62 research outputs found
VLCT-13: A commercial transport for the 21st Century
The growth of the Pacific Rim market has spurred airframers to begin feasibility studies of a large commercial transport. By the year 2001, 30 million travelers are expected to travel the Transpacific. A transport capable of hauling 800 PAX and 30,000 pounds of cargo, 7,000 nm is of specific interest. Special problems associated with this design are configuration, landing gear, passenger safety, airport compatibility, and engine thrust. A group of students at the California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo developed a very large commercial transport, VLCT-13, conventional looking design which is both comfortable and economical. Passenger comfort includes seat pitches of 34 in and 40 in, width's of 23 in and 25 in, respectfully, and a 27 ft diameter cross section. A direct operating cost of 2.3 cents per passenger per seat-mile is estimated for this airplane design. The airplane market price is estimated to be $195 million 1993 dollars based on an aircraft take off weight of 1.4 million pounds. The problems associated with the VLCT-13 are discussed and possible solutions are presented
The MeerKAT Galaxy Clusters Legacy Survey: star formation in massive clusters at 0.15 < z < 0.35
We investigate dust-unbiased star formation rates (SFR) as a function of the
environment in 20 massive clusters ()
between using radio luminosities () from the
recently released MeerKAT Galaxy Cluster Legacy Survey catalogue. We use
optical data from the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey to estimate photo-s
and assign cluster membership. We observe a steady decline in the fraction
() of star-forming galaxies from to the cluster centres
in our full cluster sample, but notice a significant difference in
gradients between clusters hosting large-scale extended radio emission in the
form of haloes and relics (associated with ongoing merger activity) and
non-radio-halo/relic hosting clusters. For star-forming galaxies within
, the in clusters hosting radio haloes and relics
() is higher than in non-radio-halo/relic hosting
clusters (). We observe a difference between the total
SFR normalised by cluster mass for non-radio-halo/relic hosting clusters
( Myr/M) and for clusters with
radio haloes and relics (
Myr/M). There is a decline
in the mass normalised total SFR of clusters for galaxies with SFR above the
luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) SFR limit at our redshift slice,
corresponding to 2 Gyr in look-back time. This is consistent with the rapid
decline in SF activity with decreasing redshift amongst cluster LIRGs seen by
previous studies using infrared-derived SFR.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures. To be published in MNRA
Resolving the complex structure of the dust torus in the active nucleus of the Circinus galaxy
To test the dust torus model for active galactic nuclei directly, we study
the extent and morphology of the nuclear dust distribution in the Circinus
galaxy using high resolution interferometric observations in the mid-infrared
with the MIDI instrument at the Very Large Telescope Interferometer. We find
that the dust distribution in the nucleus of Circinus can be explained by two
components, a dense and warm disk-like component of 0.4 pc size and a slightly
cooler, geometrically thick torus component with a size of 2.0 pc. The disk
component is oriented perpendicular to the ionisation cone and outflow and
seems to show the silicate feature at 10 micron in emission. It coincides with
a nuclear maser disk in orientation and size. From the energy needed to heat
the dust, we infer a luminosity of the accretion disk corresponding to 20% of
the Eddington luminosity of the nuclear black hole. We find that the
interferometric data are inconsistent with a simple, smooth and axisymmetric
dust emission. The irregular behaviour of the visibilities and the shallow
decrease of the dust temperature with radius provide strong evidence for a
clumpy or filamentary dust structure. We see no evidence for dust reprocessing,
as the silicate absorption profile is consistent with that of standard galactic
dust. We argue that the collimation of the ionising radiation must originate in
the geometrically thick torus component. Our findings confirm the presence of a
geometrically thick, torus-like dust distribution in the nucleus of Circinus,
as required in unified schemes of Seyfert galaxies. Several aspects of our data
require that this torus is irregular, or "clumpy".Comment: 20 pages, 16 figures, accepted for publication by A&
Full polarization study of SiO masers at 86 GHz
We study the polarization of the SiO maser emission in a representative
sample of evolved stars in order to derive an estimate of the strength of the
magnetic field, and thus determine the influence of this magnetic field on
evolved stars. We made simultaneous spectroscopic measurements of the 4 Stokes
parameters, from which we derived the circular and linear polarization levels.
The observations were made with the IF polarimeter installed at the IRAM 30m
telescope. A discussion of the existing SiO maser models is developed in the
light of our observations. Under the Zeeman splitting hypothesis, we derive an
estimate of the strength of the magnetic field. The averaged magnetic field
varies between 0 and 20 Gauss, with a mean value of 3.5 Gauss, and follows a
1/r law throughout the circumstellar envelope. As a consequence, the magnetic
field may play the role of a shaping, or perhaps collimating agent of the
circumstellar envelopes in evolved objects.Comment: 22 pages, accepted in A&A (19/12/2005
Radio and X-ray emission from disc winds in radio-quiet quasars
It has been proposed that the radio spectra of radio-quiet quasars is
produced by free-free emission in the optically thin part of an accretion disc
wind. An important observational constraint on this model is the observed X-ray
luminosity. We investigate this constraint using a sample of PG radio-quiet
quasars for which XMM-Newton EPIC spectra are available. Comparing the
predicted and measured luminosities for 0.5, 2 and 5 keV, we conclude that all
of the studied PG quasars require a large hydrogen column density absorber,
requiring these quasars to be close to or Compton-thick. Such a large column
density can be directly excluded for PG 0050+124, for which a high-resolution
RGS spectrum exists. Further constraint on the column density for a further 19
out of the 21 studied PG quasars comes from the EPIC spectrum characteristics
such as hard X-ray power-law photon index and the equivalent width of the Fe
Kalpha line; and the small equivalent width of the C IV absorber present in UV
spectra. For 2 sources: PG 1001+054 and PG 1411+442 we cannot exclude that they
are indeed Compton-thick, and the radio and X-ray luminosity are due to a wind
originating close to the super-massive black hole. We conclude that for 20 out
of 22 PG quasars studied free-free emission from a wind emanating from the
accretion disc cannot mutually explain the observed radio and X-ray luminosity.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS, 10 pages, 5 figure
Genome analysis of the necrotrophic fungal pathogens Sclerotinia sclerotiorum and Botrytis cinerea
Sclerotinia sclerotiorum and Botrytis cinerea are closely related necrotrophic plant pathogenic fungi notable for their wide host ranges and environmental persistence. These attributes have made these species models for understanding the complexity of necrotrophic, broad host-range pathogenicity. Despite their similarities, the two species differ in mating behaviour and the ability to produce asexual spores. We have sequenced the genomes of one strain of S. sclerotiorum and two strains of B. cinerea. The comparative analysis of these genomes relative to one another and to other sequenced fungal genomes is provided here. Their 38β39 Mb genomes include 11,860β14,270 predicted genes, which share 83% amino acid identity on average between the two species. We have mapped the S. sclerotiorum assembly to 16 chromosomes and found large-scale co-linearity with the B. cinerea genomes. Seven percent of the S. sclerotiorum genome comprises transposable elements compared t
The spectral energy distribution of the central parsecs of the nearest AGN
Spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of the central few tens of parsec region
of some of the nearest, most well studied, active galactic nuclei (AGN) are
presented. These genuine AGN-core SEDs, mostly from Seyfert galaxies, are
characterised by two main features: an IR bump with the maximum in the 2-10
micron range, and an increasing X-ray spectrum in the 1 to ~200 keV region.
These dominant features are common to Seyfert type 1 and 2 objects alike. Type
2 AGN exhibit a sharp drop shortward of 2 micron, with the optical to UV region
being fully absorbed, while type 1s show instead a gentle 2 micron drop ensued
by a secondary, partially-absorbed optical to UV emission bump. Assuming the
bulk of optical to UV photons generated in these AGN are reprocessed by dust
and re-emitted in the IR in an isotropic manner, the IR bump luminosity
represents >70% of the total energy output in these objects while the high
energies above 20 keV are the second energetically important contribution.
Galaxies selected by their warm IR colours, i.e. presenting a relatively-flat
flux distribution in the 12 to 60 micron range have often being classified as
AGN. The results from these high spatial resolution SEDs question this
criterion as a general rule. It is found that the intrinsic shape of the IR SED
of an AGN and inferred bolometric luminosity largely depart from those derived
from large aperture data. AGN luminosities can be overestimated by up to two
orders of magnitude if relying on IR satellite data. We find these differences
to be critical for AGN luminosities below or about 10^{44} erg/s. Above this
limit, AGNs tend to dominate the light of their host galaxy regardless of the
aperture size used. We tentatively mark this luminosity as a threshold to
identify galaxy-light- vs AGN- dominated objects.Comment: 50 pages, 14 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA
- β¦