Simulations of Electron Acceleration at Collisionless Shocks: The Effects of Surface Fluctuations

Energetic electrons are a common feature of interplanetary shocks and planetary bow shocks, and they are invoked as a key component of models of nonthermal radio emission, such as solar radio bursts. A simulation study is carried out of electron acceleration for high Mach number, quasi-perpendicular shocks, typical of the shocks in the solar wind. Two dimensional self-consistent hybrid shock simulations provide the electric and magnetic fields in which test particle electrons are followed. A range of different shock types, shock normal angles, and injection energies are studied. When the Mach number is low, or the simulation configuration suppresses fluctuations along the magnetic field direction, the results agree with theory assuming magnetic moment conserving reflection (or Fast Fermi acceleration), with electron energy gains of a factor only 2 - 3. For high Mach number, with a realistic simulation configuration, the shock front has a dynamic rippled character. The corresponding electron energization is radically different: Energy spectra display: (1) considerably higher maximum energies than Fast Fermi acceleration; (2) a plateau, or shallow sloped region, at intermediate energies 2 - 5 times the injection energy; (3) power law fall off with increasing energy, for both upstream and downstream particles, with a slope decreasing as the shock normal angle approaches perpendicular; (4) sustained flux levels over a broader region of shock normal angle than for adiabatic reflection. All these features are in good qualitative agreement with observations, and show that dynamic structure in the shock surface at ion scales produces effective scattering and can be responsible for making high Mach number shocks effective sites for electron acceleration.Comment: 26 pages, 12 figure

Optical-NIR spectroscopy of the puzzling gamma-ray source 3FGL 1603.9-4903/PMN J1603-4904 with X-shooter

The Fermi/LAT instrument has detected about two thousands Extragalactic High Energy (E > 100 MeV) gamma-ray sources. One of the brightest is 3FGL 1603.9-4903, associated to the radio source PMN J1603-4904. Its nature is not yet clear, it could be either a very peculiar BL Lac or a CSO (Compact Symmetric Object) radio source, considered as the early stage of a radio galaxy. The latter, if confirmed, would be the first detection in gamma-rays for this class of objects. Recently a redshift z=0.18 +/- 0.01 has been claimed on the basis of the detection of a single X-ray line at 5.44 +/- 0.05 keV interpreted as a 6.4 keV (rest frame) fluorescent line. We aim to investigate the nature of 3FGL 1603.9-4903/PMN J1603-4904 using optical to NIR spectroscopy. We observed PMN J1603-4904 with the UV-NIR VLT/X-shooter spectrograph for two hours. We extracted spectra in the VIS and NIR range that we calibrated in flux and corrected for telluric absorption and we systematically searched for absorption and emission features. The source was detected starting from ~6300 Ang down to 24000 Ang with an intensity comparable to the one of its 2MASS counterpart and a mostly featureless spectrum. The continuum lacks absorption features and thus is non-stellar in origin and likely non-thermal. On top of this spectrum we detected three emission lines that we interpret as the Halpha-[NII] complex, the [SII] 6716,6731 doublet and the [SIII] 9530 line, obtaining a redshift estimate of z= 0.2321 +/- 0.0004. The equivalent width of the Halpha-[NII] complex implies that PMN J1603-4904 does not follow the observational definition of BL Lac, the line ratios suggest that a LINER/Seyfert nucleus is powering the emission. This new redshift measurement implies that the X-ray line previously detected should be interpreted as a 6.7 keV line which is very peculiar.Comment: Published in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Cdo patterns the musculature of the esophagus and is required for esophageal motility in mice

Introduction: Cdo is a multifunctional cell surface co-receptor that promotes Hedgehog signaling during rostroventral midline development and cadherin-mediated signaling during skeletal myogenesis. We report here novel roles for Cdo in patterning of the murine esophageal musculature and esophageal motility disorders such as achalasia

Pharmacogenetic GWAS meta-analysis of LDL cholesterol response to statins

Cardiolog

Selection and validation of reference genes for quantitative RT-PCR expression studies of the non-model crop Musa

Gene expression analysis by reverse transcriptase real-time or quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) is becoming widely used for nonmodel plant species. Given the high sensitivity of this method, normalization using multiple housekeeping or reference genes is critical, and careful selection of these reference genes is one of the most important steps to obtain reliable results. In this study, reference genes commonly used for other plant species were investigated to identify genes displaying highly uniform expression patterns in different varieties, tissues, developmental stages, fungal infection, and osmotic stress conditions for the non-model crop Musa (banana and plantains). The expression stability of six candidate reference genes was tested on six different sample sets, and the results were analyzed using the publicly available algorithms geNorm and NormFinder. Our results show that variety, plant material, primer set, and gene identity can all influence the robustness and outcome of RT-qPCR analysis. In the case of Musa, a combination of three reference genes (EF1, TUB and ACT) can be used for normalization of gene expression data from greenhouse leaf samples. In the case of shoot meristem cultures, numerous combinations can be used because the investigated reference genes exhibited limited variability. In contrast, variability in expression of the reference genes was much larger among leaf samples from plants grown in vitro, for which the best combination of reference genes (L2 and ACT genes) is still suboptimal. Overall, our data confirm that the stability of candidate reference gene

A Critical Analysis of Techniques and Basic Phenomena Related to Deposition of High Temperature Superconducting Thin Films

The processes involved in plasma and ion beam sputter-, electron evaporation-, and laser ablation-deposition of high temperature superconducting thin films are critically reviewed. Recent advances in the development of these techniques are discussed in relation to basic physical phenomena, specific to each technique, which must be understood before high quality films can be produced. Low temperature processing of films is a common goal for each technique, particularly in relation to integrating high temperature superconducting films with the current microelectronics technology. Research is now demonstrating that the introduction of oxygen into the growing film, simultaneously with the deposition of the film components, is necessary to produce as-deposited superconducting films at relatively low substrate temperatures

Deep Learning for Forecasting Stock Returns in the Cross-Section

Many studies have been undertaken by using machine learning techniques, including neural networks, to predict stock returns. Recently, a method known as deep learning, which achieves high performance mainly in image recognition and speech recognition, has attracted attention in the machine learning field. This paper implements deep learning to predict one-month-ahead stock returns in the cross-section in the Japanese stock market and investigates the performance of the method. Our results show that deep neural networks generally outperform shallow neural networks, and the best networks also outperform representative machine learning models. These results indicate that deep learning shows promise as a skillful machine learning method to predict stock returns in the cross-section.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures, 8 tables, accepted at PAKDD 201

Minimal Angular Size of Distant Sources in Open, Λ\LambdaCDM, and Scalar Field Cosmologies

We propose a simple method for determining the redshift $z_{m}$ at which the angular size of an extragalactic source with fixed proper diameter takes its minimal value. A closed analytical expression, which is quite convenient for numerical evaluation is derived. The method is exemplified with the following FRW type expanding universes: the open matter dominated models ($\Omega_{\Lambda}= 0$), a critical density model with cosmological constant ($\Omega_{\Lambda} \neq 0$), and the class of scalar field cosmologies proposed by Ratra and Peebles. The influence of systematic evolutionary effects is briefly discussed.Comment: 8 pages, 1 postscript figures, uses revtex macro

The X-ray Position and Optical Counterpart of the Accretion-Powered Millisecond Pulsar XTE J1814-338

We report the precise optical and X-ray localization of the 3.2 ms accretion-powered X-ray pulsar XTE J1814-338 with data from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory as well as optical observations conducted during the 2003 June discovery outburst. Optical imaging of the field during the outburst of this soft X-ray transient reveals an R = 18 star at the X-ray position. This star is absent (R > 20) from an archival 1989 image of the field and brightened during the 2003 outburst, and we therefore identify it as the optical counterpart of XTE J1814-338. The best source position derived from optical astrometry is R.A. = 18h13m39.s04, Dec.= -33d46m22.3s (J2000). The featureless X-ray spectrum of the pulsar in outburst is best fit by an absorbed power-law (with photon index = 1.41 +- 0.06) plus blackbody (with kT = 0.95 +- 0.13 keV) model, where the blackbody component contributes approximately 10% of the source flux. The optical broad-band spectrum shows evidence for an excess of infrared emission with respect to an X-ray heated accretion disk model, suggesting a significant contribution from the secondary or from a synchrotron-emitting region. A follow-up observation performed when XTE J1814-338 was in quiescence reveals no counterpart to a limiting magnitude of R = 23.3. This suggests that the secondary is an M3 V or later-type star, and therefore very unlikely to be responsible for the soft excess, making synchroton emission a more reasonable candidate.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. 6 pages; 3 figure