309 research outputs found
Search for a Solution of the Pioneer Anomaly
In 1972 and 1973 the Pioneer 10 and 11 missions were launched. They were the
first to explore the outer solar system and achieved stunning breakthroughs in
deep-space exploration. But beginning in about 1980 an unmodeled force of \sim
8 \times 10^{-8} cm/s^2, directed approximately towards the Sun, appeared in
the tracking data. It later was unambiguously verified as being in the data and
not an artifact. The cause remains unknown (although radiant heat remains a
likely origin). With time more and more effort has gone into understanding this
anomaly (and also possibly related effects). We review the situation and
describe ongoing programs to resolve the issue.Comment: 24 pages 8 figure
Elliptic operators on manifolds with singularities and K-homology
It is well known that elliptic operators on a smooth compact manifold are
classified by K-homology. We prove that a similar classification is also valid
for manifolds with simplest singularities: isolated conical points and fibered
boundary. The main ingredients of the proof of these results are: an analog of
the Atiyah-Singer difference construction in the noncommutative case and an
analog of Poincare isomorphism in K-theory for our singular manifolds.
As applications we give a formula in topological terms for the obstruction to
Fredholm problems on manifolds with singularities and a formula for K-groups of
algebras of pseudodifferential operators.Comment: revised version; 25 pages; section with applications expande
Darboux points and integrability of homogeneous Hamiltonian systems with three and more degrees of freedom
We consider natural complex Hamiltonian systems with degrees of freedom
given by a Hamiltonian function which is a sum of the standard kinetic energy
and a homogeneous polynomial potential of degree . The well known
Morales-Ramis theorem gives the strongest known necessary conditions for the
Liouville integrability of such systems. It states that for each there
exists an explicitly known infinite set \scM_k\subset\Q such that if the
system is integrable, then all eigenvalues of the Hessian matrix V''(\vd)
calculated at a non-zero \vd\in\C^n satisfying V'(\vd)=\vd, belong to
\scM_k. The aim of this paper is, among others, to sharpen this result. Under
certain genericity assumption concerning we prove the following fact. For
each and there exists a finite set \scI_{n,k}\subset\scM_k such that
if the system is integrable, then all eigenvalues of the Hessian matrix
V''(\vd) belong to \scI_{n,k}. We give an algorithm which allows to find
sets \scI_{n,k}. We applied this results for the case and we found
all integrable potentials satisfying the genericity assumption. Among them
several are new and they are integrable in a highly non-trivial way. We found
three potentials for which the additional first integrals are of degree 4 and 6
with respect to the momenta.Comment: 54 pages, 1 figur
Social and cultural origins of motivations to volunteer a comparison of university students in six countries
Although participation in volunteering and motivations to volunteer (MTV) have received substantial attention on the national level, particularly in the US, few studies have compared and explained these issues across cultural and political contexts. This study compares how two theoretical perspectives, social origins theory and signalling theory, explain variations in MTV across different countries. The study analyses responses from a sample of 5794 students from six countries representing distinct institutional contexts. The findings provide strong support for signalling theory but less so for social origins theory. The article concludes that volunteering is a personal decision and thus is influenced more at the individual level but is also impacted to some degree by macro-level societal forces
Social Cohesion, Structural Holes, and a Tale of Two Measures
EMBARGOED - author can archive pre-print or post-print on any open access repository after 12 months from publication. Publication date is May 2013 so embargoed until May 2014.This is an authorâs accepted manuscript (deposited at arXiv arXiv:1211.0719v2 [physics.soc-ph] ), which was subsequently published in Journal of Statistical Physics May 2013, Volume 151, Issue 3-4, pp 745-764. The final publication is available at link.springer.com http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10955-013-0722-
Dissection-independent production of Plasmodium sporozoites from whole mosquitoes
Progress towards a protective vaccine against malaria remains slow. To date, only limited protection has been routinely achieved following immunisation with either whole-parasite (sporozoite) or subunit-based vaccines. One major roadblock to vaccine progress, and to pre-erythrocytic parasite biology in general, is the continued reliance on manual salivary gland dissection for sporozoite isolation from infected mosquitoes. Here, we report development of a multi-step method, based on batch processing of homogenised whole mosquitoes, slurry, and density-gradient filtration, which combined with free -flow electrophoresis rapidly produces a pure, infective sporozoite inoculum. Human-infective Plasmodium falciparum and rodent-infective Plasmodium berghei sporozoites produced in this way are two-to threefold more infective than salivary gland dissection sporozoites in in vitro hepatocyte infection assays. In an in vivo rodent malaria model, the same P. berghei sporozoites confer sterile protection from mosquito-bite challenge when immunisation is delivered intravenously or 60-70% protection when delivered intramuscularly. By improving purity, infectivity, and immunogenicity, this method represents a key advancement in capacity to produce research grade sporozoites, which should impact delivery of a whole parasite based malaria vaccine at scale in the future.Host-parasite interactio
Fitting the integrated Spectral Energy Distributions of Galaxies
Fitting the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of galaxies is an almost
universally used technique that has matured significantly in the last decade.
Model predictions and fitting procedures have improved significantly over this
time, attempting to keep up with the vastly increased volume and quality of
available data. We review here the field of SED fitting, describing the
modelling of ultraviolet to infrared galaxy SEDs, the creation of
multiwavelength data sets, and the methods used to fit model SEDs to observed
galaxy data sets. We touch upon the achievements and challenges in the major
ingredients of SED fitting, with a special emphasis on describing the interplay
between the quality of the available data, the quality of the available models,
and the best fitting technique to use in order to obtain a realistic
measurement as well as realistic uncertainties. We conclude that SED fitting
can be used effectively to derive a range of physical properties of galaxies,
such as redshift, stellar masses, star formation rates, dust masses, and
metallicities, with care taken not to over-interpret the available data. Yet
there still exist many issues such as estimating the age of the oldest stars in
a galaxy, finer details ofdust properties and dust-star geometry, and the
influences of poorly understood, luminous stellar types and phases. The
challenge for the coming years will be to improve both the models and the
observational data sets to resolve these uncertainties. The present review will
be made available on an interactive, moderated web page (sedfitting.org), where
the community can access and change the text. The intention is to expand the
text and keep it up to date over the coming years.Comment: 54 pages, 26 figures, Accepted for publication in Astrophysics &
Space Scienc
Categorizing Different Approaches to the Cosmological Constant Problem
We have found that proposals addressing the old cosmological constant problem
come in various categories. The aim of this paper is to identify as many
different, credible mechanisms as possible and to provide them with a code for
future reference. We find that they all can be classified into five different
schemes of which we indicate the advantages and drawbacks.
Besides, we add a new approach based on a symmetry principle mapping real to
imaginary spacetime.Comment: updated version, accepted for publicatio
Polarized Parton Distributions in the Nucleon
The distribution of the spin of the nucleon among its constituents can be
parametrized in the form of polarized parton distribution functions for quarks
and gluons. Using all available data on the polarized structure function
, we determine these distributions both at leading and
next-to-leading order in perturbation theory. We suggest three different,
equally possible scenarios for the polarized gluon distribution, which is found
to be only loosely constrained by current experimental data. We examine various
possibilities of measuring polarized parton distributions at future
experiments.Comment: 18 pages, LATEX, 6 figures available as .uu fil
Spin asymmetry A_1^d and the spin-dependent structure function g_1^d of the deuteron at low values of x and Q^2
We present a precise measurement of the deuteron longitudinal spin asymmetry
A_1^d and of the deuteron spin-dependent structure function g_1^d at Q^2 < 1
GeV^2 and 4*10^-5 < x < 2.5*10^-2 based on the data collected by the COMPASS
experiment at CERN during the years 2002 and 2003. The statistical precision is
tenfold better than that of the previous measurement in this region. The
measured A_1^d and g_1^d are found to be consistent with zero in the whole
range of x.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figure
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