12,260 research outputs found
Electron heating mechanisms in dual frequency capacitive discharges
We discuss electron heating mechanisms in the sheath regions of dual-frequency capacitive discharges, with the twin aims of identifying the dominant mechanisms and supplying closed-form expressions from which the heating power can be estimated. We show that the heating effect produced by either Ohmic or collisionless heating is much larger when the discharge is excited by a superposition of currents at two frequencies than if either current had acted alone. This coupling effect occurs because the lower frequency current, while not directly heating the electrons to any great extent, strongly affects the spatial structure of the discharge in the sheath regions
Observations of QSO J2233-606 in the Southern Hubble Deep Field
The Hubble Deep Field South (HDF-S) HST observations are expected to begin in
October 1998. We present a composite spectrum of the QSO in the HDF-S field
covering UV/optical/near IR wavelengths, obtained by combining data from the
ANU 2.3m Telescope with STIS on the HST. This intermediate resolution spectrum
covers the range 1600-10000A and allows us to derive some basic information on
the intervening absorption systems which will be important in planning future
higher resolution studies of this QSO.Comment: 9 pages and 2 figures, submitted to ApJ
A longitudinal study of migration propensities for mixed-ethnic unions in England and Wales
This research was funded by the ESRC under the Understanding Population Trends and Processes (UPTAP) programme (Award Ref: RES-163-25-0045).Most studies investigating residential segregation of ethnic minorities ignore the fact that the majority of adults live in couples. In recent years there has been a growth in the number of mixed-ethnic unions that involve a minority member and a white member. To our knowledge, hardly any research has been undertaken to explicitly examine whether the ethnic mix within households has an impact on the residential mobility of households in terms of the ethnic mix of destination neighbourhoods. Our study addresses this research gap and examines the tendencies of mobility among mixed-ethnic unions in comparison with their co-ethnic peers. We used data from the Longitudinal Study for England and Wales. Our statistical analysis supports the spatial assimilation theory; ethnic minorities move towards less deprived areas and to a lesser extent also towards less ethnically concentrated areas. However, the types of destination neighbourhood of minority people living in mixed-ethnic unions varied greatly with the ethnicity of the ethnic minority partner.PostprintPeer reviewe
Do We See Eye to Eye? Moderators of Correspondence Between Student and Faculty Evaluations of Day-to-Day Teaching
Students and instructors show moderate levels of agreement about the quality of day-to-day teaching. In the present study, we replicated and extended this finding by asking how correspondence between student and instructor ratings is moderated by time of semester and student demographic variables. Participants included 137 students and 5 instructors. On 10 separate days, students and instructors rated teaching effectiveness and challenge level of the material. Multilevel modeling indicated that student and instructor ratings of teaching effectiveness converged overall, but more advanced students and Caucasian students converged more closely with instructors. Student and instructor ratings of challenge converged early but diverged later in the semester. These results extend our knowledge about the connection between student and faculty judgments of teaching
Proton lifetime bounds from chirally symmetric lattice QCD
We present results for the matrix elements relevant for proton decay in Grand
Unified Theories (GUTs). The calculation is performed at a fixed lattice
spacing a^{-1}=1.73(3) GeV using 2+1 flavors of domain wall fermions on
lattices of size 16^3\times32 and 24^3\times64 with a fifth dimension of length
16. We use the indirect method which relies on an effective field theory
description of proton decay, where we need to estimate the low energy
constants, \alpha = -0.0112(25) GeV^3 and \beta = 0.0120(26) GeV^3. We relate
these low energy constants to the proton decay matrix elements using leading
order chiral perturbation theory. These can then be combined with experimental
bounds on the proton lifetime to bound parameters of individual GUTs.Comment: 17 pages, 9 Figure
Do Quasars Lens Quasars?
If the unexpectedly high frequency of quasar pairs with very different
component redshifts is due to the lensing of a population of background quasars
by the foreground quasar, typical lens masses must be \sim10^{12}M_{\sun} and
the sum of all such quasar lenses would have to contain times the
closure density of the Universe. It then seems plausible that a very high
fraction of all \sim10^{12} M_{\sun} gravitational lenses with redshifts
contain quasars. Here I propose that these systems have evolved to
form the present population of massive galaxies with M and M
>5\times10^{11} M_{\sun}.Comment: 6 pages, aas style, ams symbols, ApJL (accepted
An exploratory study of heavy domain wall fermions on the lattice
We report on an exploratory study of domain wall fermions (DWF) as a lattice
regularisation for heavy quarks. Within the framework of quenched QCD with the
tree-level improved Symanzik gauge action we identify the DWF parameters which
minimise discretisation effects. We find the corresponding effective 4
overlap operator to be exponentially local, independent of the quark mass. We
determine a maximum bare heavy quark mass of , below which the
approximate chiral symmetry and O(a)-improvement of DWF are sustained. This
threshold appears to be largely independent of the lattice spacing. Based on
these findings, we carried out a detailed scaling study for the heavy-strange
meson dispersion relation and decay constant on four ensembles with lattice
spacings in the range . We observe very mild
scaling towards the continuum limit. Our findings establish a sound basis for
heavy DWF in dynamical simulations of lattice QCD with relevance to Standard
Model phenomenology.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figure
A comparison of the optical properties of radio-loud and radio-quiet quasars
We have made radio observations of 87 optically selected quasars at 5 GHz
with the VLA in order to measure the radio power for these objects and hence
determine how the fraction of radio-loud quasars varies with redshift and
optical luminosity. The sample has been selected from the recently completed
Edinburgh Quasar Survey and covers a redshift range of 0.3 < z < 1.5 and an
optical absolute magnitude range of -26.5 < M_{B} < -23.5 (h, q_{0} = 1/2). We
have also matched up other existing surveys with the FIRST and NVSS radio
catalogues and combined these data so that the optical luminosity-redshift
plane is now far better sampled than previously. We have fitted a model to the
probability of a quasar being radio-loud as a function of absolute magnitude
and redshift and from this model infer the radio-loud and radio-quiet optical
luminosity functions. The radio-loud optical luminosity function is featureless
and flatter than the radio-quiet one. It evolves at a marginally slower rate if
quasars evolve by density evolution, but the difference in the rate of
evolutions of the two different classes is much less than was previously
thought. We show, using Monte-Carlo simulations, that the observed difference
in the shape of the optical luminosity functions can be partly accounted for by
Doppler boosting of the optical continuum of the radio-loud quasars and explain
how this can be tested in the future.Comment: 33 pages, 9 postscript figures, uses the AAS aaspp4 LaTeX style file,
to appear in the 1 February 1999 issue of The Astrophysical Journa
Distinct forms of synaptic inhibition and neuromodulation regulate calretinin positive neuron excitability in the spinal cord dorsal horn
The dorsal horn (DH) of the spinal cord contains a heterogenous population of neurons that process incoming sensory signals before information ascends to the brain. We have recently characterized calretinin-expressing (CR+) neurons in the DH and shown that they can be divided into excitatory and inhibitory subpopulations. The excitatory population receives high-frequency excitatory synaptic input and expresses delayed firing action potential discharge, whereas the inhibitory population receives weak excitatory drive and exhibits tonic or initial bursting discharge. Here, we characterize inhibitory synaptic input and neuromodulation in the two CR+ populations, in order to determine how each is regulated. We show that excitatory CR+ neurons receive mixed inhibition from GABAergic and glycinergic sources, whereas inhibitory CR+ neurons receive inhibition, which is dominated by glycine. Noradrenaline and serotonin produced robust outward currents in excitatory CR+ neurons, predicting an inhibitory action on these neurons, but neither neuromodulator produced a response in CR+ inhibitory neurons. In contrast, enkephalin (along with selective mu and delta opioid receptor agonists) produced outward currents in inhibitory CR+ neurons, consistent with an inhibitory action but did not affect the excitatory CR+ population. Our findings show that the pharmacology of inhibitory inputs and neuromodulator actions on CR+ cells, along with their excitatory inputs can define these two subpopulations further, and this could be exploited to modulate discrete aspects of sensory processing selectively in the DH
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