426 research outputs found
Crafting granular stories with child-like embodied, affective and sensory encounters that attune to the world's differential becoming
In this paper we explore what decentring the child in posthumanism does to our research practices, to our conceptualisations of and relationalities to the child. Crucially, we explore the imperative for other ways to encounter the child – that pursue a decolonising and de/recentralising agenda. We pursue tentacular lines of enquiry through a series of interwoven stories – some more familiar than others. It is by queering old narratives that new and unexpected stories concerning pedagogical documentation, sustainability and environmental education, and the child’s contaminated connection to ‘nature’ begin to emerge. This paper attempts to mobilise ‘the posthuman child’ as feral, an uncomfortable in-between that invites us to grapple with the dis-ease of life on a damaged planet (Tsing et al, 2017). Central to our storytelling is recycled, ‘natural’ materials found in a Reggio Emilia kindergarten in Norway. Specifically, cork has guided us; insisting that we take the non-innocence of matter to the heart of enquiries. We do this to illustrate the potential of feminist new materialism to respond with situated (Haraway, 2004), embodied, affective insights and provocations that might offer ways to consume, cohabit and wrestle in more care-full ways with the Anthropocene ecologies that we are intricately and endlessly enmeshed in
Assessment of Models of Galactic Thermal Dust Emission Using COBE/FIRAS and COBE/DIRBE Observations
Accurate modeling of the spectrum of thermal dust emission at millimeter
wavelengths is important for improving the accuracy of foreground subtraction
for CMB measurements, for improving the accuracy with which the contributions
of different foreground emission components can be determined, and for
improving our understanding of dust composition and dust physics. We fit four
models of dust emission to high Galactic latitude COBE/FIRAS and COBE/DIRBE
observations from 3 millimeters to 100 microns and compare the quality of the
fits. We consider the two-level systems model because it provides a physically
motivated explanation for the observed long wavelength flattening of the dust
spectrum and the anticorrelation between emissivity index and dust temperature.
We consider the model of Finkbeiner, Davis, and Schlegel because it has been
widely used for CMB studies, and the generalized version of this model recently
applied to Planck data by Meisner and Finkbeiner. For comparison we have also
fit a phenomenological model consisting of the sum of two graybody components.
We find that the two-graybody model gives the best fit and the FDS model gives
a significantly poorer fit than the other models. The Meisner and Finkbeiner
model and the two-level systems model remain viable for use in Galactic
foreground subtraction, but the FIRAS data do not have sufficient
signal-to-noise ratio to provide a strong test of the predicted spectrum at
millimeter wavelengths.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap
Determination of the Far-Infrared Cosmic Background Using COBE/DIRBE and WHAM Data
Determination of the cosmic infrared background (CIB) at far infrared
wavelengths using COBE/DIRBE data is limited by the accuracy to which
foreground interplanetary and Galactic dust emission can be modeled and
subtracted. Previous determinations of the far infrared CIB (e.g., Hauser et
al. 1998) were based on the detection of residual isotropic emission in skymaps
from which the emission from interplanetary dust and the neutral interstellar
medium were removed. In this paper we use the Wisconsin H-alpha Mapper (WHAM)
Northern Sky Survey as a tracer of the ionized medium to examine the effect of
this foreground component on determination of the CIB. We decompose the DIRBE
far infrared data for five high Galactic latitude regions into H I and H-alpha
correlated components and a residual component. We find the H-alpha correlated
component to be consistent with zero for each region, and we find that addition
of an H-alpha correlated component in modeling the foreground emission has
negligible effect on derived CIB results. Our CIB detections and 2 sigma upper
limits are essentially the same as those derived by Hauser et al. and are given
by nu I_nu (nW m-2 sr-1) < 75, < 32, 25 +- 8, and 13 +- 3 at 60, 100, 140, and
240 microns, respectively. Our residuals have not been subjected to a detailed
anisotropy test, so our CIB results do not supersede those of Hauser et al. We
derive upper limits on the 100 micron emissivity of the ionized medium that are
typically about 40% of the 100 micron emissivity of the neutral atomic medium.
This low value may be caused in part by a lower dust-to-gas mass ratio in the
ionized medium than in the neutral medium, and in part by a shortcoming of
using H-alpha intensity as a tracer of far infrared emission.Comment: 38 pages, 8 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap
Three-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Foreground Polarization
We present a full-sky model of polarized Galactic microwave emission based on
three years of observations by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP)
at frequencies from 23 to 94 GHz. The model compares maps of the Stokes Q and U
components from each of the 5 WMAP frequency bands in order to separate
synchrotron from dust emission, taking into account the spatial and frequency
dependence of the synchrotron and dust components. This simple two-component
model of the interstellar medium accounts for at least 97% of the polarized
emission in the WMAP maps of the microwave sky. Synchrotron emission dominates
the polarized foregrounds at frequencies below 50 GHz, and is comparable to the
dust contribution at 65 GHz. The spectral index of the synchrotron component,
derived solely from polarization data, is -3.2 averaged over the full sky, with
a modestly flatter index on the Galactic plane. The synchrotron emission has
mean polarization fraction 2--4% in the Galactic plane and rising to over 20%
at high latitude, with prominent features such as the North Galactic Spur more
polarized than the diffuse component. Thermal dust emission has polarization
fraction 1% near the Galactic center, rising to 6% at the anti-center. Diffuse
emission from high-latitude dust is also polarized with mean fractional
polarization 0.036 +/- 0.011.Comment: 9 pages with 8 figures. For higher quality figures, see the version
posted at http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/map/dr2/map_bibliography.cf
The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Source Catalog
We present the list of point sources found in the WMAP 5-year maps. The
technique used in the first-year and three-year analysis now finds 390 point
sources, and the five-year source catalog is complete for regions of the sky
away from the galactic plane to a 2 Jy limit, with SNR > 4.7 in all bands in
the least covered parts of the sky. The noise at high frequencies is still
mainly radiometer noise, but at low frequencies the CMB anisotropy is the
largest uncertainty. A separate search of CMB-free V-W maps finds 99 sources of
which all but one can be identified with known radio sources. The sources seen
by WMAP are not strongly polarized. Many of the WMAP sources show significant
variability from year to year, with more than a 2:1 range between the minimum
and maximum fluxes.Comment: 31 pages Latex with 4 embedded figures. Version accepted by the ApJ
Supplement
Nine-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Parameter Results
We present cosmological parameter constraints based on the final nine-year
WMAP data, in conjunction with additional cosmological data sets. The WMAP data
alone, and in combination, continue to be remarkably well fit by a
six-parameter LCDM model. When WMAP data are combined with measurements of the
high-l CMB anisotropy, the BAO scale, and the Hubble constant, the densities,
Omegabh2, Omegach2, and Omega_L, are each determined to a precision of ~1.5%.
The amplitude of the primordial spectrum is measured to within 3%, and there is
now evidence for a tilt in the primordial spectrum at the 5sigma level,
confirming the first detection of tilt based on the five-year WMAP data. At the
end of the WMAP mission, the nine-year data decrease the allowable volume of
the six-dimensional LCDM parameter space by a factor of 68,000 relative to
pre-WMAP measurements. We investigate a number of data combinations and show
that their LCDM parameter fits are consistent. New limits on deviations from
the six-parameter model are presented, for example: the fractional contribution
of tensor modes is limited to r<0.13 (95% CL); the spatial curvature parameter
is limited to -0.0027 (+0.0039/-0.0038); the summed mass of neutrinos is <0.44
eV (95% CL); and the number of relativistic species is found to be 3.84+/-0.40
when the full data are analyzed. The joint constraint on Neff and the
primordial helium abundance agrees with the prediction of standard Big Bang
nucleosynthesis. We compare recent PLANCK measurements of the
Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect with our seven-year measurements, and show their
mutual agreement. Our analysis of the polarization pattern around temperature
extrema is updated. This confirms a fundamental prediction of the standard
cosmological model and provides a striking illustration of acoustic
oscillations and adiabatic initial conditions in the early universe.Comment: 32 pages, 12 figures, v3: Version accepted to Astrophysical Journal
Supplement Series. Includes improvements in response to referee and
community; corrected 3 entries in Table 10, (w0 & wa model). See the Legacy
Archive for Microwave Background Data Analysis (LAMBDA):
http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/map/current/ for further detai
Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe Observations: Source Catalog
We present the list of point sources found in the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) five-year maps. The technique used in the first-year and three-year analyses now finds 390 point sources, and the five-year source catalog is complete for regions of the sky away from the Galactic plane to a 2 Jy limit, with SNR > 4.7 in all bands in the least covered parts of the sky. The noise at high frequencies is still mainly radiometer noise, but at low frequencies the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy is the largest uncertainty. A separate search of CMB-free V-W maps finds 99 sources of which all but one can be identified with known radio sources. The sources seen by WMAP are not strongly polarized. Many of the WMAP sources show significant variability from year to year, with more than a 2: 1 range between the minimum and maximum fluxes.NASA NNG05GE76G, NNX07AL75G S01, LTSA03-000-0090, ATPNNG04GK55G, ADP03-0000-092Astronom
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