945 research outputs found
Angular versus radial correlation effects on momentum distributions of light two-electron ions
We investigate different correlation mechanisms for two-electron systems and
compare their respective effects on various electron distributions. The
simplicity of the wave functions used allows for the derivation of closed-form
analytical expressions for all electron distributions. Among other features, it
is shown that angular and radial correlation mechanisms have opposite effects
on Compton profiles at small momenta.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figures, 3 tabl
Developing the New Hayabusa Curation Facility at Johnson Space Center
On 25 November 2005 the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Hayabusa spacecraft made contact with the asteroid 25143 Itokawa and collected a small amount of regolith dust from Muses Sea region of smooth terrain [1]. Even though optimal sample collection did not occur, the spacecraft returned to Earth with more than 10,000 grains ranging in the size from 30-180 microns [2]. These grains represent the only collection of pristine material returned from an asteroid by a spacecraft. As part of the joint agreement between JAXA and NASA for the mission, 10% of the Hayabusa grains will be transferred to NASA for parallel curation and allocation, the first 15 of which arrived in December 2011. In order to properly receive and process these samples, a new curation facility was developed at Johnson Space Center (JSC)
The Polarizing Power of the Interstellar Medium in Taurus
We present a study of the polarizing power of the dust in cold dense regions
(dark clouds) compared to that of dust in the general interstellar medium
(ISM). Our study uses new polarimetric, optical, and spectral classification
data for 36 stars to carefully study the relation between polarization
percentage (p) and extinction (A_V) in the Taurus dark cloud complex. We find
two trends in our p-A_V study: (1) stars background to the warm ISM show an
increase in p with A_V; and (2) the percentage of polarization of stars
background to cold dark clouds does not increase with extinction. We detect a
break in the p-A_V relation at an extinction 1.3 +/- 0.2 mag, which we expect
corresponds to a set of conditions where the polarizing power of the dust
associated with the Taurus dark clouds drops precipitously. This breakpoint
places important restrictions on the use of polarimetry in studying
interstellar magnetic fields.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figures, to appear in ApJLett, AASTeX was use
Localization-delocalization transition of a reaction-diffusion front near a semipermeable wall
The A+B --> C reaction-diffusion process is studied in a system where the
reagents are separated by a semipermeable wall. We use reaction-diffusion
equations to describe the process and to derive a scaling description for the
long-time behavior of the reaction front. Furthermore, we show that a critical
localization-delocalization transition takes place as a control parameter which
depends on the initial densities and on the diffusion constants is varied. The
transition is between a reaction front of finite width that is localized at the
wall and a front which is detached and moves away from the wall. At the
critical point, the reaction front remains at the wall but its width diverges
with time [as t^(1/6) in mean-field approximation].Comment: 7 pages, PS fil
Enhanced triplet superconductivity in next generation ultraclean UTe2
The spin-triplet superconductor UTe exhibits a myriad of exotic physical
phenomena, including the possession of three distinct superconducting phases at
ambient pressure for magnetic field 40 T aligned in certain
orientations. However, contradictory reports between studies performed on
UTe specimens of varying quality have severely impeded theoretical efforts
to understand the microscopic properties of this material. Here, we report high
magnetic field measurements on a new generation of ultraclean UTe
specimens, which possess enhanced superconducting critical temperatures and
fields compared to previous sample generations. Remarkably, for applied
close to the hard magnetic direction, we find that the angular extent of
magnetic field-reinforced superconductivity is significantly increased in these
high purity crystals. This suggests that, in proximity to a field-induced
metamagnetic transition, the enhanced role of magnetic fluctuations - that are
strongly suppressed by disorder - is likely responsible for tuning UTe
between two distinct spin-triplet superconducting phases. Our results reveal a
strong sensitivity to crystalline disorder of the field-reinforced
superconducting state of UTe
The JCMT Gould Belt Survey: A First Look at the Auriga–California Molecular Cloud with SCUBA-2
We present 850 and 450 μm observations of the dense regions within the Auriga–California molecular cloud using SCUBA-2 as part of the JCMT Gould Belt Legacy Survey to identify candidate protostellar objects, measure the masses of their circumstellar material (disk and envelope), and compare the star formation to that in the Orion A molecular cloud. We identify 59 candidate protostars based on the presence of compact submillimeter emission, complementing these observations with existing Herschel/SPIRE maps. Of our candidate protostars, 24 are associated with young stellar objects (YSOs) in the Spitzer and Herschel/PACS catalogs of 166 and 60 YSOs, respectively (177 unique), confirming their protostellar nature. The remaining 35 candidate protostars are in regions, particularly around LkHα 101, where the background cloud emission is too bright to verify or rule out the presence of the compact 70 μm emission that is expected for a protostellar source. We keep these candidate protostars in our sample but note that they may indeed be prestellar in nature. Our observations are sensitive to the high end of the mass distribution in Auriga–Cal. We find that the disparity between the richness of infrared star-forming objects in Orion A and the sparsity in Auriga–Cal extends to the submillimeter, suggesting that the relative star formation rates have not varied over the Class II lifetime and that Auriga–Cal will maintain a lower star formation efficiency
The JCMT Gould Belt Survey: Evidence for radiative heating in Serpens MWC 297 and its influence on local star formation
We present SCUBA-2 450micron and 850micron observations of the Serpens MWC
297 region, part of the JCMT Gould Belt Survey of nearby star-forming regions.
Simulations suggest that radiative feedback influences the star-formation
process and we investigate observational evidence for this by constructing
temperature maps. Maps are derived from the ratio of SCUBA-2 fluxes and a two
component model of the JCMT beam for a fixed dust opacity spectral index of
beta = 1.8. Within 40 of the B1.5Ve Herbig star MWC 297, the submillimetre
fluxes are contaminated by free-free emission with a spectral index of
1.03+-0.02, consistent with an ultra-compact HII region and polar winds/jets.
Contamination accounts for 73+-5 per cent and 82+-4 per cent of peak flux at
450micron and 850micron respectively. The residual thermal disk of the star is
almost undetectable at these wavelengths. Young Stellar Objects are confirmed
where SCUBA-2 850micron clumps identified by the fellwalker algorithm coincide
with Spitzer Gould Belt Survey detections. We identify 23 objects and use Tbol
to classify nine YSOs with masses 0.09 to 5.1 Msun. We find two Class 0, one
Class 0/I, three Class I and three Class II sources. The mean temperature is
15+-2K for the nine YSOs and 32+-4K for the 14 starless clumps. We observe a
starless clump with an abnormally high mean temperature of 46+-2K and conclude
that it is radiatively heated by the star MWC 297. Jeans stability provides
evidence that radiative heating by the star MWC 297 may be suppressing clump
collapse.Comment: 24 pages, 13 figures, 7 table
JCMT POL-2 and BISTRO Survey Observations of Magnetic Fields in the L1689 Molecular Cloud
We present 850 μm polarization observations of the L1689 molecular cloud, part of the nearby Ophiuchus molecular cloud complex, taken with the POL-2 polarimeter on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT). We observe three regions of L1689: the clump L1689N which houses the IRAS 16293-2433 protostellar system, the starless clump SMM-16, and the starless core L1689B. We use the Davis–Chandrasekhar–Fermi method to estimate plane-of-sky field strengths of 366 ± 55 μG in L1689N, 284 ± 34 μG in SMM-16, and 72 ± 33 μG in L1689B, for our fiducial value of dust opacity. These values indicate that all three regions are likely to be magnetically transcritical with sub-Alfvénic turbulence. In all three regions, the inferred mean magnetic field direction is approximately perpendicular to the local filament direction identified in Herschel Space Telescope observations. The core-scale field morphologies for L1689N and L1689B are consistent with the cloud-scale field morphology measured by the Planck Space Observatory, suggesting that material can flow freely from large to small scales for these sources. Based on these magnetic field measurements, we posit that accretion from the cloud onto L1689N and L1689B may be magnetically regulated. However, in SMM-16, the clump-scale field is nearly perpendicular to the field seen on cloud scales by Planck, suggesting that it may be unable to efficiently accrete further material from its surroundings
Observational Constraints on the Formation and Evolution of Binary Stars
We present a high spatial resolution UV to NIR survey of 44 young binary
stars in Taurus with separations of 10-1000 AU. The primary results include:
(1) The relative ages of binary star components are more similar than the
relative ages of randomly paired single stars, supporting coeval formation. (2)
Only one of the companion masses is substellar, and hence the apparent
overabundance of T Tauri star companions relative to main-sequence star
companions can not be explained by a wealth of substellar secondaries that
would have been missed in main-sequence surveys. (3) Roughly 10% of T Tauri
binary star components have very red NIR colors (K-L > 1.4) and unusually high
mass accretion rates. This phenomenon does not appear to be restricted to
binary systems, however, since a comparable fraction of single T Tauri stars
exhibit the same properties. (4) Although the disk lifetimes of single stars
are roughly equal to their stellar ages, the disk lifetimes of binary stars are
an order of magnitude less than their ages. (5) The accretion rates for both
single and binary T Tauri stars appear to be moderately mass dependent. (6)
Although most classical T Tauri star binaries retain both a circumprimary and a
circumsecondary disk, there are several systems with only a circumprimary disk.
Together with the relative accretion rates, this suggests that circumprimary
disks survive longer, on average, than circumsecondary disks. (7) The disk
lifetimes, mass ratios, and relative accretion signatures of the closest
binaries (10-100 AU) suggest that they are being replenished from a
circumbinary reservoir with low angular momentum. Overall, these results
support fragmentation as the dominant binary star formation mechanism.Comment: 67 pages including 11 figures, LaTeX2e, accepted for publication in
Ap
The need to promote behaviour change at the cultural level: one factor explaining the limited impact of the MEMA kwa Vijana adolescent sexual health intervention in rural Tanzania. A process evaluation
Background - Few of the many behavioral sexual health interventions in Africa have been rigorously evaluated. Where biological outcomes have been measured, improvements have rarely been found. One of the most rigorous trials was of the multi-component MEMA kwa Vijana adolescent sexual health programme, which showed improvements in knowledge and reported attitudes and behaviour, but none in biological outcomes. This paper attempts to explain these outcomes by reviewing the process evaluation findings, particularly in terms of contextual factors.
Methods - A large-scale, primarily qualitative process evaluation based mainly on participant observation identified the principal contextual barriers and facilitators of behavioural change.
Results - The contextual barriers involved four interrelated socio-structural factors: culture (i.e. shared practices and systems of belief), economic circumstances, social status, and gender. At an individual level they appeared to operate through the constructs of the theories underlying MEMA kwa Vijana - Social Cognitive Theory and the Theory of Reasoned Action – but the intervention was unable to substantially modify these individual-level constructs, apart from knowledge.
Conclusion - The process evaluation suggests that one important reason for this failure is that the intervention did not operate sufficiently at a structural level, particularly in regard to culture. Recently most structural interventions have focused on gender or/and economics. Complementing these with a cultural approach could address the belief systems that justify and perpetuate gender and economic inequalities, as well as other barriers to behaviour change
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