa ajoittain monimutkaiselta prosessilta. Luotettavien ja pätevien tutkimustulosten tuottaminen on vaikeaa, sillä musiikki on ilmiönä laaja ja merkitykseltään varsin yksilöllinen. Musiikilla on myös koulumaailmassa erityinen merkityksensä, sillä se mahdollistaa oppilaan itseilmaisun oman tekemisen kautta, mikä on yhtä tärkeää kuin tehokkaiden opiskelutaitojen kehittäminen

Fall Detection Analysis Using a Real Fall Dataset

International Conference on Soft Computing Models in Industrial and Environmental Applications (13th. 2018. San Sebastián