2,919 research outputs found
On the Fractal Distribution of HII Regions in Disk Galaxies
In this work we quantify the degree to which star-forming events are clumped.
We apply a precise and accurate technique to calculate the correlation
dimension Dc of the distribution of HII regions in a sample of disk galaxies.
Our reliable results are distributed in the range 1.5<Dc<2.0. We get
significant variations in the fractal dimension among galaxies, contrary to a
universal picture sometimes claimed in literature. The faintest galaxies tend
to distribute their HII regions in more clustered (less uniform) patterns.
Moreover, the fractal dimension for the brightest HII regions within the same
galaxy seems to be smaller than for the faintest ones suggesting some kind of
evolutionary effect.Comment: 6 pages including 4 figures. To appear in Highlights of Spanish
Astrophysics V: Proceedings of the VIII Scientific Meeting of the Spanish
Astronomical Society held in Santander, July 7-11, 200
Regleprudence – at OIRA and Beyond
There are significant domains of legality within the administrative state that are mostly immune from judicial review and have mostly escaped the attention of legal theorists. While administrative law generally focuses on the products of agency action as they are reviewed by the judiciary, there are important aspects of regulatory activity that are legal or law-like but rarely interrogated by systematic analysis with reference to accounts about the role and nature of law. In this Article, we introduce a category of analysis we call regleprudence, a sibling of jurisprudence and legisprudence. Once we explore some regleprudential norms, we delve into one case study – the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and the legal work it undertakes through regulatory review – and gesture at how more general attention to regleprudence can improve our understanding of important corners of the Executive Branch
Regleprudence – at OIRA and Beyond
There are significant domains of legality within the administrative state that are mostly immune from judicial review and have mostly escaped the attention of legal theorists. While administrative law generally focuses on the products of agency action as they are reviewed by the judiciary, there are important aspects of regulatory activity that are legal or law-like but rarely interrogated by systematic analysis with reference to accounts about the role and nature of law. In this Article, we introduce a category of analysis we call regleprudence, a sibling of jurisprudence and legisprudence. Once we explore some regleprudential norms, we delve into one case study – the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and the legal work it undertakes through regulatory review – and gesture at how more general attention to regleprudence can improve our understanding of important corners of the Executive Branch
Review of the Brayton engine electrical subsystem design and computerized technique used to document wiring
Brayton engine electrical subsystem design and computerized technique used to document wirin
NGC 2548: clumpy spatial and kinematic structure in an intermediate-age galactic cluster
NGC 2548 is a 400-500 Myr old open cluster with evidence of spatial
substructures likely caused by its interaction with the Galactic disk. In this
work we use precise astrometric data from the Carte du Ciel - San Fernando
(CdC-SF) catalogue to study the clumpy structure in this cluster. We confirm
the fragmented structure of NGC 2548 but, additionally, the relatively high
precision of our kinematic data lead us to the first detection of substructures
in the proper motion space of a stellar cluster. There are three spatially
separated cores each of which has its own counterpart in the proper motion
distribution. The two main cores lie nearly parallel to the Galactic plane
whereas the third one is significantly fainter than the others and it moves
toward the Galactic plane separating from the rest of the cluster. We derive
core positions and proper motions, as well as the stars belonging to each core.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRA
A method for determining the radius of an open cluster from stellar proper motions
We propose a method for calculating the radius of an open cluster in an
objective way from an astrometric catalogue containing, at least, positions and
proper motions. It uses the minimum spanning tree (hereinafter MST) in the
proper motion space to discriminate cluster stars from field stars and it
quantifies the strength of the cluster-field separation by means of a
statistical parameter defined for the first time in this paper. This is done
for a range of different sampling radii from where the cluster radius is
obtained as the size at which the best cluster-field separation is achieved.
The novelty of this strategy is that the cluster radius is obtained
independently of how its stars are spatially distributed. We test the
reliability and robustness of the method with both simulated and real data from
a well-studied open cluster (NGC 188), and apply it to UCAC4 data for five
other open clusters with different catalogued radius values. NGC 188, NGC 1647,
NGC 6603 and Ruprecht 155 yielded unambiguous radius values of 15.2+/-1.8,
29.4+/-3.4, 4.2+/-1.7 and 7.0+/-0.3 arcmin, respectively. ASCC 19 and Collinder
471 showed more than one possible solution but it is not possible to know
whether this is due to the involved uncertainties or to the presence of complex
patterns in their proper motion distributions, something that could be inherent
to the physical object or due to the way in which the catalogue was sampled.Comment: 12 pages including 14 figures and 1 table. Accepted for publication
in MNRA
Constraining the photometric properties of MgII absorbing galaxies with the SDSS
Using a sample of nearly 700 quasars with strong (W_0(2796)>0.8 Angstrom)
MgII absorption lines detected in the Early Data Release of the SDSS, we
demonstrate the feasibility of measuring the photometric properties of the
absorber systems by stacking SDSS imaging data. As MgII lines can be observed
in the range 0.37<z_abs<2.2, the absorbing galaxies are in general not
identified in SDSS images, but they produce systematic light excesses around
QSOs which can be detected with a statistical analysis. In this Letter we
present a 6-sigma detection of this effect over the whole sample in i-band,
rising to 9.4-sigma for a low-redshift subsample with 0.37<z_abs<=0.82. We use
a control sample of QSOs without strong MgII absorption lines to quantify and
remove systematics with typical 10-20% accuracy. The signal varies as expected
as a function of absorber redshift. For the low z_abs subsample we can reliably
estimate the average luminosities per MgII absorber system in the g, r, and i
bands and find them to be compatible with a few-hundred-Myr old stellar
population of M_r ~ -21 in the rest frame. Colors are also consistent with
typical absorbing galaxies resembling local Sb-c spirals. Our technique does
not require any spectroscopic follow-up and does not suffer from confusion with
other galaxies arising along the line-of-sight. It will be applied to larger
samples and other line species in upcoming studies.Comment: Accepted on ApJ Letters, 5 pages, 2 figure
Molecular regulation of stem cell behavior during tissue repair and cancer formation
Oviedo will be presenting his work on identifying the mechanisms of adult stem cell fate determination based on their topographical location in the adult body. Understanding stem cell fate determination is crucial because tissue repair and neoplastic growth are greater in anterior than in posterior regions of adult animals. Despite its critical implications for stem cell biology, carcinogenesis and regenerative medicine, this physiological phenomenon has remained overlooked. Recent findings from his group provide intriguing evidence implying DNA repair mechanisms and cellular signaling through post-translational modifications regulate stem cell fate decision depending on their topographical location in the adult body. We have identified organ-specific cues and evolutionarily conserved cellular signaling pathways that can be therapeutically exploited to control stem cell behavior and cellular transformation in the complexity of the adult body
MgII absorption systems with W_0 > 0.1 \AA for a radio selected sample of 77 QSOs and their associated magnetic fields at high redshifts
We present a catalogue of MgII absorption systems obtained from high
resolution UVES/VLT data of 77 QSOs in the redshift range 0.6 < z < 2.0, and
down to an equivalent width W_0 > 0.1 \AA. The statistical properties of our
sample are found to be in agreement with those from previous work in the
literature. However, we point out that the previously observed increase with
redshift of dN/dz for weak absorbers, pertains exclusively to very weak
absorbers with W_0 < 0.1 \AA. Instead, dN/dz for absorbers with W_0 in the
range 0.1-0.3 \AA actually decreases with redshift, similarly to the case of
strong absorbers. We then use this catalogue to extend our earlier analysis of
the links between the Faraday Rotation Measure of the quasars and the presence
of intervening MgII absorbing systems in their spectra. In contrast to the case
with strong MgII absorption systems W_0 > 0.3 \AA, the weaker systems do not
contribute significantly to the observed Rotation Measure of the background
quasars. This is possibly due to the higher impact parameters of the weak
systems compared to strong ones, suggesting that the high column density
magnetized material that is responsible for the Faraday Rotation is located
within about 50 kpc of the galaxies. Finally, we show that this result also
rules out the possibility that some unexpected secondary correlation between
the quasar redshift and its intrinsic Rotation Measure is responsible for the
association of high Rotation Measure and strong intervening MgII absorption
that we have presented elsewhere, since this would have produced an equal
effect for the weak absorption line systems, which exhibit a very similar
distribution of quasar redshifts.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. 12 pages, 8 figure
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