2,430 research outputs found
Challenging the orthodoxy: union learning representatives as organic intellectuals
Teacher education and continuing professional development have become a key areas of controversy in England since the period of school sector restructuring following the 1988 Education Reform Act. More recently teacher training and professional development have often been used to promote and reinforce a narrow focus on the governmentâs âstandards agendaâ. However, the emerging discourse of ânew professionalismâ has raised the profile of professional development in schools, and together with union learning representatives, there are opportunities to secure real improvements in teachersâ access to continuing professional development. This paper argues however that union learning representatives must go beyond advocating for better access to professional development and should raise more fundamental questions about the nature of professional development and the education system it serves. Drawing on Gramsciâs notion of the âorganic intellectualâ, the paper argues that union learning representatives have a key role as organisers of ideas â creating spaces in which the ideological dominance of current policy orthodoxy might be challenged
Black Hole - Neutron Star Mergers as Central Engines of Gamma-Ray Bursts
Hydrodynamic simulations of the merger of stellar mass black hole - neutron
star binaries (BH/NS) are compared with mergers of binary neutron stars
(NS/NS). The simulations are Newtonian, but take into account the emission and
backreaction of gravitational waves. The use of a physical nuclear equation of
state allows us to include the effects of neutrino emission. For low neutron
star to black hole mass ratios the neutron star transfers mass to the black
hole during a few cycles of orbital decay and subsequent widening before
finally being disrupted, whereas for ratios near unity the neutron star is
already distroyed during its first approach. A gas mass between about 0.3 and
about 0.7 solar masses is left in an accretion torus around the black hole and
radiates neutrinos at a luminosity of several 10^{53} erg/s during an estimated
accretion time scale of about 0.1 s. The emitted neutrinos and antineutrinos
annihilate into electron-positron pairs with efficiencies of 1-3% percent and
rates of up to 2*10^{52} erg/s, thus depositing an energy of up to 10^{51} erg
above the poles of the black hole in a region which contains less than 10^{-5}
solar masses of baryonic matter. This could allow for relativistic expansion
with Lorentz factors around 100 and is sufficient to explain apparent burst
luminosities of up to several 10^{53} erg/s for burst durations of
approximately 0.1-1 s, if the gamma emission is collimated in two moderately
focussed jets in a fraction of about 1/100-1/10 of the sky.Comment: 8 pages, LaTex, 4 postscript figures, 2 tables. ApJ Letters,
accepted; revised and shortened version, Fig. 2 change
Effects of neutrino-driven kicks on the supernova explosion mechanism
We show that neutrino-driven pulsar kicks can increase the energy of the
supernova shock. The observed large velocities of pulsars are believed to
originate in the supernova explosion, either from asymmetries in the ejecta or
from an anisotropic emission of neutrinos (or other light particles) from the
cooling neutron star. In this paper we assume the velocities are caused by
anisotropic neutrino emission and study the effects of these neutrino-driven
kicks on the supernova explosion. We find that if the collapsed star is
marginally unable to produce an explosion, the neutrino-driven mechanisms can
drive the convection to make a successful explosion. The resultant explosion is
asymmetric, with the strongest ejecta motion roughly in the direction of the
neutron star kick. This is in sharp contrast with the ejecta-driven mechanisms,
which predict the motion of the ejecta in the opposite direction. This
difference can be used to distinguish between the two mechanisms based on the
observations of the supernova remnants.Comment: 22 pages including 8 figures, submitted to ApJ, version with high
resolution figures can be found at http://qso.lanl.gov/~cl
Influence of the r-mode instability on hypercritically accreting neutron stars
We have investigated an influence of the r-mode instability on
hypercritically accreting () neutron stars in
close binary systems during their common envelope phases based on the scenario
proposed by Bethe et al. \shortcite{bethe-brown-lee}. On the one hand neutron
stars are heated by the accreted matter at the stellar surface, but on the
other hand they are also cooled down by the neutrino radiation. At the same
time, the accreted matter transports its angular momentum and mass to the star.
We have studied the evolution of the stellar mass, temperature and rotational
frequency.
The gravitational-wave-driven instability of the r-mode oscillation strongly
suppresses spinning-up of the star, whose final rotational frequency is well
below the mass-shedding limit, typically as small as 10% of that of the
mass-shedding state. On a very short time scale the rotational frequency tends
to approach a certain constant value and saturates there as far as the amount
of the accreted mass does not exceed a certain limit to collapse to a black
hole. This implies that the similar mechanism of gravitational radiation as the
so-called Wagoner star may work in this process. The star is spun up by
accretion until the angular momentum loss by gravitational radiation balances
the accretion torque. The time-integrated dimensionless strain of the radiated
gravitational wave may be large enough to be detectable by the gravitational
wave detectors such as LIGO II.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure
Double Neutron Star Systems and Natal Neutron Star Kicks
We study the four double neutron star systems found in the Galactic disk in
terms of the orbital characteristics of their immediate progenitors and the
natal kicks imparted to neutron stars. Analysis of the effect of the second
supernova explosion on the orbital dynamics, combined with recent results from
simulations of rapid accretion onto neutron stars lead us to conclude that the
observed systems could not have been formed had the explosion been symmetric.
Their formation becomes possible if kicks are imparted to the radio-pulsar
companions at birth. We identify the constraints imposed on the immediate
progenitors of the observed double neutron stars and calculate the ranges
within which their binary characteristics (orbital separations and masses of
the exploding stars) are restricted. We also study the dependence of these
limits on the magnitude of the kick velocity and the time elapsed since the
second explosion. For each of the double neutron stars, we derive a minimum
kick magnitude required for their formation, and for the two systems in close
orbits we find it to exceed 200km/s. Lower limits are also set to the
center-of-mass velocities of double neutron stars, and we find them to be
consistent with the current proper motion observations.Comment: 25 pages, 6 figs (9 parts), 4 tables, AASTeX, Accepted in Ap
Parallelization of Kinetic Theory Simulations
Numerical studies of shock waves in large scale systems via kinetic
simulations with millions of particles are too computationally demanding to be
processed in serial. In this work we focus on optimizing the parallel
performance of a kinetic Monte Carlo code for astrophysical simulations such as
core-collapse supernovae. Our goal is to attain a flexible program that scales
well with the architecture of modern supercomputers. This approach requires a
hybrid model of programming that combines a message passing interface (MPI)
with a multithreading model (OpenMP) in C++. We report on our approach to
implement the hybrid design into the kinetic code and show first results which
demonstrate a significant gain in performance when many processors are applied.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, conference proceeding
Crater lake cichlids individually specialize along the benthic-limnetic axis
A common pattern of adaptive diversification in freshwater fishes is the repeated evolution of elongated open water (limnetic) species and high-bodied shore (benthic) species from generalist ancestors. Studies on phenotype-diet correlations have suggested that population-wide individual specialization occurs at an early evolutionary and ecological stage of divergence and niche partitioning. This variable restricted niche use across individuals can provide the raw material for earliest stages of sympatric divergence. We investigated variation in morphology and diet as well as their correlations along the benthic-limnetic axis in an extremely young Midas cichlid species, Amphilophus tolteca, endemic to the Nicaraguan crater lake Asososca Managua. We found that A. tolteca varied continuously in ecologically relevant traits such as body shape and lower pharyngeal jaw morphology. The correlation of these phenotypes with niche suggested that individuals are specialized along the benthic-limnetic axis. No genetic differentiation within the crater lake was detected based on genotypes from 13 microsatellite loci. Overall, we found that individual specialization in this young crater lake species encompasses the limnetic- as well as the benthic macro-habitat. Yet there is no evidence for any diversification within the species, making this a candidate system for studying what might be the early stages preceding sympatric divergence
Core-Collapse Simulations of Rotating Stars
We present the results from a series of two-dimensional core-collapse
simulations using a rotating progenitor star. We find that the convection in
these simulations is less vigorous because a) rotation weakens the core bounce
which seeds the neutrino-driven convection and b) the angular momentum profile
in the rotating core stabilizes against convection. The limited convection
leads to explosions which occur later and are weaker than the explosions
produced from the collapse of non-rotating cores. However, because the
convection is constrained to the polar regions, when the explosion occurs, it
is stronger along the polar axis. This asymmetric explosion can explain the
polarization measurements of core-collapse supernovae. These asymmetries also
provide a natural mechanism to mix the products of nucleosynthesis out into the
helium and hydrogen layers of the star. We also discuss the role the collapse
of these rotating stars play on the generation of magnetic fields and neutron
star kicks. Given a range of progenitor rotation periods, we predict a range of
supernova energies for the same progenitor mass. The critical mass for black
hole formation also depends upon the rotation speed of the progenitor.Comment: 16 pages text + 13 figures, submitted to Ap
Modeling Core-Collapse Supernovae in 3-Dimensions
We present the first complete 3-dimensional simulations of the core-collapse
of a massive star from the onset of collapse to the resultant supernova
explosion. We compare the structure of the convective instabilities that occur
in 3-dimensional models with those of past 2-dimensional simulations. Although
the convective instabilities are clearly 3-dimensional in nature, we find that
both the size-scale of the flows and the net enhancement to neutrino heating
does not differ greatly between 2- and 3-dimensional models. The explosion
energy, explosion timescale, and remnant mass does not differ by more than 10%
between 2- and 3-dimensional simulations.Comment: 5 pages text, 3 separate figures (see http://qso.lanl.gov/~clf for
more info), accepted by Ap
Neutrino Transport in Strongly Magnetized Proto-Neutron Stars and the Origin of Pulsar Kicks: The Effect of Asymmetric Magnetic Field Topology
In proto-neutron stars with strong magnetic fields, the cross section for
() absorption on neutrons (protons) depends on the local
magnetic field strength due to the quantization of energy levels for the
() produced in the final state. If the neutron star possesses an
asymmetric magnetic field topology in the sense that the magnitude of magnetic
field in the north pole is different from that in the south pole, then
asymmetric neutrino emission may be generated. We calculate the absorption
cross sections of \nue and \bnue in strong magnetic fields as a function of
the neutrino energy. These cross sections exhibit oscillatory behaviors which
occur because new Landau levels for the () become accessible as the
neutrino energy increases. By evaluating the appropriately averaged neutrino
opacities, we demonstrate that the change in the local neutrino flux due to the
modified opacities is rather small. To generate appreciable kick velocity
( km~s) to the newly-formed neutron star, the difference in
the field strengths at the two opposite poles of the star must be at least
~G. We also consider the magnetic field effect on the spectral
neutrino energy fluxes. The oscillatory features in the absorption opacities
give rise to modulations in the emergent spectra of and .Comment: AASTeX, 25 pages. Expanded introduction and references. This revised
version was accepted by ApJ in April 1998 (to appear in the Oct 1 issue
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