1,177 research outputs found
P16-52. HIV-activated human plasmacytoid DCs induce Tregs through an indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase-dependent mechanism
International audiencen.
Managed moves: schools collaborating for collective gain
Government guidance in the United Kingdom encourages groups of schools to take collective responsibility for supporting and making provision for excluded pupils and those at risk of exclusion. Managed-moves are one way that some schools and authorities are enacting such guidance. This paper presents the results of an evaluation of one such scheme. The scheme, involving seven neighbouring secondary schools, was nearing its first year of completion. The paper draws primarily on interview data with pupils, parents and school staff to describe a number of positive outcomes associated with the scheme and to explore how these were achieved. We found that while some of these could be attributed directly to the managed-move, others arose from the more inclusive ethos and practices of particular schools. The concepts of tailored support, care and commitment emerged as strong themes that underpinned the various practical ways in which some schools in the cluster were able to re-engage 'at-risk' pupils. As managed moves become more widely practiced it will be important to remember that it is how the move proceeds and develops rather than the move itself that will ultimately make the difference for troubled and troublesome pupils
New UltraCool and Halo White Dwarf Candidates in SDSS Stripe 82
A 2.5 x 100 degree region along the celestial equator (Stripe 82) has been
imaged repeatedly from 1998 to 2005 by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. A new
catalogue of ~4 million light-motion curves, together with over 200 derived
statistical quantities, for objects in Stripe 82 brighter than r~21.5 has been
constructed by combining these data by Bramich et al. (2007). This catalogue is
at present the deepest catalogue of its kind. Extracting the ~130000 objects
with highest signal-to-noise ratio proper motions, we build a reduced proper
motion diagram to illustrate the scientific promise of the catalogue. In this
diagram disk and halo subdwarfs are well-separated from the cool white dwarf
sequence. Our sample of 1049 cool white dwarf candidates includes at least 8
and possibly 21 new ultracool H-rich white dwarfs (T_eff < 4000K) and one new
ultracool He-rich white dwarf candidate identified from their SDSS optical and
UKIDSS infrared photometry. At least 10 new halo white dwarfs are also
identified from their kinematics.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, published in MNRAS, minor text changes, final
versio
Light and Motion in SDSS Stripe 82: The Catalogues
We present a new public archive of light-motion curves in Sloan Digital Sky
Survey (SDSS) Stripe 82, covering 99 deg in right ascension from RA = 20.7 h to
3.3 h and spanning 2.52 deg in declination from Dec = -1.26 to 1.26 deg, for a
total sky area of ~249 sq deg. Stripe 82 has been repeatedly monitored in the
u, g, r, i and z bands over a seven-year baseline. Objects are cross-matched
between runs, taking into account the effects of any proper motion. The
resulting catalogue contains almost 4 million light-motion curves of stellar
objects and galaxies. The photometry are recalibrated to correct for varying
photometric zeropoints, achieving ~20 mmag and ~30 mmag root-mean-square (RMS)
accuracy down to 18 mag in the g, r, i and z bands for point sources and
extended sources, respectively. The astrometry are recalibrated to correct for
inherent systematic errors in the SDSS astrometric solutions, achieving ~32 mas
and ~35 mas RMS accuracy down to 18 mag for point sources and extended sources,
respectively.
For each light-motion curve, 229 photometric and astrometric quantities are
derived and stored in a higher-level catalogue. On the photometric side, these
include mean exponential and PSF magnitudes along with uncertainties, RMS
scatter, chi^2 per degree of freedom, various magnitude distribution
percentiles, object type (stellar or galaxy), and eclipse, Stetson and Vidrih
variability indices. On the astrometric side, these quantities include mean
positions, proper motions as well as their uncertainties and chi^2 per degree
of freedom. The here presented light-motion curve catalogue is complete down to
r~21.5 and is at present the deepest large-area photometric and astrometric
variability catalogue available.Comment: MNRAS accepte
Probing the Galactic Potential with Next-Generation Observations of Disk Stars
Near-future surveys promise a dramatic improvement in the number and
precision of astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic measurements of stars
in the Milky Way's disk. We examine the impact of such surveys on our
understanding of the Galaxy by "observing" particle realizations of
non-axisymmetric disk distributions orbiting in an axisymmetric halo with
appropriate errors and then attempting to recover the underlying potential
using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach. We demonstrate that the
azimuthally averaged gravitational force field in the Galactic plane--and
hence, to a lesser extent, the Galactic mass distribution--can be tightly
constrained over a large range of radii using a variety of types of surveys so
long as the error distribution of the measurements of the parallax, proper
motion and radial velocity are well-understood and the disk is surveyed
globally. One advantage of our method is that the target stars can be selected
non-randomly in real or apparent-magnitude space to ensure just such a global
sample without biasing the results. Assuming we can always measure the
line-of-sight velocity of a star with at least 1 km/s precision, we demonstrate
that the force field can be determined to better than ~1% for Galactocentric
radii in the range R=4-20 kpc We conclude that near-future surveys, like SIM
Lite, Gaia, and VERA, will provide the first precise mapping of the
gravitational force field in the region of the Galactic disk.Comment: 41 pages and 10 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
High-Redshift Quasars Found in Sloan Digital Sky Survey Commissioning Data III: A Color Selected Sample at i^*<20 in the Fall Equatorial Stripe
This is the third paper in a series aimed at finding high-redshift quasars
from five-color (u'g'r'i'z') imaging data taken along the Celestial Equator by
the SDSS during its commissioning phase. In this paper, we first present the
observations of 14 bright high-redshift quasars (3.66<z<4.77, i^*<20)
discovered in the SDSS Fall Equatorial Stripe, and the SDSS photometry of two
previously known high-redshift quasars in the same region of the sky. Combined
with the quasars presented in previous papers, we define a color-selected
flux-limited sample of 39 quasars at 3.6 < z < 5.0 and i^*<20, covering a total
effective area of 182 deg^2. From this sample, we estimate the average spectral
power law slope in the rest-frame ultraviolet for quasars at z~4 to be -0.79
with a standard deviation of 0.34, and the average rest-frame equivalent width
of the Ly alpha+N V emission line to be 69 A with a standard deviation of 18 A.
The selection completeness of this multicolor sample is determined from the
model colors of high-redshift quasars, taking into account the distributions of
emission line strengths, intrinsic continuum slope, the line and continuum
absorption from intervening material, and the effects of photometric errors.
The average completeness of this sample is about 75%. The selection function
calculated in this paper will be used to correct the incompleteness of this
color-selected sample and to derive the high-redshift quasar luminosity
function in a subsequent paper. In the Appendix, we present the observations of
an additional 18 faint quasars (3.57<z<4.80, 20.1<i^*<20.8) discovered in the
region on the sky that has been imaged twice. Several quasars presented in this
paper exhibit interesting properties, including a radio-loud quasar at z=4.77,
and a narrow-line quasar (FWHM = 1500 km s^-1) at z=3.57.Comment: AJ accepted (Jan 2001), with minor changes; high-resolution finding
charts available at http://www.sns.ias.edu/~fan/papers/q3.p
Target Selection for the SDSS-IV APOGEE-2 Survey
APOGEE-2 is a high-resolution, near-infrared spectroscopic survey observing
roughly 300,000 stars across the entire sky. It is the successor to APOGEE and
is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV (SDSS-IV). APOGEE-2 is expanding
upon APOGEE's goals of addressing critical questions of stellar astrophysics,
stellar populations, and Galactic chemodynamical evolution using (1) an
enhanced set of target types and (2) a second spectrograph at Las Campanas
Observatory in Chile. APOGEE-2 is targeting red giant branch (RGB) and red
clump (RC) stars, RR Lyrae, low-mass dwarf stars, young stellar objects, and
numerous other Milky Way and Local Group sources across the entire sky from
both hemispheres. In this paper, we describe the APOGEE-2 observational design,
target selection catalogs and algorithms, and the targeting-related
documentation included in the SDSS data releases.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures. Accepted to A
The luminosity density of red galaxies
A complete sample of 7.7 x 10(4) galaxies with five-band imaging and spectroscopic redshifts from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey is used to determine the fraction of the optical luminosity density of the local universe (redshifts 0.02 < z < 0.22) emitted by red galaxies. The distribution in the space of rest-frame color, central surface brightness, and concentration is shown to be highly clustered and bimodal; galaxies fall primarily into one of two distinct classes. One class is red, concentrated, and high in surface brightness; the other is bluer, less concentrated, and lower in central surface brightness. Elliptical and bulge-dominated galaxies preferentially belong to the red class. Even with a very restrictive definition of the red class that includes limits on color, surface brightness, and concentration, the class comprises roughly one-fifth of the number density of galaxies more luminous than 0.05L* and produces two-fifths of the total cosmic galaxy luminosity density at 0.7 mum. The natural interpretation is that a large fraction of the stellar mass density of the local universe is in very old stellar populations
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