Luminosity Functions beyond the spectroscopic limit. I. Method and near-infrared LFs in the HDF-N and HDF-S

We have developed a Monte Carlo method to compute the luminosity function of galaxies, based on photometric redshifts, which takes into account the non-gaussianity of the probability functions, and the presence of degenerate solutions in redshift. In this paper we describe the method and the mock tests performed to check its reliability. The NIR luminosity functions and the redshift distributions are determined for near infrared subsamples on the HDF-N and HDF-S. The results on the evolution of the NIR LF, the stellar mass function, and the luminosity density, are presented and discussed in view of the implications for the galaxy formation models. The main results are the lack of substantial evolution of the bright end of the NIR LF and the absence of decline of the luminosity density up to a redshift z ~ 2, implying that most of the stellar population in massive galaxies was already in place at such redshift.Comment: 23 pages, 19 figures. Accepted for publication in A&A. No change

La pornographie féministe : une nouvelle forme pour un nouveau regard ?

La pornographie est un des genres cinématographiques les plus prolifiques qu’il soit. Et pourtant, il est encore difficile de trouver une pornographie qui ne soit pas façonnée par un regard masculin hétéronormé. Qu’en est-il du public féminin ? Quelle image donne-t-on du sexe ? C’est pour enfin pouvoir mettre en valeur le plaisir féminin, la sexualité telle que les femmes la voient et celle des minorités sexuelles que les féministes pro-sexe se sont engagés à changer les choses : plutôt que d’espérer voir mourir le porno, faisons le nôtre

Looking Through Taḥqīq Glasses: Early Modern Imagination and the Unveiling of Nature in Mīrzā Bīdil’s The Sinai of Knowledge

In this article I trace the contours of the notion of taḥqīq in the Ṭūr-i maʿrifat (“The Sinai of Knowledge”, ca. 1688), a poetic exploration of natural phenomena by the most important Indo-Persian poet-philosopher of the Mughal times, Mīrzā ‘Abd al-Qādir Bīdil (‘Azimabad 1644 - Delhi, 1720). As a preliminary excavation, I limit myself to collecting and briefly analysing all the textual loci where the term taḥqīq occurs in Bīdil’s masnavī, showing how “verification/realisation” is a key concept to make sense of Bīdil’s method of observation, via imagination, of the phenomenic unfolding of physis. In a connected perspective, I also conjure the several surprising points of contact between Bīdil’s poetic conceptualization of nature and some aspects of Renaissance and post-Renaissance Italian naturalistic thought