Restoration of native vegetation and re-introduction of Malva preissiana on Penguin Island – Preliminary findings

Penguin Island’s vegetation in southwestern Australia has been degraded by anthropogenic activities and breeding silver gulls (Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae). However, native vegetation cover is important for breeding seabirds such as bridled terns (Onychoprion anaethetus). This pilot project aimed to restore native vegetation cover around artificial nest tubes for bridled terns using tubestock of berry salt bush (Rhagodia baccata) and bower spinach (Tetragonia implexicoma), and to re-introduce the Australian hollyhock (Malva preissiana), an ornithocoprophilic coastal plant that disappeared from Penguin Island in the 1970s due to competition with introduced Malva spp. and other nitrophilous weeds (Rippey et al. 2002). A total of 80 R. baccata or T. implexicoma seedlings and 980 M. preissiana seeds were planted, but less than 4% of the tubestock survived and less than 1% of the M. preissiana seeds germinated. Disturbance by breeding silver gulls was identified as a major issue, therefore seedling protection from these birds is now being used for ongoing restoration projects

Computationally Efficient Implementation of Convolution-based Locally Adaptive Binarization Techniques

One of the most important steps of document image processing is binarization. The computational requirements of locally adaptive binarization techniques make them unsuitable for devices with limited computing facilities. In this paper, we have presented a computationally efficient implementation of convolution based locally adaptive binarization techniques keeping the performance comparable to the original implementation. The computational complexity has been reduced from O(W2N2) to O(WN2) where WxW is the window size and NxN is the image size. Experiments over benchmark datasets show that the computation time has been reduced by 5 to 15 times depending on the window size while memory consumption remains the same with respect to the state-of-the-art algorithmic implementation

Preliminary results of a study of magnetic properties in the Foum-Zguid dyke (Morocco)

This work focuses on the study of flow and propagation of magma using rock magnetic analyses along sections across the thick Jurassic dyke of Foum-Zguid (Southern Morocco). Thermomagnetic data show that Ti-poor titanomagnetite is the main magnetic carrier. Petrographic analysis shows that the main Ti phase (ilmenite) occurs either as lamellae within spinel (center of the dyke) or as isolated grains (dyke margin). Bulk magnetic properties display distinct behavior according to the distance to the dyke margin; grain size of the main magnetic carrier decreases towards the center of the dyke, while the natural remanent magnetization and the bulk magnetic susceptibility increase. Only the magnetic susceptibility ellipsoid close to the dyke margin corresponds to that usually found in thin dykes, with the magnetic foliation sub parallel to dyke margins. Maximum principal axis is in most cases either parallel or perpendicular to the intersection between the planes of magnetic foliation and dyke wall. Moreover, when this axis is perpendicular to the intersection it is associated with a more oblate magnetic susceptibility ellipsoid shape, indicating the presence of complex magnetic fabrics. The studied magnetic properties show that, in this 100 m wide thick dyke, flow structures related with dyke propagation are only preserved close to the quickly cooled dyke margins. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Open Issues on the Synthesis of Evolved Stellar Populations at Ultraviolet Wavelengths

In this paper we briefly review three topics that have motivated our (and others') investigations in recent years within the context of evolutionary population synthesis techniques. These are: The origin of the FUV up-turn in elliptical galaxies, the age-metallicity degeneracy, and the study of the mid-UV rest-frame spectra of distant red galaxies. We summarize some of our results and present a very preliminary application of a UV grid of theoretical spectra in the analysis of integrated properties of aged stellar populations. At the end, we concisely suggest how these topics can be tackled once the World Space Observatory enters into operation in the midst of this decade.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Astrophysics & Space Science, UV Universe special issu

Evolution of cosmic star formation in the SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey

We present a new exploration of the cosmic star formation history and dust obscuration in massive galaxies at redshifts 0.5 1010M⊙ galaxies at 0.5 10. One third of this is accounted for by 450-μm-detected sources, while one-fifth is attributed to UV-luminous sources (brighter than L∗UV), although even these are largely obscured. By extrapolating our results to include all stellar masses, we estimate a total SFRD that is in good agreement with previous results from IR and UV data at z ≲ 3, and from UV-only data at z ∼ 5. The cosmic star formation history undergoes a transition at z ∼ 3–4, as predominantly unobscured growth in the early Universe is overtaken by obscured star formation, driven by the build-up of the most massive galaxies during the peak of cosmic assembly

The SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey: ALMA resolves the bright-end of the submillimeter number counts

We present high-resolution 870 μm Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) continuum maps of 30 bright sub-millimeter sources in the UKIDSS UDS field. These sources are selected from deep, 1 degree2 850 μm maps from the SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey, and are representative of the brightest sources in the field (median = 8.7 ± 0.4 mJy). We detect 52 sub-millimeter galaxies (SMGs) at >4σ significance in our 30 ALMA maps. In of the ALMA maps the single-dish source comprises a blend of ≥2 SMGs, where the secondary SMGs are Ultra-luminous Infrared Galaxies (ULIRGs) with 1012 . The brightest SMG contributes on average of the single-dish flux density, and in the ALMA maps containing ≥2 SMGs the secondary SMG contributes of the integrated ALMA flux. We construct source counts and show that multiplicity boosts the apparent single-dish cumulative counts by 20% at S870 > 7.5 mJy, and by 60% at S870 > 12 mJy. We combine our sample with previous ALMA studies of fainter SMGs and show that the counts are well-described by a double power law with a break at 8.5 ± 0.6 mJy. The break corresponds to a luminosity of ~6 × 1012 or a star formation rate (SFR) of ~103 . For the typical sizes of these SMGs, which are resolved in our ALMA data with = 1.2 ± 0.1 kpc, this yields a limiting SFR density of ~100 yr−1 kpc−2 Finally, the number density of S870 2 mJy SMGs is 80 ± 30 times higher than that derived from blank-field counts. An over-abundance of faint SMGs is inconsistent with line-of-sight projections dominating multiplicity in the brightest SMGs, and indicates that a significant proportion of these high-redshift ULIRGs are likely to be physically associated

The SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey: Ultraluminous star-forming galaxies in a z=1.6 cluster

We analyze new SCUBA-2 submillimeter and archival SPIRE far-infrared imaging of a z = 1.62 cluster, Cl 0218.3–0510, which lies in the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey/Ultra-Deep Survey field of the SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey. Combining these tracers of obscured star-formation activity with the extensive photometric and spectroscopic information available for this field, we identify 31 far-infrared/submillimeter-detected probable cluster members with bolometric luminosities 1012 L ☉ and show that by virtue of their dust content and activity, these represent some of the reddest and brightest galaxies in this structure. We exploit ALMA submillimeter continuum observations, which cover one of these sources, to confirm the identification of a SCUBA-2-detected ultraluminous star-forming galaxy in this structure. Integrating the total star-formation activity in the central region of the structure, we estimate that it is an order of magnitude higher (in a mass-normalized sense) than clusters at z ~ 0.5-1. However, we also find that the most active cluster members do not reside in the densest regions of the structure, which instead host a population of passive and massive, red galaxies. We suggest that while the passive and active populations have comparable near-infrared luminosities at z = 1.6, MH ~ –23, the subsequent stronger fading of the more active galaxies means that they will evolve into passive systems at the present day that are less luminous than the descendants of those galaxies that were already passive at z ~ 1.6 (MH ~ –20.5 and MH ~ –21.5, respectively, at z ~ 0). We conclude that the massive galaxy population in the dense cores of present-day clusters were already in place at z = 1.6 and that in Cl 0218.3–0510 we are seeing continuing infall of less extreme, but still ultraluminous, star-forming galaxies onto a pre-existing structure

An ALMA Survey of the SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey UKIDSS/UDS Field: Number Counts of Submillimeter Galaxies

We report the first results of AS2UDS, an 870 μm continuum survey with the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) of a total area of ~50 arcmin2 comprising a complete sample of 716 submillimeter sources drawn from the SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey (S2CLS) map of the UKIDSS/UDS field. The S2CLS parent sample covers a 0.96 degree2 field at σ 850 = 0.90 ± 0.05 mJy beam−1. Our deep, high-resolution ALMA observations with σ 870 ~ 0.25 mJy and a 0farcs15–0farcs30 FWHM synthesized beam, provide precise locations for 695 submillimeter galaxies (SMGs) responsible for the submillimeter emission corresponding to 606 sources in the low-resolution, single-dish map. We measure the number counts of SMGs brighter than S 870 ≥ 4 mJy, free from the effects of blending and show that the normalization of the counts falls by 28% ± 2% in comparison with the SCUBA-2 published counts, but that the shape remains unchanged. We determine that ${44}_{-14}^{+16}$% of the brighter single-dish sources with S 850 ≥ 9 mJy consist of a blend of two or more ALMA-detectable SMGs brighter than S 870 ~ 1 mJy (corresponding to a galaxy with a total-infrared luminosity of L IR gsim 1012 L ⊙), in comparison with 28% ± 2% for the single-dish sources at S 850 ≥ 5 mJy. Using the 46 single-dish submillimeter sources that contain two or more ALMA-detected SMGs with photometric redshifts, we show that there is a significant statistical excess of pairs of SMGs with similar redshifts (<1% probability of occurring by chance), suggesting that at least 30% of these blends arise from physically associated pairs of SMGs

Electric current circuits in astrophysics

Cosmic magnetic structures have in common that they are anchored in a dynamo, that an external driver converts kinetic energy into internal magnetic energy, that this magnetic energy is transported as Poynting fl ux across the magnetically dominated structure, and that the magnetic energy is released in the form of particle acceleration, heating, bulk motion, MHD waves, and radiation. The investigation of the electric current system is particularly illuminating as to the course of events and the physics involved. We demonstrate this for the radio pulsar wind, the solar flare, and terrestrial magnetic storms