4,958 research outputs found
Detailed Chemical Abundances of Globular Clusters in Local Group Dwarf Galaxies
We present detailed chemical abundances of Fe, Ca and Ba for 17 globular
clusters (GCs) in 5 Local Group dwarf galaxies: NGC 205, NGC 6822, WLM, the SMC
and LMC. These abundances are part of a larger sample of over 20 individual
elements measured in GCs in these galaxies using a new analysis method for high
resolution, integrated light spectra. Our analysis also provides age and
stellar population constraints. The existence of GCs in dwarf galaxies with a
range of ages implies that there were episodes of rapid star formation
throughout the history of these galaxies; the abundance ratios of these
clusters suggest that the duration of these burst varied considerably from
galaxy to galaxy. We find evolution of Fe, Ca, and Ba with age in the LMC, SMC,
and NGC 6822 that is consistent with extended, lower-efficiency SF between
bursts, with an increasing contribution of low-metallicity AGB ejecta at late
times. Our sample of GCs in NGC 205 and WLM are predominantly old and
metal-poor with high [Ca/Fe] ratios, implying that the early history of these
galaxies was marked by consistently high SF rates.Comment: 2 pages, To appear in the proceedings of the conference "A Universe
of Dwarf Galaxies" (Lyon, June 14-18, 2010
The nature of functional variability in plantar pressure during a range of controlled walking speeds
During walking, variability in step parameters allows the body to adapt to changes in substrate or unexpected perturbations that may occur as the feet interface with the environment. Despite a rich literature describing biomechanical variability in step parameters, there are as yet no studies that consider variability at the body–environment interface. Here, we used pedobarographic statistical parametric mapping (pSPM) and two standard measures of variability, mean square error (m.s.e.) and the coefficient of variation (CV), to assess the magnitude and spatial variability in plantar pressure across a range of controlled walking speeds. Results by reduced major axis, and pSPM regression, revealed no consistent linear relationship between m.s.e. and speed or m.s.e. and Froude number. A positive linear relationship, however, was found between CV and walking speed and CV and Froude number. The spatial distribution of variability was highly disparate when assessed by m.s.e. and CV: relatively high variability was consistently confined to the medial and lateral forefoot when measured by m.s.e., while the forefoot and heel show high variability when measured by CV. In absolute terms, variability by CV was universally low (less than 2.5%). From these results, we determined that variability as assessed by m.s.e. is independent of speed, but dependent on speed when assessed by CV
CacheZoom: How SGX Amplifies The Power of Cache Attacks
In modern computing environments, hardware resources are commonly shared, and
parallel computation is widely used. Parallel tasks can cause privacy and
security problems if proper isolation is not enforced. Intel proposed SGX to
create a trusted execution environment within the processor. SGX relies on the
hardware, and claims runtime protection even if the OS and other software
components are malicious. However, SGX disregards side-channel attacks. We
introduce a powerful cache side-channel attack that provides system adversaries
a high resolution channel. Our attack tool named CacheZoom is able to virtually
track all memory accesses of SGX enclaves with high spatial and temporal
precision. As proof of concept, we demonstrate AES key recovery attacks on
commonly used implementations including those that were believed to be
resistant in previous scenarios. Our results show that SGX cannot protect
critical data sensitive computations, and efficient AES key recovery is
possible in a practical environment. In contrast to previous works which
require hundreds of measurements, this is the first cache side-channel attack
on a real system that can recover AES keys with a minimal number of
measurements. We can successfully recover AES keys from T-Table based
implementations with as few as ten measurements.Comment: Accepted at Conference on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems
(CHES '17
Quantal distribution functions in non-extensive statistics and an early universe test revisited
Within the context of non-extensive thermostatistics, we use the
factorization approximation to study a recently proposed early universe test. A
very restrictive bound upon the non-extensive parameter is presented: .Comment: 4 pages, prl revtex style, no figures. To appear in Physica A, 199
[N,N′-Bis(4-chlorobenzyl)ethane-1,2-diamine]dichloridozinc(II)
In the title complex, [ZnCl2(C16H18Cl2N2)], the asymmetric unit contains one molecule and two half-molecules, which have similar geometric parameters; in the latter two molecules each Zn atom lies on a twofold rotation axis. The environment about each ZnII atom is distorted tetrahedral with coordination of two terminal Cl atoms and two N atoms of the N,N′-bis(4-chlorobenzyl)ethane-1,2-diamine ligand. Four N—H⋯Cl hydrogen bonds link the molecules into a chain of R
2
2(8) rings in the [001] direction
How the extinction of extragalactic background light affects surface photometry of galaxies, groups and clusters
The faint regions of galaxies, groups and clusters hold important clues about
how these objects formed, and surface photometry at optical and near-infrared
wavelengths represents a powerful tool for studying such structures. Here, we
identify a hitherto unrecognized problem with this technique, related to how
the night sky flux is typically measured and subtracted from astronomical
images. While most of the sky flux comes from regions between the observer and
the target object, a small fraction - the extragalactic background light (EBL)
- comes from behind. We argue that since this part of the sky flux can be
subject to extinction by dust present in the galaxy/group/cluster studied,
standard reduction procedures may lead to a systematic oversubtraction of the
EBL. Even very small amounts of extinction can lead to spurious features in
radial surface surface brightness profiles and colour maps of extended objects.
We assess the likely impact of this effect on a number of topics in
extragalactic astronomy where very deep surface photometry is currently
attempted, including studies of stellar halos, starburst host galaxies, disc
truncations and diffuse intragroup/intracluster light. We argue that EBL
extinction may provide at least a partial explanation for the anomalously red
colours reported for the halos of disc galaxies and the hosts of local
starburst galaxies. EBL extinction effects also mimic truncations in discs with
unusually high dust opacities, but are unlikely to be the cause of such
features in general. Failure to account for EBL extinction can also give rise
to a non-negligible underestimate of intragroup and intracluster light at the
faintest surface brightness levels currently probed. (Abridged)Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
Semi-invariants of symmetric quivers of tame type
A symmetric quiver is a finite quiver without oriented cycles
equipped with a contravariant involution on . The involution allows us to define a nondegenerate bilinear form on
a representation $V$ of $Q$. We shall say that $V$ is orthogonal if is
symmetric and symplectic if is skew-symmetric. Moreover, we define an
action of products of classical groups on the space of orthogonal
representations and on the space of symplectic representations. So we prove
that if is a symmetric quiver of tame type then the rings of
semi-invariants for this action are spanned by the semi-invariants of
determinantal type and, when matrix defining is skew-symmetric, by
the Pfaffians . To prove it, moreover, we describe the symplectic and
orthogonal generic decomposition of a symmetric dimension vector
On The Power of Tree Projections: Structural Tractability of Enumerating CSP Solutions
The problem of deciding whether CSP instances admit solutions has been deeply
studied in the literature, and several structural tractability results have
been derived so far. However, constraint satisfaction comes in practice as a
computation problem where the focus is either on finding one solution, or on
enumerating all solutions, possibly projected to some given set of output
variables. The paper investigates the structural tractability of the problem of
enumerating (possibly projected) solutions, where tractability means here
computable with polynomial delay (WPD), since in general exponentially many
solutions may be computed. A general framework based on the notion of tree
projection of hypergraphs is considered, which generalizes all known
decomposition methods. Tractability results have been obtained both for classes
of structures where output variables are part of their specification, and for
classes of structures where computability WPD must be ensured for any possible
set of output variables. These results are shown to be tight, by exhibiting
dichotomies for classes of structures having bounded arity and where the tree
decomposition method is considered
1-Dichloroacetyl-r-2,c-6-bis(4-methoxyphenyl)-c-3,t-3-dimethylpiperidin-4-one
In the title compound, C23H25Cl2NO4, the piperidine ring adopts a distorted boat conformation. Inversion-related molecules are linked into centrosymmetric R
2
2(16) dimers by paired C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, and the dimers are connected via C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds into a chain running along [101]
Profilin modulates sarcomeric organization and mediates cardiomyocyte hypertrophy
Aims: Heart failure is often preceded by cardiac hypertrophy, which is characterized by increased cell size, altered protein abundance, and actin-cytoskeletal reorganization. Profilin is a well-conserved, ubiquitously expressed, multi-functional actin-binding protein, whose role in cardiomyocytes is largely unknown. Given its involvement in vascular hypertrophy, we aimed to test the hypothesis that profilin-1 is a key mediator of cardiomyocyte-specific hypertrophic remodeling. Methods and Results: Profilin-1 was elevated in multiple mouse models of hypertrophy, and a cardiomyocyte-specific increase of profilin in Drosophila resulted in significantly larger heart tube dimensions. Moreover, adenovirus-mediated overexpression of profilin-1 in neonatal rat ventricular myocytes (NRVMs) induced a hypertrophic response, measured by increased myocyte size and gene expression. Profilin-1 silencing suppressed the response in NRVMs stimulated with phenylephrine or endothelin-1. Mechanistically, we found that profilin-1 regulates hypertrophy, in part, through activation of the ERK1/2 signaling cascade. Confocal microscopy showed that profilin localized to the Z-line of Drosophila myofibrils under normal conditions and accumulated near the M-line when overexpressed. Elevated profilin levels resulted in elongated sarcomeres, myofibrillar disorganization, and sarcomeric disarray, which correlated with impaired muscle function. Conclusion: Our results identify novel roles for profilin as an important mediator of cardiomyocyte hypertrophy. We show that overexpression of profilin is sufficient to induce cardiomyocyte hypertrophy and sarcomeric remodeling, and silencing of profilin attenuates the hypertrophic response
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