9,185 research outputs found
Near-UV to near-IR disk-averaged Earth's reflectance spectra
We report 320 to 1020nm disk-averaged Earth reflectance spectra obtained from
Moon's Earthshine observations with the EMMI spectrograph on the NTT at ESO La
Silla (Chile). The spectral signatures of Earth atmosphere and ground
vegetation are observed. A vegetation red-edge of up to 9% is observed on
Europe and Africa and ~2% upon Pacific Ocean. The spectra also show that Earth
is a blue planet when Rayleigh scattering dominates, or totally white when the
cloud cover is large.Comment: Proceeding of an oral prensentation at the UAI No200 Colloquiu
Electron transport through antidot superlattices in heterostructures: new magnetoresistance resonances in lattices with large diameter antidots
In the present work we have investigated the transport properties in a number
of Si/SiGe samples with square antidot lattices of different periods. In
samples with lattice periods equal to 700 nm and 850 nm we have observed the
conventional low-field commensurability magnetoresistance peaks consistent with
the previous observations in GaAs/AlGaAs and Si/SiGe samples with antidot
lattices. In samples with a 600 nm lattice period a new series of
well-developed magnetoresistance oscillations has been found beyond the last
commensurability peak which are supposed to originate from periodic skipping
orbits encircling an antidot with a particular number of bounds.Comment: To appear in EuroPhys. Let
Measurement of Cable System Losses Using Time Domain and VLF Techinques
Presented at the Insulated Conductors Committee, San Antonio, Texas, October 26-29, 2008
Joint density-functional theory for electronic structure of solvated systems
We introduce a new form of density functional theory for the {\em ab initio}
description of electronic systems in contact with a molecular liquid
environment. This theory rigorously joins an electron density-functional for
the electrons of a solute with a classical density-functional theory for the
liquid into a single variational principle for the free energy of the combined
system. A simple approximate functional predicts, without any fitting of
parameters to solvation data, solvation energies as well as state-of-the-art
quantum-chemical cavity approaches, which require such fitting.Comment: Fixed typos and minor updates to tex
Grid of theoretical NLTE equivalent widths of four Ba II lines and barium abundance in cool stars
We present a grid of computed non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE)
equivalent widths (EW) and NLTE abundance corrections for four Ba II lines:
4554, 5853, 6141, and 6496 A. The grid can be useful in deriving the NLTE
barium abundance in stars having parameters in the following ranges: effective
temperature from 4000 K to 6500 K, surface gravity log g from 0 to 5,
microturbulent velocity 0 km s^-1 to 3 km s^-1, metallicity [Fe/H] from -2 to
+0.5, and [Ba/Fe] from -0.4 to +0.6. The NLTE abundance can be either derived
by EW interpolation (using the observed Ba II line EW) or by using the NLTE
correction applied to a previously determined LTE abundance. Ba II line
equivalent widths and the NLTE corrections were calculated using the updated
MULTI code and the Ba II atomic model that was previously applied to determine
the NLTE barium abundance in different types of stars. The grid is available
on-line through the web, and we find that the grid Ba NLTE corrections are
almost as accurate as direct NLTE profile fitting (to within 0.05-0.08 dex).
For the weakest Ba II line (5853 A) the LTE abundances almost agree with the
NLTE abundances, whereas the other three Ba II lines, 4554, 6141, and 6496 A,
need NLTE corrections even at the highest metallicities tested here. The 4554 A
line is extremely strong and should not be used for abundance analysis above
[Fe/H]= -1. Furthermore, we tested the impact of different model atmospheres
and spectrum synthesis codes and found average differences of 0.06 dex and 0.09
dex, respectively, for all four lines. At these metallicities we find an
average Delta NLTE of +/-0.1 dex for the three useful Ba lines for subsolar
cool dwarfs.Comment: 9 pages 8 figures submitted to A&
The Earliest Phases of Galaxy Evolution
In this paper we study the very early phases of the evolution of our Galaxy
by means of a chemical evolution model which reproduces most of the
observational constraints in the solar vicinity and in the disk. We have
restricted our analysis to the solar neighborhood and present the predicted
abundances of several elements (C, N, O, Mg, Si, S, Ca, Fe) over an extended
range of metallicities to compared to previous
models. We adopted the most recent yield calculations for massive stars taken
from different authors (Woosley & Weaver 1995 and Thielemann et al. 1996) and
compared the results with a very large sample of data, one of the largest ever
used to this purpose. These data have been analysed with a new and powerful
statistical method which allows us to quantify the observational spread in
measured elemental abundances and obtain a more meaningful comparison with the
predictions from our chemical evolution model. Our analysis shows that the
``plateau'' observed for the [/Fe] ratios at low metallicities () is not perfectly constant but it shows a slope, especially for
oxygen. This slope is very well reproduced by our model with both sets of
yields. This is not surprising since realistic chemical evolution models,
taking into account in detail stellar lifetimes, never predicted a completely
flat plateau. This is due either to the fact that massive stars of different
mass produce a slightly different O/Fe ratio or to the often forgotten fact
that supernovae of type Ia, originating from white dwarfs, start appearing
already at a galactic age of 30 million years and reach their maximum at 1 Gyr.Comment: 32 pages, 9 figures, to be published in Ap
RpfC (Rv1884) atomic structure shows high structural conservation within the resuscitation promoting factor catalytic domain
We report the first structure of the catalytic domain of RpfC (Rv1884), one of theresuscitation-promoting factors (RPFs) from Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The structure was solved using molecular replacement, once the space group had been correctly identified as twinned P21 rather than the apparent C2221 by searching for anomalous scattering sites in P1. The structure displays a very high degree of structural conservation with the structures of the catalytic domains of RpfB (Rv1009) and RpfE (Rv2450) already published. This structural conservation highlights the importance of the versatile domain composition of the RPF family
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