974 research outputs found
Galaxy Harassment and the Evolution of Clusters of Galaxies
Disturbed spiral galaxies with high rates of star formation pervaded clusters
of galaxies just a few billion years ago, but nearby clusters exclude spirals
in favor of ellipticals. ``Galaxy harassment" (frequent high speed galaxy
encounters) drives the morphological transformation of galaxies in clusters,
provides fuel for quasars in subluminous hosts and leaves detectable debris
arcs. Simulated images of harassed galaxies are strikingly similar to the
distorted spirals in clusters at observed by the Hubble Space
Telescope.Comment: Submitted to Nature. Latex file, 7 pages, 10 photographs in gif and
jpeg format included. 10 compressed postscript figures and text available
using anonymous ftp from ftp://ftp-hpcc.astro.washington.edu/pub/hpcc/moore/
(mget *) Also available at http://www-hpcc.astro.washington.edu/papers
The Hubble Constant
I review the current state of determinations of the Hubble constant, which
gives the length scale of the Universe by relating the expansion velocity of
objects to their distance. There are two broad categories of measurements. The
first uses individual astrophysical objects which have some property that
allows their intrinsic luminosity or size to be determined, or allows the
determination of their distance by geometric means. The second category
comprises the use of all-sky cosmic microwave background, or correlations
between large samples of galaxies, to determine information about the geometry
of the Universe and hence the Hubble constant, typically in a combination with
other cosmological parameters. Many, but not all, object-based measurements
give values of around 72-74km/s/Mpc , with typical errors of 2-3km/s/Mpc.
This is in mild discrepancy with CMB-based measurements, in particular those
from the Planck satellite, which give values of 67-68km/s/Mpc and typical
errors of 1-2km/s/Mpc. The size of the remaining systematics indicate that
accuracy rather than precision is the remaining problem in a good determination
of the Hubble constant. Whether a discrepancy exists, and whether new physics
is needed to resolve it, depends on details of the systematics of the
object-based methods, and also on the assumptions about other cosmological
parameters and which datasets are combined in the case of the all-sky methods.Comment: Extensively revised and updated since the 2007 version: accepted by
Living Reviews in Relativity as a major (2014) update of LRR 10, 4, 200
Constitutional patriotism
Constitutional patriotism is a political theory that seeks to provide an explanation for the sense of ownership that most individuals have towards their national constitutional system. Specifically, constitutional patriotism assumes that free-thinking individuals involved in a discussion over the common good will reach an agreement that is perceived, at least by those involved in the debate, as having normative value. The awareness that such a deliberative process has historically been a part of the constitutional system also induces a sense of ownership of past historical accommodations of constitutional principles. The shared perception of being part of historically grounded institutions within a deliberative democracy is sometimes called the ânormative surplus effectâ or ânormative spill-over effectâ of the deliberative process. The theory, in its current form, was proposed by JĂŒrgen Habermas and Jean-Werner MĂŒller.
Debates over the common good might take place informally or within the stateâs institutions. Pell-mell informal debates, with few exceptions, have a limited effect on amending constitutional norms. Yet, the prerogative to openly discuss laws and policies legitimised by constitutional norms is normally sufficient to develop an inner sense of belonging to a constitutional system. Deliberative debates within public institutions (e.g. parliaments and courts) are more likely to change the functioning of a constitutional system, but they are, by way of comparison to informal political discussions, normally constrained by the system of rules that regulate representative democracy and the administration of justice. Thus, the theory of constitutional patriotism provides an explanatory model for the historical development of a democratic constitutional system.
As one of the most persuasive explanatory theories of modern pluralist democracy, constitutional patriotism has attracted a series of well-articulated critiques. It has been suggested, for instance, that constitutional patriotism might not provide a plausible model of social integration for international organisations such as the European Union (EU). In this essay, I will provide an overview of the theory and a selection of its critiques
Detection of intergalactic red-giant-branch stars in the Virgo cluster
It has been suspected for nearly 50 years that clusters of galaxies contain a
population of intergalactic stars, ripped from galaxies during cluster
formation or when the galaxies' orbits take them through the cluster center.
Support for the existence of such a population of free-floating stars comes
from measurements of the diffuse light in clusters, and from recent detections
of planetary nebulae with positions and/or velocities far removed from any
observed cluster galaxy. But estimates for the mass of the diffuse population
and its distribution relative to the galaxies are still highly uncertain. Here
we report the direct detection of intergalactic stars in deep images of a blank
field in the Virgo Cluster. The data suggest that approximately 10% of the
stellar mass of the cluster is in intergalactic stars. We observe a relatively
homogeneous distribution of stars, with evidence of a slight gradient toward
M87.Comment: Accepted for publication in Nature. 10 pages, 2 postscript figures
included. Uses nature.sty and astrobib.sty. (Astrobib is available from
http://www.stsci.edu/software/TeX.html.
A review of elliptical and disc galaxy structure, and modern scaling laws
A century ago, in 1911 and 1913, Plummer and then Reynolds introduced their
models to describe the radial distribution of stars in `nebulae'. This article
reviews the progress since then, providing both an historical perspective and a
contemporary review of the stellar structure of bulges, discs and elliptical
galaxies. The quantification of galaxy nuclei, such as central mass deficits
and excess nuclear light, plus the structure of dark matter halos and cD galaxy
envelopes, are discussed. Issues pertaining to spiral galaxies including dust,
bulge-to-disc ratios, bulgeless galaxies, bars and the identification of
pseudobulges are also reviewed. An array of modern scaling relations involving
sizes, luminosities, surface brightnesses and stellar concentrations are
presented, many of which are shown to be curved. These 'redshift zero'
relations not only quantify the behavior and nature of galaxies in the Universe
today, but are the modern benchmark for evolutionary studies of galaxies,
whether based on observations, N-body-simulations or semi-analytical modelling.
For example, it is shown that some of the recently discovered compact
elliptical galaxies at 1.5 < z < 2.5 may be the bulges of modern disc galaxies.Comment: Condensed version (due to Contract) of an invited review article to
appear in "Planets, Stars and Stellar
Systems"(www.springer.com/astronomy/book/978-90-481-8818-5). 500+ references
incl. many somewhat forgotten, pioneer papers. Original submission to
Springer: 07-June-201
The Course of Habituation of the Proboscis Extension Reflex Can Be Predicted by Sucrose Responsiveness in Drosophila
The proboscis extension reflex (PER) is triggered when insectsâ gustatory receptors contact appetitive stimuli, so it provides a behavioral readout for perceptual encoding of tastants. Research on the experience dependent modulation of PER in Drosophila has been hindered by the difficulty of obtaining reliable measures of memory-driven change in PER probability in the background of larger changes induced by physiological state. In this study, we showed that the course of PER habituation can be predicted by the degree of sucrose responsiveness in Drosophila. We assessed early response parameters, including the number of proboscis extensions and labellar movements in the first five trials, the trial to start responding, and the trial to make the first stop to quantify responsiveness, which predicted the upcoming pattern of both the short-term and 1 hour memory of PER habituation for individual flies. The cAMP signaling pathway mutant rutabaga displayed deficits in attunement of perceptual salience of sucrose to physiological demands and stimulus-driven sensitization
Measurement of the Forward-Backward Asymmetry in the B -> K(*) mu+ mu- Decay and First Observation of the Bs -> phi mu+ mu- Decay
We reconstruct the rare decays , , and in a data sample
corresponding to collected in collisions at
by the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron
Collider. Using and decays we report the branching ratios. In addition, we report
the measurement of the differential branching ratio and the muon
forward-backward asymmetry in the and decay modes, and the
longitudinal polarization in the decay mode with respect to the squared
dimuon mass. These are consistent with the theoretical prediction from the
standard model, and most recent determinations from other experiments and of
comparable accuracy. We also report the first observation of the {\mathcal{B}}(B^0_s \to
\phi\mu^+\mu^-) = [1.44 \pm 0.33 \pm 0.46] \times 10^{-6}27 \pm 6B^0_s$ decay observed.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, 3 tables. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let
Study of decays to the final state and evidence for the decay
A study of decays is performed for the first time
using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.0
collected by the LHCb experiment in collisions at centre-of-mass energies
of and TeV. Evidence for the decay
is reported with a significance of 4.0 standard deviations, resulting in the
measurement of
to
be .
Here denotes a branching fraction while and
are the production cross-sections for and mesons.
An indication of weak annihilation is found for the region
, with a significance of
2.4 standard deviations.Comment: All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and
additional information, are available at
https://lhcbproject.web.cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/LHCbProjectPublic/LHCb-PAPER-2016-022.html,
link to supplemental material inserted in the reference
Measurements of the properties of Lambda_c(2595), Lambda_c(2625), Sigma_c(2455), and Sigma_c(2520) baryons
We report measurements of the resonance properties of Lambda_c(2595)+ and
Lambda_c(2625)+ baryons in their decays to Lambda_c+ pi+ pi- as well as
Sigma_c(2455)++,0 and Sigma_c(2520)++,0 baryons in their decays to Lambda_c+
pi+/- final states. These measurements are performed using data corresponding
to 5.2/fb of integrated luminosity from ppbar collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV,
collected with the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron. Exploiting the
largest available charmed baryon sample, we measure masses and decay widths
with uncertainties comparable to the world averages for Sigma_c states, and
significantly smaller uncertainties than the world averages for excited
Lambda_c+ states.Comment: added one reference and one table, changed order of figures, 17
pages, 15 figure
Search for a New Heavy Gauge Boson Wprime with Electron + missing ET Event Signature in ppbar collisions at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV
We present a search for a new heavy charged vector boson decaying
to an electron-neutrino pair in collisions at a center-of-mass
energy of 1.96\unit{TeV}. The data were collected with the CDF II detector
and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 5.3\unit{fb}^{-1}. No
significant excess above the standard model expectation is observed and we set
upper limits on . Assuming standard
model couplings to fermions and the neutrino from the boson decay to
be light, we exclude a boson with mass less than
1.12\unit{TeV/}c^2 at the 95\unit{%} confidence level.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures Submitted to PR
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