559 research outputs found
The Relevance of Ragnar Nurkse and Classical Development Economics
In this essay we aim to show, first, how the classical development economics, that of Ragnar Nurkse's (1907-1957) generation, epitomized the best development practices of the past 500 years and crafted them into what Krugman rightly calls high development theory. It is not a coincidence that the post-World-War-II era, when Nurkse and others ruled the development mainstream, is one of exceptionally good performance for many poor countries. Second, we argue that the alleged death of the classical development economics and subsequent rise of the Washington Consensus has to do not so much with increasing modeling in economics, a way of research purposely discarded by many classical development thinkers, but much more with misunderstanding the reasons for East Asia's success and Latin America's demise; we show that the root cause of this misunderstanding - that goes in fact back to 'misreading' key passages in Adam Smith - is the role of technology, or of increasing returns activities, and of finance, in development. Third, we aim to indicate key areas of further research that the current development mainstream should pursue in order to re-learn how to create middle-income economies and middle-class jobs.
PAHs in the Halo of NGC 5529
We present sensitive ISO m observations of the edge-on
galaxy, NGC 5529, finding an extensive MIR halo around NGC 5529. The emission
is dominated by PAHs in this band. The PAH halo has an exponential scale height
of 3.7 kpc but can still be detected as far as kpc from the plane
to the limits of the high dynamic range (1770/1) data. This is the most
extensive PAH halo yet detected in a normal galaxy. This halo shows
substructure and the PAHs likely originate from some type of disk outflow. PAHs
are long-lived in a halo environment and therefore continuous replenishment
from the disk is not required (unless halo PAHs are also being destroyed or
removed), consistent with the current low SFR of the galaxy. The PAHs correlate
spatially with halo H emission, previously observed by Miller &
Veilleux (2003); both components are likely excited/ionized by in-disk photons
that are leaking into the halo. The presence of halo gas may be related to the
environment of NGC 5529 which contains at least 17 galaxies in a small group of
which NGC 5529 is the dominant member. Of these, we have identified two new
companions from the SDSS.Comment: 16 pages, 5 gif figures, accepted for publication in A&A, For pdf
with higher quality figures, see http://www.astro.queensu.ca/~irwi
Carbon star survey in the Local Group. VII. NGC 3109 a galaxy without a stellar halo
We present a CFH12K wide field survey of the carbon star population in and
around NGC 3109. Carbon stars, the brightest members of the intermediate-age
population, were found nearly exclusively in and near the disk of NGC 3109,
ruling out the existence of an extensive intermediate-age halo like the one
found in NGC 6822. Over 400 carbon stars identified have = -4.71,
confirming the nearly universality of mean magnitude of C star populations in
Local Group galaxies. Star counts over the field reveal that NGC 3109 is a
truncated disk shaped galaxy without an extensive stellar halo. The minor axis
star counts reach the foreground density between 4' and 5', a distance that can
be explained by an inclined disk rather than a spheroidal halo. We calculate a
global C/M ratio of 1.75 +/- 0.20, a value expected for such a metal poor
galaxy.Comment: Accepted in Astronomy and Astrophysic
Structure, mass and stability of galactic disks
In this review I concentrate on three areas related to structure of disks in
spiral galaxies. First I will review the work on structure, kinematics and
dynamics of stellar disks. Next I will review the progress in the area of
flaring of HI layers. These subjects are relevant for the presence of dark
matter and lead to the conclusion that disk are in general not `maximal', have
lower M/L ratios than previously suspected and are locally stable w.r.t.
Toomre's Q criterion for local stability. I will end with a few words on
`truncations' in stellar disks.Comment: Invited review at "Galaxies and their Masks" for Ken Freeman's 70-th
birthday, Sossusvlei, Namibia, April 2010. A version with high-res. figures
is available at
http://www.astro.rug.nl/~vdkruit/jea3/homepage/Namibiachapter.pd
Isolated and non-isolated dwarfs in terms of modified Newtonian dynamics
Within the framework of modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) we investigate the
kinematics of two dwarf spiral galaxies belonging to very different
environments, namely KK 246 in the Local Void and Holmberg II in the M81 group.
A mass model of the rotation curve of KK 246 is presented for the first time,
and we show that its observed kinematics are consistent with MOND. We re-derive
the outer rotation curve of Holmberg II, by modelling its HI data cube, and
find that its inclination should be closer to face-on than previously derived.
This implies that Holmberg II has a higher rotation velocity in its outer
parts, which, although not very precisely constrained, is consistent with the
MOND prediction.Comment: Accepted in A&A as a Research Note. 6 pages, 3 figure
Stellar Disk Truncations: Where do we stand ?
In the light of several recent developments we revisit the phenomenon of
galactic stellar disk truncations. Even 25 years since the first paper on outer
breaks in the radial light profiles of spiral galaxies, their origin is still
unclear. The two most promising explanations are that these 'outer edges'
either trace the maximum angular momentum during the galaxy formation epoch, or
are associated with global star formation thresholds. Depending on their true
physical nature, these outer edges may represent an improved size
characteristic (e.g., as compared to D_25) and might contain fossil evidence
imprinted by the galaxy formation and evolutionary history. We will address
several observational aspects of disk truncations: their existence, not only in
normal HSB galaxies, but also in LSB and even dwarf galaxies; their detailed
shape, not sharp cut-offs as thought before, but in fact demarcating the start
of a region with a steeper exponential distribution of starlight; their
possible association with bars; as well as problems related to the
line-of-sight integration for edge-on galaxies (the main targets for truncation
searches so far). Taken together, these observations currently favour the
star-formation threshold model, but more work is necessary to implement the
truncations as adequate parameters characterising galactic disks.Comment: LaTeX, 10 pages, 6 figures, presented at the "Penetrating Bars
through Masks of Cosmic Dust" conference in South Africa, proceedings
published by Kluwer, and edited by Block, D.L., Freeman, K.C., Puerari, I., &
Groess, R; v3 to match published versio
Star formation in Perseus: III. Outflows
We present a search for outflows towards 51 submillimetre cores in Perseus.
With consistently derived outflow properties from a large homogeneous dataset
within one molecular cloud we can investigate further the mass dependence and
time evolution of protostellar mass loss. Of the 51 cores, 37 show broad
linewings indicative of molecular outflows. In 13 cases, the linewings could be
due to confusion with neighbouring flows but 9 of those sources also have
near-infrared detections confirming their protostellar nature. The total
fraction of protostars in our sample is 65%. All but four outflow detections
are confirmed as protostellar by Spitzer IR detections and only one Spitzer
source has no outflow, showing that outflow maps at this sensitivity are
equally good at identifying protostars as Spitzer. Outflow momentum flux
correlates both with source luminosity and with core mass but there is
considerable scatter even within this one cloud despite the homogeneous
dataset. We fail to confirm the result of Bontemps et al. (1996) that Class I
sources show lower momentum fluxes on average than Class 0 sources, with a KS
test showing a significant probability that the momentum fluxes for both Class
0s and Class Is are drawn from the same distribution. We find that outflow
power may not show a simple decline between the Class 0 to Class I stages. Our
sample includes low momentum flux, low-luminosity Class 0 sources, possibly at
a very early evolutionary stage. If the only mass loss from the core were due
to outflows, cores would last for 10^5-10^8 years, longer than current
estimates of 1.5-4 x 10^5 years for the mean lifetime for the embedded phase.
Additional mechanisms for removing mass from protostellar cores may be
necessary.Comment: 26 pages, 21 figures. Version with full colour figures from
http://www.astro.ex.ac.uk/people/hatchell/RecentPapers/hatchell07_outflows.pd
The lncRNA landscape of breast cancer reveals a role for DSCAM-AS1 in breast cancer progression.
Molecular classification of cancers into subtypes has resulted in an advance in our understanding of tumour biology and treatment response across multiple tumour types. However, to date, cancer profiling has largely focused on protein-coding genes, which comprise <1% of the genome. Here we leverage a compendium of 58,648 long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) to subtype 947 breast cancer samples. We show that lncRNA-based profiling categorizes breast tumours by their known molecular subtypes in breast cancer. We identify a cohort of breast cancer-associated and oestrogen-regulated lncRNAs, and investigate the role of the top prioritized oestrogen receptor (ER)-regulated lncRNA, DSCAM-AS1. We demonstrate that DSCAM-AS1 mediates tumour progression and tamoxifen resistance and identify hnRNPL as an interacting protein involved in the mechanism of DSCAM-AS1 action. By highlighting the role of DSCAM-AS1 in breast cancer biology and treatment resistance, this study provides insight into the potential clinical implications of lncRNAs in breast cancer
Estimating the Dark Halo Mass from the Relative Thickness of Stellar Disks
We analyze the relationship between the mass of a spherical component and the
minimum possible thickness of stable stellar disks. This relationship for real
galaxies allows the lower limit on the dark halo mass to be estimated (the
thinner the stable stellar disk is, the more massive the dark halo must be). In
our analysis, we use both theoretical relations and numerical N-body
simulations of the dynamical evolution of thin disks in the presence of
spherical components with different density profiles and different masses. We
conclude that the theoretical relationship between the thickness of disk
galaxies and the mass of their spherical components is a lower envelope for the
model data points. We recommend using this theoretical relationship to estimate
the lower limit for the dark halo mass in galaxies. The estimate obtained turns
out to be weak. Even for the thinnest galaxies, the dark halo mass within four
exponential disk scale lengths must be more than one stellar disk mass.Comment: 20 pages including 6 figures. To be published in Astronomy Letters
(v. 32, No. 10, pp. 649-660, 2006
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