Lens or Binary? Chandra Observations of the Wide Separation Broad Absorption Line Quasar Pair UM425

We have obtained a 110 ksec Chandra ACIS-S exposure of UM425, a pair of QSOs at z=1.47 separated by 6.5 arcsec, which show remarkably similar emission and broad absorption line (BAL) profiles in the optical/UV. Our 5000 count X-ray spectrum of UM425A (the brighter component) is well-fit with a power law (photon spectral index Gamma=2.0) partially covered by a hydrogen column of 3.8x10^22 cm^-2. The underlying power-law slope for this object and for other recent samples of BALQSOs is typical of radio-quiet quasars, lending credence to the hypothesis that BALs exist in every quasar. Assuming the same Gamma for the much fainter image of UM425B, we detect an obscuring column 5 times larger. We search for evidence of an appropriately large lensing mass in our Chandra image and find weak diffuse emission near the quasar pair, with an X-ray flux typical of a group of galaxies at redshift z ~ 0.6. From our analysis of archival HST WFPC2 and NICMOS images, we find no evidence for a luminous lensing galaxy, but note a 3-sigma excess of galaxies in the UM425 field with plausible magnitudes for a z=0.6 galaxy group. However, the associated X-ray emission does not imply sufficient mass to produce the observed image splitting. The lens scenario thus requires a dark (high M/L ratio) lens, or a fortuitous configuration of masses along the line of sight. UM425 may instead be a close binary pair of BALQSOs, which would boost arguments that interactions and mergers increase nuclear activity and outflows.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Lie Back and Take It: BDSM, Biomedicine and the Hospital Bed in the work of Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose

This article considers the position of the patient in a hospital bed and the ways in which artists with severe illnesses have utilised this. The hospital bed allows biomedicine full control and access to the body and renders the sick person as patient. Lying in bed becomes a position of passiveness, submission and vulnerability. In this article I explore the ways in which artists have worked with the duration of the hospital bed in order to re-imagine this endurance as a worthwhile activity towards self-ownership. The article discusses a number of works but focuses on Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose’s 1992-1995 retrospective 'Visiting Hours' (Santa Monica Museum of Art in 1992; New Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1994; and Boston Centre for Fine Art in 1995) in which the gallery is turned into a hospital displaying all of their visual and video art works and includes the artists themselves. I argue that their work denies the sick body as victim and resists the contextualising of the body as simply a machine. Flanagan/Rose are able to transform the position of patient from one of passivity and victimhood to a position in which agency exists and is performed

The JAM Suite - a Voice-enabled Network-based Virtual Band Application

The Java Audio Music-suite (J.A.M. for short) is a suite of applications that provides tools and audio processing utilities for musicians. It’s core functionality includes a means whereby musicians who are geographically dispersed can play music together. An additional utility determines the actual musical notes from a piece of music using Fourier Transform techniques. All of these functions are complemented by a voiceenabled, animated help agent that takes in voice commands using speech recognition and reports errors via text-to-speech technology

Evidence for the horizontal acquisition of murine AKR virogenes by recent horizontal infection of the germ line

Several recent reports (8, 10, 11, 13) have established the biological and molecular genetic similarity between the endogenous AKV virus of strain AKR, and an N-ecotropic endogenous virus found in the genome of feral Japanese mice, Mus musculus molossinus. The similarities are so striking as to suggest a common origin of these viruses, which are present in some, but not all, inbred mouse strains. The virogenes of AKR mice may have been acquired by either: (a) common descent of AKR (and other AKV(+) strains) from a common ancestor of AKR and molossinus animals, or (b) horizontal germ line infection of the AKR strains by molossinus virus at 1;he strain’s inception followed by fixation through inbreeding. The sexual descent model carries with it a prediction of relative consanguinity of the AKR strain and molossinus, whereas the horizontal infection model does not. We have examined the polymorphic allozyme (allelic isozyme) genotype of 51 nonvirus-related loci in 17 strains of mice including AKR, C58, BALB/c, Swiss, and molossinus. By comparing the composite allozyme genotype of different inbred and outbred mouse strains, the “genetic distance” statistic was derived. Genetic distance measures the degree of allelic substitution between populations and increases proportionately with the amount of time the populations have been reproductively isolated. The genetic distance computed between molossinus and AKR is large, nearly 5-10 times the distance between known related populations and strains (e.g., C57L vs. C57BL/6). Molossinus had a similarly large distance from AKV negative strains (Swiss, C57L) as it did from AKV- positive strains. Cellular DNA sequences that flank the integrated AKV provirus were analyzed by restriction enzyme digestion of liver DNA from molossinus, AKR, and additional inbred strains that express ecotropic murine leukemia virus. The integration flanks of three AKR provirus sequences, Akv-1, Akv-2, and a third uncharacterized sequence, were not evident in molossinus cell DNA, which contained at least six different proviral integration fragments. These data effectively exclude the interpretation of consanguinity of AKR and molossinus and support the notion of acquisition of the endogenous virus in AKR by horizontal infection of the molossinus virus

Resolving the wave-vector in negative refractive media: The sign of Z\sqrt{Z}

We address the general issue of resolving the wave-vector in complex electromagnetic media including negative refractive media. This requires us to make a physical choice for the sign of a square-root imposed merely by conditions of causality. By considering the analytic behaviour of the wave-vector in the complex plane, it is shown that there are a total of eight physically distinct cases in the four quadrants of two Riemann sheets.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, RevTe

Governing culture: legislators, interpreters and accountants

Cultural policy has become dominated by questions of how to account for the intangible value of government investments. This is as a result of longstanding developments within government’s approaches to policy making, most notably those influenced by practices of audit and accounting. This paper will outline these developments with reference to Peter Miller’s concept of calculative practices, and will argue two central points: first, that there are practical solutions to the problem of measuring the value of culture that connect central government discourses with the discourses of the cultural sector; and second, the paper will demonstrate how academic work has been central to this area of policy making. As a result of the centrality of accounting academics in cultural policy, for example in providing advice on the appropriate measurement tools and techniques, questions are raised about the role academia might take vis-à-vis public policy. Accounting professionals and academics not only provide technical expertise that informs state calculative practices, but also play a surveillance role through the audit and evaluation of government programmes, and act as interpreters in defining terms of performance measurement, success and failure. The paper therefore concludes by reflecting on recent work by Phillip Schlesinger to preserve academic integrity whilst allowing accounting scholars and academics influence and partnership in policy

The Case for Optically-Thick High Velocity Broad Line Region Gas in Active Galactic Nuclei

A combined analysis of the profiles of the main broad quasar emission lines in both Hubble Space Telescope and optical spectra shows that while the profiles of the strong UV lines are quite similar, there is frequently a strong increase in the Ly-alpha/H-alpha ratio in the high-velocity gas. We show that the suggestion that the high velocity gas is optically-thin presents many problems. We show that the relative strengths of the high velocity wings arise naturally in an optically-thick BLR component. An optically-thick model successfully explains the equivalent widths of the lines, the Ly-alpha/H-alpha ratios and flatter Balmer decrements in the line wings, the strengths of CIII] and the lambda 1400 blend, and the strong variability of high-velocity, high-ionization lines (especially HeII and HeI).Comment: 34 pages in AASTeX, including 10 pages of figures. Submitted to Astrophysical Journa

Gamma-ray bursts afterglows in magnetized stellar winds

Recent analytical and numerical work argue that successful relativistic Fermi acceleration requires a weak magnetization of the unshocked plasma, all the more so at high Lorentz factors. The present paper tests this conclusion by computing the afterglow of a gamma-ray burst outflow propagating in a magnetized stellar wind using "ab initio" principles regarding the microphysics of relativistic Fermi acceleration. It is shown that in magnetized environments, one expects a drop-out in the X-ray band on sub-day scales as the synchrotron emission of the shock heated electrons exits the frequency band. At later times, Fermi acceleration becomes operative when the blast Lorentz factor drops below a certain critical value, leading to the recovery of the standard afterglow light curve. Interestingly, the observed drop-out bears resemblance with the fast decay found in gamma-ray bursts early X-ray afterglows.Comment: version to appear as MNRAS Lett. -- improved discussion, references added -- 5 pages, 2 figure