7,707 research outputs found
Galaxy number counts- IV. surveying the Herschel deep field in the near-infrared
(abridged) We present results from two new near-infrared imaging surveys. One
covers 47.2 arcmin^2 to K(3\sigma)<20 whilst a second, deeper survey covers a
sub-area of 1.8 arcmin^2 to K(3\sigma)<22.75. Over the entire area we have
extremely deep UBRI photometry. Our K- counts are consistent with the
predictions of non-evolving models with 0 < q0 <0.5. The K-selected (B-K)
galaxy colour distributions move sharply bluewards fainter than K~20 and at at
brighter magnitudes (K<20) our observed colour distributions indicate a
deficiency of red, early-type galaxies at z~1 in comparison with passively
evolving models. This implies either a pure luminosity evolution (PLE) model
with a low level of continuing star-formation following an an initial burst, or
dynamical merging. At fainter magnitudes, the continuing bluewards trend
observed in (B-K) can be explained purely in terms of passively evolving PLE
models. Our observed numbers of (I-K)>4 galaxies at K<20 exhibit the same
deficiency, suggesting that at least part of the larger deficit observed in
(B-K) at K<20 may be due to star-formation rather than dynamical merging.
Finally, as we and others have noted, the number-redshift distribution at
18<K<19 of recent, deep K- selected redshift surveys is well fitted by
non-evolving models; passively evolving models with a Salpeter or Scalo initial
mass functions overpredict the numbers of galaxies with z>1. Dynamical merging
is one possible solution to reduce the numbers of these galaxies but a
dwarf-dominated IMF for early-type galaxies could offer an alternative
explanation; we show that this model reproduces both the optical-infrared
colour distributions and the K- band galaxy counts.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, revised version, requires astrobib.sty,
mn-abs.sty, submitted to MNRA
New Pulsating DB White Dwarf Stars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
We are searching for new He atmosphere white dwarf pulsators (DBVs) based on
the newly found white dwarf stars from the spectra obtained by the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey. DBVs pulsate at hotter temperature ranges than their better
known cousins, the H atmosphere white dwarf pulsators (DAVs or ZZ Ceti stars).
Since the evolution of white dwarf stars is characterized by cooling,
asteroseismological studies of DBVs give us opportunities to study white dwarf
structure at a different evolutionary stage than the DAVs. The hottest DBVs are
thought to have neutrino luminosities exceeding their photon luminosities
(Winget et al. 2004), a quantity measurable through asteroseismology.
Therefore, they can also be used to study neutrino physics in the stellar
interior. So far we have discovered nine new DBVs, doubling the number of
previously known DBVs. Here we report the new pulsators' lightcurves and power
spectra.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures, 3 tables, ApJ accepte
Gamma-ray bursts and X-ray melting of material as a potential source of chondrules and planets
The intense radiation from a gamma-ray burst (GRB) is shown to be capable of
melting stony material at distances up to 300 light years which subsequently
cool to form chondrules. These conditions were created in the laboratory for
the first time when millimeter sized pellets were placed in a vacuum chamber in
the white synchrotron beam at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility
(ESRF). The pellets were rapidly heated in the X-ray and gamma-ray furnace to
above 1400 C melted and cooled. This process heats from the inside unlike
normal furnaces. The melted spherical samples were examined with a range of
techniques and found to have microstructural properties similar to the
chondrules that come from meteorites. This experiment demonstrates that GRBs
can melt precursor material to form chondrules that may subsequently influence
the formation of planets. This work extends the field of laboratory
astrophysics to include high power synchrotron sources.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figures. Proceedings of the 5th INTEGRAL Workshop, Munich
16-20 February 2004. High resolution figures available at
http://bermuda.ucd.ie/%7Esmcbreen/papers/duggan_01.pd
Revealing the Young Starburst in Haro 3 with Radio and Infrared Imaging
The Wolf-Rayet galaxy Haro 3 (Mrk 35, NGC 3353) was observed at the near-IR
and radio wavelengths as part of ongoing program to study the earliest stages
of starbursts. These observations confirm that the current episode of star
formation is dominated by a single region (region A). While there are knots of
recent (~10 Myr) star formation outside of region A, the sources of ionizing
radiation as observed in both radio and Br-gamma observations are almost
exclusively associated with region A. The derived ionizing flux implies a star
formation rate of ~0.6 solar masses per year localized within a radius of ~0.1
kpc. A comparison with observations from HST indicates that one or more of the
star clusters in region A are optically obscured. The star clusters in region A
have ages at least as young as ~5 Myr, and possibly as young as ~0.1 Myr. The
star cluster that appears to be the youngest also exhibits a near-IR excess in
its colors, possibly indicating natal dust in very close proximity to the
ionizing stars. The difference between optical- and radio-determined ionizing
fluxes as well as the near-IR colors indicate an average extinction value of
A_V ~2.5 in region A. The total stellar mass associated with the current
starburst in region A is inferred from both the near-IR and radio observations
to be ~10^6 solar masses. The other main stellar concentrations observed in the
near-IR (Regions B1 and B2) are somewhat older than region A, with ages ~8-10
Myr, and the near-IR observations indicate they have stellar masses of ~8x10^4
and ~2x10^4 solar masses, respectively.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures, to appear in AJ August 200
Evidence of Substructure in the Cluster of Galaxies A3558
We investigate the dynamical properties of the cluster of galaxies A3558
(Shapley 8). Studying a region of one square degree ( 3 Mpc) centered
on the cluster cD galaxy, we have obtained a statistically complete photometric
catalog with positions and magnitudes of 1421 galaxies (down to a limiting
magnitude of ). This catalog has been matched to the recent velocity
data obtained by Mazure et al. (1997) and from the literature, yielding a
radial velocity catalog containing 322 galaxies. Our analysis shows that the
position/velocity space distribution of galaxies shows significant
substructure. A central bimodal core detected previously in preliminary studies
is confirmed by using the Adaptive Kernel Technique and Wavelet Analysis. We
show that this central bimodal subtructure is nevertheless composed of a
projected feature, kinematically unrelated to the cluster, plus a group of
galaxies probably in its initial merging phase into a relaxed core. The cD
velocity offset with respect to the average cluster redshift, reported earlier
by several authors, is completely eliminated as a result of our dynamical
analysis. The untangling of the relaxed core component also allows a better,
more reliable determination of the central velocity dispersion, which in turn
eliminates the ``-problem'' for A3558. The cluster also shows a
``preferential'' distribution of subclumps coinciding with the direction of the
major axis position angle of the cD galaxy and of the central X-ray emission
ellipsoidal distribution, in agreement with an anisotropic merger scenario.Comment: 35 pages in latex, 17 figures in Postscript, accepted for publication
in the Astrophysical Journa
The Holocene history of the North American Monsoon: 'known knowns' and 'known unknowns' in understanding its spatial and temporal complexity
Evidence for climatic change across the North American Monsoon (NAM) and adjacent areas is reviewed, drawing on continental and marine records and the application of climate models. Patterns of change at 12,000, 9000, 6000 and 4000 cal yr BP are presented to capture the nature of change from the Younger Dryas (YD) and through the mid-Holocene. At the YD, conditions were cooler overall, wetter in the north and drier in the south, while moving into the Holocene wetter conditions became established in the south and then spread north as the NAM strengthened. Until c. 8,000 cal yr BP, the Laurentide Ice Sheet influenced precipitation in the north by pushing the Bermuda High further south. The peak extent of the NAM seems to have occurred around 6000 cal yr BP. 4000 cal yr BP marks the start of important changes across the NAM region, with drying in the north and the establishment of the clear differences between the summer-rain dominated south and central areas and the north, where winter rain is more important. This differentiation between south and north is crucial to understanding many climate responses across the NAM. This increasing variability is coincident with the declining influence of orbital forcing. 4000 cal yr BP also marks the onset of significant anthropogenic activity in many areas. For the last 2000 years, the focus is on higher temporal resolution change, with strong variations across the region. The Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) is characterised by centennial scale ‘megadrought’ across the southwest USA, associated with cooler tropical Pacific SSTs and persistent La Niña type conditions. Proxy data from southern Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean reveal generally wetter conditions, whereas records from the highlands of central Mexico and much of the Yucatan are typified by long -term drought. The Little Ice Age (LIA), in the north, was characterised by cooler, wetter winter conditions that have been linked with increased frequency of El Niño’s. Proxy records in the central and southern regions reveal generally dry LIA conditions, consistent with cooler SSTs in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. This synthesis demonstrates that in some periods, one major forcing can dominate across the whole area (e.g. insolation in the early-mid Holocene), but at other times there is strong variability in patterns of change due to the differential impact of forcings such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) on precipitation seasonality
Coordination between proteasome impairment and caspase activation leading to TAU pathology: neuroprotection by cAMP
Neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) are hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The main component of NFTs is TAU, a highly soluble microtubule-associated protein. However, when TAU is cleaved at Asp421 by caspases it becomes prone to aggregation leading to NFTs. What triggers caspase activation resulting in TAU cleavage remains unclear. We investigated in rat cortical neurons a potential coordination between proteasome impairment and caspase activation. We demonstrate that upon proteasome inhibition, the early accumulation of detergent-soluble ubiquitinated (SUb) proteins paves the way to caspase activation and TAU pathology. This occurs with two drugs that inhibit the proteasome by different means: the product of inflammation prostaglandin J2 (PGJ2) and epoxomicin. Our results pinpoint a critical early event, that is, the buildup of SUb proteins that contributes to caspase activation, TAU cleavage, TAU/Ub-protein aggregation and neuronal death. Furthermore, to our knowledge, we are the first to demonstrate that elevating cAMP in neurons with dibutyryl-cAMP (db-cAMP) or the lipophilic peptide PACAP27 prevents/ diminishes caspase activation, TAU cleavage and neuronal death induced by PGJ2, as long as these PGJ2-induced changes are moderate. db-cAMP also stimulated proteasomes, and mitigated proteasome inhibition induced by PGJ2. We propose that targeting cAMP/PKA to boost proteasome activity in a sustainable manner could offer an effective approach to avoid early accumulation of SUb proteins and later caspase activation, and TAU cleavage, possibly preventing/delaying AD neurodegeneration
Using Functional Traits to Model Annual Plant Community Dynamics
Predicting the response of biological communities to changes in the environment or management is a fundamental pursuit of community ecology. Meeting this challenge requires the integration of multiple processes: habitat filtering, niche differentiation, biotic interactions, competitive exclusion, and stochastic demographic events. Most approaches to this long-standing problem focus either on the role of the environment, using trait-based filtering approaches, or on quantifying biotic interactions with process-based community dynamics models. We introduce a novel approach that uses functional traits to parametrise a process-based model. By combining the two approaches we make use of the extensive literature on traits and community filtering as a convenient means of reducing the parametrisation requirements of a complex population dynamics model whilst retaining the power to capture the processes underlying community assembly. Using arable weed communities as a case study, we demonstrate that this approach results in predictions that show realistic distributions of traits and that trait selection predicted by our simulations is consistent with in-field observations. We demonstrate that trait-based filtering approaches can be combined with process-based models to derive the emergent distribution of traits. While initially developed to predict the impact of crop management on functional shifts in weed communities, our approach has the potential to be applied to other annual plant communities if the generality of relationships between traits and model parameters can be confirmed
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