6,939 research outputs found
Review of \u3cem\u3eAgainst the Wall: Poor, Young, Black and Male. Elijah Anderson.\u3c/em\u3e Reviewed by Paul G. Wright.
Book review of Elijah Anderson, Against the Wall: Poor, Young, Black and Male. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, Reissue edition, 2009. $24.95 papercover
Review of \u3cem\u3eBlue-Chip Black: Race, Class, and Status in the New Black Middle Class.\u3c/em\u3e Karyn R. Lacy. Reviewed by Paul G. Wright.
Book review of Karyn R. Lacy, Blue-Chip Black: Race, Class, and Status in the New Black Middle Class. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007. 22.95 papercover
Evidence for a Molecular Cloud Origin for Gamma-Ray Bursts: Implications for the Nature of Star Formation in the Universe
It appears that the majority of rapidly-, well-localized gamma-ray bursts
with undetected, or dark, optical afterglows, or `dark bursts' for short, occur
in clouds of size R > 10L_{49}^{1/2} pc and mass M > 3x10^5L_{49} M_{sun},
where L is the isotropic-equivalent peak luminosity of the optical flash. We
show that clouds of this size and mass cannot be modeled as a gas that is bound
by pressure equilibrium with a warm or hot phase of the interstellar medium
(i.e., a diffuse cloud): Such a cloud would be unstable to gravitational
collapse, resulting in the collapse and fragmentation of the cloud until a
burst of star formation re-establishes pressure equilibrium within the
fragments, and the fragments are bound by self-gravity (i.e., a molecular
cloud). Consequently, dark bursts probably occur in molecular clouds, in which
case dark bursts are probably a byproduct of this burst of star formation if
the molecular cloud formed recently, and/or the result of lingering or latter
generation star formation if the molecular cloud formed some time ago. We then
show that if bursts occur in Galactic-like molecular clouds, the column
densities of which might be universal, the number of dark bursts can be
comparable to the number of bursts with detected optical afterglows: This is
what is observed, which suggests that the bursts with detected optical
afterglows might also occur in molecular clouds. We confirm this by modeling
and constraining the distribution of column densities, measured from absorption
of the X-ray afterglow, of the bursts with detected optical afterglows: We find
that this distribution is consistent with the expectation for bursts that occur
in molecular clouds, and is not consistent with the expectation for bursts that
occur in diffuse clouds. More...Comment: Accepted to The Astrophysical Journal, 22 pages, 6 figures, LaTe
Fourteen New Companions from the Keck & Lick Radial Velocity Survey Including Five Brown Dwarf Candidates
We present radial velocities for 14 stars on the California & Carnegie Planet
Search target list that reveal new companions. One star, HD 167665, was fit
with a definitive Keplerian orbit leading to a minimum mass for the companion
of 50.3 Mjup at a separation from its host of ~5.5 AU. Incomplete or limited
phase coverage for the remaining 13 stars prevents us from assigning to them
unique orbital parameters. Instead, we fit their radial velocities with
Keplerian orbits across a grid of fixed values for Msini and period, P, and use
the resulting reduced chi-square surface to place constraints on Msini, P, and
semimajor axis, a. This technique allowed us to restrict Msini below the brown
dwarf -- stellar mass boundary for an additional 4 companions (HD 150554, HD
8765, HD 72780, HD 74014). If the combined 5 companions are confirmed as brown
dwarfs, these results would comprise the first major catch of such objects from
our survey beyond ~3 AU.Comment: 29 pages, 14 figures, accepted to Ap
Chromospheric CaII Emission in Nearby F, G, K, and M stars
We present chromospheric CaII activity measurements, rotation periods and
ages for ~1200 F-, G-, K-, and M- type main-sequence stars from ~18,000
archival spectra taken at Keck and Lick Observatories as a part of the
California and Carnegie Planet Search Project. We have calibrated our
chromospheric S values against the Mount Wilson chromospheric activity data.
From these measurements we have calculated median activity levels and derived
R'HK, stellar ages, and rotation periods for 1228 stars, ~1000 of which have no
previously published S values. We also present precise time series of activity
measurements for these stars.Comment: 62 pages, 7 figures, 1 table. Second (extremely long) table is
available at http://astro.berkeley.edu/~jtwright/CaIIdata/tab1.tex Accepted
by ApJ
A New Planet Around an M Dwarf: Revealing a Correlation Between Exoplanets and Stellar Mass
We report precise Doppler measurements of GJ317 (M3.5V) that reveal the
presence of a planet with a minimum mass Msini = 1.2 Mjup in an eccentric,
692.9 day orbit. GJ317 is only the third M dwarf with a Doppler-detected Jovian
planet. The residuals to a single-Keplerian fit show evidence of a possible
second orbital companion. The inclusion of an additional Jupiter-mass planet (P
= 2700 days, Msini = 0.83 Mjup) improves the quality of fit significantly,
reducing the rms from 12.5 m/s to 6.32 m/s. A false-alarm test yields a 1.1%
probability that the curvature in the residuals of the single-planet fit is due
to random fluctuations, lending additional credibility to the two-planet model.
However, our data only marginally constrain a two-planet fit and further
monitoring is necessary to fully characterize the properties of the second
planet. To study the effect of stellar mass on Jovian planet occurrence we
combine our samples of M stars, Solar-mass dwarfs and intermediate-mass
subgiants. We find a positive correlation between stellar mass and the
occurrence rate of Jovian planets within 2.5 AU; the former A-type stars in our
sample are nearly 5 times more likely than the M dwarfs to harbor a giant
planet. Our analysis shows that the correlation between Jovian planet
occurrence and stellar mass remains even after accounting for the effects of
stellar metallicity.Comment: ApJ accepted, 27 pages, 6 figures, 3 table
Microflare Heating of a Solar Active Region Observed with NuSTAR, Hinode/XRT, and SDO/AIA
NuSTAR is a highly sensitive focusing hard X-ray (HXR) telescope and has
observed several small microflares in its initial solar pointings. In this
paper, we present the first joint observation of a microflare with NuSTAR and
Hinode/XRT on 2015 April 29 at ~11:29 UT. This microflare shows heating of
material to several million Kelvin, observed in Soft X-rays (SXRs) with
Hinode/XRT, and was faintly visible in Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) with SDO/AIA.
For three of the four NuSTAR observations of this region (pre-, decay, and post
phases) the spectrum is well fitted by a single thermal model of 3.2-3.5 MK,
but the spectrum during the impulsive phase shows additional emission up to 10
MK, emission equivalent to A0.1 GOES class. We recover the differential
emission measure (DEM) using SDO/AIA, Hinode/XRT, and NuSTAR, giving
unprecedented coverage in temperature. We find the pre-flare DEM peaks at ~3 MK
and falls off sharply by 5 MK; but during the microflare's impulsive phase the
emission above 3 MK is brighter and extends to 10 MK, giving a heating rate of
about erg s. As the NuSTAR spectrum is purely
thermal we determined upper-limits on the possible non-thermal bremsstrahlung
emission. We find that for the accelerated electrons to be the source of the
heating requires a power-law spectrum of with a low energy
cut-off keV. In summary, this first NuSTAR microflare
strongly resembles much more powerful flares.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. 14 pages with 12 figures and 1 tabl
Behavior of the Escape Rate Function in Hyperbolic Dynamical Systems
For a fixed initial reference measure, we study the dependence of the escape
rate on the hole for a smooth or piecewise smooth hyperbolic map. First, we
prove the existence and Holder continuity of the escape rate for systems with
small holes admitting Young towers. Then we consider general holes for Anosov
diffeomorphisms, without size or Markovian restrictions. We prove bounds on the
upper and lower escape rates using the notion of pressure on the survivor set
and show that a variational principle holds under generic conditions. However,
we also show that the escape rate function forms a devil's staircase with jumps
along sequences of regular holes and present examples to elucidate some of the
difficulties involved in formulating a general theory.Comment: 21 pages. v2 differs from v1 only by additions to the acknowledgment
Structure and morphology of ACEL ZnS:Cu,Cl phosphor powder etched by hydrochloric acid
© The Electrochemical Society, Inc. 2009. All rights reserved. Except as provided under U.S. copyright law, this work may not be reproduced, resold, distributed, or modified without the express permission of The Electrochemical Society (ECS). The archival version is available at the link below.Despite many researches over the last half century, the mechanism of ac powder electroluminescence remains to be fully elucidated and, to this end, a better understanding of the relatively complex structure of alternate current electroluminescence (ACEL) phosphors is required. Consequently, the structure and morphology of ZnS:Cu,Cl phosphor powders have been investigated herein by means of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) on hydrochloric acid-etched samples and X-ray powder diffraction. The latter technique confirmed that, as a result of two-stage firing during their synthesis, the phosphors were converted from the high temperature hexagonal (wurtzite) structure to the low temperature cubic (sphalerite) polymorph having a high density of planar stacking faults. Optical microscopy revealed that the crystal habit of the phosphor had the appearance of the hexagonal polymorph, which can be explained by the sphalerite pseudomorphing of the earlier wurtzite after undergoing the hexagonal to cubic phase transformation during the synthesis. SEM micrographs of the hydrochloric-etched phosphor particles revealed etch pits, a high density of planar stacking faults along the cubic [111] axis, and the pyramids on the (111) face. These observations were consistent with unidirectional crystal growth originating from the face showing the pyramids.EPSRC, DTI, and the Technology Strategy Board-led Technology Program
A simple piston problem in one dimension
We study a heavy piston that separates finitely many ideal gas particles
moving inside a one-dimensional gas chamber. Using averaging techniques, we
prove precise rates of convergence of the actual motions of the piston to its
averaged behavior. The convergence is uniform over all initial conditions in a
compact set. The results extend earlier work by Sinai and Neishtadt, who
determined that the averaged behavior is periodic oscillation. In addition, we
investigate the piston system when the particle interactions have been
smoothed. The convergence to the averaged behavior again takes place uniformly,
both over initial conditions and over the amount of smoothing.Comment: Accepted by Nonlinearity. 27 pages, 2 figure
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