Sample of LMXBs in the Galactic bulge. I. Optical and near-infrared constraints from the Virtual Observatory

We report on the archival optical and near-infrared observations of 6 low mass X-ray binaries situated in the Galactic bulge. We processed several recent Chandra and XMM-Newton as well as Einstein datasets of a binary systems suspected to be ultracompact, which gave us arcsec-scale positional uncertainty estimates. We then undertook comprehensive search in existing archives and other Virtual Observatory resources in order to discover unpublished optical/NIR data on these objects. We found and analysed data from ESO Archive and UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) on SLX 1735-269, 3A 1742-294, SLX 1744-299, SLX 1744-300, GX 3+1, IGR J17505-2644 systems and publish their finding charts and optical flux constraints in this paper, as well as simple estimates of the physical parameters of these objects.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, 1 table; accepted for publication in MNRA

The face of the party? Leadership personalisation in British campaigns

The personal characteristics of political elites play an important role in British elections. While the personalisation of the media’s election coverage has been the subject of much debate, we know less about the conditions under which voters receive personalised messages directly from elites during the campaign. In this paper, we use a new dataset that includes more than 3,300 local communications from the 2015 general election to explore variation in the personalisation of campaign messaging. We find that there is systemic variation in terms of where photographs of party leaders are included in election communications, which provides further evidence that campaign messages are deployed strategically to portray the candidate – and their party – in the best possible light

Migration of the Antarctic Polar Front through the mid-Pleistocene transition: evidence and climatic implications

The Antarctic Polar Front is an important biogeochemical divider in the Southern Ocean. Laminated diatom mat deposits record episodes of massive flux of the diatom Thalassiothrix antarctica beneath the Antarctic Polar Front and provide a marker for tracking the migration of the Front through time. Ocean Drilling Program Sites 1091, 1093 and 1094 are the only deep piston cored record hitherto sampled from the sediments of the circumpolar biogenic opal belt. Mapping of diatom mat deposits between these sites indicates a glacial-interglacial front migration of up to 6 degrees of latitude in the early / mid Pleistocene. The mid Pleistocene transition marks a stepwise minimum 7 degree northward migration of the locus of the Polar Front sustained for about 450 kyr until an abrupt southward return to a locus similar to its modern position and further south than any mid-Pleistocene locus. This interval from a “900 ka event” that saw major cooling of the oceans and a ?13C minimum through to the 424 ka Mid-Brunhes Event at Termination V is also seemingly characterised by 1) sustained decreased carbonate in the subtropical south Atlantic, 2) reduced strength of Antarctic deep meridional circulation, 3) lower interglacial temperatures and lower interglacial atmospheric CO2 levels (by some 30 per mil) than those of the last 400 kyr, evidencing less complete deglaciation. This evidence is consistent with a prolonged period lasting 450 kyr of only partial ventilation of the deep ocean during interglacials and suggests that the mechanisms highlighted by recent hypotheses linking mid-latitude atmospheric conditions to the extent of deep ocean ventilation and carbon sequestration over glacial-interglacial cycles are likely in operation during the longer time scale characteristic of the Mid-Pleistocene Transition. The cooling that initiated the “900 ka event” may have been driven by minima in insolation amplitude related to eccentricity modulation of precession that also affected low latitude climates as marked by threshold changes in the African monsoon system. The major thresholds in earth system behaviour through the Mid-Pleistocene Transition were likely governed by an interplay of the 100 kyr and 400 kyr eccentricity modulation of precession