6,943 research outputs found

    A Good Policy of Sustainable Tourism

    Get PDF
    We consider an extensive form game to analyze the interdependence between environmental protection of resources, the activities related with the tourism and the behavior of a local population. We answer two questions: 1) Suppose that the central planner invest in tourist activities, has he incentives to do an aggressive propagandistic campaign to convince the tourist to come for the country? 2) How good is from the environmental point of view that the local inhabitants prefer to work in tourist activities? So we analyze the situation when it's possible to obtain a sustainable tourism in a country such that the tourism is the main economic activity.Imperfect information, mixed strategies, repeated game, sustainable tourism

    On the arcmin structure of the X-ray Universe

    Full text link
    We present the angular correlation function of the X-ray population of 1063 XMM-Newton observations at high Galactic latitudes, comprising up to ~30000 sources over a sky area of ~125 sq. degrees in the energy bands: soft (0.5-2 keV) and hard (2-10 keV). This is the largest sample of serendipitous X-ray sources ever used for clustering analysis purposes to date and the results have been determined with unprecedented accuracy. We detect significant clustering signals in the soft and hard bands (~10 sigma and ~5 sigma, respectively). We deproject the angular correlation function via Limber's equation and calculate the typical spatial lengths. We infer that AGN at redshifts ~1 are embedded in dark matter halos with typical masses of log M ~ 12.6/h Msol and lifetimes in the range ~3-5 x 10^8 years, which indicates that AGN activity is a transient phase in the life of galaxies.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure. Proc. of the conference "X-ray Astronomy 2009: Present status, multiwavelength approach and future perspectives", September 2009, Bologna. To appear in AIP Conf. Proc. (editors: A. Comastri, M. Cappi, L. Angelini)

    Analysis of Spitzer-IRS spectra of hyperluminous infrared galaxies

    Full text link
    Hyperluminous infrared galaxies (HLIRG) are the most luminous persistent objects in the Universe. They exhibit extremely high star formation rates, and most of them seem to harbour an AGN. They are unique laboratories to investigate the most extreme star formation, and its connection to super-massive black hole growth. The AGN and SB relative contributions to the total output in these objects is still debated. Our aim is to disentangle the AGN and SB emission of a sample of thirteen HLIRG. We have studied the MIR low resolution spectra of a sample of thirteen HLIRG obtained with the IRS on board Spitzer. The 5-8 {\mu}m range is an optimal window to detect AGN activity even in a heavily obscured environment. We performed a SB/AGN decomposition of the continuum using templates, successfully applied for ULIRG in previous works. The MIR spectra of all sources is largely dominated by AGN emission. Converting the 6 {\mu}m luminosity into IR luminosity, we found that ~80% of the sample shows an IR output dominated by the AGN emission. However, the SB activity is significant in all sources (mean SB contribution ~30%), showing star formation rates ~300-3000 solar masses per year. Using X-ray and MIR data we estimated the dust covering factor (CF) of these HLIRG, finding that a significant fraction presents a CF consistent with unity. Along with the high X-ray absorption shown by these sources, this suggests that large amounts of dust and gas enshroud the nucleus of these HLIRG, as also observed in ULIRG. Our results are in agreement with previous studies of the IR SED of HLIRG using radiative transfer models, and we find strong evidence that all HLIRG harbour an AGN. This work provides further support to the idea that AGN and SB are both crucial to understand the properties of HLIRG. Our study of the CF supports the hypothesis that HLIRG can be divided in two different populations.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication in A&

    Relativistic reflection in the average X-ray spectrum of AGN in the V\'eron-Cetty & V\'eron catalogue

    Get PDF
    The X-ray spectra of active galactic nuclei (AGN) unveil properties of matter around the super massive black hole (SMBH). We investigate the X-ray spectra of AGN focusing on Compton reflection and fluorescence, important processes of interaction between primary radiation and circum-nuclear material. Unresolved emission lines (most notably the Fe line) in the X-ray spectra of AGN indicate that this material is located far away from the SMBH. Contributions from the inner accretion disk, affected by relativistic effects, have also been detected in several cases. We studied the average X-ray spectrum of a sample of 263 X-ray unabsorbed AGN that yield 419023 counts in the 2-12 keV rest-frame band distributed among 388 XMM-Newton spectra. We fitted the average spectrum using a (basically) unabsorbed power law (primary radiation). From second model that represents the interaction of the primary radiation with matter located far away from the SMBH, we found that it was very significantly detected. Finally, we added a contribution from interaction with neutral material in the accretion disk close to the central SMBH, which is therefore smeared by relativistic effects, which improved the fit at 6 sigma. The reflection factors are 0.65 for the accretion disk and 0.25 for the torus. Replacing the neutral disk-reflection with low-ionisation disk reflection, also relativistically smeared, fits the data equally well, suggesting that we do not find evidence for a significant ionisation of the accretion disk. We detect distant neutral reflection in the average spectrum of unabsorbed AGN with z=0.8. Adding the disk-reflection component associated with a relativistic Fe line improves the data description at 6 sigma confidence level, suggesting that both reflection components are present. The disk-reflection component accounts for about 70 % of the total reflected flux.Comment: Accepted by A&A. 10 pages, 7 figure

    Proposal of a novel design for linear superconducting motor using 2G tape stacks

    Get PDF
    This paper presents a new design for a su- perconducting linear motor (SLM). This SLM uses stacks of second-generation (2G) superconducting tapes, which are responsible for replacing yttrium barium copper oxide bulks. The proposed SLM may operate as a synchronous motor or as a hysteresis motor, depending on the load force magnitude. A small-scale linear machine prototype with 2G stacks was constructed and tested to investigate the proposed SLM topology. The stator traveling magnetic field wave was represented by several Nd-Fe-B permanent magnets. A relative movement was produced between the stator and the stack, and the force was measured along the displacement. This system was also simulated by the finite element method, in order to calculate the induced currents in the stack and determine the electromagnetic force. The H-formulation was used to solve the problem, and a power law relation was applied to take into account the intrin- sically nonlinearity of the superconductor. The simulated and measured results were in accordance. Simulated re- sults were extrapolated, proving to be an interesting tool to scale up the motor in future projects. The proposed motor presented an estimated force density of almost 500 N/kg, which is much higher than any linear motor.This work was supported in part by the following agencies: CNPq/CAPES/INERGE, CNPq—Ci ˆ encias sem Fronteiras, FAPERJ, Catalan Government 2014- SGR-753, CONSOLIDER Excellence Network MAT2014-56063-C2-1-R and MAT2015-68994-REDC, Eurofusion EU COST ACTIONS MP1201/ MP1014/PPPT-WPMAG 2014, EUROTAPES FP7-NMP-Large-2011- 280432, FORTISSIMO FP7-2013-ICT-609029, and Spanish Govern- ment Agencies—Severo Ochoa Programme Centres of Excellence in R&D. (Corresponding author: Guilherme G. Sotelo.

    Coupled thermo-mechanical finite element models with node-dependent kinematics for multi-layered shell structures

    Get PDF
    Node-dependent Kinematic (NDK) shell finite element (FE) formulations are presented for the steady-state thermo-mechanical analysis of laminated structures. The displacements and temperature change are treated as primary variables in the FE models and are directly solved through the coupled thermo-mechanical models. The enforcement of distributed temperature boundary conditions on the top or the bottom surface of hierarchical shell elements is conducted through the Linear Least Squares. The effectiveness of the proposed FE approaches is verified by comparing the results against those from the literature. The application of adaptive refinement approach based on the hierarchical elements and NDK to build FE models with optimal efficiency is demonstrated through numerical examples

    Estimating Photometric Redshifts for X-ray sources in the X-ATLAS field, using machine-learning techniques

    Full text link
    We present photometric redshifts for 1,031 X-ray sources in the X-ATLAS field, using the machine learning technique TPZ (Carrasco Kind & Brunner 2013). X-ATLAS covers 7.1 deg2 observed with the XMM-Newton within the Science Demonstration Phase (SDP) of the H-ATLAS field, making it one of the largest contiguous areas of the sky with both XMMNewton and Herschel coverage. All of the sources have available SDSS photometry while 810 have additionally mid-IR and/or near-IR photometry. A spectroscopic sample of 5,157 sources primarily in the XMM/XXL field, but also from several X-ray surveys and the SDSS DR13 redshift catalogue, is used for the training of the algorithm. Our analysis reveals that the algorithm performs best when the sources are split, based on their optical morphology, into point-like and extended sources. Optical photometry alone is not enough for the estimation of accurate photometric redshifts, but the results greatly improve when, at least, mid-IR photometry is added in the training process. In particular, our measurements show that the estimated photometric redshifts for the X-ray sources of the training sample, have a normalized absolute median deviation, n_mad=0.06, and the percentage of outliers, eta=10-14 percent, depending on whether the sources are extended or point-like. Our final catalogue contains photometric redshifts for 933 out of the 1,031 X-ray sources with a median redshift of 0.9.Comment: 10 pages, 13 figures, A&A accepte
    • …
    corecore