595 research outputs found
Polling bias and undecided voter allocations: US Presidential elections, 2004 - 2016
Accounting for undecided and uncertain voters is a challenging issue for
predicting election results from public opinion polls. Undecided voters typify
the uncertainty of swing voters in polls but are often ignored or allocated to
each candidate in a simple, deterministic manner. Historically this may have
been adequate because the undecided were comparatively small enough to assume
that they do not affect the relative proportions of the decided voters.
However, in the presence of high numbers of undecided voters, these static
rules may in fact bias election predictions from election poll authors and
meta-poll analysts. In this paper, we examine the effect of undecided voters in
the 2016 US presidential election to the previous three presidential elections.
We show there were a relatively high number of undecided voters over the
campaign and on election day, and that the allocation of undecided voters in
this election was not consistent with two-party proportional (or even)
allocations. We find evidence that static allocation regimes are inadequate for
election prediction models and that probabilistic allocations may be superior.
We also estimate the bias attributable to polling agencies, often referred to
as "house effects".Comment: 32 pages, 9 figures, 6 table
Design guide for high pressure oxygen systems
A repository for critical and important detailed design data and information, hitherto unpublished, along with significant data on oxygen reactivity phenomena with metallic and nonmetallic materials in moderate to very high pressure environments is documented. This data and information provide a ready and easy to use reference for the guidance of designers of propulsion, power, and life support systems for use in space flight. The document is also applicable to designs for industrial and civilian uses of high pressure oxygen systems. The information presented herein are derived from data and design practices involving oxygen usage at pressures ranging from about 20 psia to 8000 psia equal with thermal conditions ranging from room temperatures up to 500 F
C, N, O Abundances in the Most Metal-Poor Damped Lyman alpha Systems
This study focuses on some of the most metal-poor damped Lyman alpha
absorbers known in the spectra of high redshift QSOs, using new and archival
observations obtained with UV-sensitive echelle spectrographs on the Keck and
VLT telescopes. The weakness and simple velocity structure of the absorption
lines in these systems allows us to measure the abundances of several elements,
and in particular those of C, N, and O, a group that is difficult to study in
DLAs of more typical metallicities. We find that when the oxygen abundance is
less than about 1/100 of solar, the C/O ratio in high redshift DLAs and
sub-DLAs matches that of halo stars of similar metallicity and shows higher
values than expected from galactic chemical evolution models based on
conventional stellar yields. Furthermore, there are indications that at these
low metallicities the N/O ratio may also be above simple expectations and may
exhibit a minimum value, as proposed by Centurion and her collaborators in
2003. Both results can be interpreted as evidence for enhanced production of C
and N by massive stars in the first few episodes of star formation, in our
Galaxy and in the distant proto-galaxies seen as QSO absorbers. The higher
stellar yields implied may have an origin in stellar rotation which promotes
mixing in the stars' interiors, as considered in some recent model
calculations. We briefly discuss the relevance of these results to current
ideas on the origin of metals in the intergalactic medium and the universality
of the stellar initial mass function.Comment: 17 pages, 9 Figures, Accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of
the Royal Astronomical Societ
The Radio Afterglow and the Host Galaxy of the X-Ray Rich GRB 981226
We report the discovery of a radio transient VLA 232937.2-235553, coincident
with the proposed X-ray afterglow for the gamma-ray burst GRB 981226. This GRB
has the highest ratio of X-ray to gamma-ray fluence of all the GRBs detected by
BeppoSAX so far and yet no corresponding optical transient was detected. The
radio light curve of VLA 232937.2-235553 is qualitatively similar to that of
several other radio afterglows. At the sub-arcsecond position provided by the
radio detection, optical imaging reveals an extended R=24.9 mag object, which
we identify as the host galaxy of GRB 981226. Afterglow models which invoke a
jet-like geometry for the outflow or require an ambient medium with a radial
density dependence, such as that produced by a wind from a massive star, are
both consistent with the radio data. Furthermore, we show that the observed
properties of the radio afterglow can explain the absence of an optical
transient without the need for large extinction local to the GRB.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Thirteen pages. Three Postscript figure
SBS 0335-052W - an Extremely Low Metallicity Dwarf Galaxy
We present Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT) and Keck II telescope
spectrophotometry and 3.5m Calar Alto telescope R, I photometry of the western
component of the extremely low-metallicity blue compact galaxy SBS 0335-052.
The components, separated by 22 kpc, appear to be members of a unique,
physically connected system. It is shown that SBS 0335-052W consists of at
least three stellar clusters and has the same redshift as SBS 0335-052. The
oxygen abundance in its two brightest knots is extremely low, 12+log(O/H)=
7.22+/-0.03 and 7.13+/-0.08, respectively. These values are lower than in SBS
0335-052 and are nearly the same as those in I Zw 18. The (R-I) color profiles
are very blue in both galaxies due to the combined effects of ionized gas and a
young stellar population emission. We argue that SBS 0335-052W is likely to be
a nearby, young dwarf galaxy.Comment: 18 pages, 4 EPS figures, to appear in ApJ, 1 July 199
SPICES II. Optical and Near-Infrared Identifications of Faint X-Ray Sources from Deep Chandra Observations of Lynx
We present our first results on field X-ray sources detected in a deep, 184.7
ks observation with the ACIS-I camera on Chandra. The observations target the
Lynx field of SPICES, and contains three known X-ray-emitting clusters out to
z=1.27. Not including the known clusters, in the 17'x17' ACIS-I field we detect
132 sources in the 0.5-2 keV (soft) X-ray band down to a limiting flux of
\~1.7e-16 erg/cm2/s and 111 sources in the 2-10 keV (hard) X-ray band down to a
limiting flux of ~1.3e-15 erg/cm2/s. The combined catalog contains a total of
153 sources, of which 42 are detected only in the soft band and 21 are detected
only in the hard band. Confirming previous Chandra results, we find that the
fainter sources have harder X-ray spectra, providing a consistent solution to
the long-standing `spectral paradox'. From deep optical and near-infrared
follow-up data, 77% of the X-ray sources have optical counterparts to I=24 and
71% of the X-ray sources have near-infrared counterparts to K=20. Four of the
24 sources in the near-IR field are associated with extremely red objects
(EROs; I-K>4). We have obtained spectroscopic redshifts with the Keck
telescopes of 18 of the Lynx Chandra sources. These sources comprise a mix of
broad-lined active galaxies, apparently normal galaxies, and two late-type
Galactic dwarfs. Intriguingly, one Galactic source is identified with an M7
dwarf exhibiting non-transient, hard X-ray emission. We review non-AGN
mechanisms to produce X-ray emission and discuss properties of the Lynx Chandra
sample in relation to other samples of X-ray and non-X-ray sources.Comment: 42 pages, 16 figures. Accepted for publication in the May 2002
Astronomical Journa
The Host Galaxy of GRB 990123
We present deep images of the field of gamma-ray burst (GRB) 990123 obtained
in a broad-band UV/visible bandpass with the Hubble Space Telescope, and deep
near-infrared images obtained with the Keck-I 10-m telescope. Both the HST and
Keck images show that the optical transient (OT) is clearly offset by 0.6
arcsec from an extended object, presumably the host galaxy. This galaxy is the
most likely source of the metallic-line absorption at z = 1.6004 seen in the
spectrum of the OT. With magnitudes V_{C} ~ 24.6 +/- 0.2 and K = 21.65 +/- 0.30
mag this corresponds to an L ~ 0.7 L_* galaxy, assuming that it is located at z
= 1.6. The estimated unobscured star formation rate is SFR ~ 6 M_sun/yr, which
is not unusually high for normal galaxies at comparable redshifts. The strength
of the observed metallic absorption lines is suggestive of a relatively high
metallicity of the gas, and thus of a chemically evolved system which may be
associated with a massive galaxy. It is also indicative of a high column
density of the gas, typical of damped Ly-alpha systems at high redshifts. We
conclude that this is the host galaxy of GRB 990123. No other obvious galaxies
are detected within the same projected radius from the OT. There is thus no
evidence for strong gravitational lensing magnification of this burst, and some
alternative explanation for its remarkable energetics may be required. The
observed offset of the OT from the center of its apparent host galaxy, 5.5 +/-
0.9 proper kpc (projected) in the galaxy's rest-frame, both refutes the
possibility that GRBs are related to galactic nuclear activity and supports
models of GRBs which involve the death and/or merger of massive stars. Further,
the HST image suggests an intimate connection of GRB 990123 and a star-forming
region.Comment: Updated references. 12 pages including 3 Postscript figures. Camera-
ready reproductions of the figures can be found at
http://astro.caltech.edu/~jsb/GRB/grb990123.htm
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