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Retrieving Decadal Climate Change from Satellite Radiance Observations-A 100-year CO2 Doubling OSSE Demonstration.
Preparing for climate change depends on the observation and prediction of decadal trends of the environmental variables, which have a direct impact on the sustainability of resources affecting the quality of life on our planet. The NASA Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) mission is proposed to provide climate quality benchmark spectral radiance observations for the purpose of determining the decadal trends of climate variables, and validating and improving the long-range climate model forecasts needed to prepare for the changing climate of the Earth. The CLARREO will serve as an in-orbit, absolute, radiometric standard for the cross-calibration of hyperspectral radiance spectra observed by the international system of polar operational satellite sounding sensors. Here, we demonstrate that the resulting accurately cross-calibrated polar satellite global infrared spectral radiance trends (e.g., from the Metop IASI instrument considered here) can be interpreted in terms of temperature and water vapor profile trends. This demonstration is performed using atmospheric state data generated for a 100-year period from 2000-2099, produced by a numerical climate model prediction that was forced by the doubling of the global average atmospheric CO2 over the 100-year period. The vertical profiles and spatial distribution of temperature decadal trends were successfully diagnosed by applying a linear regression profile retrieval algorithm to the simulated hyperspectral radiance spectra for the 100-year period. These results indicate that it is possible to detect decadal trends in atmospheric climate variables from high accuracy all-sky satellite infrared radiance spectra using the linear regression retrieval technique
A combinatorial approach to gene expression analysis: DNA microarrays.
The microarray technology is based on analytical tools that parallelize the quantitative and qualitative analysis of nucleic acids, proteins and tissue sections one of its more recent evolutions-. By miniaturizing the size of the reaction and sensing area, microarrays allow to assess at the activity of thousands of genes in a given tissue or cell line at once in a rapid and quantitative way, and to carry out serial comparative tests in multiple samples. These tools, that stem from the innovations resulting from the technological improvements and knowledge arising from the genome sequencing projects, can be considered as a combinatorial technique that can rapidly provide significant information about complex cellular pathways and processes within one or few ‘‘mass scale’’ and comprehensive testing of a biological sample’s composition
Correlation functions at small quark masses with overlap fermions
We report on recent work on the determination of low-energy constants
describing Delta{S}=1 weak transitions, in order to investigate the origins of
the Delta{I}=1/2 rule. We focus on numerical techniques designed to enhance the
statistical signal in three-point correlation functions computed with overlap
fermions near the chiral limit.Comment: Talk presented at Lattice2004(weak), Fermilab, 21-26 June 2004, 3
pages, 2 figure
Lattice Spacing Dependence of the First Order Phase Transition for Dynamical Twisted Mass Fermions
Lattice QCD with Wilson fermions generically shows the phenomenon of a first
order phase transition. We study the phase structure of lattice QCD using
Wilson twisted mass fermions and the Wilson plaquette gauge action are used in
a range of beta values where such a first order phase transition is observed.
In particular, we investigate the dependence of the first order phase
transition on the value of the lattice spacing. Using only data in one phase
and neglecting possible problems arising from the phase transition we are able
to perform a first scaling test for physical quantities using this action.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, typo corrected, web-list of authors correcte
A Dramatic Decrease in Carbon Star Formation in M31
We analyze resolved stellar near-infrared photometry of 21 HST fields in M31
to constrain the impact of metallicity on the formation of carbon stars.
Observations of nearby galaxies show that the carbon stars are increasingly
rare at higher metallicity. Models indicate that carbon star formation
efficiency drops due to the decrease in dredge-up efficiency in metal-rich
thermally-pulsing Asymptotic Giant Branch (TP-AGB) stars, coupled to a higher
initial abundance of oxygen. However, while models predict a metallicity
ceiling above which carbon stars cannot form, previous observations have not
yet pinpointed this limit. Our new observations reliably separate carbon stars
from M-type TP-AGB stars across 2.6-13.7 kpc of M31's metal-rich disk using HST
WFC3/IR medium-band filters. We find that the ratio of C to M stars (C/M)
decreases more rapidly than extrapolations of observations in more metal-poor
galaxies, resulting in a C/M that is too low by more than a factor of 10 in the
innermost fields and indicating a dramatic decline in C star formation
efficiency at metallicities higher than [M/H] -0.1 dex. The
metallicity ceiling remains undetected, but must occur at metallicities higher
than what is measured in M31's inner disk ([M/H] +0.06 dex).Comment: 16 pages, 13 Figures; text clarifications in response to the referee.
Results are unchanged; accepted for publication in Ap
The ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury. X. Quantifying the Star Cluster Formation Efficiency of Nearby Dwarf Galaxies
We study the relationship between the field star formation and cluster
formation properties in a large sample of nearby dwarf galaxies. We use optical
data from the Hubble Space Telescope and from ground-based telescopes to derive
the ages and masses of the young (t_age < 100Myr) cluster sample. Our data
provides the first constraints on two proposed relationships between the star
formation rate of galaxies and the properties of their cluster systems in the
low star formation rate regime. The data show broad agreement with these
relationships, but significant galaxy-to-galaxy scatter exists. In part, this
scatter can be accounted for by simulating the small number of clusters
detected from stochastically sampling the cluster mass function. However, this
stochasticity does not fully account for the observed scatter in our data
suggesting there may be true variations in the fraction of stars formed in
clusters in dwarf galaxies. Comparison of the cluster formation and the
brightest cluster in our sample galaxies also provide constraints on cluster
destruction models.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, Accepted to Ap
Perturbative renormalization factors in domain-wall QCD with improved gauge actions
We evaluate renormalization factors of the domain-wall fermion system with
various improved gauge actions at one loop level. The renormalization factors
are calculated for quark wave function, quark mass, bilinear quark operators,
three- and four-quark operators in modified minimal subtraction (MS-bar) scheme
with the dimensional reduction(DRED) as well as the naive dimensional
regularization(NDR). We also present detailed results in the mean field
improved perturbation theory.Comment: 44 page
Parental Compliance: Its Role in Termination of Parental Rights Cases
This article examines the current state of termination of parental rights (TPR) law, along with the results of an appellate case review, an exploratory project, and an empirical investigation of decision-making related to these cases. Section I begins with an overview of termination of parental rights law. The focus of this section is recent statutory changes in the area, highlighting some key differences between the former and the current law. In Section II, the focus shifts to a review of the foundations for the empirical study. Section III more specifically addresses the main areas that are explored in the empirical study, including descriptions of case plans, parental compliance with case plans, and the mental status of parents. Section IV describes the empirical study, which addressed whether certain factors contribute to TPRs. Finally, sections V and VI discuss the conclusions that can be drawn from the empirical study
The Small Magellanic Cloud Investigation of Dust and Gas Evolution (SMIDGE): The Dust Extinction Curve from Red Clump Stars
We use Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of red clump stars taken as
part of the Small Magellanic Cloud Investigation of Dust and Gas Evolution
(SMIDGE) program to measure the average dust extinction curve in a ~ 200 pc x
100 pc region in the southwest bar of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The
rich information provided by our 8-band ultra-violet through near-infrared
photometry allows us to model the color-magnitude diagram of the red clump
accounting for the extinction curve shape, a log-normal distribution of
, and the depth of the stellar distribution along the line of sight. We
measure an extinction curve with = 2.65
0.11. This measurement is significantly larger than the equivalent values
of published Milky Way = 3.1 () and SMC Bar =
2.74 () extinction curves. Similar extinction curve offsets in
the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) have been interpreted as the effect of large
dust grains. We demonstrate that the line-of-sight depth of the SMC (and LMC)
introduces an apparent "gray" contribution to the extinction curve inferred
from the morphology of the red clump. We show that no gray dust component is
needed to explain extinction curve measurements when a full-width half-max
depth of 10 2 kpc in the stellar distribution of the SMC (5 1 kpc
for the LMC) is considered, which agrees with recent studies of Magellanic
Cloud stellar structure. The results of our work demonstrate the power of
broad-band HST imaging for simultaneously constraining dust and galactic
structure outside the Milky Way.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures, 5 tables. Accepted for publication in Ap
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