13,536 research outputs found
Binary Black Hole Mergers from Planet-like Migrations
If supermassive black holes (BHs) are generically present in galaxy centers,
and if galaxies are built up through hierarchical merging, BH binaries are at
least temporary features of most galactic bulges. Observations suggest,
however, that binary BHs are rare, pointing towards a binary lifetime far
shorter than the Hubble time. We show that, regardless of the detailed
mechanism, all stellar-dynamical processes are insufficient to reduce
significantly the orbital separation once orbital velocities in the binary
exceed the virial velocity of the system. We propose that a massive gas disk
surrounding a BH binary can effect its merger rapidly, in a scenario analogous
to the orbital decay of super-jovian planets due to a proto-planetary disk. As
in the case of planets, gas accretion onto the secondary (here a supermassive
BH) is integrally connected with its inward migration. Such accretion would
give rise to quasar activity. BH binary mergers could therefore be responsible
for many or most quasars.Comment: 8 pages, submitted to ApJ Letter
Infrared Line Emission from Planetary Nebulae. I - General Theory
General theory of infrared line emission from planetary nebul
Microwave radiometer experiment of soil moisture sensing at BARC test site during summer 1981
Soil moisture was measured by truck mounted microwave radiometers at the frequencies of 1.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 10.7 GHz. The soil textures in the two test sites were different so that the soil type effect of microwave radiometric response could be studied. Several fields in each test site were prepared with different surface roughnesses and vegetation covers. Ground truth on the soil moisture, temperature, and the biomass of the vegetation was acquired in support of the microwave radiometric measurements. Soil bulk density for each of the fields in both test sites was sampled. The soils in both sites were measured mechanically and chemically. A tabulation of the measured data is presented and the sensors and operational problems associated with the measurements are discussed
Generalised Perk--Schultz models: solutions of the Yang-Baxter equation associated with quantised orthosymplectic superalgebras
The Perk--Schultz model may be expressed in terms of the solution of the
Yang--Baxter equation associated with the fundamental representation of the
untwisted affine extension of the general linear quantum superalgebra
, with a multiparametric co-product action as given by
Reshetikhin. Here we present analogous explicit expressions for solutions of
the Yang-Baxter equation associated with the fundamental representations of the
twisted and untwisted affine extensions of the orthosymplectic quantum
superalgebras . In this manner we obtain generalisations of the
Perk--Schultz model.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure
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Increasing compliance with low tidal volume ventilation in the ICU with two nudge-based interventions: evaluation through intervention time-series analyses
Objectives: Low tidal volume (TVe) ventilation improves outcomes for ventilated patients, and the majority of clinicians state they implement it. Unfortunately, most patients never receive low TVes. ‘Nudges’ influence decision-making with subtle cognitive mechanisms and are effective in many contexts. There have been few studies examining their impact on clinical decision-making. We investigated the impact of 2 interventions designed using principles from behavioural science on the deployment of low TVe ventilation in the intensive care unit (ICU).
Setting: University Hospitals Bristol, a tertiary, mixed medical and surgical ICU with 20 beds, admitting over 1300 patients per year.
Participants: Data were collected from 2144 consecutive patients receiving controlled mechanical ventilation for more than 1 hour between October 2010 and September 2014. Patients on controlled mechanical ventilation for more than 20 hours were included in the final analysis.
Interventions: (1) Default ventilator settings were adjusted to comply with low TVe targets from the initiation of ventilation unless actively changed by a clinician. (2) A large dashboard was deployed displaying TVes in the format mL/kg ideal body weight (IBW) with alerts when TVes were excessive.
Primary outcome measure: TVe in mL/kg IBW.
Findings: TVe was significantly lower in the defaults group. In the dashboard intervention, TVe fell more quickly and by a greater amount after a TVe of 8 mL/kg IBW was breached when compared with controls. This effect improved in each subsequent year for 3 years.
Conclusions: This study has demonstrated that adjustment of default ventilator settings and a dashboard with alerts for excessive TVe can significantly influence clinical decision-making. This offers a promising strategy to improve compliance with low TVe ventilation, and suggests that using insights from behavioural science has potential to improve the translation of evidence into practice
Radiometric measurements over bare and vegetated fields at 1.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequencies
Microwave emission from bare and vegetated fields was measured with dual polarized radiometers at 1.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequencies. The measured brightness temperatures over bare fields are shown to compare favorably with those calculated from radiative transfer theory with two constant parameters characterizing surface roughness effect. The presence of vegetation cover is found to reduce the sensitivity to soil moisture variation. This sensitivity reduction is generally pronounced the denser, the vegetation cover and the higher the frequency of observation. The effect of vegetation cover is also examined with respect to the measured polarization factor at both frequencies. With the exception of dry corn fields, the measured polarization factor over vegetated fields is found appreciably reduced compared to that over bare fields. A much larger reduction in this factor is found at 5GHz than at 1.4GHz frequency
The age and abundance structure of the stellar populations in the central sub-kpc of the Milky Way
The four main findings about the age and abundance structure of the Milky Way
bulge based on microlensed dwarf and subgiant stars are: (1) a wide metallicity
distribution with distinct peaks at [Fe/H]=-1.09, -0.63, -0.20, +0.12, +0.41;
(2) a high fraction of intermediate-age to young stars where at [Fe/H]>0 more
than 35 % are younger than 8 Gyr, (3) several episodes of significant star
formation in the bulge 3, 6, 8, and 11 Gyr ago; (4) the `knee' in the
alpha-element abundance trends of the sub-solar metallicity bulge appears to be
located at a slightly higher [Fe/H] (about 0.05 to 0.1 dex) than in the local
thick disk.Comment: 4 pages, contributed talk at the IAU Symposium 334 "Rediscovering our
Galaxy" in Potsdam, July 10-14, 201
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Replication enhancer elements within the open reading frame of tick-borne encephalitis virus and their evolution within the Flavivirus genus
We provide experimental evidence of a replication enhancer element (REE) within the capsid gene of tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV, genus Flavivirus). Thermodynamic and phylogenetic analyses predicted that the REE folds as a long stable stem–loop (designated SL6), conserved among all tick-borne flaviviruses (TBFV). Homologous sequences and potential base pairing were found in the corresponding regions of mosquito-borne flaviviruses, but not in more genetically distant flaviviruses. To investigate the role
of SL6, nucleotide substitutions were introduced which changed a conserved hexanucleotide motif, the conformation of the terminal loop and the base-paired dsRNA stacking. Substitutions were made within a TBEV reverse genetic system and recovered mutants were compared for plaque
morphology, single-step replication kinetics and cytopathic effect. The greatest phenotypic changes were observed in mutants with a destabilized stem. Point mutations in the conserved hexanucleotide motif of the terminal loop caused
moderate virus attenuation. However, all mutants
eventually reached the titre of wild-type virus late post-infection. Thus, although not essential for growth in tissue culture, the SL6 REE acts to up-regulate virus replication. We hypothesize that this modulatory role may be important for TBEV survival in nature, where the virus circulates by non-viraemic transmission between infected and
non-infected ticks, during co-feeding on local rodents
Observation of a resonant four-body interaction in cold cesium Rydberg atoms
Cold Rydberg atoms subject to long-range dipole-dipole interactions represent
a particularly interesting system for exploring few-body interactions and
probing the transition from 2-body physics to the many-body regime. In this
work we report the direct observation of a resonant 4-body Rydberg interaction.
We exploit the occurrence of an accidental quasi-coincidence of a 2-body and a
4-body resonant Stark-tuned Forster process in cesium to observe a resonant
energy transfer requiring the simultaneous interaction of at least four
neighboring atoms. These results are relevant for the implementation of quantum
gates with Rydberg atoms and for further studies of many-body physics.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
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