3,824 research outputs found
Passage time distributions in large Markov chains
Accepted versio
La réorganisation économique et régionale de la gestion des eaux en France
En 1964, la France a introduit des changements majeurs dans la gestion de ses ressources en eau. Ceux-ci peuvent intéresser des pays, provinces ou régions qui voudraient mettre en oeuvre des approches similaires. La gestion classique est présentée dans cet article et suivie par une discussion de la loi de 1964. Deux thèmes sont choisis parmi plusieurs possibles : a) la considération de l'eau en tant que bien économique et le système de redevances qui en résulte, et b) la régionalisation du système de gestion par l'intermédiaire des agences financières de bassin. La section finale présente quelques critiques de cette réorganisation ainsi que des pronostics de l'évolution future des institutions.In 1964 France introduced a series of major changes in its management of water resources which can be of interest to other countries, provinces, or regions which are contemplating a similar reorganization. Traditional institutional arrangements in French water management are presented in this article and are followed by a discussion of the landmark "Water Law" of 1964. Two themes are chosen out of the many possible : (a) the consideration of water as an economic good and the resulting System of "payments" and (b) the regionalisation of the management System under the auspices of "Agences Financières de Bassin". The final section of the article presents several criticisms of the reorganization which has taken place and proposes a series of prognostications concerning future institutional evolution
Cosmic Electromagnetic Fields due to Perturbations in the Gravitational Field
We use non-linear gauge-invariant perturbation theory to study the
interaction of an inflation produced seed magnetic field with density and
gravitational wave perturbations in an almost
Friedmann-Lema\^itre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) spacetime. We compare the effects
of this coupling under the assumptions of poor conductivity, infinite
conductivity and the case where the electric field is sourced via the coupling
of velocity perturbations to the seed field in the ideal magnetohydrodynamic
(MHD) regime, thus generalizing, improving on and correcting previous results.
We solve our equations for long wavelength limits and numerically integrate the
resulting equations to generate power spectra for the electromagnetic field
variables, showing where the modes cross the horizon. We find that the rotation
of the electric field dominates the power spectrum on small scales, in
agreement with previous arguments.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, published in PR
Magnetic field diagnostics and spatio-temporal variability of the solar transition region
Magnetic field diagnostics of the transition region from the chromosphere to
the corona faces us with the problem that one has to apply extreme UV
spectro-polarimetry. While for coronal diagnostic techniques already exist
through infrared coronagraphy above the limb and radio observations on the
disk, for the transition region one has to investigate extreme UV observations.
However, so far the success of such observations has been limited, but there
are various projects to get spectro-polarimetric data in the extreme UV in the
near future. Therefore it is timely to study the polarimetric signals we can
expect for such observations through realistic forward modeling.
We employ a 3D MHD forward model of the solar corona and synthesize the
Stokes I and Stokes V profiles of C IV 1548 A. A signal well above 0.001 in
Stokes V can be expected, even when integrating for several minutes in order to
reach the required signal-to-noise ratio, despite the fact that the intensity
in the model is rapidly changing (just as in observations). Often this
variability of the intensity is used as an argument against transition region
magnetic diagnostics which requires exposure times of minutes. However, the
magnetic field is evolving much slower than the intensity, and thus when
integrating in time the degree of (circular) polarization remains rather
constant. Our study shows the feasibility to measure the transition region
magnetic field, if a polarimetric accuracy on the order of 0.001 can be
reached, which we can expect from planned instrumentation.Comment: Accepted for publication in Solar Physics (4.Mar.2013), 19 pages, 9
figure
Development of thermally formed glass optics for astronomical hard x-ray telescopes
The next major observational advance in hard X-ray/soft gamma-ray astrophysics will come with the implementation of telescopes capable of focusing 10-200 keV radiation. Focusing allows high signal-to-noise imaging and spectroscopic observations of many sources in this band for the first time. The recent development of depth-graded multilayer coatings has made the design of telescopes for this bandpass practical, however the ability to manufacture inexpensive substrates with appropriate surface quality and figure to achieve sub-arcminute performance has remained an elusive goal. In this paper, we report on new, thermally-formed glass micro-sheet optics capable of meeting the requirements of the next-generation of astronomical hard X-ray telescopes
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Structural and Functional Dissection of Mif2p, a Conserved DNA-binding Kinetochore Protein
Mif2p is the budding-yeast orthologue of the mammalian centromere-binding protein CENP-C. We have mapped domains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae Mif2p and studied the phenotyptic consequences of their deletion. Using chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) and electrophoretic mobility shift assays, we have further shown that Mif2p binds in the CDEIII region of the budding-yeast centromere, probably in close spatial association with Ndc10p. Moreover, ChIP experiments show that Mif2p recruits to yeast kinetochores a substantial subset of inner and outer kinetochore proteins, but not the Ndc80 or Spc105 complexes. We have determined the crystal structure of the C-terminal, dimerization domain of Mif2p. It has a "cupin" fold, extremely similar both in polypeptide chain conformation and in dimer geometry to the dimerization domain of a bacterial transcription factor. The Mif2p dimer seems to be part of an enhanceosome-like structure that nucleates kinetochore assembly in budding yeast.Molecular and Cellular Biolog
Image analysis of palm oil crystallisation as observed by hot stage microscopy
An image processing algorithm previously used to analyse the crystallisation of a pure fat (tripalmitin) has been applied to the crystallisation of a multicomponent natural fat (palm oil). In contrast to tripalmitin, which produced circular crystals with a constant growth rate, palm oil produced speckled crystals caused by the inclusion of entrapped liquid, and growth rates gradually decreased with time. This can be explained by the depletion of crystallisable material in the liquid phase, whereas direct impingement of crystals (the basis of the Avrami equation) was less common. A theoretical analysis combining this depletion with assuming that the growth rate is proportional to the supersaturation of a crystallisable pseudo-component predicted a tanh function variation of radius with time. This was generally able to provide good fits to the growth curves. It was found that growth rate was a relatively mild function of temperature but also varied from crystal to crystal and even between different sides of the same crystal, which may be due to variations in composition within the liquid phase. Nucleation rates were confirmed to vary approximately exponentially with decreasing temperature, resulting in much greater numbers of crystals and a smaller final average crystal size at lower temperatures
Looking at A 0535+26 at low luminosities with NuSTAR
We report on two NuSTAR observations of the HMXB A 0535+26 taken toward the
end of its normal 2015 outburst at very low keV luminosities of
erg/s and erg/s which are
complemented by 9 Swift observations. The data clearly confirm indications seen
in earlier data that the source's spectral shape softens as it becomes fainter.
The smooth, exponential rollover at high energies present in the first
observation evolves to a much more abrupt steepening of the spectrum at
keV. The continuum evolution can be well described with emission from a
magnetized accretion column, modeled using the compmag model modified by an
additional Gaussian emission component for the fainter observation. Between the
two observations, the optical depth changes from to
, the electron temperature remains constant, and there is
an indication that the column decreases in radius. Since the energy resolved
pulse profiles remain virtually unchanged in shape between the two
observations, the emission properties of the accretion column, however, reflect
the same accretion regime. This conclusion is also confirmed by our result that
the energy of the cyclotron resonant scattering feature (CRSF) at
keV is independent of the luminosity, implying that the magnetic field in the
region in which the observed radiation is produced is the same in both
observations. Finally, we also constrain the evolution of the continuum
parameters with rotational phase of the neutron star. The width of the CRSF
could only be constrained for the brighter observation. Based on Monte-Carlo
simulations of CRSF formation in single accretion columns, its pulse phase
dependence supports a simplified fan beam emission pattern. The evolution of
the CRSF width is very similar to that of the CRSF depth, which is in
disagreement with expectations.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publication in A&
Ground calibration of the spatial response and quantum efficiency of the CdZnTe hard x-ray detectors for NuSTAR
Pixelated Cadmium Zinc Telluride (CdZnTe) detectors are currently flying on the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope ARray (NuSTAR) NASA Astrophysics Small Explorer. While the pixel pitch of the detectors is ≈ 605 μm, we can leverage the detector readout architecture to determine the interaction location of an individual photon to much higher spatial accuracy. The sub-pixel spatial location allows us to finely oversample the point spread function of the optics and reduces imaging artifacts due to pixelation. In this paper we demonstrate how the sub-pixel information is obtained, how the detectors were calibrated, and provide ground verification of the quantum efficiency of our Monte Carlo model of the detector response
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