1,783 research outputs found
Orbital Decay and Tidal Disruption of a Star Cluster: Analytical Calculation
The orbital decay and tidal disruption of a star cluster in a galaxy is
studied in an analytical manner. Owing to dynamical friction, the star cluster
spirals in toward the center of the galaxy. Simultaneously, the galactic tidal
field strips stars from the outskirts of the star cluster. Under an assumption
that the star cluster undergoes a self-similar evolution, we obtain the
condition and timescale for the star cluster to reach the galaxy center before
its disruption. The result is used to discuss the fate of so-called
intermediate-mass black holes with >10^3 M(sun) found recently in young star
clusters of starburst galaxies and also the mass function of globular clusters
in galaxies.Comment: 12 pages, 1 PS file for 2 figures, to appear in The Astrophysical
Journa
To Infinity And Beyond: An Empirical Analysis of Instructional Communication Immediacy Among ERAU Online Learners
The purpose of this study is to examine how communication relates to online education. In particular, the study investigates motivation and attitudes toward online learning. Further, it differentiates military versus civilian students. An online survey method was employed and launched throughout fall 2009 term. Three institutions with dominant military student enrollment participated. These universities are not-for-profit and regionally accredited, have brick and mortar main campuses, and well-established online undergraduate and graduate programs. Conducted within the theoretical framework of communication immediacy and self-efficacy, results (n=497) demonstrate that motivation (intrinsic, extrinsic and task-value) and attitudes toward online education (satisfaction and self-efficacy) are significantly related to communication immediacy between instructors and students. Recommendations for online educators are suggested and future studies are proposed
High-Redshift Galaxies: Their Predicted Size and Surface Brightness Distributions and Their Gravitational Lensing Probability
Direct observations of the first generation of luminous objects will likely
become feasible over the next decade. The advent of the Next Generation Space
Telescope (NGST) will allow imaging of numerous galaxies and mini-quasars at
redshifts z>5. We apply semi-analytic models of structure formation to estimate
the rate of multiple imaging of these sources by intervening gravitational
lenses. Popular CDM models for galaxy formation yield a lensing optical depth
of about 1% for sources at redshift 10. The expected slope of the luminosity
function of the early sources implies an additional magnification bias of about
5, bringing the fraction of lensed sources at z=10 to about 5%. We estimate the
angular size distribution of high-redshift disk galaxies and find that most of
them are more extended than the resolution limit of NGST, roughly 0.06
arcseconds. We also show that there is only a modest redshift evolution in the
mean surface brightness of galaxies at z>2. The expected increase by 1-2 orders
of magnitude in the number of resolved sources on the sky, due to observations
with NGST, will dramatically improve upon the statistical significance of
existing weak lensing measurements. We show that, despite this increase in the
density of sources, confusion noise from z>2 galaxies is expected to be small
for NGST observations.Comment: 27 pages, 8 PostScript figures (of which two are new), revised
version accepted for Ap
Some Global Characteristics of the Galactic Globular Cluster System
The relations between the luminosities , the metallicities ,
the Galactocentric radii , and the central concentration indices of
Galactic globular clusters are discussed. It is found that the most luminous
clusters rarely have collapsed cores. The reason for this might be that the
core collapse time scales for such populous clusters are greater than the age
of the Galaxy. Among those clusters, for which the structure has not been
modified by core collapse, there is a correlation between central concentration
and integrated luminosity, in the sense that the most luminous clusters have
the strongest central concentration. The outermost region of the Galaxy with
kpc was apparently not able to form metal-rich globular
clusters, whereas such clusters (of which Ter 7 is the prototype) were able to
form in some nearby dwarf spheroidal galaxies. It is not yet clear how the
popular hypothesis that globular clusters were initially formed with a single
power law mass spectrum can be reconciled with the observation that both (1)
Galactic globular clusters with kpc, and (2) the globulars associated
with the Sagittarius dwarf, appear to have bi-modal luminosity functions.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figur
Systematic Topology Analysis and Generation Using Degree Correlations
We present a new, systematic approach for analyzing network topologies. We
first introduce the dK-series of probability distributions specifying all
degree correlations within d-sized subgraphs of a given graph G. Increasing
values of d capture progressively more properties of G at the cost of more
complex representation of the probability distribution. Using this series, we
can quantitatively measure the distance between two graphs and construct random
graphs that accurately reproduce virtually all metrics proposed in the
literature. The nature of the dK-series implies that it will also capture any
future metrics that may be proposed. Using our approach, we construct graphs
for d=0,1,2,3 and demonstrate that these graphs reproduce, with increasing
accuracy, important properties of measured and modeled Internet topologies. We
find that the d=2 case is sufficient for most practical purposes, while d=3
essentially reconstructs the Internet AS- and router-level topologies exactly.
We hope that a systematic method to analyze and synthesize topologies offers a
significant improvement to the set of tools available to network topology and
protocol researchers.Comment: Final versio
Identification of suspended resilient pellets in particles tracked by a Particle Image Camera System (PICS) in a muddy estuary
The Particle Imaging Camera System (PICS) was designed to allow for the measurement of the settling velocity of individual particles in situ by using the smaller particles (\u3c density \u3c 1800kg/m3 ). This classification system, while adequate for suspended dredge plumes, needs to be revisited when the PICS is used in a muddy estuary, such as the York River Estuary, Virginia. Figure 1B shows the settling velocities of particles tracked within a video captured 2.5m from the surface in the Clay Bank region of the York River, plotted against their equivalent spherical diameters. While most of the particles are classified as flocs, as indicated by the blue dots in Figure 1C and the peak in the relative number of particles in Figure 1E, there is still a large number of particles classified as âbed aggregatesâ (red dots). This number of higher density particles may be unexpected, as this video was captured 4.25m over a âmuddy bedâ in a natural system with a flood current of 40cm/s. However, biologically compacted mud in the form of resilient pellets (see Figure 2) may be the answer. Bed sediments from five sediment cruises during this study period (Aug 2012 â Nov 2014) were found to be comprised of 86-96% mud (Figure 3A). However, 9-14% of the mud was packaged as resilient pellets (Figure 3B). Sediment captured 38cm above the bed by traps deployed on tripods were found to have 92-98% mud, with 4-14% of the mud packaged as resilient pellets (Figures 3A and B). Pellets isolated from the Apr to Jul 2014 trap were sampled with the PICS to determine the distribution of settling velocities (Ws), particle densities, and the ratio of the long and short axis of the particles. This will be used to identify the pellets in PICS videos captured during the five 6h anchor stations (black lines in Figure 3) where three depths were sampled each hour
The importance of organic content to fractal floc properties in estuarine surface waters, insights from video, LISST, and pump sampling: Supporting data
The linked folders and associated data files contain the observations utilized in Fall, K.A., Friedrichs, C.T., Massey, G.M., Bowers, D.G., and Smith, S.J. (2021). The importance of organic content to fractal floc properties in estuarine surface waters: Insights from video, LISST, and pump sampling. JGR Oceans.
The file âDescription of Data Files.pdfâ outlines the content of the ten data folders, each of which is associated with a data set collected on an individual one-day cruise in the York River estuary
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