13,880 research outputs found
Form and function of barbels in Osteoglossum bicirrhosum (Pisces Osteoglossidae) during aquatic surface respiration
The barbels on the lower jaw of Osteoglossum bicirrhosum have a different shape from those of other teleosts. A thin longitudinal fold along the shaft is characteristic. The barbel consists of dermal tissue surrounded by a thin epidermal layer. O. bicirrhosum lacks accessory respiratory organs for breathing air. At oxygen concentrations at or below 2 ppm, young individuals begin "aquatic surface respiration" (ASR). While engaged in this behaviour, the fishes swim constantly at a regular speed with the barbels in a fixed position, the lower jaws motionless, and the opercula in continuous motion. This enables the fishes to survive for hours at oxygen concentrations of less than 0.5 ppm. Observations of the currents around the barbels reveal their hydrodynamic function in light of the current theories. The barbels improve the flow of surface water into the mouth
Study of low gravity propellant transfer Quarterly progress report, 23 Dec. 1970 - 30 Apr. 1971
Bellows, metallic diaphragm, and paddle vortex subcritical transfer systems designs and high pressure systems analyses for orbital space station cryogen
The Herschel Lensing Survey (HLS): Overview
The Herschel Lensing Survey (HLS) will conduct deep PACS and SPIRE imaging of ∼40 massive clusters of galaxies. The strong gravitational lensing power of these clusters will enable us to penetrate through the confusion noise, which sets the ultimate limit on our ability to probe the
Universe with Herschel. Here we present an overview of our survey and a summary of the major results from our science demonstration phase (SDP) observations of the Bullet cluster (z = 0.297). The SDP data are rich and allow us to study not only the background high-redshift galaxies
(e.g., strongly lensed and distorted galaxies at z = 2.8 and 3.2) but also the properties of cluster-member galaxies. Our preliminary analysis shows a great diversity of far-infrared/submillimeter spectral energy distributions (SEDs), indicating that we have much to learn with Herschel about the properties of galaxy SEDs. We have also detected the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (SZ) effect increment with the SPIRE data. The success of this SDP program demonstrates the great potential of the Herschel Lensing Survey to produce exciting results in a variety of science areas
Neutrinos and Future Concordance Cosmologies
We review the free parameters in the concordance cosmology, and those which
might be added to this set as the quality of astrophysical data improves. Most
concordance parameters encode information about otherwise unexplored aspects of
high energy physics, up to the GUT scale via the "inflationary sector," and
possibly even the Planck scale in the case of dark energy. We explain how
neutrino properties may be constrained by future astrophysical measurements.
Conversely, future neutrino physics experiments which directly measure these
parameters will remove uncertainty from fits to astrophysical data, and improve
our ability to determine the global properties of our universe.Comment: Proceedings of paper given at Neutrino 2008 meeting (by RE
IT-technology in the budgeting
Budgeting plays an important role in modern organization, it is the tool that is necessary for the survival of the company in a competitive environment. Budgeting has become necessary business management process, and like any management activities, it requires automation
Discovery of very high energy gamma-rays from the flat spectrum radio quasar 3C 279 with the MAGIC telescope
3C 279 is one of the best studied flat spectrum radio quasars located at a
comparatively large redshift of z = 0.536. Observations in the very high energy
band of such distant sources were impossible until recently due to the expected
steep energy spectrum and the strong gamma-ray attenuation by the extragalactic
background light photon field, which conspire to make the source visible only
with a low energy threshold. Here the detection of a significant gamma-ray
signal from 3C 279 at very high energies (E > 75 GeV) during a flare in early
2006 is reported. Implications of its energy spectrum on the current
understanding of the extragalactic background light and very high energy
gamma-ray emission mechanism models are discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, submitted to proceedings of "4th Heidelberg
International Symposium on High Energy Gamma-Ray Astronomy 2008
An \emph{ab initio} method for locating characteristic potential energy minima of liquids
It is possible in principle to probe the many--atom potential surface using
density functional theory (DFT). This will allow us to apply DFT to the
Hamiltonian formulation of atomic motion in monatomic liquids [\textit{Phys.
Rev. E} {\bf 56}, 4179 (1997)]. For a monatomic system, analysis of the
potential surface is facilitated by the random and symmetric classification of
potential energy valleys. Since the random valleys are numerically dominant and
uniform in their macroscopic potential properties, only a few quenches are
necessary to establish these properties. Here we describe an efficient
technique for doing this. Quenches are done from easily generated "stochastic"
configurations, in which the nuclei are distributed uniformly within a
constraint limiting the closeness of approach. For metallic Na with atomic pair
potential interactions, it is shown that quenches from stochastic
configurations and quenches from equilibrium liquid Molecular Dynamics (MD)
configurations produce statistically identical distributions of the structural
potential energy. Again for metallic Na, it is shown that DFT quenches from
stochastic configurations provide the parameters which calibrate the
Hamiltonian. A statistical mechanical analysis shows how the underlying
potential properties can be extracted from the distributions found in quenches
from stochastic configurations
Optical Conductivity in a Two-Band Superconductor: Pb
We demonstrate the effect of bandstructure on the superconducting properties
of Pb by calculating the strong-coupling features in the optical conductivity,
, due to the electron-phonon interaction. The importance of
momentum dependence in the calculation of the properties of superconductors has
previously been raised for MgB. Pb resembles MgB in that it is a two
band superconductor in which the bands' contributions to the Fermi surface have
very different topologies. We calculate by calculating a
memory function which has been recently used to analyze of
BiSrCaCuO. In our calculations the two components of
the Fermi surface are described by parameterizations of de Haas--van Alphen
data. We use a phonon spectrum which is a fit to neutron scattering data. By
including the momentum dependence of the Fermi surface good agreement is found
with the experimentally determined strong-coupling features which can be
described by a broad peak at around 4.5 meV and a narrower higher peak around 8
meV of equal height. The calculated features are found to be dominated by
scattering between states within the third band. By contrast scattering between
states in the second band leads to strong-coupling features in which the height
of the high energy peak is reduced by compared to that of the low
energy peak. This result is similar to that in the conventional isotropic
(momentum independent) treatment of superconductivity. Our results show that it
is important to use realistic models of the bandstructure and phonons, and to
avoid using momentum averaged quantities, in calculations in order to get
quantitatively accurate results
ATLBS Extended Source Sample: The evolution in radio source morphology with flux density
Based on the ATLBS survey we present a sample of extended radio sources and
derive morphological properties of faint radio sources. 119 radio galaxies form
the ATLBS-Extended Source Sample (ATLBS-ESS) consisting of all sources
exceeding 30" in extent and integrated flux densities exceeding 1 mJy. We give
structural details along with information on galaxy identifications and source
classifications. The ATLBS-ESS, unlike samples with higher flux-density limits,
has almost equal fractions of FR-I and FR-II radio galaxies with a large
fraction of the FR-I population exhibiting 3C31-type structures. Significant
asymmetry in lobe extents appears to be a common occurrence in the ATLBS-ESS
FR-I sources compared to FR-II sources. We present a sample of 22 FR-Is at
z>0.5 with good structural information. The detection of several giant radio
sources, with size exceeding 0.7 Mpc, at z>1 suggests that giant radio sources
are not less common at high redshifts. The ESS also includes a sample of 28
restarted radio galaxies. The relative abundance of dying and restarting
sources is indicative of a model where radio sources undergo episodic activity
in which an active phase is followed by a brief dying phase that terminates
with restarting of the central activity; in any massive elliptical a few such
activity cycles wherein adjacent events blend may constitute the lifetime of a
radio source and such bursts of blended activity cycles may be repeated over
the age of the host. The ATLBS-ESS includes a 2-Mpc giant radio galaxy with the
lowest surface brightness lobes known to date.Comment: 69 pages, 119 figures, 4 tables, to appear in ApJ
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