Supernova Remnant in a Stratified Medium: Explicit, Analytical Approximations for Adiabatic Expansion and Radiative Cooling

We propose simple, explicit, analytical approximations for the kinematics of an adiabatic blast wave propagating in an exponentially stratified ambient medium, and for the onset of radiative cooling, which ends the adiabatic era. Our method, based on the Kompaneets implicit solution and the Kahn approximation for the radiative cooling coefficient, gives straightforward estimates for the size, expansion velocity, and progression of cooling times over the surface, when applied to supernova remnants (SNRs). The remnant shape is remarkably close to spherical for moderate density gradients, but even a small gradient in ambient density causes the cooling time to vary substantially over the remnant's surface, so that for a considerable period there will be a cold dense expanding shell covering only a part of the remnant. Our approximation provides an effective tool for identifying the approximate parameters when planning 2-dimensional numerical models of SNRs, the example of W44 being given in a subsequent paper.Comment: ApJ accepted, 11 pages, 2 figures embedded, aas style with ecmatex.sty and lscape.sty package

Black Extended Objects, Naked Singularities and P-Branes

We treat the horizons of charged, dilaton black extended objects as quantum mechanical objects. We show that the S matrix for such an object can be written in terms of a p-brane-like action. The requirements of unitarity of the S matrix and positivity of the p-brane tension equivalent severely restrict the number of space-time dimensions and the allowed values of the dilaton parameter a. Generally, black objects transform at the extremal limit into p-branes.Comment: 9 pages, REVTE

Knowlesi malaria in Vietnam

The simian malaria parasite Plasmodium knowlesi is transmitted in the forests of Southeast Asia. Symptomatic zoonotic knowlesi malaria in humans is widespread in the region and is associated with a history of spending time in the jungle. However, there are many settings where knowlesi transmission to humans would be expected but is not found. A recent report on the Ra-glai population of southern central Vietnam is taken as an example to help explain why this may be so

Perturbations in the Kerr-Newman Dilatonic Black Hole Background: I. Maxwell waves

In this paper we analyze the perturbations of the Kerr-Newman dilatonic black hole background. For this purpose we perform a double expansion in both the background electric charge and the wave parameters of the relevant quantities in the Newman-Penrose formalism. We then display the gravitational, dilatonic and electromagnetic equations, which reproduce the static solution (at zero order in the wave parameter) and the corresponding wave equations in the Kerr background (at first order in the wave parameter and zero order in the electric charge). At higher orders in the electric charge one encounters corrections to the propagations of waves induced by the presence of a non-vanishing dilaton. An explicit computation is carried out for the electromagnetic waves up to the asymptotic form of the Maxwell field perturbations produced by the interaction with dilatonic waves. A simple physical model is proposed which could make these perturbations relevant to the detection of radiation coming from the region of space near a black hole.Comment: RevTeX, 36 pages in preprint style, 1 figure posted as a separate PS file, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Pressure-Induced Insulating State in Ba1-xRExIrO3 (RE = Gd, Eu) Single Crystals

BaIrO3 is a novel insulator with coexistent weak ferromagnetism, charge and spin density wave. Dilute RE doping for Ba induces a metallic state, whereas application of modest pressure readily restores an insulating state characterized by a three-order-of-magnitude increase of resistivity. Since pressure generally increases orbital overlap and broadens energy bands, a pressure-induced insulating state is not commonplace. The profoundly dissimilar responses of the ground state to light doping and low hydrostatic pressures signal an unusual, delicate interplay between structural and electronic degrees of freedom in BaIrO3

Assembly and analysis of fragmentation data for liquid propellant vessels

Fragmentation data was assembled and analyzed for exploding liquid propellant vessels. These data were to be retrieved from reports of tests and accidents, including measurements or estimates of blast yield, etc. A significant amount of data was retrieved from a series of tests conducted for measurement of blast and fireball effects of liquid propellant explosions (Project PYRO), a few well-documented accident reports, and a series of tests to determine auto-ignition properties of mixing liquid propellants. The data were reduced and fitted to various statistical functions. Comparisons were made with methods of prediction for blast yield, initial fragment velocities, and fragment range. Reasonably good correlation was achieved. Methods presented in the report allow prediction of fragment patterns, given type and quantity of propellant, type of accident, and time of propellant mixing

Dilatonic Black Holes, Naked Singularities and Strings

We extend a previous calculation which treated Schwarschild black hole horizons as quantum mechanical objects to the case of a charged, dilaton black hole. We show that for a unique value of the dilaton parameter `a', which is determined by the condition of unitarity of the S matrix, black holes transform at the extremal limit into strings.Comment: 8 pages, REVTE

3D MHD Modeling of the Gaseous Structure of the Galaxy: Synthetic Observations

We generated synthetic observations from the four-arm model presented in Gomez & Cox (2004) for the Galactic ISM in the presence of a spiral gravitational perturbation. We found that velocity crowding and diffusion have a strong effect in the l-v diagram. The v-b diagram presents structures at the expected spiral arm velocities, that can be explained by the off-the-plane structure of the arms presented in previous papers of this series. Such structures are observed in the Leiden/Dwingeloo HI survey. The rotation curve, as measured from the inside of the modeled galaxy, shows similarities with the observed one for the Milky Way Galaxy, although it has large deviations from the smooth circular rotation corresponding to the background potential. The magnetic field inferred from a synthetic synchrotron map shows a largely circular structure, but with interesting deviations in the midplane due to distortion of the field from circularity in the interarm regions.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. Better quality figures in http://www.astro.umd.edu/~gomez/publica/3d_galaxy-3.pd