18,523 research outputs found
New VLT observations of the Fermi pulsar PSR J1048-5832
PSR J1048-5832 is a Vela-like (P=123.6 ms; tau~20.3 kyr) gamma-ray pulsar
detected by Fermi, at a distance of ~2.7 kpc and with a rotational energy loss
rate dot{E}_{SD} ~2 x 10^{36} erg/s. The PSR J1048-5832 field has been observed
with the VLT in the V and R bands. We used these data to determine the colour
of the object detected closest to the Chandra position (Star D) and confirm
that it is not associated with the pulsar. For the estimated extinction along
the line of sight, inferred from a re-analysis of the Chandra and XMM-Newton
spectra, the fluxes of Star D (V~26.7; R~25.8) imply a -0.13 < (V-R)_0 < 0.6.
This means that the PSR J1048-5832 spectrum would be unusually red compared to
the Vela pulsar.Moreover, the ratio between the unabsorbed optical and X-ray
flux of PSR J1048-5832 would be much higher than for other young pulsars. Thus,
we conclude that Star D is not the PSR J1048-5832 counterpart. We compared the
derived R and V-band upper limits (R>26.4; V>27.6) with the extrapolation of
the X and gamma-ray spectra and constrained the pulsar spectrum at
low-energies. In particular, the VLT upper limits suggest that the pulsar
spectrum could be consistent with a single power-law, stretching from the
gamma-rays to the optical.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication on Monthly Notices of
the Royal Astronomical Society Main Journa
Conformations Of A Model Protein Revealed By An Aggregating Cuᴵᴵ Porphyrin: Sensing The Difference
Aggregated t-CuP binds to poly-L-glutamate through supramolecular interactions, revealing itself to be an extremely sensitive probe for the major conformations of the polymeric scaffold
A Characterization of Bispecial Sturmian Words
A finite Sturmian word w over the alphabet {a,b} is left special (resp. right
special) if aw and bw (resp. wa and wb) are both Sturmian words. A bispecial
Sturmian word is a Sturmian word that is both left and right special. We show
as a main result that bispecial Sturmian words are exactly the maximal internal
factors of Christoffel words, that are words coding the digital approximations
of segments in the Euclidean plane. This result is an extension of the known
relation between central words and primitive Christoffel words. Our
characterization allows us to give an enumerative formula for bispecial
Sturmian words. We also investigate the minimal forbidden words for the set of
Sturmian words.Comment: Accepted to MFCS 201
Finding a reflexive voice : -- researching the problems of implementing new learning practices within a New Zealand manufacturing organisation : a 100pt thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management in Human Resources Management at Massey University
This study explored the social forces mediating manager's participation in a new reflexive participative learning practice designed to improve profitability within a New Zealand manufacturing organisation. Despite a large theoretical and managerial body of literature on organisational learning there has been little empirical investigation of how people experience and engage their reflexivity towards challenging the status-quo to create high level learning and new knowledge. Power was identified as a potential moderator of the reflexive learning experience and the variable relations of power and learning were constructed from a review of literature and these relationships were explored and investigated within the case study. Two prevailing discourses were identified as powerful moderators of public reflexivity, the traditionalist discourse which constructed managers actions and conversations towards insularism and survivalist concerns and the productionist discourse in which institutionalised production practices encircled and mediated managers actions and what constituted legitimacy in conversations. This study used a critical action research method to place the reflexive experience of managers and the researcher at the centre of the study and provide data representative of the social discourses that constructed variable freedoms and constraints upon the reflexive voice
The Ineludible non-Gaussianity of the Primordial Black Hole Abundance
We study the formation of primordial black holes when they are generated by
the collapse of large overdensities in the early universe. Since the density
contrast is related to the comoving curvature perturbation by a nonlinear
relation, the overdensity statistics is unavoidably non-Gaussian. We show that
the abundance of primordial black holes at formation may not be captured by a
perturbative approach which retains the first few cumulants of the non-Gaussian
probability distribution. We provide two techniques to calculate the
non-Gaussian abundance of primordial black holes at formation, one based on
peak theory and the other on threshold statistics. Our results show that the
unavoidable non-Gaussian nature of the inhomogeneities in the energy density
makes it harder to generate PBHs. We provide simple (semi-)analytical
expressions to calculate the non-Gaussian abundances of the primordial black
holes and show that for both narrow and broad power spectra the gaussian case
from threshold statistics is reproduced by increasing the amplitude of the
power spectrum by a factor .Comment: 26 pages, 10 figures, matching published versio
Target motion estimation via a multistatic FSR
The focus of this paper is on the estimation of the kinematic parameters of moving targets
via a MIMO Forward Scatter Radar (FSR) system. A sub-optimum estimation technique is considered
that exploits the information concerning the time instants at which the target crosses the individual
baselines to retrieve the motion parameters. The accuracy of such technique is firstly investigated
from a theoretical point of view and then the effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated
by applying it to live MIMO FSR data. Shown results prove the practical applicability of the proposed
technique
Unifying Einstein and Palatini gravities
We consider a novel class of gravity theories where the connection is
related to the conformally scaled metric with
a scaling that depends on the scalar curvature only. We call them
C-theories and show that the Einstein and Palatini gravities can be obtained as
special limits. In addition, C-theories include completely new physically
distinct gravity theories even when . With nonlinear ,
C-theories interpolate and extrapolate the Einstein and Palatini cases and may
avoid some of their conceptual and observational problems. We further show that
C-theories have a scalar-tensor formulation, which in some special cases
reduces to simple Brans-Dicke-type gravity. If matter fields couple to the
connection, the conservation laws in C-theories are modified. The stability of
perturbations about flat space is determined by a simple condition on the
lagrangian.Comment: 17 pages, no figure
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