335 research outputs found
Galaxies Probing Galaxies at High Resolution: Co-Rotating Gas Associated with a Milky Way Analog at z=0.4
We present results on gas flows in the halo of a Milky Way-like galaxy at
z=0.413 based on high-resolution spectroscopy of a background galaxy. This is
the first study of circumgalactic gas at high spectral resolution towards an
extended background source (i.e., a galaxy rather than a quasar). Using
longslit spectroscopy of the foreground galaxy, we observe spatially extended H
alpha emission with circular rotation velocity v=270 km/s. Using echelle
spectroscopy of the background galaxy, we detect Mg II and Fe II absorption
lines at impact parameter rho=27 kpc that are blueshifted from systemic in the
sense of the foreground galaxy's rotation. The strongest absorber EW(2796) =
0.90 A has an estimated column density (N_H>10^19 cm-2) and line-of-sight
velocity dispersion (sigma=17 km/s) that are consistent with the observed
properties of extended H I disks in the local universe. Our analysis of the
rotation curve also suggests that this r=30 kpc gaseous disk is warped with
respect to the stellar disk. In addition, we detect two weak Mg II absorbers in
the halo with small velocity dispersions (sigma<10 km/s). While the exact
geometry is unclear, one component is consistent with an extraplanar gas cloud
near the disk-halo interface that is co-rotating with the disk, and the other
is consistent with a tidal feature similar to the Magellanic Stream. We can
place lower limits on the cloud sizes (l>0.4 kpc) for these absorbers given the
extended nature of the background source. We discuss the implications of these
results for models of the geometry and kinematics of gas in the circumgalactic
medium.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, submitted to ApJ, comments welcom
Bacteria isolated from Bengal cat (Felis catus × Prionailurus bengalensis) anal sac secretions produce volatile compounds potentially associated with animal signaling.
In social animals, scent secretions and marking behaviors play critical roles in communication, including intraspecific signals, such as identifying individuals and group membership, as well as interspecific signaling. Anal sacs are an important odor producing organ found across the carnivorans (species in the mammalian Order Carnivora). Secretions from the anal sac may be used as chemical signals by animals for behaviors ranging from defense to species recognition to signaling reproductive status. In addition, a recent study suggests that domestic cats utilize short-chain free fatty acids in anal sac secretions for individual recognition. The fermentation hypothesis is the idea that symbiotic microorganisms living in association with animals contribute to odor profiles used in chemical communication and that variation in these chemical signals reflects variation in the microbial community. Here we examine the fermentation hypothesis by characterizing volatile organic compounds (VOC) and bacteria isolated from anal sac secretions collected from a male Bengal cat (Felis catus × Prionailurus bengalensis), a cross between the domestic cat and the leopard cat. Both left and right anal sacs of a male Bengal cat were manually expressed (emptied) and collected. Half of the material was used to culture bacteria or to extract bacterial DNA and the other half was used for VOC analysis. DNA was extracted from the anal sac secretions and used for a 16S rRNA gene PCR amplification and sequencing based characterization of the microbial community. Additionally, some of the material was plated out in order to isolate bacterial colonies. Three taxa (Bacteroides fragilis, Tessaracoccus, and Finegoldia magna) were relatively abundant in the 16S rRNA gene sequence data and also isolated by culturing. Using Solid Phase Microextraction (SPME) gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), we tentatively identified 52 compounds from the Bengal cat anal sac secretions and 67 compounds from cultures of the three bacterial isolates chosen for further analysis. Among 67 compounds tentatively identified from bacterial isolates, 51 were also found in the anal sac secretion. We show that the bacterial community in the anal sac consists primarily of only a few abundant taxa and that isolates of these taxa produce numerous volatiles that are found in the combined anal sac volatile profile. Several of these volatiles are found in anal sac secretions from other carnivorans, and are also associated with known bacterial biosynthesis pathways. This is consistent with the fermentation hypothesis and the possibility that the anal sac is maintained at least in part to house bacteria that produce volatiles for the host
The Dynamics of Molecular Material Within 15 pcs of the Galactic Center
We report the results of a 5-field mosaic of the central 15pc of the Galaxy
in the (1,1) and (2,2) lines of NH3. Two narrow filaments or streamers are seen
running parallel to the Galactic plane. The southern streamer appears to carry
gas directly toward the nuclear region from the 20 km/s cloud. The eastern
streamer, which we will denote the molecular ridge, appears to be the denser
part of the 50 km/s cloud which lies immediately east of the Sgr A East complex
and extends in the south towards the 20 km/s cloud. This ridge of gas carries
the kinematical signatures of interactions with Sgr A East as well as a SNR
which lies south of the Galactic center. The bulk motion of the gas, the
enhanced line widths, and the heating of the molecular material all suggest an
active evolutionary phase for the gas immediately adjacent to the nucleus.Comment: 11 pages, 13 figures, to appear in The Astrophysical Journa
Improved Mock Galaxy Catalogs for the DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey from Subhalo Abundance and Environment Matching
We develop empirical methods for modeling the galaxy population and
populating cosmological N-body simulations with mock galaxies according to the
observed properties of galaxies in survey data. We use these techniques to
produce a new set of mock catalogs for the DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey based
on the output of the high-resolution Bolshoi simulation, as well as two other
simulations with different cosmological parameters, all of which we release for
public use. The mock-catalog creation technique uses subhalo abundance matching
to assign galaxy luminosities to simulated dark-matter halos. It then adds
color information to the resulting mock galaxies in a manner that depends on
the local galaxy density, in order to reproduce the measured color-environment
relation in the data. In the course of constructing the catalogs, we test
various models for including scatter in the relation between halo mass and
galaxy luminosity, within the abundance-matching framework. We find that there
is no constant-scatter model that can simultaneously reproduce both the
luminosity function and the autocorrelation function of DEEP2. This result has
implications for galaxy-formation theory, and it restricts the range of
contexts in which the mocks can be usefully applied. Nevertheless, careful
comparisons show that our new mocks accurately reproduce a wide range of the
other properties of the DEEP2 catalog, suggesting that they can be used to gain
a detailed understanding of various selection effects in DEEP2.Comment: 24 pages, 13 figures, matches version accepted for publication in
ApJS. Catalogs are available for download from the URL referenced in the
Appendi
Processing and Transmission of Information
Contains reports on seven research projects.Lincoln Laboratory (Purchase Order DDL-B222
Mapping the Dark Matter From UV Light at High Redshift: An Empirical Approach to Understand Galaxy Statistics
We present a simple formalism to interpret two galaxy statistics, the UV
luminosity function and two-point correlation functions for star-forming
galaxies at z~4, 5, 6 in the context of LCDM cosmology. Both statistics are the
result of how star formation takes place in DM halos, and thus are used to
constrain how UV light depends on halo properties such as mass. The two
measures were taken from the GOODS data, thus ideal for joint analysis. The two
physical quantities we explore are the SF duty cycle, and the range of L_UV
that a halo of mass M can have (mean and variance). The former addresses the
typical duration of SF activity in halos while the latter addresses the
averaged SF history and regularity of gas inflow into these systems. We explore
various physical models consistent with data, and find the following: 1) the
typical duration of SF observed in the data is <0.4 Gyr (1 sig), 2) the
inferred scaling law between L_UV and halo mass M from the observed slope of
the LFs is roughly linear at all redshifts, and 3) L_UV for a fixed halo mass
decreases with time, implying that the SF efficiency (after dust extinction) is
higher at earlier times. We explore several physical scenarios relating star
formation to halo mass, but find that these scenarios are indistinguishable due
to the limited range of halo mass probed by our data. In order to discriminate
between different scenarios, we discuss constraining the bright-faint galaxy
cross-correlation functions and luminosity-dependence of galaxy bias.
(Abridged)Comment: 24 pages, 16 figures: matches published version -- Astrophysical
Journal 695 (2009) 368-39
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