The design and fabrication of microstrip omnidirectional array antennas for aerospace applications

A microstrip antenna design concept was developed that will provide quasi-omnidirectional radiation pattern characteristics about cylindrical and conical aerospace structures. L-band and S-band antenna arrays were designed, fabricated, and, in some cases, flight tested for rocket, satellite, and aircraft drone applications. Each type of array design is discussed along with a thermal cover design that was required for the sounding rocket applications

Why is timing of bird migration advancing when individuals are not?

Recent advances in spring arrival dates have been reported in many migratory species but the mechanism driving these advances is unknown. As population declines are most widely reported in species that are not advancing migration, there is an urgent need to identify the mechanisms facilitating and constraining these advances. Individual plasticity in timing of migration in response to changing climatic conditions is commonly proposed to drive these advances but plasticity in individual migratory timings is rarely observed. For a shorebird population that has significantly advanced migration in recent decades, we show that individual arrival dates are highly consistent between years, but that the arrival dates of new recruits to the population are significantly earlier now than in previous years. Several mechanisms could drive advances in recruit arrival, none of which require individual plasticity or rapid evolution of migration timings. In particular, advances in nest-laying dates could result in advanced recruit arrival, if benefits of early hatching facilitate early subsequent spring migration. This mechanism could also explain why arrival dates of short-distance migrants, which generally return to breeding sites earlier and have greater scope for advance laying, are advancing more rapidly than long-distance migrants

IRAC Observations of M81

IRAC images of M81 show three distinct morphological constituents: a smooth distribution of evolved stars with bulge, disk, and spiral arm components; a clumpy distribution of dust emission tracing the spiral arms; and a pointlike nuclear source. The bulge stellar colors are consistent with M-type giants, and the disk colors are consistent with a slightly younger population. The dust emission generally follows the blue and ultraviolet emission, but there are large areas that have dust emission without ultraviolet and smaller areas with ultraviolet but little dust emission. The former are presumably caused by extinction, and the latter may be due to cavities in the gas and dust created by supernova explosions. The nucleus appears fainter at 8 um than expected from ground-based 10 um observations made four years ago.Comment: ApJS in press (Spitzer special issue); 15 pages, 3 figures. Changes: unused references removed, numbers and labels in Table 1 change

A Spitzer Unbiased Ultradeep Spectroscopic Survey

We carried out an unbiased, spectroscopic survey using the low-resolution module of the infrared spectrograph (IRS) on board Spitzer targeting two 2.6 square arcminute regions in the GOODS-North field. IRS was used in spectral mapping mode with 5 hours of effective integration time per pixel. One region was covered between 14 and 21 microns and the other between 20 and 35 microns. We extracted spectra for 45 sources. About 84% of the sources have reported detections by GOODS at 24 microns, with a median F_nu(24um) ~ 100 uJy. All but one source are detected in all four IRAC bands, 3.6 to 8 microns. We use a new cross-correlation technique to measure redshifts and estimate IRS spectral types; this was successful for ~60% of the spectra. Fourteen sources show significant PAH emission, four mostly SiO absorption, eight present mixed spectral signatures (low PAH and/or SiO) and two show a single line in emission. For the remaining 17, no spectral features were detected. Redshifts range from z ~ 0.2 to z ~ 2.2, with a median of 1. IR Luminosities are roughly estimated from 24 microns flux densities, and have median values of 2.2 x 10^{11} L_{\odot} and 7.5 x 10^{11} L_{\odot} at z ~ 1 and z ~ 2 respectively. This sample has fewer AGN than previous faint samples observed with IRS, which we attribute to the fainter luminosities reached here.Comment: Published in Ap

Detection of Powerful Mid-IR H_2 Emission in the Bridge between the Taffy Galaxies

We report the detection of strong, resolved emission from warm H_2 in the Taffy galaxies and bridge. Relative to the continuum and faint polyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emission, the H_2 emission is the strongest in the connecting bridge, approaching L(H_2)/L(PAH 8 μm) = 0.1 between the two galaxies, where the purely rotational lines of H_2 dominate the mid-infrared spectrum in a way very reminiscent of the group-wide shock in the interacting group Stephan's Quintet (SQ). The surface brightness in the 0-0 S(0) and S(1) H_2 lines in the bridge is more than twice that observed at the center of the SQ shock. We observe a warm H2 mass of 4.2 × 10^8 M_☉ in the bridge, but taking into account the unobserved bridge area, the total warm mass is likely to be twice this value. We use excitation diagrams to characterize the warm molecular gas, finding an average surface mass of ~5 × 10^6 M_☉ kpc^(–2) and typical excitation temperatures of 150-175 K. H_2 emission is also seen in the galaxy disks, although there the emission is more consistent with normal star-forming galaxies. We investigate several possible heating mechanisms for the bridge gas but favor the conversion of kinetic energy from the head-on collision via turbulence and shocks as the main heating source. Since the cooling time for the warm H_2 is short (~5000 yr), shocks must be permeating the molecular gas in the bridge region in order to continue heating the H_2

Infrared Properties of Radio-Selected Submillimeter Galaxies in the Spitzer First Look Survey Verification Field

We report on submillimeter and infrared observations of 28 radio-selected galaxies in the Spitzer First Look Survey Verification field (FLSV). All of the radio-selected galaxies that show evidence for emission at 850um with SCUBA have Spitzer counterparts at 24um, while only half of the radio-selected galaxies without 850um emission have detectable counterparts at 24um. The data show a wide range of infrared colors (S70/S24 < 5--30, S8/S3.6 < 0.3--4), indicative of a mixture of infrared-warm AGN and cooler starburst dominated sources. The galaxies showing 850um emission have Spitzer flux densities and flux density ratios consistent with the range of values expected for high-redshift (z=1--4) ultraluminous infrared galaxies.Comment: Accepted for Spitzer ApJS Special Edition, 12 pages including 4 figures and 1 tabl

Mid-J CO Emission From NGC 891: Microturbulent Molecular Shocks in Normal Star Forming Galaxies

We have detected the CO(6-5), CO(7-6), and [CI] 370 micron lines from the nuclear region of NGC 891 with our submillimeter grating spectrometer ZEUS on the CSO. These lines provide constraints on photodissociation region (PDR) and shock models that have been invoked to explain the H_2 S(0), S(1), and S(2) lines observed with Spitzer. We analyze our data together with the H_2 lines, CO(3-2), and IR continuum from the literature using a combined PDR/shock model. We find that the mid-J CO originates almost entirely from shock-excited warm molecular gas; contributions from PDRs are negligible. Also, almost all the H_2 S(2) and half of the S(1) line is predicted to emerge from shocks. Shocks with a pre-shock density of 2x10^4 cm^-3 and velocities of 10 km/s and 20 km/s for C-shocks and J-shocks, respectively, provide the best fit. In contrast, the [CI] line emission arises exclusively from the PDR component, which is best parameterized by a density of 3.2x10^3 cm^-3 and a FUV field of G_o = 100 for both PDR/shock-type combinations. Our mid-J CO observations show that turbulence is a very important heating source in molecular clouds, even in normal quiescent galaxies. The most likely energy sources for the shocks are supernovae or outflows from YSOs. The energetics of these shock sources favor C-shock excitation of the lines.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figures, 6 tables, accepted by Ap

Predictive Value of Depressive Symptoms for All-Cause Mortality: Findings From the PRIME Belfast Study Examining the Role of Inflammation and Cardiovascular Risk Markers.

OBJECTIVES: To improve understanding about the potential underlying biological mechanisms in the link between depression and all-cause mortality and to investigate the role that inflammatory and other cardiovascular risk factors may play in the relationship between depressive symptoms and mortality. METHODS: Depression and blood-based biological markers were assessed in the Belfast PRIME prospective cohort study (N = 2389 men, aged 50-59 years) in which participants were followed up for 18 years. Depression was measured using the 10-item Welsh Pure Depression Inventory. Inflammation markers (C-reactive protein [CRP], neopterin, interleukin [IL]-1 receptor antagonist [IL-1Ra], and IL-18) and cardiovascular-specific risk factors (N-terminal pro-b-type natriuretic peptide, midregion pro-atrial natriuretic peptide, midregion pro-adrenomedullin, C-terminal pro-endothelin-1 [CT-proET]) were obtained at baseline. We used Cox proportional hazards modeling to examine the association between depression and biological measures in relation to all-cause mortality and explore the mediating effects. RESULTS: During follow-up, 418 participants died. Higher levels of depressive symptoms were associated with higher levels of CRP, IL-1Ra, and CT-proET. After adjustment for socioeconomic and life-style risk factors, depressive symptoms were significantly associated with all-cause mortality (hazard ratio = 1.10 per scale unit, 95% confidence interval = 1.04-1.16). This association was partly explained by CRP (7.3%) suggesting a minimal mediation effect. IL-1Ra, N-terminal pro-b-type natriuretic peptide, midregion pro-atrial natriuretic peptide, midregion pro-adrenomedullin, and CT-proET contributed marginally to the association between depression and subsequent mortality. CONCLUSIONS: Inflammatory and cardiovascular risk markers are associated with depression and with increased mortality. However, depression and biological measures show additive effects rather than a pattern of meditation of biological factors in the association between depression and mortality

The Cool ISM in S0 Galaxies. I. A Survey of Molecular Gas

Lenticular galaxies remain remarkably mysterious as a class. Observations to date have not led to any broad consensus about their origins, properties and evolution, though they are often thought to have formed in one big burst of star formation early in the history of the Universe, and to have evolved relatively passively since then. In that picture, current theory predicts that stellar evolution returns substantial quantities of gas to the interstellar medium; most is ejected from the galaxy, but significant amounts of cool gas might be retained. Past searches for that material, though, have provided unclear results. We present results from a survey of molecular gas in a volume-limited sample of field S0 galaxies, selected from the Nearby Galaxies Catalog. CO emission is detected from 78 percent of the sample galaxies. We find that the molecular gas is almost always located inside the central few kiloparses of a lenticular galaxy, meaning that in general it is more centrally concentrated than in spirals. We combine our data with HI observations from the literature to determine the total masses of cool and cold gas. Curiously, we find that, across a wide range of luminosity, the most gas rich galaxies have about 10 percent of the total amount of gas ever returned by their stars. That result is difficult to understand within the context of either monolithic or hierarchical models of evolution of the interstellar medium.Comment: 26 pages of text, 15 pages of tables, 10 figures. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

The role of lumbar puncture in children with suspected central nervous system infection

BACKGROUND: The use of the lumbar puncture in the diagnosis of central nervous system infection in acutely ill children is controversial. Recommendations have been published but it is unclear whether they are being followed. METHODS: The medical case notes of 415 acute medical admissions in a children's hospital were examined to identify children with suspected central nervous system infection and suspected meningococcal septicaemia. We determined whether lumbar punctures were indicated or contraindicated, whether they had been performed, and whether the results contributed to the patients' management. RESULTS: Fifty-two children with suspected central nervous system infections, and 43 with suspected meningococcal septicaemia were identified. No lumbar punctures were performed in patients with contraindications, but only 25 (53%) of 47 children with suspected central nervous system infection and no contraindications received a lumbar puncture. Lumbar puncture findings contributed to the management in 18 (72%) of these patients, by identifying a causative organism or excluding bacterial meningitis. CONCLUSION: The recommendations for undertaking lumbar punctures in children with suspected central nervous system infection are not being followed because many children that should receive lumbar punctures are not getting them. When they are performed, lumbar puncture findings make a useful contribution to the patients' management