HerMES: The contribution to the cosmic infrared background from galaxies selected by mass and redshift

The cosmic infrared background (CIB), discovered in Far Infrared Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS) data from the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE; Puget et al. 1996; Fixsen et al. 1998), originates from thermal re-radiation of imagine cutting out hundreds of thumbnails from a map centered on the positions where galaxies are known to be, and averaging those thumbnails together until an image of the average galaxy emerges from the noise. These positional priors can come in many forms, e.g., they could be catalogs of UV, optical, IR, or radio sources. Note that the output is the average of that population in the stacked maps, i.e., there will likely be sources whose actual fluxes are higher or lower. Thus, the more homogeneous the sources comprising the input list, the more meaningful the stacked flux will be.Web of Scienc

Dark Energy from structure: a status report

The effective evolution of an inhomogeneous universe model in any theory of gravitation may be described in terms of spatially averaged variables. In Einstein's theory, restricting attention to scalar variables, this evolution can be modeled by solutions of a set of Friedmann equations for an effective volume scale factor, with matter and backreaction source terms. The latter can be represented by an effective scalar field (`morphon field') modeling Dark Energy. The present work provides an overview over the Dark Energy debate in connection with the impact of inhomogeneities, and formulates strategies for a comprehensive quantitative evaluation of backreaction effects both in theoretical and observational cosmology. We recall the basic steps of a description of backreaction effects in relativistic cosmology that lead to refurnishing the standard cosmological equations, but also lay down a number of challenges and unresolved issues in connection with their observational interpretation. The present status of this subject is intermediate: we have a good qualitative understanding of backreaction effects pointing to a global instability of the standard model of cosmology; exact solutions and perturbative results modeling this instability lie in the right sector to explain Dark Energy from inhomogeneities. It is fair to say that, even if backreaction effects turn out to be less important than anticipated by some researchers, the concordance high-precision cosmology, the architecture of current N-body simulations, as well as standard perturbative approaches may all fall short in correctly describing the Late Universe.Comment: Invited Review for a special Gen. Rel. Grav. issue on Dark Energy, 59 pages, 2 figures; matches published versio

On a free boundary problem for a two-species weak competition system

[[abstract]]We study a Lotka–Volterra type weak competition model with a free boundary in a one-dimensional habitat. The main objective is to understand the asymptotic behavior of two competing species spreading via a free boundary. We also provide some sufficient conditions for spreading success and spreading failure, respectively. Finally, when spreading successfully, we provide an estimate to show that the spreading speed (if exists) cannot be faster than the minimal speed of traveling wavefront solutions for the competition model on the whole real line without a free boundary.[[incitationindex]]SCI[[booktype]]紙本[[booktype]]電子

Mortality, morbidity and economic growth

The question of whether and how changes to population health impact on economic growth has been actively studied in the literature, albeit with mixed results. We contribute to this debate by reassessing-and extending-[1], one of the most influential studies. We include a larger set of countries (135) and cover a more recent period (1990-2014). We also account for morbidity in addition to mortality and adopt the strategy of providing bounding sets for the effects of interest rather than point estimates. We find that reducing mortality and disability adjusted life years (DALYs), a measure which combines morbidity and mortality, promotes per capita GDP growth. The magnitude of the effect is moderate, but non negligible, and it is similar for mortality and DALYs

Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), far detector technical design report, volume III: DUNE far detector technical coordination

The preponderance of matter over antimatter in the early universe, the dynamics of the supernovae that produced the heavy elements necessary for life, and whether protons eventually decay—these mysteries at the forefront of particle physics and astrophysics are key to understanding the early evolution of our universe, its current state, and its eventual fate. The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is an international world-class experiment dedicated to addressing these questions as it searches for leptonic charge-parity symmetry violation, stands ready to capture supernova neutrino bursts, and seeks to observe nucleon decay as a signature of a grand unified theory underlying the standard model. The DUNE far detector technical design report (TDR) describes the DUNE physics program and the technical designs of the single- and dual-phase DUNE liquid argon TPC far detector modules. Volume III of this TDR describes how the activities required to design, construct, fabricate, install, and commission the DUNE far detector modules are organized and managed. This volume details the organizational structures that will carry out and/or oversee the planned far detector activities safely, successfully, on time, and on budget. It presents overviews of the facilities, supporting infrastructure, and detectors for context, and it outlines the project-related functions and methodologies used by the DUNE technical coordination organization, focusing on the areas of integration engineering, technical reviews, quality assurance and control, and safety oversight. Because of its more advanced stage of development, functional examples presented in this volume focus primarily on the single-phase (SP) detector module

A diatom extension to the cGEnIE Earth system model – EcoGEnIE 1.1

We extend the ecological component (‘ECOGEM’) of the carbon-centric Grid Enabled Integrated Earth system model (‘cGEnIE’) to include a diatom functional group. ECOGEM represents plankton community dynamics via a spectrum of ecophysiological traits originally based on size and plankton food web (phyto- and zooplankton; EcoGEnIE 1.0), which we developed here to account for a diatom functional group (EcoGEnIE 1.1). We tuned EcoGEnIE 1.1, exploring a range of ecophysiological parameter values specific to phytoplankton, including diatom growth and survival (18 parameters over 550 runs) to achieved best fits to observations of diatom biogeography and size class distribution, and to global ocean nutrient and dissolved oxygen distributions. This, in conjunction with a previously developed representation in the water column of opal dissolution and an updated representation of the ocean iron cycle, resulted in an improved distribution of dissolved oxygen in the water column relative to the previous EcoGEnIE 1.0, with global export production (7.4 Gt C yr-1) now closer to previous estimates. Simulated diatom biogeography is characterised by larger size classes dominating at high latitudes, notably in the Southern Ocean, and smaller size classes dominating at lower latitudes. Overall, diatom biological productivity accounts for ~ 20% of global carbon biomass in the model, with diatoms outcompeting other phytoplankton functional groups when dissolved silica is available due to their faster maximum photosynthetic rates and reduced palatability to grazers. Adding a diatom functional group provides the cGEnIE Earth system model with an extended capability to explore ecological dynamics and their influence on ocean biogeochemistry