No evidence for retinal damage evolving from reduced retinal blood flow in carotid artery disease

Introduction. Carotid artery disease (CAD) comprising high-grade internal carotid artery stenosis (CAS) or carotid artery occlusion (CAO) may lead to ipsilateral impaired cerebral blood flow and reduced retinal blood supply. Objective. To examine the influence of chronic CAD on retinal blood flow, retinal morphology, and visual function. Methods. Patients with unilateral CAS ≥ 50% (ECST criteria) or CAO were grouped according to the grade of the stenosis and to the flow direction of the ophthalmic artery (OA). Retinal perfusion was measured by transorbital duplex ultrasound, assessing central retinal artery (CRA) blood flow velocities. In addition, optic nerve and optic nerve sheath diameter were measured. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) was performed to study retinal morphology. Visual function was assessed using high- and low-contrast visual paradigms. Results. Twenty-seven patients were enrolled. Eyes with CAS ≥ 80%/CAO and retrograde OA blood flow showed a significant reduction in CRA peak systolic velocity (no-CAD side: 0.130 ± 0.035 m/s, CAS/CAO side: 0.098 ± 0.028; p = 0.005; n = 12). OCT, optic nerve thicknesses, and visual functional parameters did not show a significant difference. Conclusion. Despite assessable hemodynamic effects, chronic high-grade CAD does not lead to gaugeable morphological or functional changes of the retina

Deep Inelastic Scattering from off-Shell Nucleons

We derive the general structure of the hadronic tensor required to describe deep-inelastic scattering from an off-shell nucleon within a covariant formalism. Of the large number of possible off-shell structure functions we find that only three contribute in the Bjorken limit. In our approach the usual ambiguities encountered when discussing problems related to off-shellness in deep-inelastic scattering are not present. The formulation therefore provides a clear framework within which one can discuss the various approximations and assumptions which have been used in earlier work. As examples, we investigate scattering from the deuteron, nuclear matter and dressed nucleons. The results of the full calculation are compared with those where various aspects of the off-shell structure are neglected, as well as with those of the convolution model.Comment: 36 pages RevTeX, 9 figures (available upon request), ADP-93-210/T128, PSI-PR-93-13, accepted for publication in Physical Review

Modelling the sulfate capacity of simulated radioactive waste borosilicate glasses

The capacity of simulated high-level radioactive waste borosilicate glasses to incorporate sulfate has been studied as a function of glass composition. Combined Raman, 57Fe Mössbauer and literature evidence supports the attribution of coordination numbers and oxidation states of constituent cations for the purposes of modelling, and results confirm the validity of correlating sulfate incorporation in multicomponent borosilicate radioactive waste glasses with different models. A strong compositional dependency is observed and this can be described by an inverse linear relationship between incorporated sulfate (mol% SO42−) and total cation field strength index of the glass, Σ(z/a2), with a high goodness-of-fit (R2 ≈ 0.950). Similar relationships are also obtained if theoretical optical basicity, Λth (R2 ≈ 0.930) or non-bridging oxygen per tetrahedron ratio, NBO/T (R2 ≈ 0.919), are used. Results support the application of these models, and in particular Σ(z/a2), as predictive tools to aid the development of new glass compositions with enhanced sulfate capacities

Fitting the integrated Spectral Energy Distributions of Galaxies

Fitting the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of galaxies is an almost universally used technique that has matured significantly in the last decade. Model predictions and fitting procedures have improved significantly over this time, attempting to keep up with the vastly increased volume and quality of available data. We review here the field of SED fitting, describing the modelling of ultraviolet to infrared galaxy SEDs, the creation of multiwavelength data sets, and the methods used to fit model SEDs to observed galaxy data sets. We touch upon the achievements and challenges in the major ingredients of SED fitting, with a special emphasis on describing the interplay between the quality of the available data, the quality of the available models, and the best fitting technique to use in order to obtain a realistic measurement as well as realistic uncertainties. We conclude that SED fitting can be used effectively to derive a range of physical properties of galaxies, such as redshift, stellar masses, star formation rates, dust masses, and metallicities, with care taken not to over-interpret the available data. Yet there still exist many issues such as estimating the age of the oldest stars in a galaxy, finer details ofdust properties and dust-star geometry, and the influences of poorly understood, luminous stellar types and phases. The challenge for the coming years will be to improve both the models and the observational data sets to resolve these uncertainties. The present review will be made available on an interactive, moderated web page (sedfitting.org), where the community can access and change the text. The intention is to expand the text and keep it up to date over the coming years.Comment: 54 pages, 26 figures, Accepted for publication in Astrophysics & Space Scienc

Moments of isovector quark distributions from lattice QCD

We present a complete analysis of the chiral extrapolation of lattice moments of all twist-2 isovector quark distributions, including corrections from Nπ and Δπ loops. Even though the Δ resonance formally gives rise to higher order non-analytic structure, the coefficients of the higher order terms for the helicity and transversity moments are large and cancel much of the curvature generated by the wave function renormalization. The net effect is that, whereas the unpolarized moments exhibit considerable curvature, the polarized moments show little deviation from linearity as the chiral limit is approached

The Nucleon's Virtual Meson Cloud and Deep Inelastic Lepton Scattering

We address the question whether the nucleon's antiquark sea can be attributed entirely to its virtual meson cloud and, in essence, whether there exists a smooth transition between hadronic and quark-gluon degrees of freedom. We take into account contributions from $\pi$ and $K$ mesons and compare with the nucleon's antiquark distributions which serve as a non-perturbative input to the QCD evolution equations. We elucidate the different behavior in the flavor singlet and non-singlet channels and study the dependence of our results on the scale $Q^2$. The meson-nucleon cut-offs that we determine give not only an indication on the size of the region within which quarks are confined in a nucleon, but we find that the scale of these form factors is closely related to the four-momentum transfer, $Q^2$, where gluons are resolved by a high energy probe, and that large meson loop momenta, $|{\bf k}| \approx 0.8$ GeV, contribute significantly to the sea quark distributions. While the agreement of our calculations with data-based parametrizations is satisfactory and scale independent for the flavor breaking share of the nucleon's antiquark sea, the flavor singlet component is quite poorly described. This hints the importance of gluon degrees of freedom.Comment: 34 pages, RevTeX, 6 figures optionally included using epsfig.st

Cluster Density and the IMF

Observed variations in the IMF are reviewed with an emphasis on environmental density. The remote field IMF studied in the LMC by several authors is clearly steeper than most cluster IMFs, which have slopes close to the Salpeter value. Local field regions of star formation, like Taurus, may have relatively steep IMFs too. Very dense and massive clusters, like super star clusters, could have flatter IMFs, or inner-truncated IMFs. We propose that these variations are the result of three distinct processes during star formation that affect the mass function in different ways depending on mass range. At solar to intermediate stellar masses, gas processes involving thermal pressure and supersonic turbulence determine the basic scale for stellar mass, starting with the observed pre-stellar condensations, and they define the mass function from several tenths to several solar masses. Brown dwarfs require extraordinarily high pressures for fragmentation from the gas, and presumably form inside the pre-stellar condensations during mutual collisions, secondary fragmentations, or in disks. High mass stars form in excess of the numbers expected from pure turbulent fragmentation as pre-stellar condensations coalesce and accrete with an enhanced gravitational cross section. Variations in the interaction rate, interaction strength, and accretion rate among the primary fragments formed by turbulence lead to variations in the relative proportions of brown dwarfs, solar to intermediate mass stars, and high mass stars.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, to be published in ``IMF@50: A Fest-Colloquium in honor of Edwin E. Salpeter,'' held at Abbazia di Spineto, Siena, Italy, May 16-20, 2004. Kluwer Academic Publishers; edited by E. Corbelli, F. Palla, and H. Zinnecke

Constraining the evolution of cataclysmic variables via the masses and accretion rates of their underlying white dwarfs

We report on the masses (MWD), effective temperatures (⁠Teff⁠) and secular mean accretion rates (⁠⟨M˙⟩⁠) of 43 cataclysmic variable (CV) white dwarfs, 42 of which were obtained from the combined analysis of their Hubble Space Telescope ultraviolet data with the parallaxes provided by the Early Third Data Release of the Gaia space mission, and one from the white dwarf gravitational redshift. Our results double the number of CV white dwarfs with an accurate mass measurement, bringing the total census to 89 systems. From the study of the mass distribution, we derive ⟨MWD⟩=0.81+0.16/−0.20M⊙⁠, in perfect agreement with previous results, and find no evidence of any evolution of the mass with orbital period. Moreover, we identify five systems with MWD < 0.5M⊙, which are most likely representative of helium-core white dwarfs, showing that these CVs are present in the overall population. We reveal the presence of an anti-correlation between the average accretion rates and the white dwarf masses for the systems below the 2 − 3 h period gap. Since ⟨M˙⟩ reflects the rate of system angular momentum loss, this correlation suggests the presence of an additional mechanism of angular momentum loss that is more efficient at low white dwarf masses. This is the fundamental concept of the recently proposed empirical prescription of consequential angular momentum loss (eCAML) and our results provide observational support for it, although we also highlight how its current recipe needs to be refined to better reproduce the observed scatter in Teff and ⟨M˙⟩⁠, and the presence of helium-core white dwarfs

A Pre-Landing Assessment of Regolith Properties at the InSight Landing Site

This article discusses relevant physical properties of the regolith at the Mars InSight landing site as understood prior to landing of the spacecraft. InSight will land in the northern lowland plains of Mars, close to the equator, where the regolith is estimated to be ≥3--5 m thick. These investigations of physical properties have relied on data collected from Mars orbital measurements, previously collected lander and rover data, results of studies of data and samples from Apollo lunar missions, laboratory measurements on regolith simulants, and theoretical studies. The investigations include changes in properties with depth and temperature. Mechanical properties investigated include density, grain-size distribution, cohesion, and angle of internal friction. Thermophysical properties include thermal inertia, surface emissivity and albedo, thermal conductivity and diffusivity, and specific heat. Regolith elastic properties not only include parameters that control seismic wave velocities in the immediate vicinity of the Insight lander but also coupling of the lander and other potential noise sources to the InSight broadband seismometer. The related properties include Poisson’s ratio, P- and S-wave velocities, Young’s modulus, and seismic attenuation. Finally, mass diffusivity was investigated to estimate gas movements in the regolith driven by atmospheric pressure changes. Physical properties presented here are all to some degree speculative. However, they form a basis for interpretation of the early data to be returned from the InSight mission.Additional co-authors: Nick Teanby and Sharon Keda