1,464 research outputs found
SNARE proteins as molecular masters of interneuronal communication
In the beginning of the 20th century the groundbreaking work\ud
of Ramon y Cajal firmly established the neuron doctrine, according to which neurons are the basic structural and functional units of the nervous system. Von Weldeyer coined the term “neuron” in 1891, but the huge leap forward in\ud
neuroscience was due to Cajal’s meticulous microscopic observations of brain sections stained with an improved version of Golgi’s la reazione nera (black reaction). The latter improvement of Golgi’s technique made it possible to visualize the arborizations of single neurons that were “colored brownish black even to their finest branchlets, standing out with unsurpassable clarity upon a transparent yellow background. All was sharp as a sketch with Chinese ink”. The high quality of both the visualization of individual nerve cells and the work performed on studying the anatomy of the central nervous system lead Ramon y Cajal to the conclusion that axons output the nervous impulses to the dendrites or the soma of other target neurons
AAT Imaging and Microslit Spectroscopy in the Southern Hubble Deep Field
We present a deep photometric (B- and R-band) catalog and an associated
spectroscopic redshift survey conducted in the vicinity of the Hubble Deep
Field South. The spectroscopy yields 53 extragalactic redshifts in the range
0<z<1.4 substantially increasing the body of spectroscopic work in this field
to over 200 objects. The targets are selected from deep AAT prime focus images
complete to R<24 and spectroscopy is 50% complete at R=23. There is now strong
evidence for a rich cluster at z\simeq 0.58 flanking the WFPC2 field which is
consistent with a known absorber of the bright QSO in this field. We find that
photometric redshifts of z<1 galaxies in this field based on HST data are
accurate to \sigma_z/(1+z)=0.03 (albeit with small number statistics). The
observations were carried out as a community service for Hubble Deep Field
science, to demonstrate the first use of the `nod & shuffle' technique with a
classical multi-object spectrograph and to test the use of `microslits' for
ultra-high multiplex observations along with a new VPH grism and deep-depletion
CCD. The reduction of this new type of data is also described.Comment: From the better late than never department: AJ in press (2006). 16
pages, 2 tables, 6 figures, final data release + Appendix at
http://www.aao.gov.au/hdfs/Redshifts
The connection between the peaks in velocity dispersion and star-forming clumps of turbulent galaxies
We present Keck/OSIRIS adaptive optics observations with 150-400 pc spatial
sampling of 7 turbulent, clumpy disc galaxies from the DYNAMO sample
(). DYNAMO galaxies have previously been shown to be well matched
in properties to main sequence galaxies at . Integral field
spectroscopy observations using adaptive optics are subject to a number of
systematics including a variable PSF and spatial sampling, which we account for
in our analysis. We present gas velocity dispersion maps corrected for these
effects, and confirm that DYNAMO galaxies do have high gas velocity dispersion
(\kms), even at high spatial sampling. We find statistically
significant structure in 6 out of 7 galaxies. The most common distance between
the peaks in velocity dispersion and emission line peaks is ~kpc, we
note this is very similar to the average size of a clump measured with HST
H maps. This could suggest that the peaks in velocity dispersion in
clumpy galaxies likely arise due to some interaction between the clump and the
surrounding ISM of the galaxy, though our observations cannot distinguish
between outflows, inflows or velocity shear. Observations covering a wider area
of the galaxies will be needed to confirm this result.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA
Pair Analysis of Field Galaxies from the Red-Sequence Cluster Survey
We study the evolution of the number of close companions of similar
luminosities per galaxy (Nc) by choosing a volume-limited subset of the
photometric redshift catalog from the Red-Sequence Cluster Survey (RCS-1). The
sample contains over 157,000 objects with a moderate redshift range of 0.25 < z
< 0.8 and absolute magnitude in Rc (M_Rc) < -20. This is the largest sample
used for pair evolution analysis, providing data over 9 redshift bins with
about 17,500 galaxies in each. After applying incompleteness and projection
corrections, Nc shows a clear evolution with redshift. The Nc value for the
whole sample grows with redshift as (1+z)^m, where m = 2.83 +/- 0.33 in good
agreement with N-body simulations in a LCDM cosmology. We also separate the
sample into two different absolute magnitude bins: -25 < M_Rc < -21 and -21 <
M_Rc < -20, and find that the brighter the absolute magnitude, the smaller the
m value. Furthermore, we study the evolution of the pair fraction for different
projected separation bins and different luminosities. We find that the m value
becomes smaller for larger separation, and the pair fraction for the fainter
luminosity bin has stronger evolution. We derive the major merger remnant
fraction f_rem = 0.06, which implies that about 6% of galaxies with -25 < M_Rc
< -20 have undergone major mergers since z = 0.8.Comment: ApJ, in pres
Assessing an intuitive condition for stability under a range of traffic conditions via a generalised Lu-Kumar network
We argue the importance both of developing simple sufficient conditions for the stability of general multiclass queueing networks and also of assessing such conditions under a range of assumptions on the weight of the traffic flowing between service stations. To achieve the former, we review a peak-rate stability condition and extend its range of application and for the latter, we introduce a generalisation of the Lu-Kumar network on which the stability condition may be tested for a range of traffic configurations. The peak-rate condition is close to exact when the between-station traffic is light, but degrades as this traffic increases.Multiclass queueing networks, stability, fluid model, Lu-Kumar network
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