346 research outputs found
The underlying physical meaning of the relation
Asteroseismology of stars that exhibit solar-like oscillations are enjoying a
growing interest with the wealth of observational results obtained with the
CoRoT and Kepler missions. In this framework, scaling laws between
asteroseismic quantities and stellar parameters are becoming essential tools to
study a rich variety of stars. However, the physical underlying mechanisms of
those scaling laws are still poorly known. Our objective is to provide a
theoretical basis for the scaling between the frequency of the maximum in the
power spectrum () of solar-like oscillations and the cut-off
frequency (). Using the SoHO GOLF observations together with
theoretical considerations, we first confirm that the maximum of the height in
oscillation power spectrum is determined by the so-called \emph{plateau} of the
damping rates. The physical origin of the plateau can be traced to the
destabilizing effect of the Lagrangian perturbation of entropy in the
upper-most layers which becomes important when the modal period and the local
thermal relaxation time-scale are comparable. Based on this analysis, we then
find a linear relation between and , with a
coefficient that depends on the ratio of the Mach number of the exciting
turbulence to the third power to the mixing-length parameter.Comment: 8 pages, 11 figures. Accepted in A&
Cardiac amyloidosis in non-transplant cardiac surgery
Cardiac amyloidosis is a rare infiltrative cardiomyopathy that portends a poor prognosis. There is a growing recognition of co-existent aortic valve stenosis and transthyretin cardiac amyloidosis, with some studies suggesting that dual pathology may be associated increased risk of complication and mortality during surgical intervention. This review aims to evaluate the available literature on non-transplant cardiac surgical interventions in patients with cardiac amyloidosis, with particular focus on diagnosis, high surgical risk and areas of uncertainty that require further research
Stellar turbulence and mode physics
An overview of selected topical problems on modelling oscillation properties
in solar-like stars is presented. High-quality oscillation data from both
space-borne intensity observations and ground-based spectroscopic measurements
provide first tests of the still-ill-understood, superficial layers in distant
stars. Emphasis will be given to modelling the pulsation dynamics of the
stellar surface layers, the stochastic excitation processes and the associated
dynamics of the turbulent fluxes of heat and momentum.Comment: Proc. HELAS Workshop on 'Synergies between solar and stellar
modelling', eds M. Marconi, D. Cardini, M. P. Di Mauro, Astrophys. Space
Sci., in the pres
Gross solids from combined sewers in dry weather and storms, elucidating production, storage and social factors
Variation in rates of sanitary hygiene products, toilet tissue and faeces occurring in sewers are presented for dry and wet weather from three steep upstream urban catchments with different economic, age and ethnic profiles. Results show, for example, that total daily solids per capita from the low income and ageing populations are almost twice that from high income or ethnic populations. Relative differences are verified through independent questionnaires. The relationship between solids stored in sewers prior to storms, antecedent dry weather period and the proportion of roof to total catchment area is quantified. A full solids' flush occurs when storm flows exceed three times the peak dry weather flow. The data presented will assist urban drainage designers in managing pollution caused by the discharge of sewage solids
Mutually Penetrating Motion of Self-Organized 2D Patterns of Soliton-Like Structures
Results of numerical simulations of a recently derived most general
dissipative-dispersive PDE describing evolution of a film flowing down an
inclined plane are presented. They indicate that a novel complex type of
spatiotemporal patterns can exist for strange attractors of nonequilibrium
systems. It is suggested that real-life experiments satisfying the validity
conditions of the theory are possible: the required sufficiently viscous
liquids are readily available.Comment: minor corrections, 4 pages, LaTeX, 6 figures, mpeg simulations
available upon or reques
Stochastic excitation of acoustic modes in stars
For more than ten years, solar-like oscillations have been detected and
frequencies measured for a growing number of stars with various characteristics
(e.g. different evolutionary stages, effective temperatures, gravities, metal
abundances ...).
Excitation of such oscillations is attributed to turbulent convection and
takes place in the uppermost part of the convective envelope. Since the
pioneering work of Goldreich & Keely (1977), more sophisticated theoretical
models of stochastic excitation were developed, which differ from each other
both by the way turbulent convection is modeled and by the assumed sources of
excitation. We review here these different models and their underlying
approximations and assumptions.
We emphasize how the computed mode excitation rates crucially depend on the
way turbulent convection is described but also on the stratification and the
metal abundance of the upper layers of the star. In turn we will show how the
seismic measurements collected so far allow us to infer properties of turbulent
convection in stars.Comment: Notes associated with a lecture given during the fall school
organized by the CNRS and held in St-Flour (France) 20-24 October 2008 ; 39
pages ; 11 figure
Solar-like oscillations in massive main-sequence stars. I. Asteroseismic signatures of the driving and damping regions
Motivated by the recent detection of stochastically excited modes in the
massive star V1449 Aql (Belkacem et al., 2009b), already known to be a
Cephei, we theoretically investigate the driving by turbulent convection. By
using a full non-adiabatic computation of the damping rates, together with a
computation of the energy injection rates, we provide an estimate of the
amplitudes of modes excited by both the convective region induced by the iron
opacity bump and the convective core. Despite uncertainties in the dynamical
properties of such convective regions, we demonstrate that both are able to
efficiently excite modes above the CoRoT observational threshold and the
solar amplitudes. In addition, we emphasise the potential asteroseismic
diagnostics provided by each convective region, which we hope will help to
identify the one responsible for solar-like oscillations, and to give
constraints on this convective zone. A forthcoming work will be dedicated to an
extended investigation of the likelihood of solar-like oscillations across the
Hertzsprung-Russell diagram.Comment: 9 pages, 14 figures, accepter in A&
A stochastic flow rule for granular materials
There have been many attempts to derive continuum models for dense granular
flow, but a general theory is still lacking. Here, we start with Mohr-Coulomb
plasticity for quasi-2D granular materials to calculate (average) stresses and
slip planes, but we propose a "stochastic flow rule" (SFR) to replace the
principle of coaxiality in classical plasticity. The SFR takes into account two
crucial features of granular materials - discreteness and randomness - via
diffusing "spots" of local fluidization, which act as carriers of plasticity.
We postulate that spots perform random walks biased along slip-lines with a
drift direction determined by the stress imbalance upon a local switch from
static to dynamic friction. In the continuum limit (based on a Fokker-Planck
equation for the spot concentration), this simple model is able to predict a
variety of granular flow profiles in flat-bottom silos, annular Couette cells,
flowing heaps, and plate-dragging experiments -- with essentially no fitting
parameters -- although it is only expected to function where material is at
incipient failure and slip-lines are inadmissible. For special cases of
admissible slip-lines, such as plate dragging under a heavy load or flow down
an inclined plane, we postulate a transition to rate-dependent Bagnold
rheology, where flow occurs by sliding shear planes. With different yield
criteria, the SFR provides a general framework for multiscale modeling of
plasticity in amorphous materials, cycling between continuum limit-state stress
calculations, meso-scale spot random walks, and microscopic particle
relaxation
Mode excitation by turbulent convection in rotating stars. I. Effect of uniform rotation
We focus on the influence of the Coriolis acceleration on the stochastic
excitation of oscillation modes in convective regions of rotating stars. Our
aim is to estimate the asymmetry between excitation rates of prograde and
retrograde modes. We extend the formalism derived for obtaining stellar -
and -mode amplitudes (Samadi & Goupil 2001, Belkacem et al. 2008) to include
the effect of the Coriolis acceleration. We then study the special case of
uniform rotation for slowly rotating stars by performing a perturbative
analysis. This allows us to consider the cases of the Sun and the CoRoT target
HD 49933. We find that, in the subsonic regime, the influence of rotation as a
direct contribution to mode driving is negligible in front of the Reynolds
stress contribution. In slow rotators, the indirect effect of the modification
of the eigenfunctions on mode excitation is investigated by performing a
perturbative analysis of the excitation rates. It turns out that the excitation
of solar modes is affected by rotation with excitation rates asymmetries
between prograde and retrograde modes of the order of several percents. Solar
low-order modes are also affected by uniform rotation and their excitation
rates asymmetries are found to reach up to 10 %. The CoRoT target HD 49933 is
rotating faster than the Sun () and we show
that the resulting excitation rates asymmetry is about 10 % for the excitation
rates of modes. We have then demonstrated that and mode excitation
rates are modified by uniform rotation through the Coriolis acceleration. Study
of the effect of differential rotation is dedicated to a forthcoming paper.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, accepted in A&
On the intensity contrast of solar photospheric faculae and network elements
Sunspots, faculae and the magnetic network contribute to solar irradiance
variations. The contribution due to faculae and the network is of basic
importance, but suffers from considerable uncertainty. We determine the
contrasts of active region faculae and the network, both as a function of
heliocentric angle and magnetogram signal. To achieve this, we analyze
near-simultaneous full disk images of photospheric continuum intensity and
line-of-sight magnetic field provided by the Michelson Doppler Interferometer
(MDI) on board the SOHO spacecraft. Starting from the surface distribution of
the solar magnetic field we first construct a mask, which is then used to
determine the brightness of magnetic features, and the relatively field-free
part of the photosphere separately. By sorting the magnetogram signal into
different bins we are able to distinguish between the contrasts of different
concentrations of magnetic field. We find that the contrasts of active region
faculae (large magnetogram signal) and the network (small signal) exhibit a
very different CLV, showing that the populations of magnetic flux tubes are
different. This implies that these elements need to be treated separately when
reconstructing variations of the total solar irradiance with high precision. We
have obtained an analytical expression for the contrast of photospheric
magnetic features as a function of both position on the disk and magnetic field
strength, by performing a 2-dimensional fit to the observations.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, uses aa.cl
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