Observations of cold dust in nearby elliptical galaxies

Spectral energy distribution (SED) analyses that include new millimeter to far-infrared (FIR) observations obtained with continuum instruments on the Nobeyama and James Clerk Maxwell Telescopes and the Infrared Space Observatory are presented for seven nearby (<45 Mpc) FIR-bright elliptical galaxies. These are analyzed together with archival FIR and shortwave radio data obtained from the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED). The radio to infrared SEDs are best-fitted by power law plus graybody models of dust residing in the central galactic regions within a 2.4 kpc diameter and with temperatures between ~21 and 28 K, emissivity index simeq2, and masses from ~1.6 to 19 × 105 M☉. The emissivity index is consistent with dust constituting amorphous silicate and carbonaceous grains previously modeled for stellar-heated dust observed in the Galaxy and other nearby extragalactic sources. Using updated dust absorption coefficients for this type of dust, dust masses are estimated that are similar to those determined from earlier FIR data alone, even though the latter results implied hotter dust temperatures. Fluxes and masses that are consistent with the new FIR and submillimeter data are estimated for dust cooler than 20 K within the central galactic regions. Tighter physical constraints for such cold, diffuse dust (if it exists) with low surface brightness will need sensitive FIR to submillimeter observations with the Spitzer Space Telescope, SCUBA2, or ALMA

Procedures for a competency/performance based education program according to Bandura\u27s social cognitive theory

Dieser Beitrag berichtet über ein Trainingsverfahren zur Kompetenzanbahnung in Großgruppen. Im Sommersemester 1991 wurden 54 Studierende der Pädagogischen Hochschule Schwäbisch Gmünd in einer zweistündigen Semesterveranstaltung im Zuhören, Eingehen auf Beiträge, Fragenstellen, Führen bestimmter Gespräche und in der Moderation von Diskussionen geschult. In Anlehnung an Banduras sozial kognitive Theorie liefen die einzelnen Veranstaltungen stets in drei Phasen ab: Die Aufmerksamkeit der Teilnehmerinnen wurde auf die zu erwerbende Kompetenz gelenkt; sodann erging die Aufforderung, sich gegenseitig die Wahrnehmungen mitzuteilen, und gegen Ende wurden die Handlungsspektren oder -strukturen gemeinsam erarbeitet. Die Teilnehmerinnen wurden schließlich mit der Aufforderung entlassen, die Bewusstseinsinhalte verfügbar zu halten, um im Berufsfeld der Einsicht entsprechend handeln zu können. Die Unterschiede hinsichtlich der kognitiven Repräsentanzen waren sowohl auf der Vor- und Nachtest-Basis als auch zwischen männlichen und weiblichen Teilnehmerinnen signifikant. (DIPF/Orig.)This article refers to a special procedure for a Competency/Performance Based Teacher Education Program. 54 students of the Teacher Training College in Schwäbisch Gmünd have been trained in specific competencies and Performances in classroom interaction such as listening, encouraging, questioning, and leading discussions. Following the mastery learning concept the participants were involved into attentional processes, retention processes, and production processes according to Bandura\u27s social cognitive theory. The students had to undergo a pretest and a posttest to check up the cognitive representations. The results show significant differences in two directions as far as the results between the tests and the male and female students are concerned. (DIPF/Orig.

Lepton Flavour Violation in charged leptons within SUSY-seesaw

In this paper we review our main results for Lepton Flavour Violating (LFV) semileptonic tau decays and muon-electron conversion in nuclei within the context of two Constrained SUSY-Seesaw Models, the CMSSM and the NUHM. The relevant spectrum is that of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model extended by three right handed neutrinos, $\nu_{R_i}$ and their corresponding SUSY partners, ${\tilde \nu}_{R_i}$, ($i=1,2,3$). We use the seesaw mechanism for neutrino mass generation and choose a parameterisation of this mechanism that allows us to incorporate the neutrino data in our analysis of LFV processes. In addition to the full one-loop results for the rates of these processes, we will also review the set of simple formulas, valid at large $\tan \beta$, which are very useful to compare with present experimental bounds. The sensitivity to SUSY and Higgs sectors in these processes will also be discussed. This is a very short summary of the works in Refs. \cite{Arganda:2008jj} and \cite{Arganda:2007jw} to which we refer the reader for more details.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures. To be published in the proceedings of the Tau08 Conference, Novosibirsk, Russia, 22-25 September 200

High Resolution Molecular Gas Maps of M33

New observations of CO (J=1->0) line emission from M33, using the 25 element BEARS focal plane array at the Nobeyama Radio Observatory 45-m telescope, in conjunction with existing maps from the BIMA interferometer and the FCRAO 14-m telescope, give the highest resolution (13'') and most sensitive (RMS ~ 60 mK) maps to date of the distribution of molecular gas in the central 5.5 kpc of the galaxy. A new catalog of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) has a completeness limit of 1.3 X 10^5 M_sun. The fraction of molecular gas found in GMCs is a strong function of radius in the galaxy, declining from 60% in the center to 20% at galactocentric radius R_gal ~ 4 kpc. Beyond that radius, GMCs are nearly absent, although molecular gas exists. Most (90%) of the emission from low mass clouds is found within 100 pc projected separation of a GMC. In an annulus 2.1< R_gal <4.1 kpc, GMC masses follow a power law distribution with index -2.1. Inside that radius, the mass distribution is truncated, and clouds more massive than 8 X 10^5 M_sun are absent. The cloud mass distribution shows no significant difference in the grand design spiral arms versus the interarm region. The CO surface brightness ratio for the arm to interarm regions is 1.5, typical of other flocculent galaxies.Comment: 14 pages, 14 figures, accepted in ApJ. Some tables poorly typeset in emulateapj; see source files for raw dat

SZ and X-ray combined analysis of a distant galaxy cluster, RX J2228+2037.

We have performed a combined analysis of X-ray and Sunyaev-Zel'dovich data in the direction of the distant galaxy cluster, RX J2228+2037. Fitting a $\beta$-model to the high-resolution HRI data gives $r_c = 103 \pm 12 h_{70}^{-1}$ kpc and $\beta=0.54 \pm 0.03$. The dependency of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect with respect to the gas temperature allows us, through the additional use of the 21 GHz data of the cluster, to determine $k_B T_e=10.4 \pm 1.8 h_{70}^{1/2}$ keV. Extrapolating the gas density profile out to the virial radius ($R_v=r_{178}=2.9$ Mpc), we derived a gas mass of $M_{g}(r<R_v)=(4.0\pm 0.2)\times 10^{14} h_{70}^{-5/2} \rm{M}_\odot$. Within the hypothesis of hydrostatic equilibrium, the corresponding extrapolated total mass for this source is: $M_{tot}(r<R_v)=(1.8 \pm 0.4)\times 10^{15} h^{-1} \rm{M}_\odot$, which corresponds to a gas fraction of $f_{gas}=0.22\pm 0.06 h_{70}^{-3/2}$. Our results on the temperature and on the cluster mass classify RX J2228+2037 among the distant, hot and very massive galaxy clusters. Our work highlights the power of the association of galaxy cluster mapping observations in X-ray and the SZ effect to derive the cluster's physical properties, even without X-ray spectroscopy.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in A&

Probabilistic Search for Object Segmentation and Recognition

The problem of searching for a model-based scene interpretation is analyzed within a probabilistic framework. Object models are formulated as generative models for range data of the scene. A new statistical criterion, the truncated object probability, is introduced to infer an optimal sequence of object hypotheses to be evaluated for their match to the data. The truncated probability is partly determined by prior knowledge of the objects and partly learned from data. Some experiments on sequence quality and object segmentation and recognition from stereo data are presented. The article recovers classic concepts from object recognition (grouping, geometric hashing, alignment) from the probabilistic perspective and adds insight into the optimal ordering of object hypotheses for evaluation. Moreover, it introduces point-relation densities, a key component of the truncated probability, as statistical models of local surface shape.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure

Arc-like distribution of high CO(J=3-2)/CO(J=1-0) ratio gas surrounding the central star cluster of the supergiant HII region NGC 604

We report the discovery of a high CO(J=3-2)/CO(J=1-0) ratio gas with an arc-like distribution (``high-ratio gas arc'') surrounding the central star cluster of the supergiant HII region NGC 604 in the nearby spiral galaxy M 33, based on multi-J CO observations of a 5' $\times$ 5' region of NGC 604 conducted using the ASTE 10-m and NRO 45-m telescopes. The discovered ``high-ratio gas arc'' extends to the south-east to north-west direction with a size of $\sim$ 200 pc. The western part of the high-ratio gas arc closely coincides well with the shells of the HII regions traced by H$\alpha$ and radio continuum peaks. The CO(J=3-2)/CO(J=1-0) ratio, R_{3-2/1-0}, ranges between 0.3 and 1.2 in the observed region, and the R_{3-2/1-0} values of the high-ratio gas arc are around or higher than unity, indicating very warm (T_kin > 60 K) and dense (n(H_2) > 10^{3-4} cm^{-3}) conditions of the high-ratio gas arc. We suggest that the dense gas formation and second-generation star formation occur in the surrounding gas compressed by the stellar wind and/or supernova of the first-generation stars of NGC 604, i.e., the central star cluster of NGC 604.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, in pres

Coargumenthood and the processing of pronouns

We report three eye-movement experiments and an offline task investigating structural constraints on pronoun resolution in different contexts. This included ‘coargument’ contexts in which a pronoun was the direct object of a verb (‘The surgeon remembered that Jonathan had noticed him’), so-called picture noun phrases (‘The surgeon remembered that Jonathan had a picture of him’) and picture noun phrases with a possessor (‘The surgeon remembered about Jonathan’s picture of him’). In each eye-movement experiment, we observed longer reading times when the nonlocal antecedent (‘the surgeon’) mismatched in stereotypical gender with the pronoun, but little evidence of the gender of the local antecedent (‘Jonathan’) influencing reading times. The offline task suggested readers occasionally interpret pronouns as referring to local antecedents, especially in non-coargument contexts. These results suggest that structural constraints constitute more highly weighted cues to antecedent retrieval than gender congruency during the initial stages of memory retrieval during pronoun resolution