18,606 research outputs found
Probing the Galaxy I. The galactic structure towards the galactic pole
Observations of (B-V) colour distributions towards the galactic poles are
compared with those obtained from synthetic colour-magnitude diagrams to
determine the major constituents in the disc and spheroid. The disc is
described with four stellar sub-populations: the young, intermediate, old, and
thick disc populations, which have respectively scale heights of 100 pc, 250
pc, 0.5 kpc, and 1.0 kpc. The spheroid is described with stellar contributions
from the bulge and halo. The bulge is not well constrained with the data
analyzed in this study. A non-flattened power-law describes the observed
distributions at fainter magnitudes better than a deprojected R^{1/4}-law.
Details about the age, metallicity, and normalizations are listed in Table 1.
The star counts and the colour distributions from the stars in the intermediate
fields towards the galactic anti-centre are well described with the stellar
populations mentioned above. Arguments are given that the actual solar offset
is about 15 pc north from the galactic plane.Comment: 11 pages TeX, 4 separate pages with additional figures, accepted for
publication in A&
Validation of the English and Chinese versions of the Quick-FLIC quality of life questionnaire.
A useful measure of quality of life should be easy and quick to complete. Recently, we reported the development and validation of a shortened Chinese version of the Functional Living Index-Cancer (FLIC), which we called the Quick-FLIC. In the present study of 327 English-speaking and 221 Chinese-speaking cancer patients, we validated the English version of the Quick-FLIC and further assessed the Chinese version. The 11 Quick-FLIC items were administered alongside the 11 remaining items of the full FLIC, but there appeared to be little context effect. Validity of the English version of the Quick-FLIC was attested by its strong correlation with two other measures of quality of life, and its ability to detect differences between patients with different performance status and treatment status (each P<0.001). Its internal consistency (alpha=0.86) and test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation=0.76) were also satisfactory. The measure was responsive to changes in performance status (P<0.001). The Chinese version showed similar characteristics. The Quick-FLIC behaved in ways that are highly comparable with the FLIC, even though the Quick-FLIC comprised only 11 items whereas the FLIC comprised 22. Further research is required to see whether the use of shorter instruments can improve data quality and response rates, but the fact that shorter instruments place less burden on the patients is itself inherently important
Radio Polarization Observations of the Snail: A Crushed Pulsar Wind Nebula in G327.1-1.1 with a Highly Ordered Magnetic Field
Pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) are suggested to be acceleration sites of cosmic
rays in the Galaxy. While the magnetic field plays an important role in the
acceleration process, previous observations of magnetic field configurations of
PWNe are rare, particularly for evolved systems. We present a radio
polarization study of the "Snail" PWN inside the supernova remnant G327.1-1.1
using the Australia Telescope Compact Array. This PWN is believed to have been
recently crushed by the supernova (SN) reverse shock. The radio morphology is
composed of a main circular body with a finger-like protrusion. We detected a
strong linear polarization signal from the emission, which reflects a highly
ordered magnetic field in the PWN and is in contrast to the turbulent
environment with a tangled magnetic field generally expected from
hydrodynamical simulations. This could suggest that the characteristic
turbulence scale is larger than the radio beam size. We built a toy model to
explore this possibility, and found that a simulated PWN with a turbulence
scale of about one-eighth to one-sixth of the nebula radius and a pulsar wind
filling factor of 50--75% provides the best match to observations. This implies
substantial mixing between the SN ejecta and pulsar wind material in this
system.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures, Accepted for publication in Ap
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