946 research outputs found
Diagnosing space telescope misalignment and jitter using stellar images
Accurate knowledge of the telescope's point spread function (PSF) is
essential for the weak gravitational lensing measurements that hold great
promise for cosmological constraints. For space telescopes, the PSF may vary
with time due to thermal drifts in the telescope structure, and/or due to
jitter in the spacecraft pointing (ground-based telescopes have additional
sources of variation). We describe and simulate a procedure for using the
images of the stars in each exposure to determine the misalignment and jitter
parameters, and reconstruct the PSF at any point in that exposure's field of
view. The simulation uses the design of the SNAP (http://snap.lbl.gov)
telescope. Stellar-image data in a typical exposure determines secondary-mirror
positions as precisely as . The PSF ellipticities and size, which
are the quantities of interest for weak lensing are determined to and accuracies respectively in each exposure,
sufficient to meet weak-lensing requirements. We show that, for the case of a
space telescope, the PSF estimation errors scale inversely with the square root
of the total number of photons collected from all the usable stars in the
exposure.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figs, submitted to PAS
Round ligament varicocele
A 24-year-old pregnant woman (at 25 weeks gestation) was referred to our department because of a painless swelling in the left groin which she was feeling for one week. The swelling was more apparent in the upright position and when coughing. The swelling was reducible. Ultrasound demonstrated an anechoic structure with intralesional septa at the left inguinal area (Fig. A, longitudinal ultrasound image). The lesion augmented with the Valsalva manoeuvre and in standing position. Power Doppler confirmed the presence of venous flow (Fig. B). Inverted venous flow was seen after Valsalva (Fig. C, arrow)
Enhancing the cosmic shear power spectrum
Applying a transformation to a non-Gaussian field can enhance the information content of the resulting power spectrum, by reducing the correlations between Fourier modes. In the context of weak gravitational lensing, it has been shown that this gain in information content is significantly compromised by the presence of shape noise. We apply clipping to mock convergence fields, a technique which is known to be robust in the presence of noise and has been successfully applied to galaxy number density fields. When analysed in isolation the resulting convergence power spectrum returns degraded constraints on cosmological parameters. However, substantial gains can be achieved by performing a combined analysis of the power spectra derived from both the original and transformed fields. Even in the presence of realistic levels of shape noise, we demonstrate that this approach is capable of reducing the area of likelihood contours within the Ωm â Ï8 plane by more than a factor of 3
Small portion sizes in worksite cafeterias: do they help consumers to reduce their food intake?
Background:Environmental interventions directed at portion size might help consumers to reduce their food intake.Objective:To assess whether offering a smaller hot meal, in addition to the existing size, stimulates people to replace their large meal with a smaller meal.Design:Longitudinal randomized controlled trial assessing the impact of introducing small portion sizes and pricing strategies on consumer choices.Setting/participants:In all, 25 worksite cafeterias and a panel consisting of 308 consumers (mean age39.18 years, 50% women).Intervention:A small portion size of hot meals was offered in addition to the existing size. The meals were either proportionally priced (that is, the price per gram was comparable regardless of the size) or value size pricing was employed.Main outcome measures:Daily sales of small and the total number of meals, consumers self-reported compensation behavior and frequency of purchasing small meals.Results:The ratio of small meals sales in relation to large meals sales was 10.2%. No effect of proportional pricing was found B0.11 (0.33), P0.74, confidence interval (CI): 0.76 to 0.54). The consumer data indicated that 19.5% of the participants who had selected a small meal often-to-always purchased more products than usual in the worksite cafeteria. Small meal purchases were negatively related to being male (B0.85 (0.20), P0.00, CI: 1.24 to 0.46, n178).Conclusion:When offering a small meal in addition to the existing size, a percentage of consumers that is considered reasonable were inclined to replace the large meal with the small meal. Proportional prices did not have an additional effect. The possible occurrence of compensation behavior is an issue that merits further attention. © 2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited All rights reserved
Fractional Dirac Bracket and Quantization for Constrained Systems
So far, it is not well known how to deal with dissipative systems. There are
many paths of investigation in the literature and none of them present a
systematic and general procedure to tackle the problem. On the other hand, it
is well known that the fractional formalism is a powerful alternative when
treating dissipative problems. In this paper we propose a detailed way of
attacking the issue using fractional calculus to construct an extension of the
Dirac brackets in order to carry out the quantization of nonconservative
theories through the standard canonical way. We believe that using the extended
Dirac bracket definition it will be possible to analyze more deeply gauge
theories starting with second-class systems.Comment: Revtex 4.1. 9 pages, two-column. Final version to appear in Physical
Review
Clipping the Cosmos: The Bias and Bispectrum of Large Scale Structure
A large fraction of the information collected by cosmological surveys is
simply discarded to avoid lengthscales which are difficult to model
theoretically. We introduce a new technique which enables the extraction of
useful information from the bispectrum of galaxies well beyond the conventional
limits of perturbation theory. Our results strongly suggest that this method
increases the range of scales where the relation between the bispectrum and
power spectrum in tree-level perturbation theory may be applied, from k_max ~
0.1 h/Mpc to ~ 0.7 h/Mpc. This leads to correspondingly large improvements in
the determination of galaxy bias. Since the clipped matter power spectrum
closely follows the linear power spectrum, there is the potential to use this
technique to probe the growth rate of linear perturbations and confront
theories of modified gravity with observation.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures. To appear in Physical Review Letter
Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): Redshift Space Distortions from the Clipped Galaxy Field
We present the first cosmological measurement derived from a galaxy density field subject to a `clipping' transformation. By enforcing an upper bound on the galaxy number density field in the Galaxy and Mass Assembly survey (GAMA), contributions from the nonlinear processes of virialisation and galaxy bias are greatly reduced. This leads to a galaxy power spectrum which is easier to model, without calibration from numerical simulations. We develop a theoretical model for the power spectrum of a clipped field in redshift space, which is exact for the case of anisotropic Gaussian fields. Clipping is found to extend the applicability of the conventional Kaiser prescription by more than a factor of three in wavenumber, or a factor of thirty in terms of the number of Fourier modes. By modelling the galaxy power spectrum on scales k < 0.3 h/Mpc and density fluctuations we measure the normalised growth rate
GEMS: The Size Evolution of Disk Galaxies
We combine HST imaging from the GEMS survey with photometric redshifts from
COMBO-17 to explore the evolution of disk-dominated galaxies since z<1.1. The
sample is comprised of all GEMS galaxies with Sersic indices n<2.5, derived
from fits to the galaxy images. We account fully for selection effects through
careful analysis of image simulations; we are limited by the depth of the
redshift and HST data to the study of galaxies with absolute magnitudes
M(V)10. We find strong evolution in
the magnitude-size scaling relation for galaxies with M(V)<-20, corresponding
to a brightening of 1 mag per sqarcsec in rest-frame V-band by z=1. Yet, disks
at a given absolute magnitude are bluer and have lower stellar mass-to-light
ratios at z=1 than at the present day. As a result, our findings indicate weak
or no evolution in the relation between stellar mass and effective disk size
for galaxies with log(M)>10 over the same time interval. This is strongly
inconsistent with the most naive theoretical expectation, in which disk size
scales in proportion to the halo virial radius, which would predict that disks
are a factor of two denser at fixed mass at z=1. The lack of evolution in the
stellar mass-size relation is consistent with an ``inside-out'' growth of
galaxy disks on average (galaxies increasing in size as they grow more
massive), although we cannot rule out more complex evolutionary scenarios.Comment: 22 pages, 16 figures, submitted to Ap
Ultra-deep catalog of X-ray groups in the Extended Chandra Deep Field South
Ultra-deep observations of ECDF-S with Chandra and XMM-Newton enable a search
for extended X-ray emission down to an unprecedented flux of
ergs s cm. We present the search for the extended emission on
spatial scales of 32 in both Chandra and XMM data, covering
0.3 square degrees and model the extended emission on scales of arcminutes. We
present a catalog of 46 spectroscopically identified groups, reaching a
redshift of 1.6. We show that the statistical properties of ECDF-S, such as
logN-logS and X-ray luminosity function are broadly consistent with LCDM, with
the exception that dn/dz/d test reveals that a redshift range of
in ECDF-S is sparsely populated. The lack of nearby structure,
however, makes studies of high-redshift groups particularly easier both in
X-rays and lensing, due to a lower level of clustered foreground. We present
one and two point statistics of the galaxy groups as well as weak-lensing
analysis to show that the detected low-luminosity systems are indeed low-mass
systems. We verify the applicability of the scaling relations between the X-ray
luminosity and the total mass of the group, derived for the COSMOS survey to
lower masses and higher redshifts probed by ECDF-S by means of stacked weak
lensing and clustering analysis, constraining any possible departures to be
within 30% in mass. Abridged.Comment: 20 pages, 21 figures, 3 tables, to match the journal versio
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