381 research outputs found

    Lake Ontario Long Term Biological Monitoring Program: 1981, 1982 Data Base

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    The Bioindex, or Long Term Biological Monitoring Program, was developed to: 1) determine normal seasonal patterns and annual ranges of abundance, community structure, and when possible, productivity of the biological components - phytoplankton, zooplankton, and benthos; 2) relate the biological components to variations in the physical, nutrient, and biological environment; and, 3) assess the adopted sampling strategy for long term monitoring. The data bases from the first two years are summarized in this document

    RESONANT STRUCTURE IN THE KUIPER DISK: AN ASYMMETRIC PLUTINO DISK

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    In order to develop a dynamical model of the Kuiper disk, we run numerical integrations of particles originating from source bodies trapped in the 3 : 2 external mean motion resonance with Neptune to determine what percentage of particles remain in the resonance for a variety of particle and source body sizes. The dynamical evolution of the particles is followed from source to sink with Poynting-Robertson light drag, solar wind drag, radiation pressure, the Lorentz force, neutral interstellar gas drag, and the effects of planetary gravitational perturbations included. We find that the number of particles in the 3 : 2 resonance increases with decreasing � (i.e., increasing particle size) for the cases in which the initial source bodies are small (� 10 km in diameter) and that the percentage of particles in resonance is not significantly changed by either the addition of the Lorentz force, as long as the potential of the particles is small (� 5 V), or the effect of neutral interstellar gas drag. The brightness of the entire Kuiper disk is calculated using a model composed of 500 lm diameter particles and fits well with upper limits to the Kuiper disk brightness and previous estimates. A disk with a size-frequency distribution weighted toward large particles, which are more likely to remain in resonance, may have a stronger, more easily identifiable resonant signature than a disk composed of small particles

    Stable manifolds and homoclinic points near resonances in the restricted three-body problem

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    The restricted three-body problem describes the motion of a massless particle under the influence of two primaries of masses 1−μ1-\mu and μ\mu that circle each other with period equal to 2π2\pi. For small μ\mu, a resonant periodic motion of the massless particle in the rotating frame can be described by relatively prime integers pp and qq, if its period around the heavier primary is approximately 2πp/q2\pi p/q, and by its approximate eccentricity ee. We give a method for the formal development of the stable and unstable manifolds associated with these resonant motions. We prove the validity of this formal development and the existence of homoclinic points in the resonant region. In the study of the Kirkwood gaps in the asteroid belt, the separatrices of the averaged equations of the restricted three-body problem are commonly used to derive analytical approximations to the boundaries of the resonances. We use the unaveraged equations to find values of asteroid eccentricity below which these approximations will not hold for the Kirkwood gaps with q/pq/p equal to 2/1, 7/3, 5/2, 3/1, and 4/1. Another application is to the existence of asymmetric librations in the exterior resonances. We give values of asteroid eccentricity below which asymmetric librations will not exist for the 1/7, 1/6, 1/5, 1/4, 1/3, and 1/2 resonances for any μ\mu however small. But if the eccentricity exceeds these thresholds, asymmetric librations will exist for μ\mu small enough in the unaveraged restricted three-body problem

    How Observations of Circumstellar Disk Asymmetries Can Reveal Hidden Planets: Pericenter Glow and its Application to the HR 4796 Disk

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    Recent images of the disks of dust around the young stars HR 4796A and Fomalhaut show, in each case, a double-lobed feature that may be asymmetric (one lobe may be brighter than the other). A symmetric double-lobed structure is that expected from a disk of dust with a central hole that is observed nearly edge-on (i.e., close to the plane of the disk). This paper shows how the gravitational influence of a second body in the system with an eccentric orbit would cause a brightness asymmetry in such a disk by imposing a "forced eccentricity" on the orbits of the constituent dust particles, thus shifting the center of symmetry of the disk away from the star and causing the dust near the forced pericenter of the perturbed disk to glow. Dynamic modeling of the HR 4796 disk shows that its 5% brightness asymmetry could be the result of a forced eccentricity as small as 0.02 imposed on the disk by either the binary companion HR 4796B, or by an unseen planet close to the inner edge of the disk. Since it is likely that a forced eccentricity of 0.01 or higher would be imposed on a disk in a system in which there are planets, but no binary companion, the corresponding asymmetry in the disk's structure could serve as a sensitive indicator of these planets that might otherwise remain undetected.Comment: 61 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal (scheduled for January 10, 2000

    Men and talk about legal abortion in South Africa: equality, support and rights discourses undermining reproductive ‘choice’

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    Discursive constructions of abortion are embedded in the social and gendered power relations of a particular socio-historical space. As part of research on public discourses concerning abortion in South Africa where there has been a radical liberalisation of abortion legislation, we collected data from male group discussions about a vignette concerning abortion, and newspaper articles written by men about abortion. Our analysis revealed how discourses of equality, support and rights may be used by men to subtly undermine women’s reproductive right to ‘choose’ an abortion. Within an Equal Partnership discourse, abortion, paired with the assumption of foetal personhood, was equated with violating an equal heterosexual partnership and a man’s patriarchal duty to protect a child. A New Man discourse, which positions men as supportive of women, was paired with the assumption of men as rational and women as irrational in decision-making, to allow for the possibility of men dissuading women from terminating a pregnancy. A Rights discourse was invoked to suggest that abortion violates men’s paternal rights

    Deep 10 and 18 micron Imaging of the HR 4796A Circumstellar Disk: Transient Dust Particles & Tentative Evidence for a Brightness Asymmetry

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    We present new 10.8 and 18.2 micron images of HR 4796A, a young A0V star that was recently discovered to have a spectacular, nearly edge-on, circumstellar disk prominent at ~20 microns (Jayawardhana et al. 1998; Koerner et al. 1998). These new images, obtained with OSCIR at Keck II, show that the disk's size at 10 microns is comparable to its size at 18 microns. Therefore, the 18 micron-emitting dust may also emit some, or all, of the 10 micron radiation. Using these multi-wavelength images, we determine a "characteristic" diameter of 2-3 microns for the mid-infrared-emitting dust particles if they are spherical and composed of astronomical silicates. Particles this small are expected to be blown out of the system by radiation pressure in a few hundred years, and therefore these particles are unlikely to be primordial. Dynamical modeling of the disk (Wyatt et al. 2000) indicates that the disk surface density is relatively sharply peaked near 70 AU, which agrees with the mean annular radius deduced by Schneider et al. (1999) from their NICMOS images. We present evidence (~1.8 sigma significance) for a brightness asymmetry that may result from the presence of the hole and the gravitational perturbation of the disk particle orbits by the low-mass stellar companion or a planet. This "pericenter glow," which must still be confirmed, results from a very small (a few AU) shift of the disk's center of symmetry relative to the central star HR 4796A; one side of the inner boundary of the annulus is shifted towards HR 4796A, thereby becoming warmer and more infrared-emitting. The possible detection of pericenter glow implies that the detection of even complex dynamical effects of planets on disks is within reach.Comment: 18 pages. 9 GIF images. Total size ~800 kB. High resolution images available upon request. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal (scheduled for January 10, 2000

    Signatures of recent asteroid disruptions in the formation and evolution of solar system dust bands

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    We have performed detailed dynamical modeling of the structure of a faint dust band observed in coadded InfraRed Astronomical Satellite data at an ecliptic latitude of 17 degrees that convincingly demonstrates that it is the result of a relatively recent (significantly less than 1Ma) disruption of an asteroid and is still in the process of forming. We show here that young dust bands retain information on the size distribution and cross-sectional area of dust released in the original asteroid disruption, before it is lost to orbital and collisional decay. We find that the Emilkowalski cluster is the source of this partial band and that the dust released in the disruption would correspond to a regolith layer similar to 3 m deep on the similar to 10 km diameter source body's surface. The dust in this band is described by a cumulative size-distribution inverse power-law index with a lower bound of 2.1 (implying domination of cross-sectional area by small particles) for dust particles with diameters ranging from a few mu m up to a few cm. The coadded observations show that the thermal emission of the dust band structure is dominated by large (mm-cm size) particles. We find that dust particle ejection velocities need to be a few times the escape velocity of the Emilkowalski cluster source body to provide a good fit to the inclination dispersion of the observations. We discuss the implications that such a significant release of material during a disruption has for the temporal evolution of the structure, composition, and magnitude of the zodiacal cloud
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