721 research outputs found
Migration then assembly: Formation of Neptune mass planets inside 1 AU
We demonstrate that the observed distribution of `Hot Neptune'/`Super-Earth'
systems is well reproduced by a model in which planet assembly occurs in situ,
with no significant migration post-assembly. This is achieved only if the
amount of mass in rocky material is -- interior to 1
AU. Such a reservoir of material implies that significant radial migration of
solid material takes place, and that it occur before the stage of final planet
assembly.
The model not only reproduces the general distribution of mass versus period,
but also the detailed statistics of multiple planet systems in the sample.
We furthermore demonstrate that cores of this size are also likely to meet
the criterion to gravitationally capture gas from the nebula, although
accretion is rapidly limited by the opening of gaps in the gas disk. If the
mass growth is limited by this tidal truncation, then the scenario sketched
here naturally produces Neptune-mass objects with substantial components of
both rock and gas, as is observed.
The quantitative expectations of this scenario are that most planets in the
`Hot Neptune/Super-Earth' class inhabit multiple-planet systems, with
characteristic orbital spacings. The model also provides a natural division
into gas-rich (Hot Neptune) and gas-poor (Super-Earth) classes at fixed period.
The dividing mass ranges from at 10 day orbital periods to
at 100 day orbital periods. For orbital periods
days, the division is less clear because a gas atmosphere may be significantly
eroded by stellar radiation.Comment: 41 pages in preprint style, 15 figures, final version accepted to Ap
Possible Disintegrating Short-Period Super-Mercury Orbiting KIC 12557548
We report here on the discovery of stellar occultations, observed with
Kepler, that recur periodically at 15.685 hour intervals, but which vary in
depth from a maximum of 1.3% to a minimum that can be less than 0.2%. The star
that is apparently being occulted is KIC 12557548, a K dwarf with T_eff = 4400
K and V = 16. Because the eclipse depths are highly variable, they cannot be
due solely to transits of a single planet with a fixed size. We discuss but
dismiss a scenario involving a binary giant planet whose mutual orbit plane
precesses, bringing one of the planets into and out of a grazing transit. We
also briefly consider an eclipsing binary, that either orbits KIC 12557548 in a
hierarchical triple configuration or is nearby on the sky, but we find such a
scenario inadequate to reproduce the observations. We come down in favor of an
explanation that involves macroscopic particles escaping the atmosphere of a
slowly disintegrating planet not much larger than Mercury. The particles could
take the form of micron-sized pyroxene or aluminum oxide dust grains. The
planetary surface is hot enough to sublimate and create a high-Z atmosphere;
this atmosphere may be loaded with dust via cloud condensation or explosive
volcanism. Atmospheric gas escapes the planet via a Parker-type thermal wind,
dragging dust grains with it. We infer a mass loss rate from the observations
of order 1 M_E/Gyr, with a dust-to-gas ratio possibly of order unity. For our
fiducial 0.1 M_E planet, the evaporation timescale may be ~0.2 Gyr. Smaller
mass planets are disfavored because they evaporate still more quickly, as are
larger mass planets because they have surface gravities too strong to sustain
outflows with the requisite mass-loss rates. The occultation profile evinces an
ingress-egress asymmetry that could reflect a comet-like dust tail trailing the
planet; we present simulations of such a tail.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures; submitted to ApJ, January 10, 2012; accepted
March 21, 201
Academic Health Science Centres as Vehicles for Knowledge Mobilisation in Australia? A Qualitative Study
Background Despite increasing investments in academic health science centres (AHSCs) in Australia and an expectation that they will serve as vehicles for knowledge translation and exchange, there is limited empirical evidence on whether and how they deliver impact. The aim of this study was to examine and compare the early development of four Australian AHSCs to explore how they are enacting their impact-focused role. Methods A descriptive qualitative methodology was employed across four AHSCs located in diverse health system settings in urban and regional locations across Australia. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews with 15 academic, industry and executive board members of participating AHSCs. The analysis combined inductive and deductive elements, with inductive categories mapped to deductive themes corresponding to the study aims. Results AHSCs in Australia are in an emergent state of development and are following different pathways. Whilst varied approaches to support research translation are apparent, there is a dominant focus on structure and governance, as opposed to action-oriented roles and processes to deliver strategic goals. Balancing collaboration and competition between partners presents a challenge, as does identifying appropriate ways to evaluate impact. Conclusion The early stage of development of AHSCs in Australia presents an important opportunity for formative learning and evaluation to optimise their enactment of knowledge mobilisation processes for impact
Mobilising knowledge in (and about) Academic Health Science Centres : boundary spanning, inter-organisational governance and systems thinking
Academic Health Science Centres (AHSCs), also termed Research Translation Centres (RTCs) in Australia, are organisations that aim to promote the integration of research, health professional education, and health service delivery to improve translation and innovation in Australia’s health system. In 2020, we published a study on how people, processes and systems were being organised within Australian AHSCs to enable knowledge to be mobilised for impact
The global oscillation network group site survey. II. Results
The Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG) Project will place a network of instruments around the world to observe solar oscillations as continuously as possible for three years. The Project has now chosen the six network sites based on analysis of survey data from fifteen sites around the world. The chosen sites are: Big Bear Solar Observatory, California; Mauna Loa Solar Observatory, Hawaii; Learmonth Solar Observatory, Australia; Udaipur Solar Observatory, India; Observatorio del Teide, Tenerife; and Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory, Chile.
Total solar intensity at each site yields information on local cloud cover, extinction coefficient, and transparency fluctuations. In addition, the performance of 192 reasonable components analysis. An accompanying paper describes the analysis methods in detail; here we present the results of both the network and individual site analyses.
The selected network has a duty cycle of 93.3%, in good agreement with numerical simulations. The power spectrum of the network observing window shows a first diurnal sidelobe height of 3 × 10⁻⁴ with respect to the central component, an improvement of a factor of 1300 over a single site. The background level of the network spectrum is lower by a factor of 50 compared to a single-site spectrum
Mean Motion Resonances in Extrasolar Planetary Systems with Turbulence, Interactions, and Damping
This paper continues previous work on the effects of turbulence on mean
motion resonances in extrasolar planetary systems. Turbulence is expected to
arise in the disks that form planets, and these fluctuations act to compromise
resonant configurations. This paper extends previous work by considering how
interactions between the planets and possible damping effects imposed by the
disk affect the outcomes. These physical processes are studied using three
approaches: numerical integrations of the 3-body problem with additional
forcing due to turbulence, model equations that reduce the problem to
stochastically driven oscillators, and Fokker-Planck equations that describe
the time evolution of an ensemble of systems. With this combined approach, we
elucidate the physics of how turbulence can remove extrasolar planetary systems
from mean motion resonance. As expected, systems with sufficiently large
damping (dissipation) can maintain resonance, in spite of turbulent forcing. In
the absence of strong damping, ensembles of these systems exhibit two regimes
of behavior, where the fraction of the bound states decreases as a power-law or
as an exponential. Both types of behavior can be understood through the model
developed herein. For systems with weak interactions between planets, the model
reduces to a stochastic pendulum, and the fraction of bound states decreases as
a power-law. For highly interactive systems, the dynamics are more complicated
and the fraction of bound states decreases exponentially. We show how planetary
interactions lead to drift terms in the Fokker-Planck equation and account for
this exponential behavior. In addition to clarifying the physical processes
involved, this paper strengthens the finding that turbulence implies that mean
motions resonances should be rare.Comment: accepted to ApJ, 42 pages, 7 figure
High-titre retroviral vector system for efficient gene delivery into human and mouse cells of haematopoietic and lymphocytic lineages
Genetically modified cells of haematopoietic and lymphocytic lineages could provide potentially curative treatments for a wide range of inherited and acquired diseases. However, this application is limited in mouse models by the low efficiency of lentiviral vectors. To facilitate the rapid production of high-titre helper-free retroviral vectors for enhanced gene delivery, multiple modifications to a prototype moloney murine leukemia virus (MoMLV)-derived vector system were made including adaptation of the vector system to simian virus 40 ori/T antigen-mediated episomal replication in packaging cells, replacement of the MoMLV 5′ U3 promoter with a series of stronger composite promoters and addition of an extra polyadenylation signal downstream of the 3′ long terminal repeat. These modifications enhanced vector production by 2–3 logs. High-titre vector stocks were tested for their ability to infect a variety of cells derived from humans and mice, including primary monocyte-derived macrophage cultures. Whilst the lentiviral vector was significantly restricted at the integration level, the MoMLV-based vector showed effective gene transduction of mouse cells. This high-titre retroviral vector system represents a useful tool for efficient gene delivery into human and mouse haematopoietic and lymphocytic cells, with particular application in mice as a small animal model for novel gene therapy tests
Earth and Terrestrial Planet Formation
The growth and composition of Earth is a direct consequence of planet
formation throughout the Solar System. We discuss the known history of the
Solar System, the proposed stages of growth and how the early stages of planet
formation may be dominated by pebble growth processes. Pebbles are small bodies
whose strong interactions with the nebula gas lead to remarkable new accretion
mechanisms for the formation of planetesimals and the growth of planetary
embryos.
Many of the popular models for the later stages of planet formation are
presented. The classical models with the giant planets on fixed orbits are not
consistent with the known history of the Solar System, fail to create a high
Earth/Mars mass ratio, and, in many cases, are also internally inconsistent.
The successful Grand Tack model creates a small Mars, a wet Earth, a realistic
asteroid belt and the mass-orbit structure of the terrestrial planets.
In the Grand Tack scenario, growth curves for Earth most closely match a
Weibull model. The feeding zones, which determine the compositions of Earth and
Venus follow a particular pattern determined by Jupiter, while the feeding
zones of Mars and Theia, the last giant impactor on Earth, appear to randomly
sample the terrestrial disk. The late accreted mass samples the disk nearly
evenly.Comment: Accepted for publication in Early Earth an AGU Monograph edited by
James Badro and Michael J. Walte
The California Planet Survey III. A Possible 2:1 Resonance in the Exoplanetary Triple System HD 37124
We present new radial velocities from Keck Observatory and both Newtonian and
Keplerian solutions for the triple-planet system orbiting HD 37124. The orbital
solution for this system has improved dramatically since the third planet was
first reported in Vogt et al. 2005 with an ambiguous orbital period. We have
resolved this ambiguity, and the outer two planets have an apparent period
commensurability of 2:1. A dynamical analysis finds both resonant and
non-resonant configurations consistent with the radial velocity data, and
constrains the mutual inclinations of the planets to be less than about 30
degrees. We discuss HD 37124 in the context of the other 19 exoplanetary
systems with apparent period commenserabilities, which we summarize in a table.
We show that roughly one in three well-characterized multiplanet systems has a
apparent low-order period commensuribility, which is more than would naively be
expected if the periods of exoplanets in known multiplanet systems were drawn
randomly from the observed distribution of planetary orbital periods.Comment: 12 pp, emulateapj style, ApJ accepted. v2. Minor edits to update
numbers, fix garbled tex
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