33 research outputs found
Round Table Summary: Problems in Modelling Stellar Atmospheres
The aim of the Round Table (RT) "Problems in modelling stellar atmospheres" was that of giving a panoramic view of the state of art on the atmospheric models used to predict observations of stars from T to A spectral type, the Sun included
Pili Annulati Coincident with Alopecia Areata, Autoimmune Thyroid Disease, and Primary IgA Deficiency: Case report and Considerations on the Literature
Pili annulati is a rare autosomal dominant hair disorder clinically characterized by a pattern of alternating bright and dark bands of the hair, the bright bands appearing dark if observed by transmitted light. This pattern is due to the periodic occurrence of air-filled cavities along the hair cortex which scatter and reflect the light while precluding its transmission. A susceptibility region, including a possibly responsible Frizzled gene, has been mapped to the telomeric region of chromosome 12q, although a specific mutation has not been identified. The condition has sometimes been observed in concurrence with alopecia areata, and in this paper we report a case in whom the concomitant severe alopecia areata was associated with autoimmune thyroid disease and primary IgA deficiency \u2013 a quadruple complex which, to our knowledge, has never been previously described. The occurrence of multiple immune disorders in the same patient affected by pili annulati could represent a key to understanding the high prevalence of alopecia areata in this condition. Specifically, in individuals predisposed to autoimmune disease, the molecular alterations that cause the anatomical changes of pili annulati could prompt the immune response against the hair root that underlies alopecia areata
A study of the elements copper through uranium in Sirius A: Contributions from STIS and ground-based spectra
We determine abundances or upper limits for all of the 55 stable elements
from copper to uranium for the A1 Vm star Sirius. The purpose of the study is
to assemble the most complete picture of elemental abundances with the hope of
revealing the chemical history of the brightest star in the sky, apart from the
Sun. We also explore the relationship of this hot metallic-line (Am) star to
its cooler congeners, as well as the hotter, weakly- or non-magnetic
mercury-manganese (HgMn) stars. Our primary observational material consists of
{\em Hubble Space Telescope} () spectra taken with the Space Telescope
Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) in the ASTRAL project. We have also used archival
material from the %\citep/{ayr10}. satellite, and from the
Goddard High-Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS), as well as ground-based spectra
from Furenlid, Westin, Kurucz, Wahlgren, and their coworkers, ESO spectra from
the UVESPOP project, and NARVAL spectra retrieved from PolarBase. Our analysis
has been primarily by spectral synthesis, and in this work we have had the
great advantage of extensive atomic data unavailable to earlier workers. We
find most abundances as well as upper limits range from 10 to 100 times above
solar values. We see no indication of the huge abundance excesses of 1000 or
more that occur among many chemically peculiar (CP) stars of the upper main
sequence. The picture of Sirius as a hot Am star is reinforced.Comment: With 6 Figures and 4 Tables; accepted for publication in Ap
A large stellar evolution database for population synthesis studies. II. Stellar models and isochrones for an alpha-enhanced metal distribution
[Abridged] We present a large, new set of stellar evolution models and
isochrones for an alpha-enhanced metal distribution typical of Galactic halo
and bulge stars; it represents a homogeneous extension of our stellar model
library for a distribution already presented in Pietrinferni et al.(2004). The
effect of the alpha-element enhancement has been properly taken into account in
the nuclear network, opacity, equation of state and, for the first time, the
bolometric corrections, and color transformations. This allows us to avoid the
inconsistent use - common to all alpha-enhanced model libraries currently
available - of scaled-solar bolometric corrections and color transformations
for alpha-enhanced models and isochrones. We show how bolometric corrections to
magnitudes obtained for the U,B portion of stellar spectra for T_{eff}<=6500K,
are significantly affected by the metal mixture, especially at the higher
metallicities. We also provide complete sets of evolutionary models for
low-mass, He-burning stellar structures covering the whole metallicity range,
to enable synthetic horizontal branch simulations. We compare our database with
several widely used stellar model libraries from different authors, as well as
with various observed color magnitude and color-color diagrams (Johnson-Cousins
BVI and near infrared magnitudes, Stromgren colors) of Galactic field stars and
globular clusters. We also test our isochrones comparing integrated optical
colors and Surface Brightness Fluctuation magnitudes with selected globular
cluster data. We find a general satisfactory agreement with the empirical
constraints.Comment: 46 pages, 20 figures, ApJ in press, the whole database presented in
this paper can be foud at http://www.te.astro.it/BASTI/index.ph
Synthetic Lick Indices and Detection of α-enhanced Stars. III. F, G, and K Stars with [Fe/H] > 0.00
A sample of 119 F, G, and K solar neighborhood stars, selected under the condition [Fe/H] > 0.00, is investigated in order to detect which of them, if any, present α-enhanced characteristics. According to the kinematics, the sample represents stars of the thin-disk component of the Galaxy. The search of α-enhanced characteristics is performed by adopting an already tested procedure that does not require previous knowledge of the stellar main atmospheric parameters. The analysis is based on the comparison of spectral indices in the Lick IDS system, coming from different observational data sets, with synthetic ones computed with solar-scaled abundances and with α-element enhancement. The main result of the analysis is the extreme paucity (likely just one in 119) of α-enhanced stars in our sample, thus suggesting [α/Fe] = 0.0 for thin-disk stars with [Fe/H] > 0.00. This result, which is in agreement with the standard evolutionary picture of the disk of the Galaxy, is compared with recent results from high-resolution analysis reported in the literature. The role of the atmospheric parameter assumptions in the analysis of high-resolution spectroscopic data is discussed, and a possible explanation of discrepant results about α-enhancement for stars with [Fe/H] > 0.00 is presented