188 research outputs found
Dark Energy and the mass of galaxy clusters
Up to now, Dark Energy evidences are based on the dynamics of the universe on
very large scales, above 1 Gpc. Assuming it continues to behave like a
cosmological constant on much smaller scales, I discuss its effects
on the motion of non-relativistic test-particles in a weak gravitational field
and I propose a way to detect evidences of at the scale of
about 1 Mpc: the main ingredient is the measurement of galaxy cluster masses.Comment: 5 pages, no figures, references adde
Gravitational Collapse with a Cosmological Constant
We consider the effect of a positive cosmological constant on spherical
gravitational collapse to a black hole for a few simple, analytic cases. We
construct the complete Oppenheimer-Snyder-deSitter (OSdS) spacetime, the
generalization of the Oppenheimer-Snyder solution for collapse from rest of a
homogeneous dust ball in an exterior vacuum. In OSdS collapse, the cosmological
constant may affect the onset of collapse and decelerate the implosion
initially, but it plays a diminishing role as the collapse proceeds. We also
construct spacetimes in which a collapsing dust ball can bounce, or hover in
unstable equilibrium, due to the repulsive force of the cosmological constant.
We explore the causal structure of the different spacetimes and identify any
cosmological and black hole event horizons which may be present.Comment: 7 pages, 10 figures; To appear in Phys. Rev.
Maximally extended, explicit and regular coverings of the Schwarzschild - de Sitter vacua in arbitrary dimension
Maximally extended, explicit and regular coverings of the Schwarzschild - de
Sitter family of vacua are given, first in spacetime (generalizing a result due
to Israel) and then for all dimensions (assuming a sphere). It is
shown that these coordinates offer important advantages over the well known
Kruskal - Szekeres procedure.Comment: 12 pages revtex4 5 figures in color. Higher resolution version at
http://www.astro.queensu.ca/~lake/regularcoordinates.pd
Global properties of warped solutions in General Relativity
Assuming the four-dimensional space-time to be a general warped product of
two surfaces we reduce the four-dimensional Einstein equations to a
two-dimensional problem which can be solved. All global vacuum solutions are
explicitly constructed and analysed. The classification of the solutions
includes the Schwarzschild, the (anti-)de Sitter, and other well-known
solutions but also many exact ones whose detailed global properties to our
knowledge have not been discussed before. They have a natural physical
interpretation describing single or several wormholes, domain walls of
curvature singularities, cosmic strings, cosmic strings surrounded by domain
walls, solutions with closed timelike curves, etc.Comment: 35 pages, 5 eps figures, minor change
A dynamic deep sleep stage in Drosophila
Howmight one determine whether simple animals such as flies sleep in stages? Sleep inmammalsis a dynamic process involving different stages of sleep intensity, and these are typically associated with measurable changes in brain activity (Blake and Gerard, 1937; Rechtschaffen and Kales, 1968; Webb and Agnew, 1971). Evidence for different sleep stages in invertebrates remains elusive, even though it has been well established that many invertebrate species require sleep (Campbell and Tobler, 1984; Hendricks et al., 2000; Shaw et al., 2000; Sauer et al., 2003). Here we used electrophysiology and arousal-testing paradigms to show that the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, transitions between deeper and lighter sleep within extended bouts of inactivity, with deeper sleep intensities after15 and30 min of inactivity. As in mammals, the timing and intensity of these dynamic sleep processes in flies is homeostatically regulated and modulated by behavioral experience. Two molecules linked to synaptic plasticity regulate the intensity of the first deep sleep stage. Optogenetic upregulation of cyclic adenosine monophosphate during the day increases sleep intensity at night, whereas loss of function of a molecule involved in synaptic pruning, the fragile-X mental retardation protein, increases sleep intensity during the day. Our results show that sleep is not homogenous in insects, and suggest that waking behavior and the associated synaptic plasticity mechanisms determine the timing and intensity of deep sleep stages in Drosophila
A Cosmological No-Hair Theorem
A generalisation of Price's theorem is given for application to Inflationary
Cosmologies. Namely, we show that on a Schwarzschild--de Sitter background
there are no static solutions to the wave or gravitational perturbation
equations for modes with angular momentum greater than their intrinsic spin.Comment: 9 pages, NCL94 -TP4, (Revtex
Combined assessment (aspiration cytology and mammography) of clinically suspicious breast masses
We examined the safety and utility of the combined assessment of aspiration cytology and mammography in 705 women who had clinically suspicious or malignant palpable breast masses. Histological assessment confirmed 176 benign and 529 malignant lesions. There were no incorrect (false positive) diagnoses made in the 176 benign masses when combined assessment was used (specificity 1,0; predictive value 0,86); in isolation, however, there was a false positive cytological diagnosis («papillary carcinoma») and 3 false positive mammographic diagnoses. Benign disease (false negative) was incorrectly diagnosed by combined assessment in 4 of the 529 malignant masses (sensitivity 0,99; predictive value 0,98): cytological diagnoses were of fat necrosis (2) and benign cells on cytospin (1) and aspiration biopsy (1); mammographic diagnoses were of benign disease (2) and normality (2). Indeterminate («atypical», «suspicious») diagnoses were problematic and frequent (overall 223 (31,6%), malignant masses 137 (25,9%), benign masses 86 (48,9%); cytology 117 (16,6%), mammography 141 (20%). Thus, with the combined assessment of mammography and cytology in clinically suspicious breast masses, a decisive diagnosis was made in about two-thirds of cases allowing the safe commencement of therapy; the balance of patients required cone or excision biopsy
Ernst equation and spheroidal coordinates with a cosmological constant term
We discuss solution generating techniques treating stationary and axially
symmetric metrics in the presence of a cosmological constant. Using the
recently found extended form of Ernst's complex equation, which takes into
account the cosmological constant term, we propose an extension of spheroidal
coordinates adapted to asymptotically de-Sitter and anti de-Sitter static
spacetimes. In the absence of a cosmological constant we show in addition that
any higher dimensional metric parametrised by a single angular momentum can be
given by a 4 dimensional solution and Weyl potentials parametrising the extra
Killing directions. We explicitly show how a stationary, and a static axially
symmetric spacetime solution in 4 dimensions, can be {\it added} together to
give a 5 dimensional stationary and axisymmetric solution.Comment: 9 pages, no figures, some additional results to gr-qc/0610091.
Prepared for 12th Conference on Recent Developments in Gravity (NEB XII),
Nafplio, Greece, 29 Jun - 2 Jul 200
Maxwell's theory on a post-Riemannian spacetime and the equivalence principle
The form of Maxwell's theory is well known in the framework of general
relativity, a fact that is related to the applicability of the principle of
equivalence to electromagnetic phenomena. We pose the question whether this
form changes if torsion and/or nonmetricity fields are allowed for in
spacetime. Starting from the conservation laws of electric charge and magnetic
flux, we recognize that the Maxwell equations themselves remain the same, but
the constitutive law must depend on the metric and, additionally, may depend on
quantities related to torsion and/or nonmetricity. We illustrate our results by
putting an electric charge on top of a spherically symmetric exact solution of
the metric-affine gauge theory of gravity (comprising torsion and
nonmetricity). All this is compared to the recent results of Vandyck.Comment: 9 pages, REVTeX, no figures; minor changes, version to be published
in Class. Quantum Gra
The geodesic structure of the Schwarzschild Anti-de Sitter black hole
In the present work we found the geodesic structure of an AdS black hole. By
means of a detailed analyze of the corresponding effective potentials for
particles and photon, we found all the possible motions which are allowed by
the energy levels. Radial and non radial trajectories were exactly evaluated
for both geodesics. The founded orbits were plotted in order to have a direct
visualization of the allowed motions. We show that the geodesic structure of
this black hole presents new type of motions not allowed by the Schwarzschild
spacetime.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figure
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