13,857 research outputs found
The MUCHFUSS photometric campaign
Hot subdwarfs (sdO/Bs) are the helium-burning cores of red giants, which lost
almost all of their hydrogen envelopes. This mass loss is often triggered by
common envelope interactions with close stellar or even substellar companions.
Cool companions like late-type stars or brown dwarfs are detectable via
characteristic light curve variations like reflection effects and often also
eclipses. To search for such objects we obtained multi-band light curves of 26
close sdO/B binary candidates from the MUCHFUSS project with the BUSCA
instrument. We discovered a new eclipsing reflection effect system
(~d) with a low-mass M dwarf companion ().
Three more reflection effect binaries found in the course of the campaign were
already published, two of them are eclipsing systems, in one system only
showing the reflection effect but no eclipses the sdB primary is found to be
pulsating. Amongst the targets without reflection effect a new long-period sdB
pulsator was discovered and irregular light variations were found in two sdO
stars. The found light variations allowed us to constrain the fraction of
reflection effect binaries and the substellar companion fraction around sdB
stars. The minimum fraction of reflection effect systems amongst the close sdB
binaries might be greater than 15\% and the fraction of close substellar
companions in sdB binaries might be as high as . This would result in a
close substellar companion fraction to sdB stars of about 3\%. This fraction is
much higher than the fraction of brown dwarfs around possible progenitor
systems, which are solar-type stars with substellar companions around 1 AU, as
well as close binary white dwarfs with brown dwarf companions. This might be a
hint that common envelope interactions with substellar objects are
preferentially followed by a hot subdwarf phase.Comment: accepted for A&
Star Formation Across the Taffy Bridge: UGC 12914/15
We present BIMA two-field mosaic CO(1-0) images of the Taffy galaxies (UGC
12914/15), which show the distinct taffy-like radio continuum emission bridging
the two spiral disks. Large amounts of molecular gas (1.4 x 10^{10} Msun, using
the standard Galactic CO-to-H conversion applicable to Galactic disk giant
molecular clouds [GMCs]) were clearly detected throughout the taffy bridge
between the two galaxies, which, as in the more extreme case of HI, presumably
results from a head-on collision between the two galaxies. The highest CO
concentration between the two galaxies corresponds to the H_alpha source in the
taffy bridge near the intruder galaxy UGC 12915. This HII region is also
associated with the strongest source of radio continuum in the bridge, and
shows both morphological and kinematic connections to UGC 12915. The overall CO
distribution of the entire system agrees well with that of the radio continuum
emission, particularly in the taffy bridge. This argues for the star formation
origin of a significant portion of the radio continuum emission. Compared to
the HI morphology and kinematics, which are strongly distorted owing to the
high-speed collision, CO better defines the orbital geometry and impact
parameter of the interaction, as well as the disk properties (e.g., rotation,
orientation) of the progenitor galaxies. Based on the 20cm-to-CO ratio maps, we
conclude that the starburst sites are primarily located in UGC 12915 and the
H_alpha source in the bridge and show that the molecular gas in the taffy
bridge is forming into stars with star formation efficiency comparable to that
of the target galaxy UGC 12914 and similar to that in the Galactic disk.Comment: Minor typo/style corrections to match with the published version (AJ,
Nov. issue). A single .ps.gz file of the entire paper can be downloaded from
http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/gao/Taffy/all.ps.g
Inflammatory Airway Disease of Horses - Revised Consensus Statement
The purpose of this manuscript is to revise and update the previous consensus statement on inflammatory airway disease (IAD) in horses. Since 2007, a large number of scientific articles have been published on the topic and these new findings have led to a significant evolution of our understanding of IAD
Analysis of Particle Transport in a Magnetophoretic Microsystem
An analytical analysis is presented of the transport and capture of magnetic
micro/nano-particles in a magnetophoretic microsystem that consists of an array
of integrated soft-magnetic elements embedded beneath a microfluidic channel.
The elements, which are polarized by a bias field, produce a nonuniform field
distribution that gives rise to a force on magnetic particles within the
microchannel. The equations governing particle motion are derived using
analytical expressions for the dominant magnetic and fluidic forces. The
magnetic force is obtained using an analytical expression for the field
distribution in the microchannel combined with a linear magnetization model for
the magnetic response of particles. The theory takes into account particle size
and material properties, the bias field, the dimensions of the microchannel,
the fluid properties, and the flow velocity. The equations of motion are solved
to study particle transport and capture. The analysis indicates that the
particles exhibit an oscillatory motion as they traverse the microsystem, and
that a high capture efficiency can be obtained in practice
Ab initio calculation of the anomalous Hall conductivity by Wannier interpolation
The intrinsic anomalous Hall effect in ferromagnets depends on subtle
spin-orbit-induced effects in the electronic structure, and recent ab-initio
studies found that it was necessary to sample the Brillouin zone at millions of
k-points to converge the calculation. We present an efficient first-principles
approach for computing the anomalous Hall conductivity. We start out by
performing a conventional electronic-structure calculation including spin-orbit
coupling on a uniform and relatively coarse k-point mesh. From the resulting
Bloch states, maximally-localized Wannier functions are constructed which
reproduce the ab-initio states up to the Fermi level. The Hamiltonian and
position-operator matrix elements, needed to represent the energy bands and
Berry curvatures, are then set up between the Wannier orbitals. This completes
the first stage of the calculation, whereby the low-energy ab-initio problem is
transformed into an effective tight-binding form. The second stage only
involves Fourier transforms and unitary transformations of the small matrices
set up in the first stage. With these inexpensive operations, the quantities of
interest are interpolated onto a dense k-point mesh and used to evaluate the
anomalous Hall conductivity as a Brillouin zone integral. The present scheme,
which also avoids the cumbersome summation over all unoccupied states in the
Kubo formula, is applied to bcc Fe, giving excellent agreement with
conventional, less efficient first-principles calculations. Remarkably, we find
that more than 99% of the effect can be recovered by keeping a set of terms
depending only on the Hamiltonian matrix elements, not on matrix elements of
the position operator.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figure
Backward Reachability of Array-based Systems by SMT solving: Termination and Invariant Synthesis
The safety of infinite state systems can be checked by a backward
reachability procedure. For certain classes of systems, it is possible to prove
the termination of the procedure and hence conclude the decidability of the
safety problem. Although backward reachability is property-directed, it can
unnecessarily explore (large) portions of the state space of a system which are
not required to verify the safety property under consideration. To avoid this,
invariants can be used to dramatically prune the search space. Indeed, the
problem is to guess such appropriate invariants. In this paper, we present a
fully declarative and symbolic approach to the mechanization of backward
reachability of infinite state systems manipulating arrays by Satisfiability
Modulo Theories solving. Theories are used to specify the topology and the data
manipulated by the system. We identify sufficient conditions on the theories to
ensure the termination of backward reachability and we show the completeness of
a method for invariant synthesis (obtained as the dual of backward
reachability), again, under suitable hypotheses on the theories. We also
present a pragmatic approach to interleave invariant synthesis and backward
reachability so that a fix-point for the set of backward reachable states is
more easily obtained. Finally, we discuss heuristics that allow us to derive an
implementation of the techniques in the model checker MCMT, showing remarkable
speed-ups on a significant set of safety problems extracted from a variety of
sources.Comment: Accepted for publication in Logical Methods in Computer Scienc
Solving Problems on Graphs of High Rank-Width
A modulator of a graph G to a specified graph class H is a set of vertices
whose deletion puts G into H. The cardinality of a modulator to various
tractable graph classes has long been used as a structural parameter which can
be exploited to obtain FPT algorithms for a range of hard problems. Here we
investigate what happens when a graph contains a modulator which is large but
"well-structured" (in the sense of having bounded rank-width). Can such
modulators still be exploited to obtain efficient algorithms? And is it even
possible to find such modulators efficiently?
We first show that the parameters derived from such well-structured
modulators are strictly more general than the cardinality of modulators and
rank-width itself. Then, we develop an FPT algorithm for finding such
well-structured modulators to any graph class which can be characterized by a
finite set of forbidden induced subgraphs. We proceed by showing how
well-structured modulators can be used to obtain efficient parameterized
algorithms for Minimum Vertex Cover and Maximum Clique. Finally, we use
well-structured modulators to develop an algorithmic meta-theorem for deciding
problems expressible in Monadic Second Order (MSO) logic, and prove that this
result is tight in the sense that it cannot be generalized to LinEMSO problems.Comment: Accepted at WADS 201
The microstructure of plasmodesmata in internodal stem tissue of the Saccharum hybrid var. NCo376 : evidence for an apoplasmic loading pathway
The distribution, structure and functional state of plasmodesmata were investigated to gain a clearer understanding of the sucrose transport pathway to the storage parenchyma cells in stem tissue in Saccharum officinarum var. NCo376. Evidence from structural studies on sugarcane stems by electron microscopy indicated that there are numerous plasmodesmata from the vascular bundles through to the storage parenchyma cells in mature stem tissue. Our studies, supported by fluorescence microscopy and iontophoresis, indicate that there are functional plasmodesmata in the phloemunloading pathway from transport phloem tissue to the bundle sheath in Saccharum, which could support symplasmic transport; plasmodesmata outside of the sheath cells in the storage parenchyma appear to be constricted by sphincter-like structures within their neck regions. Staining with Aniline Blue revealed evidence of large callose deposits, which co-localized with plasmodesmatal aggregates in the walls of the storage parenchyma cells. This suggests that the sucrose transport into, and accumulation by, storage parenchyma of mature stem tissue is under apoplasmic control
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