The pre-ZAMS nature of Mol160/IRAS23385+6053 confirmed by Spitzer

Determining the timeline for the formation of massive YSOs requires the identification and characterisation of all the phases that a massive forming YSO undergoes. It is of particular interest to verify the observability of the phase in which the object is rapidly accreting while not yet igniting the fusion of hydrogen that marks the arrival on the ZAMS. One of the candidate prototypical objects for this phase is Mol160/IRAS23385+6053, which previous studies suggest it could be in a pre-Hot Core stage. We further investigate this issue by means of Spitzer imaging and spectroscopy in the 5-70 micron range. The dense core of Mol160/IRAS23385+6053, which up to now had only been detected at submm and mm wavelenghts has been revealed for the first time at 24 and 70 micron by Spitzer. The complete 24 micron -3.4 mm continuum cannot be fitted with a standard model of a Zero-Age Main-Sequence (ZAMS) star embedded in an envelope. A simple greybody fit yields a mass of 220 solar masses. The luminosity is slightly in excess of 3000 solar luminosities, which is a factor of 5 less than previous estimates when only IRAS fluxes were available between 20 and 100 micron. The source is under-luminous by the same factor with respect to UCHII regions or Hot-Cores of similar circumstellar mass, and simple models show that this is compatible with an earlier evolutionary stage. Spectroscopy between 5 and 40 microns revelas typical PDR/PIR conditions, where the required UV illumination may be provided by other sources revealed at 24 microns in the same region, and which can be plausibly modeled as moderately embedded intermediate-mass ZAMS stars. Our results strengthen the suggestion that the central core in Mol160/IRAS23385+6053 is a massive YSO actively accreting from its circumstellar envelope and which did not yet begin hydrogen fusion.Comment: Accepted by A&

FEATURE SELECTION APPLIED TO THE TIME-FREQUENCY REPRESENTATION OF MUSCLE NEAR-INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY (NIRS) SIGNALS: CHARACTERIZATION OF DIABETIC OXYGENATION PATTERNS

Diabetic patients might present peripheral microcirculation impairment and might benefit from physical training. Thirty-nine diabetic patients underwent the monitoring of the tibialis anterior muscle oxygenation during a series of voluntary ankle flexo-extensions by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). NIRS signals were acquired before and after training protocols. Sixteen control subjects were tested with the same protocol. Time-frequency distributions of the Cohen's class were used to process the NIRS signals relative to the concentration changes of oxygenated and reduced hemoglobin. A total of 24 variables were measured for each subject and the most discriminative were selected by using four feature selection algorithms: QuickReduct, Genetic Rough-Set Attribute Reduction, Ant Rough-Set Attribute Reduction, and traditional ANOVA. Artificial neural networks were used to validate the discriminative power of the selected features. Results showed that different algorithms extracted different sets of variables, but all the combinations were discriminative. The best classification accuracy was about 70%. The oxygenation variables were selected when comparing controls to diabetic patients or diabetic patients before and after training. This preliminary study showed the importance of feature selection techniques in NIRS assessment of diabetic peripheral vascular impairmen

IRAS 23385+6053: a candidate protostellar massive object

We present the results of a multi-line and continuum study towards the source IRAS 23385+6053,performed with the IRAM-30m telescope, the Plateau de Bure Interferometer, the Very Large Array Interferometer and the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. The new results confirm our earlier findings, namely that IRAS 23385+6053 is a good candidate high-mass protostellar object, precursor of an ultracompact H$_{II}$ region. The source is roughly composed of two regions: a molecular core $\sim0.03\div0.04$ pc in size, with a temperature of $\sim40$ K and an H$_{2}$ volume density of the order of 10$^{7}$ cm$^{-3}$, and an extended halo of diameter $\leq$0.4 pc, with an average kinetic temperature of $\sim 15$ K and H$_{2}$ volume density of the order of 10$^{5}$ cm$^{-3}$. The core temperature is much smaller than what is typically found in molecular cores of the same diameter surrounding massive ZAMS stars. We deduce that the core luminosity is between 150 and $1.6\times10^{4}L_{\odot}$, and we believe that the upper limit is near the ``true'' source luminosity. Moreover, by comparing the H$_{2}$ volume density obtained at different radii from the IRAS source, we find that the halo has a density profile of the type $n_{\rm H_{2}}\propto r^{-2.3}$. This suggests that the source is gravitationally unstable. Finally, we demonstrate that the temperature at the core surface is consistent with a core luminosity of $10^3 L_{\odot}$ and conclude that we might be observing a protostar still accreting material from its parental cloud, whose mass at present is $\sim 6 M_{\odot}$.Comment: 18 pages, 20 figure

Search for massive protostellar candidates in the southern hemisphere: I. Association with dense gas

(Abridged) We have observed CS and C17O lines, and 1.2 mm cont. emission towards a sample of 130 high-mass protostellar candidates with DEC<-30 deg. This is the first step of the southern extension of a project started more than a decade ago aimed at the identification of massive protostellar candidates. We selected from the IRAS PSC 429 sources which potentially are compact molecular clouds. The sample is divided into two groups: the 298 sources with [25-12]>0.57 and [60-12]>1.30 we call 'High' sources, the remaining 131 we call 'Low' sources. In this paper, we check the association with dense gas and dust in 130 'Low' sources. We find a detection rate of ca. 85% in CS, demonstrating a tight association with dense molecular clumps. Among the sources detected in CS, ca. 76% have also been detected in C17O and ca. 93% in the 1.2 mm cont. Mm-cont. maps show the presence of clumps with diameters 0.2-2 pc and masses from a few Msun to 10^5 Msun; H2 volume densities lie between ca. 10^{4.5} and 10^{5.5} cm^{-3}. The L(bol) are 10^3-10^6 Lsun, consistent with embedded high-mass objects. Based on our results and those found in the literature for other samples, we conclude that our sources are massive objects probably in a stage prior to the formation of an HII region. We propose a scenario in which 'High' and 'Low' sources are both made of a massive clump hosting a high-mass protostellar candidate and a nearby stellar cluster. The difference might be due to the fact that the IRAS 12mu flux, the best discriminant between the two groups, is dominated by the emission from the cluster in 'Lows' and from the massive protostellar object in 'Highs'.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astron. & Astroph.; 34 pages (incl. 14 figures and 8 tables

Many-body approach to infinite non-periodic systems: application to the surface of semi-infinite jellium

A method to implement the many-body Green function formalism in the GW approximation for infinite non periodic systems is presented. It is suitable to treat systems of known ``asymptotic'' properties which enter as boundary conditions, while the effects of the lower symmetry are restricted to regions of finite volume. For example, it can be applied to surfaces or localized impurities. We illustrate the method with a study of the surface of semi-infinite jellium. We report the dielectric function, the effective potential and the electronic self-energy discussing the effects produced by the screening and by the charge density profile near the surface.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure

Direct Estimate of Cirrus Noise in Herschel Hi-GAL Images

In Herschel images of the Galactic plane and many star forming regions, a major factor limiting our ability to extract faint compact sources is cirrus confusion noise, operationally defined as the "statistical error to be expected in photometric measurements due to confusion in a background of fluctuating surface brightness". The histogram of the flux densities of extracted sources shows a distinctive faint-end cutoff below which the catalog suffers from incompleteness and the flux densities become unreliable. This empirical cutoff should be closely related to the estimated cirrus noise and we show that this is the case. We compute the cirrus noise directly, both on Herschel images from which the bright sources have been removed and on simulated images of cirrus with statistically similar fluctuations. We connect these direct estimates with those from power spectrum analysis, which has been used extensively to predict the cirrus noise and provides insight into how it depends on various statistical properties and photometric operational parameters. We report multi-wavelength power spectra of diffuse Galactic dust emission from Hi-GAL observations at 70 to 500 microns within Galactic plane fields at l= 30 degrees and l= 59 degrees. We find that the exponent of the power spectrum is about -3. At 250 microns, the amplitude of the power spectrum increases roughly as the square of the median brightness of the map and so the expected cirrus noise scales linearly with the median brightness. Generally, the confusion noise will be a worse problem at longer wavelengths, because of the combination of lower angular resolution and the rising power spectrum of cirrus toward lower spatial frequencies, but the photometric signal to noise will also depend on the relative spectral energy distribution of the source compared to the cirrus.Comment: 4 pages (in journal), 3 figures, Astronomy and Astrophysics, accepted for publication 13 May 201

Shocks and PDRs in an intermediate mass star forming globule: the case of IC1396N

The dark globule IC1396N is a typical example of a star formation process induced by radiation driven implosion due to the strong UV field from a nearby O6 star. The IRAS source embedded in the globule and its associated molecular outflow have been observed with the Long Wavelength Spectrometer (LWS) on ISO revealing an extremely rich spectrum including: CO rotational lines from J=14-13 up to J=28-27, rotational lines from ortho-H2O, OH lines involving the first four rotational levels of both ladders, atomic (OI 63μm, OI 145μm) and ionic (CII 157μm, OIII 52μm, OIII 88μm) lines. A complex picture arises, where an externally illuminated PDR coexists with strong C-shocks within IC1396N and whose origin is not clear

First principle theory of correlated transport through nano-junctions

We report the inclusion of electron-electron correlation in the calculation of transport properties within an ab initio scheme. A key step is the reformulation of Landauer's approach in terms of an effective transmittance for the interacting electron system. We apply this framework to analyze the effect of short range interactions on Pt atomic wires and discuss the coherent and incoherent correction to the mean-field approach.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Two massive star-forming regions at early evolutionary stages

We report sensitive ATCA radio-continuum observations toward IRAS 15596-5301 and 16272-4837, two luminous objects (> 2x10^4 Lsun) thought to represent massive star-forming regions in early stages of evolution (due to previously undetected radio emission at the 1-sigma level of 2 mJy per beam). Also reported are 1.2-millimeter continuum and a series of molecular-line observations made with the SEST telescope. For IRAS 15596-5301, the observations reveal the presence of three distinct compact radio-continuum sources associated with a dense molecular core. We suggest that this core contains a cluster of B stars which are exciting compact HII regions that are in pressure equilibrium with the dense molecular surroundings. No radio continuum emission was detected from IRAS 16272-4837 (3-sigma limit of 0.2 mJy). However, a dense molecular core has been detected. The high luminosity and lack of radio emission from this massive core suggests that it hosts an embedded young massive protostar that is still undergoing an intense accretion phase. This scenario is supported by the observed characteristics of the line profiles and the presence of a bipolar outflow detected from observations of the SiO emission. We suggest that IRAS 16272-4837 is a bona fide massive star- forming region in a very early evolutionary stage, being the precursor of an ultra compact HII region.Comment: 25 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa

Long-term behaviour of a dam affected by alkali–silica reaction studied by a multi-scale model

This paper aims to employ a 2D thermo-mechanical multi-scale ASR model for the analysis of a concrete gravity dam in Western Switzerland. Simulation results are compared to the field measurements and observations. Analysis of the results reveals negligible effect of temperature variation on the ASR advancement. The difference in length between the upstream and the downstream faces is identified as the main source for the upstream drift at the level of the crest. Study of the structural effects reveals ASR-related expansion anisotropy and cracks alignment being more pronounced along the upstream part and the foundation. If the former is explained by the transmission of the self-weight, the latter is attributed to the constraining effect of the underlying rock