3,914 research outputs found
Understanding the patterns, characteristics and trends in the housing sector labour force-AHURI Final Report No.208
The focus of this study is the national policy problem of the gap between housing supply and demand, as identified and monitored by the National Housing Supply Council. Research to date has not focused upon the spatial distribution of labour supply and demand of the housing sector labour force (HSLF). Also research to date has not distinguished between labour engaged in building new dwellings and labour engaged in undertaking alterations and additions. In addressing this research gap, this Final Report presents the summative output of the AHURI research project entitled: Understanding the patterns, characteristics and trends in the housing sector labour force in Australia. It follows the publication of the Positioning Paper for the project (Dalton et al. 2011a).This chapter has presented a response to the secondary research question: What are the temporal dimensions of the HSLF as a whole and the new build and alterations and additions sub-sectors? It first described the categories, containing records of workers who worked in the housing industry, which were used to interrogate the census data. Using these categories, the data presented showed that, in aggregate, the size of the HSLF grew in the period 2001-06. In Victoria, the workforce grew from 72 000 to 89 000, an increase of 23 per cent in the five-year period 2001-06. The 44 per cent growth in the Queensland workforce was almost twice that of Victoria for the same period when it grew from 53 000 to 77 000. This aggregate data was then split to distinguish between workers who worked on 'new build' housing and those who worked on 'alterations and additions'. The results of this splitting showed that there had been growth in both sub-sectors. The rate of growth in the alterations and additions sub-sector was greater than for the new build sector, although this growth was from a lower base
The Molecular Gas Environment around Two Herbig Ae/Be Stars: Resolving the Outflows of LkHa 198 and LkHa 225S
Observations of outflows associated with pre-main-sequence stars reveal
details about morphology, binarity and evolutionary states of young stellar
objects. We present molecular line data from the Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland
Association array and Five Colleges Radio Astronomical Observatory toward the
regions containing the Herbig Ae/Be stars LkHa 198 and LkHa 225S. Single dish
observations of 12CO 1-0, 13CO 1-0, N2H+ 1-0 and CS 2-1 were made over a field
of 4.3' x 4.3' for each species. 12CO data from FCRAO were combined with high
resolution BIMA array data to achieve a naturally-weighted synthesized beam of
6.75'' x 5.5'' toward LkHa 198 and 5.7'' x 3.95'' toward LkHa 225S,
representing resolution improvements of factors of approximately 10 and 5 over
existing data. By using uniform weighting, we achieved another factor of two
improvement. The outflow around LkHa 198 resolves into at least four outflows,
none of which are centered on LkHa 198-IR, but even at our resolution, we
cannot exclude the possibility of an outflow associated with this source. In
the LkHa 225S region, we find evidence for two outflows associated with LkHa
225S itself and a third outflow is likely driven by this source. Identification
of the driving sources is still resolution-limited and is also complicated by
the presence of three clouds along the line of sight toward the Cygnus
molecular cloud. 13CO is present in the environments of both stars along with
cold, dense gas as traced by CS and (in LkHa 225S) N2H+. No 2.6 mm continuum is
detected in either region in relatively shallow maps compared to existing
continuum observations.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures (5 color), accepted for publication in Ap
Constraints on decreases in Eta Carinae's mass loss from 3D hydrodynamic simulations of its binary colliding winds
Recent work suggests that the mass-loss rate of the primary star (Eta A) in
the massive colliding wind binary Eta Carinae dropped by a factor of 2-3
between 1999 and 2010. We present results from large- (r=1545au) and small-
(r=155au) domain, 3D smoothed particle hydrodynamic (SPH) simulations of Eta
Car's colliding winds for 3 Eta A mass-loss rates (2.4, 4.8, and 8.5 x 10^-4
M_sun/yr), investigating the effects on the dynamics of the binary wind-wind
collision (WWC). These simulations include orbital motion, optically thin
radiative cooling, and radiative forces. We find that Eta A's mass-loss rate
greatly affects the time-dependent hydrodynamics at all spatial scales
investigated. The simulations also show that the post-shock wind of the
companion star (Eta B) switches from the adiabatic to the radiative-cooling
regime during periastron passage. The SPH simulations together with 1D
radiative transfer models of Eta A's spectra reveal that a factor of 2 or more
drop in Eta A's mass-loss rate should lead to substantial changes in numerous
multiwavelength observables. Recent observations are not fully consistent with
the model predictions, indicating that any drop in Eta A's mass-loss rate was
likely by a factor < 2 and occurred after 2004. We speculate that most of the
recent observed changes in Eta Car are due to a small increase in the WWC
opening angle that produces significant effects because our line-of-sight to
the system lies close to the dense walls of the WWC zone. A modest decrease in
Eta A's mass-loss rate may be responsible, but changes in the wind/stellar
parameters of Eta B cannot yet be fully ruled out. We suggest observations
during Eta Car's next periastron in 2014 to further test for decreases in Eta
A's mass-loss rate. If Eta A's mass-loss rate is declining and continues to do
so, the 2014 X-ray minimum should be even shorter than that of 2009.Comment: 38 pages, 25 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in MNRA
Waiting in the Wings: Reflected X-ray Emission from the Homunculus Nebula
We report the first detection of X-ray emission associated with the
Homunculus Nebula which surrounds the supermassive star Eta Carinae. The
emission is characterized by a temperature in excess of 100 MK, and is
consistent with scattering of the time-delayed X-ray flux associated with the
star. The nebular emission is bright in the northwestern lobe and near the
central regions of the Homunculus, and fainter in the southeastern lobe. We
also report the detection of an unusually broad Fe K fluorescent line, which
may indicate fluorescent scattering off the wind of a companion star or some
other high velocity outflow. The X-ray Homunculus is the nearest member of the
small class of Galactic X-ray reflection nebulae, and the only one in which
both the emitting and reflecting sources are distinguishable.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures, accepted by Ap
Discovery of CH and OH in the -513 km s-1 Ejecta of Eta Carinae
The very massive star, Eta Carinae, is enshrouded in an unusual complex of
stellar ejecta, which is highly depleted in C and O, and enriched in He and N.
This circumstellar gas gives rise to distinct absorption components
corresponding to at least 20 different velocities along the line-of-sight. The
velocity component at -513 kms-1 exhibits very low ionization with
predominantly neutral species of iron-peak elements. Our statistical
equilibrium/photoionization modeling indicates that the low temperature (T =
760 K) and high density (n_H=10^7 cm^-3) of the -513 kms-1 component is
conducive to molecule formation including those with the elements C and O.
Examination of echelle spectra obtained with the Space Telescope Imaging
Spectrograph (STIS) aboard the confirms the model's predictions. The molecules,
H_2, CH, and most likely OH, have been identified in the -513 kms-1 absorption
spectrum. This paper presents the analysis of the HST/STIS spectra with the
deduced column densities for CH, OH and C I, and upper limit for CO. It is
quite extraordinary to see molecular species in a cool environment at such a
high velocity. The sharp molecular and ionic absorptions in this extensively
CNO- processed material offers us a unique environment for studying the
chemistry, dust formation processes, and nucleosynthesis in the ejected layers
of a highly evolved massive star.Comment: tentatively scheduled for the ApJ 1 September 2005, v630, 1 issu
An X-ray investigation of the NGC 346 field in the SMC (3): XMM-Newton data
We present new XMM-Newton results on the field around the NGC346 star cluster
in the SMC. This continues and extends previously published work on Chandra
observations of the same field. The two XMM-Newton observations were obtained,
respectively, six months before and six months after the previously published
Chandra data. Of the 51 X-ray sources detected with XMM-Newton, 29 were already
detected with Chandra. Comparing the properties of these X-ray sources in each
of our three datasets has enabled us to investigate their variability on times
scales of a year. Changes in the flux levels and/or spectral properties were
observed for 21 of these sources. In addition, we discovered long-term
variations in the X-ray properties of the peculiar system HD5980, a luminous
blue variable star, that is likely to be a colliding wind binary system, which
displayed the largest luminosity during the first XMM-Newton observation.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures (in gif), accepted by ApJ, also available from
http://vela.astro.ulg.ac.be/Preprints/P89/index.htm
Quasiparticles in the vortex state of V3Si
Low-energy quasiparticle excitations in the vortex state of the superconductor V3Si have been investigated using the de Haas-van Alphen effect. Quantum oscillations persist to surprisingly low values of B0/B(c2) is similar to 0.6 and T/T(c) is similar to 0.001. The superconducting state introduces a field-dependent quasiparticle damping which has a value HBAR tau-1 almost-equal-to 0.25 DELTA at the lowest fields investigated, considerably less than the superconducting gap DELTA. Quantum oscillations are attributed to the presence of a gapless excitation spectrum and may be a universal characteristic of superconductors in the vortex state
Suzaku monitoring of hard X-ray emission from η carinae over a single binary orbital cycle
The Suzaku X-ray observatory monitored the supermassive binary system η Carinae 10 times during the whole 5.5 yr orbital cycle between 2005 and 2011. This series of observations presents the first long-term monitoring of this enigmatic system in the extremely hard X-ray band between 15 and 40 keV. During most of the orbit, the 15-25 keV emission varied similarly to the 2-10 keV emission, indicating an origin in the hard energy tail of the kT ∼ 4 keV wind-wind collision (WWC) plasma. However, the 15-25 keV emission declined only by a factor of three around periastron when the 2-10 keV emission dropped by two orders of magnitude due probably to an eclipse of the WWC plasma. The observed minimum in the 15-25 keV emission occurred after the 2-10 keV flux had already recovered by a factor of ∼3. This may mean that the WWC activity was strong, but hidden behind the thick primary stellar wind during the eclipse. The 25-40 keV flux was rather constant through the orbital cycle, at the level measured with INTEGRAL in 2004. This result may suggest a connection of this flux component to the γ-ray source detected in this field. The helium-like Fe Kα line complex at ∼6.7 keV became strongly distorted toward periastron as seen in the previous cycle. The 5-9 keV spectra can be reproduced well with a two-component spectral model, which includes plasma in collision equilibrium and a plasma in non-equilibrium ionization (NEI) with τ ∼ 1011 cm-3 s-1. The NEI plasma increases in importance toward periastron
Density of states of a type-II superconductor in a high magnetic field: Impurity effects
We have calculated the density of states of a dirty but
homogeneous superconductor in a high magnetic field. We assume a dilute
concentration of scalar impurities and find how behaves as one
crosses from the weak scattering to the strong scattering limit. At low
energies, for small values of the impurity
concentration and scattering strength. When the disorder becomes stronger than
some critical value, a finite density of states is created at the Fermi
surface. These results are a consequence of the gapless nature of the
quasiparticle excitation spectrum in a high magnetic field.Comment: 20 pages in RevTeX, 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. B (July 1,
1997
- …