8,240 research outputs found
A study of twenty-five female patients at the Rhode Island Hospital for Mental Diseases who were tried in community job placements
Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit
Ground-based CCD astrometry with wide field imagers. IV. An improved Geometric Distortion Correction for the Blue prime-focus Camera at the LBT
High precision astrometry requires an accurate geometric distortion solution.
In this work, we present an average correction for the Blue Camera of the Large
Binocular Telescope which enables a relative astrometric precision of ~15 mas
for the B_Bessel and V_Bessel broad-band filters. The result of this effort is
used in two companion papers: the first to measure the absolute proper motion
of the open cluster M67 with respect to the background galaxies; the second to
decontaminate the color-magnitude diagram of M67 from field objects, enabling
the study of the end of its white dwarf cooling sequence. Many other
applications might find this distortion correction useful.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, 4 tables. accepted for publication on Astronomy
and Astrophysic
Astrometry and photometry with HST-WFC3. I. Geometric distortion corrections of F225W, F275W, F336W bands of the UVIS-channel
An accurate geometric distortion solution for the Hubble Space Telescope
UVIS-channel of Wide Field Camera 3 is the first step towards its use for high
precision astrometry. In this work we present an average correction that
enables a relative astrometric accuracy of ~1 mas (in each axis for well
exposed stars) in three broad-band ultraviolet filters (F225W, F275W, and
F336W). More data and a better understanding of the instrument are required to
constrain the solution to a higher level of accuracy.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures (3 in low resolution), 3 tables. Accepted for
publication in PASP on October 16 200
Neutrino oscillations
In the last decades, a very important breakthrough has been brought in the
elementary particle physics by the discovery of the phenomenon of the neutrino
oscillations, which has shown neutrino properties beyond the Standard Model.
But a full understanding of the various aspects of the neutrino oscillations is
far to be achieved. In this paper the theoretical background of the neutrino
oscillation phenomenon is described, referring in particular to the
paradigmatic models. Then the various techniques and detectors which studied
neutrinos from different sources are discussed, starting from the pioneering
ones up to the detectors still in operation and to those in preparation. The
physics results are finally presented adopting the same research path which has
crossed this long saga. The problems not yet fixed in this field are discussed,
together with the perspectives of their solutions in the near future
Fresh inflation: a warm inflationary model from a zero temperature initial state
A two-components mixture fluid which complies with the gamma law is
considered in the framework of inflation with finite temperature. The model is
developed for a quartic scalar potential without symmetry breaking. The
radiation energy density is assumed to be zero when inflation starts and
remains below the GUT temperature during the inflationary stage. Furthermore,
provides the necessary number of e-folds and sufficient radiation energy
density to GUT baryogenesis can take place near the minimum energetic
configuration.Comment: 11 pages, no figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.
Gauge invariant fluctuations of the metric during inflation from new scalar-tensor Weyl-Integrable gravity model
We investigate gauge invariant scalar fluctuations of the metric during
inflation in a non-perturbative formalism in the framework of a recently
introduced scalar-tensor theory of gravity formulated on a Weyl-Integrable
geometry. We found that the Weyl scalar field can play the role of the inflaton
field in this theory. As an application we study the case of a power law
inflation. In this case the quasi-scale invariance of the spectrum for scalar
fluctuations of the metric is achieved for determined values of the
parameter of the scalar-tensor theory. In our formalism the physical inflaton
field has a geometrical origin.Comment: 9 pages, no figures. This is a revised version accepted for
publication in Physical Review
Geo-neutrinos
We review a new interdisciplinary field between Geology and Physics: the
study of the Earth's geo-neutrino flux. We describe competing models for the
composition of the Earth, present geological insights into the make up of the
continental and oceanic crust, those parts of the Earth that concentrate Th and
U, the heat producing elements, and provide details of the regional settings in
the continents and oceans where operating and planned detectors are sited.
Details are presented for the only two operating detectors that are capable of
measuring the Earth's geo-neutrinos flux: Borexino and KamLAND; results
achieved to date are presented, along with their impacts on geophysical and
geochemical models of the Earth. Finally, future planned experiments are
highlighted
Ground-based astrometry with wide field imagers. V. Application to near-infrared detectors: HAWK-I@VLT/ESO
High-precision astrometry requires accurate point-spread function modeling
and accurate geometric-distortion corrections. This paper demonstrates that it
is possible to achieve both requirements with data collected at the high acuity
wide-field K-band imager (HAWK-I), a wide-field imager installed at the Nasmyth
focus of UT4/VLT ESO 8m telescope. Our final astrometric precision reaches ~3
mas per coordinate for a well-exposed star in a single image with a systematic
error less than 0.1 mas. We constructed calibrated astro-photometric catalogs
and atlases of seven fields: the Baade's Window, NGC 6656, NGC 6121, NGC 6822,
NGC 6388, NGC 104, and the James Webb Space Telescope calibration field in the
Large Magellanic Cloud. We make these catalogs and images electronically
available to the community. Furthermore, as a demonstration of the efficacy of
our approach, we combined archival material taken with the optical wide-field
imager at the MPI/ESO 2.2m with HAWK-I observations. We showed that we are able
to achieve an excellent separation between cluster members and field objects
for NGC 6656 and NGC 6121 with a time base-line of about 8 years. Using both
HST and HAWK-I data, we also study the radial distribution of the SGB
populations in NGC 6656 and conclude that the radial trend is flat within our
uncertainty. We also provide membership probabilities for most of the stars in
NGC 6656 and NGC 6121 catalogs and estimate membership for the published
variable stars in these two fields.Comment: 36 pages (included appendix), 13 tables, 35 figures (26 in low
resolution), accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics. Online
materials will be soon available on CDS. Meanwhile, online materials can be
requested directly to the first autho
Chemical composition of stellar populations in Omega Centauri
We derive abundances of Fe, Na, O, and s-elements from GIRAFFE@VLT spectra
for more than 200 red giant stars in the Milky Way satellite Omega Centauri.
Our preliminary results are that: (i) we confirm that Omega Centauri exibiths
large star-to-star metallicity variations ( 1.4 dex); (ii) the
metallicity distribution reveals the presence of at least five stellar
populations with different [Fe/H]; (iii) a clear Na-O anticorrelation is
clearly observed for the metal-poor and metal-intermediate populations while
apparently the anticorrelation disappears for the most metal-rich populations.
Interestingly the Na level grows with iron.Comment: 2 pages, 2 figures. To appear in the proceedings of IAU Symp. 268
"Light elements in the Universe" (C. Charbonnel, M. Tosi, F. Primas, C.
Chiappini, eds., Cambridge Univ. Press
Warm inflation and scalar perturbations of the metric
A second-order expansion for the quantum fluctuations of the matter field was
considered in the framework of the warm inflation scenario. The friction and
Hubble parameters were expended by means of a semiclassical approach. The
fluctuations of the Hubble parameter generates fluctuations of the metric.
These metric fluctuations produce an effective term of curvature. The power
spectrum for the metric fluctuations can be calculated on the infrared sector.Comment: 10 pages, no figures, to be published in General Rel. and Gravitatio
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