Surface Brightness and Stellar Populations at the Outer Edge of the Large Magellanic Cloud: No Stellar Halo Yet

We present a high quality CMD for a 36'x 36' field located 8 degrees (7 kpc) from the LMC center, as well as a precise determination of the LMC surface brightness derived from the resolved stellar population out to this large galactocentric radius. This deep CMD shows for the first time the detailed age distribution at this position, where the surface brightness is V=26.5 mag/sq". At a radius R=474' the main sequence is well populated from the oldest turnoff at I=21.5 to the 2.5 Gyr turnoff at I=19.5. Beyond this radius, a relatively strong gradient in the density of stars with ages in the 2.5-4 Gyr range is apparent. There are some stars brighter and bluer than the main population, quite uniformly distributed over the whole area surveyed, which are well matched by a 1.5 Gyr isochrone and may be indicative of a relatively recent star formation, or merger, event. The surface brightness profile of the LMC remains exponential to this large galactocentric radius and shows no evidence of disk truncation. Combining the information on surface brightness and stellar population we conclude that the LMC disk extends (and dominates over a possible stellar halo) out to a distance of at least 7 kpc. These results confirm that the absence of blue stars in the relatively shallow off-center CMDs of dIrr galaxies is not necessarily evidence for an exclusively old stellar population resembling the halo of the Milky Way.Comment: ApJLett, in press 13 pages including 3 color figure

The twisted fourth moment of the Riemann zeta function

We compute the asymptotics of the fourth moment of the Riemann zeta function times an arbitrary Dirichlet polynomial of length $T^{{1/11} - \epsilon}$Comment: 28 pages. v2: added reference

VPg of murine norovirus binds translation initiation factors in infected cells

BACKGROUND: Norovirus genomic and subgenomic RNAs are covalently linked at the 5' nucleotide to a 15 kD protein called VPg. VPg of two human norovirus strains binds translation initiation factor eIF3 and other eIFs in vitro, suggesting VPg functions in initiation of protein synthesis on viral RNA. Human norovirus strains are not cultivable, and thus experimental evidence of interactions between VPg and eIFs in infected cells has been lacking. We used the cultivable murine norovirus MNV-1 as a model to study interactions between VPg and eIFs in infected cells. RESULTS: As shown previously for human norovirus VPg, MNV-1 VPg bound eIF3, eIF4GI, eIF4E, and S6 ribosomal protein in cell extracts by GST pull-down assay. Importantly, MNV-1 VPg co-precipitated eIF4GI and eIF4E from infected macrophages, providing evidence that VPg interacts with components of the translation machinery in norovirus infected cells. CONCLUSION: The interactions between MNV-1 VPg and eIFs completely mimic those reported for the human norovirus VPg, illustrating the utility of MNV-1 as a relevant molecular model to study mechanisms of human norovirus replication

Origin of the tetragonal-to-orthorhombic (nematic) phase transition in FeSe: a combined thermodynamic and NMR study

The nature of the tetragonal-to-orthorhombic structural transition at $T_s\approx90$ K in single crystalline FeSe is studied using shear-modulus, heat-capacity, magnetization and NMR measurements. The transition is shown to be accompanied by a large shear-modulus softening, which is practically identical to that of underdoped Ba(Fe,Co)$_2$As$_2$, suggesting very similar strength of the electron-lattice coupling. On the other hand, a spin-fluctuation contribution to the spin-lattice relaxation rate is only observed below $T_s$. This indicates that the structural, or "nematic", phase transition in FeSe is not driven by magnetic fluctuations

Pressure-temperature phase diagram of ferromagnetic superconductors

The symmetry approach to the description of the (P,T) phase diagram of ferromagnet superconductors with triplet pairing is developed. Taking into account the recent experimental observations made on UCoGe it is considered the case of a crystal with orthorhombic structure and strong spin-orbital coupling. It is shown that formation of ferromagnet superconducting state from a superconducting state is inevitably accompanied by the first order type transition.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur