The observed spiral structure of the Milky Way

The spiral structure of the Milky Way is not yet well determined. The keys to understanding this structure are to increase the number of reliable spiral tracers and to determine their distances as accurately as possible. HII regions, giant molecular clouds (GMCs), and 6.7-GHz methanol masers are closely related to high mass star formation, and hence they are excellent spiral tracers. We update the catalogs of Galactic HII regions, GMCs, and 6.7-GHz methanol masers, and then outline the spiral structure of the Milky Way. We collected data for more than 2500 known HII regions, 1300 GMCs, and 900 6.7-GHz methanol masers. If the photometric or trigonometric distance was not yet available, we determined the kinematic distance using a Galaxy rotation curve with the current IAU standard, $R_0$ = 8.5 kpc and $\Theta_0$ = 220 km s$^{-1}$, and the most recent updated values of $R_0$ = 8.3 kpc and $\Theta_0$ = 239 km s$^{-1}$, after we modified the velocities of tracers with the adopted solar motions. With the weight factors based on the excitation parameters of HII regions or the masses of GMCs, we get the distributions of these spiral tracers. The distribution of tracers shows at least four segments of arms in the first Galactic quadrant, and three segments in the fourth quadrant. The Perseus Arm and the Local Arm are also delineated by many bright HII regions. The arm segments traced by massive star forming regions and GMCs are able to match the HI arms in the outer Galaxy. We found that the models of three-arm and four-arm logarithmic spirals are able to connect most spiral tracers. A model of polynomial-logarithmic spirals is also proposed, which not only delineates the tracer distribution, but also matches the observed tangential directions.Comment: 22 Pages, 16 Figures, 7 Tables, updated to match the published versio

Magnetic fields of our Galaxy on large and small scales

Magnetic fields have been observed on all scales in our Galaxy, from AU to kpc. With pulsar dispersion measures and rotation measures, we can directly measure the magnetic fields in a very large region of the Galactic disk. The results show that the large-scale magnetic fields are aligned with the spiral arms but reverse their directions many times from the inner-most arm (Norma) to the outer arm (Perseus). The Zeeman splitting measurements of masers in HII regions or star-formation regions not only show the structured fields inside clouds, but also have a clear pattern in the global Galactic distribution of all measured clouds which indicates the possible connection of the large-scale and small-scale magnetic fields.Comment: 9 pages. Invited Talk at IAU Symp.242, 'Astrophysical Masers and their Environments', Proceedings edited by J. M. Chapman & W. A. Baa

A compiled catalog of rotation measures of radio point sources

We compiled a catalog of Faraday rotation measures (RMs) for 4553 extragalactic radio point sources ublished in literature. These RMs were derived from multi-frequency polarization observations. The RM data are compared to those in the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) RM catalog. We reveal a systematic uncertainty of about $10.0 \pm 1.5$\,rad~m$^{-2}$ in the NVSS RM catalog. The Galactic foreground RM is calculated through a weighted averaging method by using the compiled RM catalog together with the NVSS RM catalog, with careful consideration of uncertainties in the RM data. The data from the catalog and the interface for the Galactic foreground RM calculations are publicly available on the webpage: http://zmtt.bao.ac.cn/RM/.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures. Published already, at http://www.raa-journal.org/raa/index.php/raa/article/view/171

Evaluating Methods of Correcting for Multiple Comparisons Implemented in SPM12 in Social Neuroscience fMRI Studies: An Example from Moral Psychology

In fMRI research, the goal of correcting for multiple comparisons is to identify areas of activity that reflect true effects, and thus would be expected to replicate in future studies. Finding an appropriate balance between trying to minimize false positives (Type I error) while not being too stringent and omitting true effects (Type II error) can be challenging. Furthermore, the advantages and disadvantages of these types of errors may differ for different areas of study. In many areas of social neuroscience that involve complex processes and considerable individual differences, such as the study of moral judgment, effects are typically smaller and statistical power weaker, leading to the suggestion that less stringent corrections that allow for more sensitivity may be beneficial, but also result in more false positives. Using moral judgment fMRI data, we evaluated four commonly used methods for multiple comparison correction implemented in SPM12 by examining which method produced the most precise overlap with results from a meta-analysis of relevant studies and with results from nonparametric permutation analyses. We found that voxel-wise thresholding with family-wise error correction based on Random Field Theory provides a more precise overlap (i.e., without omitting too few regions or encompassing too many additional regions) than either clusterwise thresholding, Bonferroni correction, or false discovery rate correction methods

Extragalactic dispersion measures of fast radio bursts

Fast radio bursts show large dispersion measures, much larger than the Galactic dispersion measure foreground. Therefore,they evidently have an extragalactic origin. We investigate possible contributions to the dispersion measure from host galaxies. We simulate the spatial distribution of fast radio bursts and calculate the dispersion measures along the sightlines from fast radio bursts to the edge of host galaxies by using the scaled NE2001 model for thermal electron density distributions. We find that contributions to the dispersion measure of fast radio bursts from the host galaxy follow a skew Gaussian distribution. The peak and the width at half maximum of the dispersion measure distribution increase with the inclination angle of a spiral galaxy, to large values when the inclination angle is over 70\degr. The largest dispersion measure produced by an edge-on spiral galaxy can reach a few thousand pc~cm$^{-3}$, while the dispersion measures from dwarf galaxies and elliptical galaxies have a maximum of only a few tens of pc~cm$^{-3}$. Notice, however, that additional dispersion measures of tens to hundreds of pc~cm$^{-3}$ can be produced by high density clumps in host galaxies. Simulations that include dispersion measure contributions from the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Andromeda Galaxy are shown as examples to demonstrate how to extract the dispersion measure from the intergalactic medium.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

Redshift evolution of extragalactic rotation measures

We obtained rotation measures of 2642 quasars by cross-identification of the most updated quasar catalog and rotation measure catalog. After discounting the foreground Galactic Faraday rotation of the Milky Way, we get the residual rotation measure (RRM) of these quasars. We carefully discarded the effects from measurement and systematical uncertainties of RRMs as well as large RRMs from outliers, and get marginal evidence for the redshift evolution of real dispersion of RRMs which steady increases to 10 rad m$^{-2}$ from $z=0$ to $z\sim1$ and is saturated around the value at higher redshifts. The ionized clouds in the form of galaxy, galaxy clusters or cosmological filaments could produce the observed RRM evolutions with different dispersion width. However current data sets can not constrain the contributions from galaxy halos and cosmic webs. Future RM measurements for a large sample of quasars with high precision are desired to disentangle these different contributions.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures. Accepted by MNRA