Effects of a Cut, Lorentz-Boosted sky on the Angular Power Spectrum

The largest fluctuation in the observed CMB temperature field is the dipole, its origin being usually attributed to the Doppler Effect - the Earth's velocity with respect to the CMB rest frame. The lowest order boost correction to temperature multipolar coefficients appears only as a second order correction in the temperature power spectrum, $C_{\ell}$. Since v/c - 10-3, this effect can be safely ignored when estimating cosmological parameters [4-7]. However, by cutting our galaxy from the CMB sky we induce large-angle anisotropies in the data. In this case, the corrections to the cut-sky $C_{\ell}$s show up already at first order in the boost parameter. In this paper we investigate this issue and argue that this effect might turn out to be important when reconstructing the power spectrum from the cut-sky data.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figur

Real Space Approach to CMB deboosting

The effect of our Galaxy's motion through the Cosmic Microwave Background rest frame, which aberrates and Doppler shifts incoming photons measured by current CMB experiments, has been shown to produce mode-mixing in the multipole space temperature coefficients. However, multipole space determinations are subject to many difficulties, and a real-space analysis can provide a straightforward alternative. In this work we describe a numerical method for removing Lorentz- boost effects from real-space temperature maps. We show that to deboost a map so that one can accurately extract the temperature power spectrum requires calculating the boost kernel at a finer pixelization than one might naively expect. In idealized cases that allow for easy comparison to analytic results, we have confirmed that there is indeed mode mixing among the spherical harmonic coefficients of the temperature. We find that using a boost kernel calculated at Nside=8192 leads to a 1% bias in the binned boosted power spectrum at l~2000, while individual Cls exhibit ~5% fluctuations around the binned average. However, this bias is dominated by pixelization effects and not the aberration and Doppler shift of CMB photons that causes the fluctuations. Performing analysis on maps with galactic cuts does not induce any additional error in the boosted, binned power spectra over the full sky analysis. For multipoles that are free of resolution effects, there is no detectable deviation between the binned boosted and unboosted spectra. This result arises because the power spectrum is a slowly varying function of and does not show that, in general, Lorentz boosts can be neglected for other cosmological quantities such as polarization maps or higher-point functions.Comment: 8 pages, submitted to MNRA

Systematic review of the efficacy of antiemetics in the treatment of nausea in patients with far advanced cancer

Objectives: To systematically review studies of antiemetics used in the treatment of nausea in patients with far-advanced cancer. Data sources: Randomized controlled trials (RCT) and uncontrolled studies identified by electronic and hand searching. Review methods: Identified studies were appraised for quality and effect size. Results: Of 21 studies included, 2 were systematic reviews, 7 were RCT and 12 were uncontrolled studies or case series. Differences in interventions and outcomes amongst the RCT precluded any quantitative data synthesis and all seven studies were prone to bias. Whereas uncontrolled studies indicated a high response rate to standard regimens (75-93% for both nausea and vomiting), RCT showed much lower response rates to these agents (23-36% for nausea, 18-52% for vomiting). The two methods of antiemetic choice (choice based either on the inferred mechanism or empirical) were equally effective. There is reasonably strong evidence for the use of metoclopramide in cancer-associated dyspepsia and steroids in malignant bowel obstruction. There was conflicting evidence about the efficacy of serotonin antagonists compared with standard treatments (e.g. metoclopramide, dopamine antagonists and dexamethasone). There was little or no evidence of the efficacy of some commonly used and seemingly effective drugs such as haloperidol, cyclizine, and methotrimeprazine. Conclusion: Evidence supporting the existing consensus-based guidelines for management of nausea and vomiting in advanced cancer is sparse. Current approaches to treatment based on the neuropharmacology of the emetic pathway may be inappropriate in this setting. Well-designed studies of the impact of "standard" management and novel agents on nausea and vomiting in palliative populations are needed

Mid-J CO Emission in Nearby Seyfert Galaxies

We study for the first time the complete sub-millimeter spectra (450 GHz to 1550 GHz) of a sample of nearby active galaxies observed with the SPIRE Fourier Transform Spectrometer (SPIRE/FTS) onboard Herschel. The CO ladder (from Jup = 4 to 12) is the most prominent spectral feature in this range. These CO lines probe warm molecular gas that can be heated by ultraviolet photons, shocks, or X-rays originated in the active galactic nucleus or in young star-forming regions. In these proceedings we investigate the physical origin of the CO emission using the averaged CO spectral line energy distribution (SLED) of six Seyfert galaxies. We use a radiative transfer model assuming an isothermal homogeneous medium to estimate the molecular gas conditions. We also compare this CO SLED with the predictions of photon and X-ray dominated region (PDR and XDR) models.Comment: Proceedings of the Torus Workshop 2012 held at the University of Texas at San Antonio, 5-7 December 2012. C. Packham, R. Mason, and A. Alonso-Herrero (eds.); 6 pages, 3 figure

How Bulk Sensitive is Hard X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy: Accounting for the Cathode-Electrolyte Interface when Addressing Oxygen Redox.

Sensitivity to the "bulk" oxygen core orbital makes hard X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (HAXPES) an appealing technique for studying oxygen redox candidates. Various studies have reported an additional O 1s peak (530-531 eV) at high voltages, which has been considered a direct signature of the bulk oxygen redox process. Here, we find the emergence of a 530.4 eV O 1s HAXPES peak for three model cathodes-Li2MnO3, Li-rich NMC, and NMC 442-that shows no clear link to oxygen redox. Instead, the 530.4 eV peak for these three systems is attributed to transition metal reduction and electrolyte decomposition in the near-surface region. Claims of oxygen redox relying on photoelectron spectroscopy must explicitly account for the surface sensitivity of this technique and the extent of the cathode degradation layer

Herschel SPIRE-FTS Observations of Excited CO and [CI] in the Antennae (NGC 4038/39): Warm and Cold Molecular Gas

We present Herschel SPIRE-FTS observations of the Antennae (NGC 4038/39), a well studied, nearby ($22$ Mpc) ongoing merger between two gas rich spiral galaxies. We detect 5 CO transitions ($J=4-3$ to $J=8-7$), both [CI] transitions and the [NII]$205\mu m$ transition across the entire system, which we supplement with ground based observations of the CO $J=1-0$, $J=2-1$ and $J=3-2$ transitions, and Herschel PACS observations of [CII] and [OI]$63\mu m$. Using the CO and [CI] transitions, we perform both a LTE analysis of [CI], and a non-LTE radiative transfer analysis of CO and [CI] using the radiative transfer code RADEX along with a Bayesian likelihood analysis. We find that there are two components to the molecular gas: a cold ($T_{kin}\sim 10-30$ K) and a warm ($T_{kin} \gtrsim 100$ K) component. By comparing the warm gas mass to previously observed values, we determine a CO abundance in the warm gas of $x_{CO} \sim 5\times 10^{-5}$. If the CO abundance is the same in the warm and cold gas phases, this abundance corresponds to a CO $J=1-0$ luminosity-to-mass conversion factor of $\alpha_{CO} \sim 7 \ M_{\odot}{pc^{-2} \ (K \ km \ s^{-1})^{-1}}$in the cold component, similar to the value for normal spiral galaxies. We estimate the cooling from H$_2$, [CII], CO and [OI]$63\mu m$to be$\sim 0.01 L_{\odot}/M_{\odot}$. We compare PDR models to the ratio of the flux of various CO transitions, along with the ratio of the CO flux to the far-infrared flux in NGC 4038, NGC 4039 and the overlap region. We find that the densities recovered from our non-LTE analysis are consistent with a background far-ultraviolet field of strength$G_0\sim 1000$. Finally, we find that a combination of turbulent heating, due to the ongoing merger, and supernova and stellar winds are sufficient to heat the molecular gas.Comment: 50 pages, 15 figures, 8 tables, Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa