2,804 research outputs found
Evidence for dust reddening in DLAs identified through CaII H&K absorption
We present a new sample of 31 CaII(H&K) 3935,3970 absorption line systems
with 0.84<z_abs<1.3 discovered in the spectra of Sloan Digital Sky Survey
(SDSS) Data Release 3 quasars, together with an analysis of their dust content.
The presence of Calcium absorption together with measurements of the MgII 2796,
FeII 2600 and MgI 2853 lines lead to the conclusion that the majority of our
systems are Damped Ly-alpha (DLA) absorbers. The composite spectrum in the rest
frame of the absorber shows clear evidence for reddening. Large and Small
Magellanic Cloud extinction curves provide satisfactory fits, with a best-fit
E(B-V) of 0.06, while the Galactic dust extinction curve provides a poor fit
due to the lack of a strong 2175A feature. A trend of increasing dust content
with equivalent width of CaII is present. Monte Carlo techniques demonstrate
that the detection of reddening is significant at >99.99% confidence. The
discovery of significant amounts of dust in a subsample of DLAs has direct
implications for studies of the metallicity evolution of the universe and the
nature of DLAs in relation to high redshift galaxies. The gas:dust ratio is
discussed. Our results suggest that at least ~40% of the CaII absorption
systems are excluded from the magnitude-limited SDSS quasar sample as a result
of the associated extinction, a fraction similar to the upper limit deduced at
higher redshifts from radio-selected surveys.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, accepted MNRAS Letter
Peering through the OH Forest: public release of sky-residual subtracted spectra for SDSS DR7
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) automated spectroscopic reduction
pipeline provides >1.5 million intermediate resolution, R~2000, moderate
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), SNR~15, astronomical spectra of unprecedented
homogeneity that cover the wavelength range 3800-9200AA. However, there remain
significant systematic residuals in many spectra due to the sub-optimal
subtraction of the strong OH sky emission lines longward of 6700AA. The OH sky
lines extend over almost half the wavelength range of the SDSS spectra, and the
SNR over substantial wavelength regions in many spectra is reduced by more than
a factor two over that expected from photon counting statistics. Following the
OH line subtraction procedure presented in Wild & Hewett (2005), we make
available to the community sky-residual subtracted spectra for the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey Data Relase 7. Here we summarise briefly the method,
including minor changes in the implementation of the procedure with respect to
WH05. The spectra are suitable for many science applications but we highlight
some limitations for certain investigations. Details of the data model for the
sky-residual subtracted spectra and instructions on how to access the spectra
are provided.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures. Spectra may be downloaded from the JHU SDSS
server http://www.sdss.jhu.edu/skypca/spSpec, additionally the QSOs can be
found on the DR7 Value Added Catalogue web page:
http://www.sdss.org/dr7/products/value_added/index.html#quasar
Urban Poverty and Health in Developing Countries: Household and Neighborhood Effects
In the U.S. and other high-income countries, where most of the population lives in urban areas, there is intense scholarly and program interest in the effects of household and neighborhood living standards on health. Yet very few studies of developing-country cities have examined these issues. This paper investigates whether in these cities, the health of women and young children is influenced by both household and neighborhood standards of living. Using data from the urban samples of some 85 Demographic and Health surveys, and modelling living standards using factor-analytic MIMIC methods, we find, first, that the neighborhoods of poor households are more heterogeneous than is often asserted. To judge from our results, it appears that as a rule, poor urban households do not tend to live in uniformly poor communities; indeed, about 1 in 10 of a poor household's neighbors is relatively affluent, belonging to the upper quartile of the urban distribution of living standards. Do household and neighborhood living standards influence health? Applying multivariate models with controls for other socioeconomic variables, we discover that household living standards have a substantial influence on three measures of health: unmet need for modern contraception; birth attendance by doctors, nurses, or trained midwives; and children's height for age. Neighborhood living standards exert significant additional influence on health in many of the surveys we examine, especially in birth attendance. There is considerable evidence, then, indicating that both household and neighborhood living standards can make a substantively important difference to health.poverty, health, developing countries, urban, factor analysis, neighborhood
The Adolescent Girls Empowerment Program: Lessons learned from the pilot test program
This document presents an evaluation of the Adolescent Girls Empowerment Program (AGEP), which is comprised of three major components: 1) safe spaces groups in which girls meet once a week over the course of two years for training on sexual and reproductive health, life skills and financial education. Groups are facilitated by a mentor, a young female from the same community as the girls; 2) a health voucher that girls can use at contracted private and public facilities for general wellness and sexual and reproductive health services; and 3) a saving account that has been designed to be girl-friendly. A randomized control trial (RCT) using a cluster design is being used to evaluate the impact of AGEP. The research aims to identify the impact of the intervention on the following key indicators: HIV prevalence, HSV-2 prevalence, age at first sex, age at first birth, contraceptive use, experience of gender-based violence, and educational attainment
The KX method for producing K-band flux-limited samples of quasars
The longstanding question of the extent to which the quasar population is
affected by dust extinction, within host galaxies or galaxies along the line of
sight, remains open. More generally, the spectral energy distributions of
quasars vary significantly and flux-limited samples defined at different
wavelengths include different quasars. Surveys employing flux measurements at
widely separated wavelengths are necessary to characterise fully the spectral
properties of the quasar population. The availability of panoramic
near-infrared detectors on large telescopes provides the opportunity to
undertake surveys capable of establishing the importance of extinction by dust
on the observed population of quasars. We introduce an efficient method for
selecting K-band, flux-limited samples of quasars, termed ``KX'' by analogy
with the UVX method. This method exploits the difference between the power-law
nature of quasar spectra and the convex spectra of stars: quasars are
relatively brighter than stars at both short wavelengths (the UVX method) and
long wavelengths (the KX method). We consider the feasibility of undertaking a
large-area KX survey for damped Ly-alpha galaxies and gravitational lenses
using the planned UKIRT wide-field near-infrared camera.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, to appear in MNRA
Spectroscopy of the optical Einstein ring 0047-2808
We present optical and near-infrared spectroscopic observations of the
optical Einstein ring 0047-2808. We detect both [OIII] lines 4959, 5007 near
2.3 micron, confirming the redshift of the lensed source as z=3.595. The Ly-a
line is redshifted relative to the [OIII] line by 140+-20 km/s. Similar
velocity shifts have been seen in nearby starburst galaxies. The [OIII] line is
very narrow, 130 km/s FWHM. If the ring is the image of the centre of a galaxy
the one-dimensional stellar velocity dispersion sigma=55 km/s is considerably
smaller than the value predicted by Baugh et al. (1998) for the somewhat
brighter Lyman-break galaxies. The Ly-a line is significantly broader than the
[OIII] line, probably due to resonant scattering. The stellar central velocity
dispersion of the early-type deflector galaxy at z=0.485 is 250+-30 km/s. This
value is in good agreement both with the value predicted from the radius of the
Einstein ring (and a singular isothermal sphere model for the deflector), and
the value estimated from the D_n-sigma relation.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
Heavily reddened type 1 quasars at z > 2 I: Evidence for significant obscured black-hole growth at the highest quasar luminosities
We present a new population of z>2 dust-reddened, Type 1 quasars with
0.5<E(B-V)<1.5, selected using near infra-red (NIR) imaging data from the
UKIDSS-LAS, ESO-VHS and WISE surveys. NIR spectra obtained using the Very Large
Telescope (VLT) for 24 new objects bring our total sample of spectroscopically
confirmed hyperluminous (>10^{13}L_0), high-redshift dusty quasars to 38. There
is no evidence for reddened quasars having significantly different H
equivalent widths relative to unobscured quasars. The average black-hole masses
(~10^9-10^10 M_0) and bolometric luminosities (~10^{47} erg/s) are comparable
to the most luminous unobscured quasars at the same redshift, but with a tail
extending to very high luminosities of ~10^{48} erg/s. Sixty-six per cent of
the reddened quasars are detected at at 22um by WISE. The average
6um rest-frame luminosity is log10(L6um/erg/s)=47.1+/-0.4, making the objects
among the mid-infrared brightest AGN currently known. The extinction-corrected
space-density estimate now extends over three magnitudes (-30 < M_i < -27) and
demonstrates that the reddened quasar luminosity function is significantly
flatter than that of the unobscured quasar population at z=2-3. At the
brightest magnitudes, M_i < -29, the space density of our dust-reddened
population exceeds that of unobscured quasars. A model where the probability
that a quasar becomes dust-reddened increases at high luminosity is consistent
with the observations and such a dependence could be explained by an increase
in luminosity and extinction during AGN-fuelling phases. The properties of our
obscured Type 1 quasars are distinct from the heavily obscured, Compton-thick
AGN that have been identified at much fainter luminosities and we conclude that
they likely correspond to a brief evolutionary phase in massive galaxy
formation.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures (+ 2 appendices), Accepted for publication in
MNRA
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