Modeling the color evolution of luminous red galaxies - improvements with empirical stellar spectra

Predicting the colors of Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has been a long-standing problem. The g,r,i colors of LRGs are inconsistent with stellar population models over the redshift range 0.1<z<0.7. The g-r colors in the models are on average redder than the data while the r-i colors in the models are bluer towards low redshift. Beyond redshift 0.4, the predicted r-i color becomes instead too red, while the predicted g-r agrees with the data. We provide a solution to this problem, through a combination of new astrophysics and a fundamental change to the stellar population modeling. We find that the use of the empirical library of Pickles (1998) instead of theoretical spectra modifies the predicted colors exactly in the way suggested by the data. The reason is a lower flux in the empirical libraries, with respect to the theoretical ones, in the wavelength range 5500-6500 AA. The discrepancy increases with decreasing effective temperature independently of gravity. This result has general implications for a variety of studies from globular clusters to high-redshift galaxies. The astrophysical part of our solution regards the composition of the stellar populations of these massive Luminous Red Galaxies. We find that on top of the previous effect one needs to consider a model in which ~3% of the stellar mass is in old metal-poor stars. Other solutions such as substantial blue Horizontal Branch at high metallicity or young stellar populations can be ruled out by the data. Our new model provides a better fit to the g-r and r-i colors of LRGs and gives new insight into the formation histories of these most massive galaxies. Our model will also improve the k- and evolutionary corrections for LRGs which are critical for fully exploiting present and future galaxy surveys.Comment: Submitted to ApJ Letters. High resolution version available at http://www.maraston.eu/Maraston_etal_2008.pd

Stellar population models at high spectral resolution

We present new, high-to-intermediate spectral resolution stellar population models, based on four popular libraries of empirical stellar spectra, namely Pickles, ELODIE, STELIB and MILES. These new models are the same as our previous models, but with higher resolution and based on empirical stellar spectra, while keeping other ingredients the same including the stellar energetics, the atmospheric parameters and the treatment of the Thermally-Pulsating Asymptotic Giant Branch and the Horizontal Branch morphology. We further compute very high resolution (R=20,000) models based on the theoretical stellar library MARCS which extends to the near-infrared. We therefore provide merged high resolution stellar population models, extending from ~1000 AA to 25,000 AA. We compare how these libraries perform in stellar population models and highlight spectral regions where discrepancies are found. We confirm our previous findings that the flux around the V-band is lower (in a normalised sense) in models based on empirical libraries than in those based on the BaSeL-Kurucz library, which results in a bluer B-V colour. Most noticeably the theoretical library MARCS gives results fully consistent with the empirical libraries. This same effect is also found in other models using MILES, namely Vazdekis et al. and Conroy & Gunn, even though the latter authors reach the opposite conclusion. The bluer predicted B-V colour (by 0.05 magnitudes in our models) is in better agreement with both the colours of Luminous Red Galaxies and globular cluster data. We test the models on their ability to reproduce, through full spectral fitting, the ages and metallicities of galactic globular clusters as derived from CMD fitting and find overall good agreement. {Abridged}Comment: 30 pages, 36 figures, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in pres

Populist communication in the new media environment: a cross-regional comparative perspective

The changing terms of mediation place new demands, opportunities and risks on the performance of the political persona. Visibility has become a double-edged sword, leaving representatives vulnerable to exposure while new tools provide opportunities for emerging entrepreneurial actors. This double risk to elites’ mediated personas—exposure and challenge from entrepreneurs—renders their armour of authenticity dangerously fragile, which nourishes a public sense of being inefficaciously represented. It is this climate in which populism currently flourishes around the globe. Three primary criteria of mediated self-representation by politicians—visibility, authenticity and efficacy—form the focus of this paper: how do populists negotiate such demands in different democratic contexts, and wherein lies the symbiosis between populism and the new media environment suggested by the literature? To answer this, the paper compares two populist cases responding to different democratic contexts: UKIP, a right-wing party from an established democracy (UK), and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a left-wing party from a transitional democracy (South Africa). The objects of study are disruptive performances by these parties, which are considered emblematic manifestations of populist ideology as they establish a Manichaean relationship between the elite and populist actors who embody the people. The paper introduces disruption as a multi-faceted and significant analytical concept to explain the populist behaviour and strategies that underlie populist parties’ responses to the demands for visibility, authenticity and efficacy that the new media environment places upon political representatives. Using mixed methods with an interpretive focus, the paper paints a rich picture of the contexts, meanings and means of construction of populist performances

Directorium divini cultus ad Cathedralis Ecclesiae Minoriccensis : eiusque Dioecesis usum

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Mediation of Political Realities : Media as Crucial Sources of Information

As stated in the Introduction, the twofold purpose of this book is first to bring together state-of-the-art chapters on the mediatization of politics, thereby assessing what we know and providing a framework for further research; and second to move research on the mediatization of politics forward towards a more fully developed theory. For this reason, we invited leading scholars in this field to comment in their chapters on basic and more advanced questions and to develop various topics and perspectives. The scope in content and the depth of analysis of their contributions underscore the many different ways in which mediatization research can augment the literature of political communication and how stimulating the impulses are that it evokes