Neutral gas in Lyman-alpha emitting galaxies Haro 11 and ESO 338-IG04 measured through sodium absorption

Context. The Lyman alpha emission line of galaxies is an important tool for finding galaxies at high redshift, and thus probe the structure of the early universe. However, the resonance nature of the line and its sensitivity to dust and neutral gas is still not fully understood. Aims. We present measurements of the velocity, covering fraction and optical depth of neutral gas in front of two well known local blue compact galaxies that show Lyman alpha in emission: ESO 338-IG 04 and Haro 11. We thus test observationally the hypothesis that Lyman alpha can escape through neutral gas by being Doppler shifted out of resonance. Methods. We present integral field spectroscopy from the GIRAFFE/Argus spectrograph at VLT/FLAMES in Paranal, Chile. The excellent wavelength resolution allows us to accurately measure the velocity of the ionized and neutral gas through the H-alpha emission and Na D absorption, which traces the ionized medium and cold interstellar gas, respectively. We also present independent measurements with the VLT/X-shooter spectrograph which confirm our results. Results. For ESO 338-IG04, we measure no significant shift of neutral gas. The best fit velocity is -15 (16) km/s. For Haro 11, we see an outflow from knot B at 44 (13) km/s and infalling gas towards knot C with 32 (12) km/s. Based on the relative strength of the Na D absorption lines, we estimate low covering fractions of neutral gas (down to 10%) in all three cases. Conclusions. The Na D absorption likely occurs in dense clumps with higher column densities than where the bulk of the Ly-alpha scattering takes place. Still, we find no strong correlation between outflowing neutral gas and a high Lyman alpha escape fraction. The Lyman alpha photons from these two galaxies are therefore likely escaping due to a low column density and/or covering fraction.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

Complexity of checking whether two automata are synchronized by the same language

A deterministic finite automaton is said to be synchronizing if it has a reset word, i.e. a word that brings all states of the automaton to a particular one. We prove that it is a PSPACE-complete problem to check whether the language of reset words for a given automaton coincides with the language of reset words for some particular automaton.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure

Synchronization Problems in Automata without Non-trivial Cycles

We study the computational complexity of various problems related to synchronization of weakly acyclic automata, a subclass of widely studied aperiodic automata. We provide upper and lower bounds on the length of a shortest word synchronizing a weakly acyclic automaton or, more generally, a subset of its states, and show that the problem of approximating this length is hard. We investigate the complexity of finding a synchronizing set of states of maximum size. We also show inapproximability of the problem of computing the rank of a subset of states in a binary weakly acyclic automaton and prove that several problems related to recognizing a synchronizing subset of states in such automata are NP-complete.Comment: Extended and corrected version, including arXiv:1608.00889. Conference version was published at CIAA 2017, LNCS vol. 10329, pages 188-200, 201

A titanium-nitride near-infrared kinetic inductance photon-counting detector and its anomalous electrodynamics

We demonstrate single-photon counting at 1550 nm with titanium-nitride (TiN) microwave kinetic inductance detectors. Energy resolution of 0.4 eV and arrival-time resolution of 1.2 microseconds are achieved. 0-, 1-, 2-photon events are resolved and shown to follow Poisson statistics. We find that the temperature-dependent frequency shift deviates from the Mattis-Bardeen theory, and the dissipation response shows a shorter decay time than the frequency response at low temperatures. We suggest that the observed anomalous electrodynamics may be related to quasiparticle traps or subgap states in the disordered TiN films. Finally, the electron density-of-states is derived from the pulse response.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

The impact of asking intention or self-prediction questions on subsequent behavior: a meta-analysis

The current meta-analysis estimated the magnitude of the impact of asking intention and self-prediction questions on rates of subsequent behavior, and examined mediators and moderators of this question–behavior effect (QBE). Random-effects meta-analysis on 116 published tests of the effect indicated that intention/prediction questions have a small positive effect on behavior (d+ = 0.24). Little support was observed for attitude accessibility, cognitive dissonance, behavioral simulation, or processing fluency explanations of the QBE. Multivariate analyses indicated significant effects of social desirability of behavior/behavior domain (larger effects for more desirable and less risky behaviors), difficulty of behavior (larger effects for easy-to-perform behaviors), and sample type (larger effects among student samples). Although this review controls for co-occurrence of moderators in multivariate analyses, future primary research should systematically vary moderators in fully factorial designs. Further primary research is also needed to unravel the mechanisms underlying different variants of the QBE

Growth, profits and technological choice: The case of the Lancashire cotton textile industry

Using Lancashire textile industry company case studies and financial records, mainly from the period just before the First World War, the processes of growth and decline are re-examined. These are considered by reference to the nature of Lancashire entrepreneurship and the impact on technological choice. Capital accumulation, associated wealth distributions and the character of Lancashire business organisation were sybiotically linked to the success of the industry before 1914. However, the legacy of that accumulation in later decades, chronic overcapacity, formed a barrier to reconstruction and enhanced the preciptious decline of a once great industry

Navigability is a Robust Property

The Small World phenomenon has inspired researchers across a number of fields. A breakthrough in its understanding was made by Kleinberg who introduced Rank Based Augmentation (RBA): add to each vertex independently an arc to a random destination selected from a carefully crafted probability distribution. Kleinberg proved that RBA makes many networks navigable, i.e., it allows greedy routing to successfully deliver messages between any two vertices in a polylogarithmic number of steps. We prove that navigability is an inherent property of many random networks, arising without coordination, or even independence assumptions