A pair of gigantic bipolar dust jets close to the solar system

We report the discovery of two adjacent jet candidates with a length of about 9 degrees each -- 10 times longer than the largest known jets -- detected by us on 60 and 100 micron IRAS maps, but not observed at any other wavelength. They are extremely collimated (length-to-width ratios 20--50), curved, knotty, and end in prominent bubbles. Their dust temperatures are 25 K and 30 K, respectively. Both harbour faint stars, one having a high proper motion (0.23 arcsec/yr) and being very red, suggesting a distance of about 60 pc. At this distance, the total mass of both jet candidates is about about 1 solar mass. We suspect that these gigantic (9 pc length respectively) jets are of fossil type and have a common origin, due to the decay of a system of evolved stars. They are the first examples of jets radiating in the far IR and might, because of their closeness, be of interest for further studies of the acceleration and collimation processes of astrophysical jets.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures in reduced quality, accepted by Astronomy & Astrophysics (Letter) february 10, 2004. See http://astro.uibk.ac.at/dustjets/ for the full resolution and color version of the image

Life, Death and Preferential Attachment

Scientific communities are characterized by strong stratification. The highly skewed frequency distribution of citations of published scientific papers suggests a relatively small number of active, cited papers embedded in a sea of inactive and uncited papers. We propose an analytically soluble model which allows for the death of nodes. This model provides an excellent description of the citation distributions for live and dead papers in the SPIRES database. Further, this model suggests a novel and general mechanism for the generation of power law distributions in networks whenever the fraction of active nodes is small.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

On the Existence of Radiation Gauges in Petrov type II spacetimes

The radiation gauges used by Chrzanowski (his IRG/ORG) for metric reconstruction in the Kerr spacetime seem to be over-specified. Their specification consists of five conditions: four, which we treat here as valid gauge conditions, plus an additional condition on the trace of the metric perturbation. In this work, we utilize a newly developed form of the perturbed Einstein equations to establish a condition -- on a particular tetrad component of the stress-energy tensor -- under which the full IRG/ORG can be imposed. Using gauge freedom, we are able to impose the full IRG for Petrov type II and type D backgrounds, using a different tetrad for each case. As a specific example, we work through the process of imposing the IRG in a Schwarzschild background, using a more traditional approach. Implications for metric reconstruction using the Teukolsky curvature perturbations in type D spacetimes are briefly discussed.Comment: 21 pages, uses iop style files. v2: proved a stronger result for type II backgrounds, added a subsection on remaining gauge freedom in the full IRG and improved calrity and readability throughout due to insightful referee comments; published as Class. Quantum Grav. 24 (2007) 2367-238

Coulomb drag as a measure of trigonal warping in doped graphene

I suggest to use the effect of Coulomb drag between two closely positioned graphite monolayers (graphene sheets) for experimental measurement of the strength of weak non-linearities of the spectrum in graphene. I consider trigonal warping as a representative mechanism responsible for the drag effect. Since graphene is relatively defect-free, I evaluate the drag conductivity in the ballistic regime and find that it is proportional to the fourth power of the warping strength.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Simulation of a Hybrid Optical/Radio/Acoustic Extension to IceCube for EeV Neutrino Detection

Astrophysical neutrinos at $\sim$EeV energies promise to be an interesting source for astrophysics and particle physics. Detecting the predicted cosmogenic (``GZK'') neutrinos at 10$^{16}$ - 10$^{20}$ eV would test models of cosmic ray production at these energies and probe particle physics at $\sim$100 TeV center-of-mass energy. While IceCube could detect $\sim$1 GZK event per year, it is necessary to detect 10 or more events per year in order to study temporal, angular, and spectral distributions. The IceCube observatory may be able to achieve such event rates with an extension including optical, radio, and acoustic receivers. We present results from simulating such a hybrid detector.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures; to appear in the Proceedings of the 29th ICRC, Pune, Indi

The effect of magnetic fields on star cluster formation

We examine the effect of magnetic fields on star cluster formation by performing simulations following the self-gravitating collapse of a turbulent molecular cloud to form stars in ideal MHD. The collapse of the cloud is computed for global mass-to-flux ratios of infinity, 20, 10, 5 and 3, that is using both weak and strong magnetic fields. Whilst even at very low strengths the magnetic field is able to significantly influence the star formation process, for magnetic fields with plasma beta < 1 the results are substantially different to the hydrodynamic case. In these cases we find large-scale magnetically-supported voids imprinted in the cloud structure; anisotropic turbulent motions and column density structure aligned with the magnetic field lines, both of which have recently been observed in the Taurus molecular cloud. We also find strongly suppressed accretion in the magnetised runs, leading to up to a 75% reduction in the amount of mass converted into stars over the course of the calculations and a more quiescent mode of star formation. There is also some indication that the relative formation efficiency of brown dwarfs is lower in the strongly magnetised runs due to the reduction in the importance of protostellar ejections.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, 8 very pretty movies, MNRAS, accepted. Version with high-res figures + movies available from http://www.astro.ex.ac.uk/people/dprice/pubs/mcluster/index.htm

Cost comparison of asthma treatments in 12-week study : caution about matching and short observational follow-up

This review was funded by Observational and Pragmatic Research Institute Pte Ltd.Peer reviewedPublisher PD