Pan-European backcasting exercise, enriched with regional perspective, and including a list of short-term policy options

This deliverable reports on the results of the third and final pan-European stakeholder meeting and secondly, on the enrichment with a Pilot Area and regional perspective. The main emphasis is on backcasting as a means to arrive at long-term strategies and short-term (policy) actions

Squeezed-light source for the superresolving microscopy

We propose a source of multimode squeezed light that can be used for the superresolving microscopy beyond the standard quantum limit. This source is an optical parametric amplifier with a properly chosen diaphragm on its output and a Fourier lens. We demonstrate that such an arrangement produces squeezed prolate spheroidal waves which are the eigen modes of the optical imaging scheme used in microscopy. The degree of squeezing and the number of spatial modes in illuminating light, necessary for the effective object field reconstruction, are evaluatedComment: 6 pages, 1 figure, RevTeX4. Shortened version will appear in Optics Letter

The physics of wind-blown sand and dust

The transport of sand and dust by wind is a potent erosional force, creates sand dunes and ripples, and loads the atmosphere with suspended dust aerosols. This article presents an extensive review of the physics of wind-blown sand and dust on Earth and Mars. Specifically, we review the physics of aeolian saltation, the formation and development of sand dunes and ripples, the physics of dust aerosol emission, the weather phenomena that trigger dust storms, and the lifting of dust by dust devils and other small-scale vortices. We also discuss the physics of wind-blown sand and dune formation on Venus and Titan.Comment: 72 journal pagers, 49 figure

Small-Cell Lung Cancer:Is the Black Box Finally Opening Up?

Small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) is an aggressive cancer that originates from the neuroendocrine crest [...

Carbon monoxide and water vapor in the atmosphere of the non-transiting exoplanet HD 179949 b

(Abridged) In recent years, ground-based high-resolution spectroscopy has become a powerful tool for investigating exoplanet atmospheres. It allows the robust identification of molecular species, and it can be applied to both transiting and non-transiting planets. Radial-velocity measurements of the star HD 179949 indicate the presence of a giant planet companion in a close-in orbit. Here we present the analysis of spectra of the system at 2.3 micron, obtained at a resolution of R~100,000, during three nights of observations with CRIRES at the VLT. We targeted the system while the exoplanet was near superior conjunction, aiming to detect the planet's thermal spectrum and the radial component of its orbital velocity. We detect molecular absorption from carbon monoxide and water vapor with a combined S/N of 6.3, at a projected planet orbital velocity of K_P = (142.8 +- 3.4) km/s, which translates into a planet mass of M_P = (0.98 +- 0.04) Jupiter masses, and an orbital inclination of i = (67.7 +- 4.3) degrees, using the known stellar radial velocity and stellar mass. The detection of absorption features rather than emission means that, despite being highly irradiated, HD 179949 b does not have an atmospheric temperature inversion in the probed range of pressures and temperatures. Since the host star is active (R_HK > -4.9), this is in line with the hypothesis that stellar activity damps the onset of thermal inversion layers owing to UV flux photo-dissociating high-altitude, optical absorbers. Finally, our analysis favors an oxygen-rich atmosphere for HD 179949 b, although a carbon-rich planet cannot be statistically ruled out based on these data alone.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

The GROUSE project III: Ks-band observations of the thermal emission from WASP-33b

In recent years, day-side emission from about a dozen hot Jupiters has been detected through ground-based secondary eclipse observations in the near-infrared. These near-infrared observations are vital for determining the energy budgets of hot Jupiters, since they probe the planet's spectral energy distribution near its peak. The aim of this work is to measure the Ks-band secondary eclipse depth of WASP-33b, the first planet discovered to transit an A-type star. This planet receives the highest level of irradiation of all transiting planets discovered to date. Furthermore, its host-star shows pulsations and is classified as a low-amplitude delta-Scuti. As part of our GROUnd-based Secondary Eclipse (GROUSE) project we have obtained observations of two separate secondary eclipses of WASP-33b in the Ks-band using the LIRIS instrument on the William Herschel Telescope (WHT). The telescope was significantly defocused to avoid saturation of the detector for this bright star (K~7.5). To increase the stability and the cadence of the observations, they were performed in staring mode. We collected a total of 5100 and 6900 frames for the first and the second night respectively, both with an average cadence of 3.3 seconds. On the second night the eclipse is detected at the 12-sigma level, with a measured eclipse depth of 0.244+0.027-0.020 %. This eclipse depth corresponds to a brightness temperature of 3270+115-160 K. The measured brightness temperature on the second night is consistent with the expected equilibrium temperature for a planet with a very low albedo and a rapid re-radiation of the absorbed stellar light. For the other night the short out-of-eclipse baseline prevents good corrections for the stellar pulsations and systematic effects, which makes this dataset unreliable for eclipse depth measurements. This demonstrates the need of getting a sufficient out-of-eclipse baseline.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Detection of water absorption in the day side atmosphere of HD 189733 b using ground-based high-resolution spectroscopy at 3.2 microns

We report a 4.8 sigma detection of water absorption features in the day side spectrum of the hot Jupiter HD 189733 b. We used high-resolution (R~100,000) spectra taken at 3.2 microns with CRIRES on the VLT to trace the radial-velocity shift of the water features in the planet's day side atmosphere during 5 h of its 2.2 d orbit as it approached secondary eclipse. Despite considerable telluric contamination in this wavelength regime, we detect the signal within our uncertainties at the expected combination of systemic velocity (Vsys=-3 +5-6 km/s) and planet orbital velocity (Kp=154 +14-10 km/s), and determine a H2O line contrast ratio of (1.3+/-0.2)x10^-3 with respect to the stellar continuum. We find no evidence of significant absorption or emission from other carbon-bearing molecules, such as methane, although we do note a marginal increase in the significance of our detection to 5.1 sigma with the inclusion of carbon dioxide in our template spectrum. This result demonstrates that ground-based, high-resolution spectroscopy is suited to finding not just simple molecules like CO, but also to more complex molecules like H2O even in highly telluric contaminated regions of the Earth's transmission spectrum. It is a powerful tool that can be used for conducting an immediate census of the carbon- and oxygen-bearing molecules in the atmospheres of giant planets, and will potentially allow the formation and migration history of these planets to be constrained by the measurement of their atmospheric C/O ratios.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS Letter