7,654 research outputs found
Ks-band detection of thermal emission and color constraints to CoRoT-1b: A low-albedo planet with inefficient atmospheric energy redistribution and a temperature inversion
We report the detection in Ks-band of the secondary eclipse of the hot
Jupiter CoRoT-1b, from time series photometry with the ARC 3.5-m telescope at
Apache Point Observatory. The eclipse shows a depth of 0.336+/-0.042 percent
and is centered at phase 0.5022 (+0.0023,-0.0027), consistent with a zero
eccentricity orbit ecos{\omega} = 0.0035 (+0.0036,-0.0042). We perform the
first optical to near-infrared multi-band photometric analysis of an
exoplanet's atmosphere and constrain the reflected and thermal emissions by
combining our result with the recent 0.6, 0.71, and 2.09 micron secondary
eclipse detections by Snellen et al. (2009), Gillon et al. (2009), and Alonso
et al. (2009a). Comparing the multi-wavelength detections to state-of-the-art
radiative-convective chemical-equilibrium atmosphere models, we find the
near-infrared fluxes difficult to reproduce. The closest blackbody-based and
physical models provide the following atmosphere parameters: a temperature T =
2454 (+84,-170) K, a very low Bond albedo A_B = 0.000 (+0.087,-0.000), and an
energy redistribution parameter P_n = 0.1, indicating a small but nonzero
amount of heat transfer from the day- to night-side. The best physical model
suggests a thermal inversion layer with an extra optical absorber of opacity
kappa_e =0.05cm^2g^-1, placed near the 0.1-bar atmospheric pressure level. This
inversion layer is located ten times deeper in the atmosphere than the
absorbers used in models to fit mid-infrared Spitzer detections of other
irradiated hot Jupiters.Comment: accepted for publication on Ap
How can a multimodal approach to primate communication help us understand the evolution of communication?
Scientists studying the communication of non-human animals are often aiming to better understand the evolution of human communication, including human language. Some scientists take a phylogenetic perspective, where the goal is to trace the evolutionary history of communicative traits, while others take a functional perspective, where the goal is to understand the selection pressures underpinning specific traits. Both perspectives are necessary to fully understand the evolution of communication, but it is important to understand how the two perspectives differ and what they can and cannot tell us. Here, we suggest that integrating phylogenetic and functional questions can be fruitful in better understanding the evolution of communication. We also suggest that adopting a multimodal approach to communication might help to integrate phylogenetic and functional questions, and provide an interesting avenue for research into language evolution
Gravitational Wave Background from Neutrino-Driven Gamma-Ray Bursts
We discuss the gravitational wave background (GWB) from a cosmological
population of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Among various emission mechanisms for
the gravitational waves (GWs), we pay a particular attention to the vast
anisotropic neutrino emissions from the accretion disk around the black hole
formed after the so-called failed supernova explosions. The produced GWs by
such mechanism are known as burst with memory, which could dominate over the
low-frequency regime below \sim 10Hz. To estimate their amplitudes, we derive
general analytic formulae for gravitational waveform from the axisymmetric
jets. Based on the formulae, we first quantify the spectrum of GWs from a
single GRB. Then, summing up its cosmological population, we find that the
resultant value of the density parameter becomes roughly \Omega_{GW} \approx
10^{-20} over the wide-band of the low-frequency region, f\sim 10^{-4}-10^1Hz.
The amplitude of GWB is sufficiently smaller than the primordial GWBs
originated from an inflationary epoch and far below the detection limit.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
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Proposed Keystone XL Pipeline: Legal Issues
[Excerpt] In 2008, TransCanada Corp. applied for a presidential permit from the State Department to construct and operate an oil pipeline across the U.S.-Canada border in a project known as Keystone XL. The Keystone XL pipeline would transport oil produced from oil sands in Alberta,Canada, to Gulf Coast refineries. The permit application was subjected to review by the State Department pursuant to executive branch authority over cross-border pipeline facilities as articulated in Executive Order 13337.
After several phases of review, on November 10, 2011, the State Department announced that it would seek additional information about alternative pipeline routes before it could move forward with a national interest determination. In response, several pieces of legislation were introduced, including Title V of the Temporary Payroll Tax Cut Continuation Act of 2011. Title V dictated that President must grant the Keystone XL pipeline permit within 60 days of the law’s enactment, unless the President determined that the pipeline is not in the national interest. If the President did not make a national interest determination and took no action to grant the permit, then the law provided that the permit “shall be in effect by operation of law.” The Temporary Payroll Tax Cut Continuation Act of 2011 (P.L. 112-78), including Title V addressing the Keystone XL permit, was enacted on December 23, 2011.
Pursuant to the requirements of Title V, on January 18, 2012, the State Department recommended that “the presidential permit for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline be denied and, that at this time, the TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline be determined not to serve the national interest. ”The same day, the President stated his determination that the Keystone XL pipeline project“ would not serve the national interest.
”New legislative activity with respect to the permitting of border-crossing facilities, a subject previously handled exclusively by the executive branch, has triggered inquiries as to whether this raises constitutional issues related to the jurisdiction of the two branches over such facilities. Additionally, as states have begun to contemplate taking action with respect to the pipeline siting, some have questioned whether state siting of a pipeline is preempted by federal law. Others argue that states dictating the route of the pipeline violates the dormant Commerce Clause of the Constitution which, among other things, prohibits one state from acting to protect its own interests to the detriment of other states.
This report reviews those legal issues. First, it suggests that legislation related to cross-border facility permitting is unlikely to raise significant constitutional questions, despite the fact that such permits have traditionally been handled by the executive branch alone pursuant to its constitutional “foreign affairs” authority. Next, it observes generally that state oversight of pipeline siting decisions does not appear to violate existing federal law or the Constitution. Finally, the report suggests that State Department’s implementation of the existing authority to issue presidential permits appears to allow for judicial review of its National Environmental Policy Act determinations
Information Management in the Modern Hydrographic Office - A Challenge for the 21st Century
Collectively, the various national hydrographic authorities within the auspices of the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) are the custodians of a significant portion of the world asset of marine information. In the course of managing this information, Member States have been subject to significant changes in both technology and user requirements. The current practices that have evolved to provide a relatively uniform service of charts and other publications for the international mariner are today under increasing pressure to adapt to a wider variety of specific user needs and the methodologies for presentation. Consideration must be given as to whether the current information management practices in place today are able to meet the source data capabilities and user requirements of tomorrow. This paper discusses a rationale for the structuring that may bë required for future hydrographic information management. It examines current problems and some potential directions in the overall management and organization of the types of information held by the modem hydrographic agency. An appreciation and understanding of the issues surrounding information management in hydrographic organizations, under the auspices of the International Hydrographic Organization, must lead to a closer cooperation towards meeting the challenge of international information dissemination in the twenty-first century
Relativistic effects in neutrino-Fermi gas interactions
We study neutrino interactions in a hadron gas within a relativistic
framework. The hadron matter is described by a non-interacting Fermi gas in
beta equilibrium. We show that the introduction of relativistic effects causes
a sizable enhancement of the neutrino-scattering cross sections.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of International School of Nuclear
Physics: 27th Course: "Neutrinos in Cosmology, in Astro, Particle and Nuclear
Physics". Erice, Sicily, Italy, 16-2
GRB Energetics in the Swift Era
We examine the rest frame energetics of 76 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) with known
redshift that were detected by the Swift spacecraft and monitored by the
satellite's X-ray Telescope (XRT). Using the bolometric fluence values
estimated in Butler et al. 2007b and the last XRT observation for each event,
we set a lower limit the their collimation corrected energy Eg and find that a
68% of our sample are at high enough redshift and/or low enough fluence to
accommodate a jet break occurring beyond the last XRT observation and still be
consistent with the pre-Swift Eg distribution for long GRBs. We find that
relatively few of the X-ray light curves for the remaining events show evidence
for late-time decay slopes that are consistent with that expected from post jet
break emission. The breaks in the X-ray light curves that do exist tend to be
shallower and occur earlier than the breaks previously observed in optical
light curves, yielding a Eg distribution that is far lower than the pre-Swift
distribution. If these early X-ray breaks are not due to jet effects, then a
small but significant fraction of our sample have lower limits to their
collimation corrected energy that place them well above the pre-Swift Eg
distribution. Either scenario would necessitate a much wider post-Swift Eg
distribution for long cosmological GRBs compared to the narrow standard energy
deduced from pre-Swift observations. We note that almost all of the pre-Swift
Eg estimates come from jet breaks detected in the optical whereas our sample is
limited entirely to X-ray wavelengths, furthering the suggestion that the
assumed achromaticity of jet breaks may not extend to high energies.Comment: 30 pages, 10 figures, Accepted to Ap
Ab initio Translationally Invariant Nonlocal One-body Densities from No-core Shell-model Theory
[Background:] It is well known that effective nuclear interactions are in
general nonlocal. Thus if nuclear densities obtained from {\it ab initio}
no-core-shell-model (NCSM) calculations are to be used in reaction
calculations, translationally invariant nonlocal densities must be available.
[Purpose:] Though it is standard to extract translationally invariant one-body
local densities from NCSM calculations to calculate local nuclear observables
like radii and transition amplitudes, the corresponding nonlocal one-body
densities have not been considered so far. A major reason for this is that the
procedure for removing the center-of-mass component from NCSM wavefunctions up
to now has only been developed for local densities. [Results:] A formulation
for removing center-of-mass contributions from nonlocal one-body densities
obtained from NCSM and symmetry-adapted NCSM (SA-NCSM) calculations is derived,
and applied to the ground state densities of He, Li, C, and
O. The nonlocality is studied as a function of angular momentum
components in momentum as well as coordinate space [Conclusions:] We find that
the nonlocality for the ground state densities of the nuclei under
consideration increases as a function of the angular momentum. The relative
magnitude of those contributions decreases with increasing angular momentum. In
general, the nonlocal structure of the one-body density matrices we studied is
given by the shell structure of the nucleus, and can not be described with
simple functional forms.Comment: 13 pages, 11 Figure
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