259 research outputs found
Investment Activities of Relocated Tenement Landlords—A Pilot Study
It appears remarkable that the literature on slum clearance and housing rehabilitation contains so very little on the investment and behavior patterns of owners of substandard housing. Yet the success of housing code enforcement efforts and associated programs of housing improvement depends almost entirely on the response, attitude, and behavior of owners and investors in substandard housing
Mitigation and screening for environmental assessment
This article considers how, as a matter of law and policy, mitigation measures should be taken into account in determining whether a project will have significant environmental effects and therefore be subject to assessment under the EU Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Directive. This is not straightforward: it is problematic to distinguish clearly between an activity and the measures proposed to minimise or mitigate for the adverse consequences of the activity. The issue is a salient one in impact assessment law, but under-explored in the literature and handled with some difficulty by the courts. I argue that there is an unnecessarily and undesirably narrow approach currently taken under the EIA Directive, which could be improved upon by taking a more adaptive approach; alternatively a heightened standard of review of ‘significance’, and within this of the scope for mitigation measures to bring projects beneath the significance threshold, may also be desirable
Bulge growth through disk instabilities in high-redshift galaxies
The role of disk instabilities, such as bars and spiral arms, and the
associated resonances, in growing bulges in the inner regions of disk galaxies
have long been studied in the low-redshift nearby Universe. There it has long
been probed observationally, in particular through peanut-shaped bulges. This
secular growth of bulges in modern disk galaxies is driven by weak,
non-axisymmetric instabilities: it mostly produces pseudo-bulges at slow rates
and with long star-formation timescales. Disk instabilities at high redshift
(z>1) in moderate-mass to massive galaxies (10^10 to a few 10^11 Msun of stars)
are very different from those found in modern spiral galaxies. High-redshift
disks are globally unstable and fragment into giant clumps containing 10^8-10^9
Msun of gas and stars each, which results in highly irregular galaxy
morphologies. The clumps and other features associated to the violent
instability drive disk evolution and bulge growth through various mechanisms,
on short timescales. The giant clumps can migrate inward and coalesce into the
bulge in a few 10^8 yr. The instability in the very turbulent media drives
intense gas inflows toward the bulge and nuclear region. Thick disks and
supermassive black holes can grow concurrently as a result of the violent
instability. This chapter reviews the properties of high-redshift disk
instabilities, the evolution of giant clumps and other features associated to
the instability, and the resulting growth of bulges and associated sub-galactic
components.Comment: 37 pages, 9 figures. Invited refereed review to appear in "Galactic
Bulges", E. Laurikainen, D. Gadotti, R. Peletier (eds.), Springe
Observational Diagnostics of Gas Flows: Insights from Cosmological Simulations
Galactic accretion interacts in complex ways with gaseous halos, including
galactic winds. As a result, observational diagnostics typically probe a range
of intertwined physical phenomena. Because of this complexity, cosmological
hydrodynamic simulations have played a key role in developing observational
diagnostics of galactic accretion. In this chapter, we review the status of
different observational diagnostics of circumgalactic gas flows, in both
absorption (galaxy pair and down-the-barrel observations in neutral hydrogen
and metals; kinematic and azimuthal angle diagnostics; the cosmological column
density distribution; and metallicity) and emission (Lya; UV metal lines; and
diffuse X-rays). We conclude that there is no simple and robust way to identify
galactic accretion in individual measurements. Rather, progress in testing
galactic accretion models is likely to come from systematic, statistical
comparisons of simulation predictions with observations. We discuss specific
areas where progress is likely to be particularly fruitful over the next few
years.Comment: Invited review to appear in Gas Accretion onto Galaxies, Astrophysics
and Space Science Library, eds. A. J. Fox & R. Dave, to be published by
Springer. Typos correcte
Gas Accretion and Star Formation Rates
Cosmological numerical simulations of galaxy evolution show that accretion of
metal-poor gas from the cosmic web drives the star formation in galaxy disks.
Unfortunately, the observational support for this theoretical prediction is
still indirect, and modeling and analysis are required to identify hints as
actual signs of star-formation feeding from metal-poor gas accretion. Thus, a
meticulous interpretation of the observations is crucial, and this
observational review begins with a simple theoretical description of the
physical process and the key ingredients it involves, including the properties
of the accreted gas and of the star-formation that it induces. A number of
observations pointing out the connection between metal-poor gas accretion and
star-formation are analyzed, specifically, the short gas consumption time-scale
compared to the age of the stellar populations, the fundamental metallicity
relationship, the relationship between disk morphology and gas metallicity, the
existence of metallicity drops in starbursts of star-forming galaxies, the
so-called G dwarf problem, the existence of a minimum metallicity for the
star-forming gas in the local universe, the origin of the alpha-enhanced gas
forming stars in the local universe, the metallicity of the quiescent BCDs, and
the direct measurements of gas accretion onto galaxies. A final section
discusses intrinsic difficulties to obtain direct observational evidence, and
points out alternative observational pathways to further consolidate the
current ideas.Comment: Invited review to appear in Gas Accretion onto Galaxies, Astrophysics
and Space Science Library, eds. A. J. Fox & R. Dav\'e, to be published by
Springe
Determinants of Restaurant Systematic Risk: A Reexamination
This study reexamines determinants of the systematic risk or beta of restaurant firms based on the financial data of 75 U.S. restaurant firms from 1996 through 1999. Our weighted least-squares regression analysis found that restaurant systematic risk correlated negatively with assets turnover but positively with quick ratio. The findings suggest that high efficiency in generating sales revenue helps lower the systematic risk, while excess liquidity tends to increase the risk
Cross-Platform Array Screening Identifies COL1A2, THBS1, TNFRSF10D and UCHL1 as Genes Frequently Silenced by Methylation in Melanoma
Epigenetic regulation of tumor suppressor genes (TSGs) has been shown to play a central role in melanomagenesis. By integrating gene expression and methylation array analysis we identified novel candidate genes frequently methylated in melanoma. We validated the methylation status of the most promising genes using highly sensitive Sequenom Epityper assays in a large panel of melanoma cell lines and resected melanomas, and compared the findings with those from cultured melanocytes. We found transcript levels of UCHL1, COL1A2, THBS1 and TNFRSF10D were inversely correlated with promoter methylation. For THBS1 and UCHL1 the effect of this methylation on expression was confirmed at the protein level. Identification of these candidate TSGs and future research designed to understand how their silencing is related to melanoma development will increase our understanding of the etiology of this cancer and may provide tools for its early diagnosis
ALMA constraints on star-forming gas in a prototypical z=1.5 clumpy galaxy: the dearth of CO(5-4) emission from UV-bright clumps
We present deep ALMA CO(5-4) observations of a main sequence, clumpy galaxy at z = 1.5 in the HUDF. Thanks to the ∼0.500 resolution of the ALMA data, we can link stellar population properties to the CO(5-4) emission on scales of a few kpc. We detect strong CO(5-4) emission from the nuclear region of the galaxy, consistent with the observed LIR–L 0 CO(5−4) correlation and indicating on-going nuclear star formation. The CO(5-4) gas component appears more concentrated than other star formation tracers or the dust distribution in this galaxy. We discuss possible implications of this difference in terms of star formation efficiency and mass build-up at the galaxy centre. Conversely, we do not detect any CO(5-4) emission from the UV-bright clumps. This might imply that clumps have a high star formation efficiency (although they do not display unusually high specific star formation rates) and are not entirely gas dominated, with gas fractions no larger than that of their host galaxy (∼50%). Stellar feedback and disk instability torques funnelling gas towards the galaxy centre could contribute to the relatively low gas content. Alternatively, clumps could fall in a more standard star formation efficiency regime if their actual star-formation rates are lower than generally assumed. We find that clump star-formation rates derived with several different, plausible methods can vary by up to an order of magnitude. The lowest estimates would be compatible with a CO(5-4) non-detection even for main-sequence like values of star formation efficiency and gas content
Globular cluster systems and galaxy formation
Globular clusters are compact, gravitationally bound systems of up to a
million stars. The GCs in the Milky Way contain some of the oldest stars known,
and provide important clues to the early formation and continuing evolution of
our Galaxy. More generally, GCs are associated with galaxies of all types and
masses, from low-mass dwarf galaxies to the most massive early-type galaxies
which lie in the centres of massive galaxy clusters. GC systems show several
properties which connect tightly with properties of their host galaxies. For
example, the total mass of GCs in a system scales linearly with the dark matter
halo mass of its host galaxy. Numerical simulations are at the point of being
able to resolve globular cluster formation within a cosmological framework.
Therefore, GCs link a range of scales, from the physics of star formation in
turbulent gas clouds, to the large-scale properties of galaxies and their dark
matter. In this Chapter we review some of the basic observational approaches
for GC systems, some of their key observational properties, and describe how
GCs provide important clues to the formation of their parent galaxies.Comment: 32 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in the book "Reviews in
Frontiers of Modern Astrophysics: From Space Debris to Cosmology" (eds
Kabath, Jones and Skarka; publisher Springer Nature) funded by the European
Union Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership grant "Per Aspera Ad Astra Simul"
2017-1-CZ01-KA203-03556
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