1,089 research outputs found
Muscle fibrils: Solubilization and gel electrophoresis
In a three-year longitudinal intervention study developing an understanding of statisticalliteracy with a cohort of students from Years 4 to 6, teachers delivered lessons fromprovided materials, including scripts and prompts. Besides completing seven majorinvestigations, workbooks, and several in-class assessments, the students undertook foursurveys, from which their overall progress was determined, as well as individual learningprogressions. Findings indicated that despite experiencing the same lessons delivered insimilar ways, students had very different learning progressions. The implications of thesefindings are explored
Extragalactic megahertz-peaked spectrum radio sources at milliarcsecond scales
Extragalactic peaked-spectrum radio sources are thought to be the progenitors
of larger, radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGN). Synchrotron self-absorption
(SSA) has often been identified as the cause of their spectral peak. The
identification of new megahertz-peaked spectrum sources from the GaLactic and
Extragalactic All-sky Murchison Widefield Array (GLEAM) survey provides an
opportunity to test how radio sources with spectral peaks below 1 GHz fit
within this evolutionary picture. We observed six peaked-spectrum sources
selected from the GLEAM survey, three that have spectral characteristics which
violate SSA and three that have spectral peaks below 230 MHz, with the Very
Long Baseline Array at 1.55 and 4.96 GHz. We present milliarcsecond resolution
images of each source and constrain their morphology, linear size, luminosity,
and magnetic field strength. Of the sources that are resolved by our study, the
sources that violate SSA appear to be compact doubles, while the sources with
peak frequencies below 230 MHz have core-jet features. We find that all of our
sources are smaller than expected from SSA by factors of >20. We also find that
component magnetic field strengths calculated from SSA are likely inaccurate,
differing by factors of >5 from equipartition estimates. The calculated
equipartition magnetic field strengths more closely resemble estimates from
previously studied gigahertz-peaked spectrum sources. Exploring a model of the
interaction between jets and the interstellar medium, we demonstrate that
free-free absorption (FFA) can accurately describe the linear sizes and peak
frequencies of our sources. Our findings support the theory that there is a
fraction of peaked-spectrum sources whose spectral peaks are best modelled by
FFA, implying our understanding of the early stages of radio AGN is incomplete.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) on 16 July
2019. 13 pages, 6 figure
Milliarcsecond Structures of Variable Peaked-Spectrum Sources
Spectral variability offers a new technique to identify small scale
structures from scintillation, as well as determining the absorption mechanism
for peaked-spectrum (PS) radio sources. In this paper, we present very long
baseline interferometry (VLBI) imaging using the Long Baseline Array (LBA) of
two PS sources, MRC0225-065 and PMNJ0322-4820, identified as spectrally
variable from observations with the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA). We compare
expected milliarcsecond structures based on the detected spectral variability
with direct LBA imaging. We find MRC0225-065 is resolved into three components,
a bright core and two fainter lobes, roughly 430pc projected separation. A
comprehensive analysis of the magnetic field, host galaxy properties, and
spectral analysis implies that MRC0225-065 is a young radio source with recent
jet activity over the last 10^2-10^3years. We find PMNJ0322-4820 is unresolved
on milliarcsecond scales. We conclude PMNJ0322-4820 is a blazar with flaring
activity detected in 2014 with the MWA. We use spectral variability to predict
morphology and find these predictions consistent with the structures revealed
by our LBA images.Comment: Accepted for publication in PASA. 11 pages, 4 figure
Variability of M giant stars based on Kepler photometry: general characteristics
M giants are among the longest-period pulsating stars which is why their
studies were traditionally restricted to analyses of low-precision visual
observations, and more recently, accurate ground-based data. Here we present an
overview of M giant variability on a wide range of time-scales (hours to
years), based on analysis of thirteen quarters of Kepler long-cadence
observations (one point per every 29.4 minutes), with a total time-span of over
1000 days. About two-thirds of the sample stars have been selected from the
ASAS-North survey of the Kepler field, with the rest supplemented from a
randomly chosen M giant control sample.
We first describe the correction of the light curves from different quarters,
which was found to be essential. We use Fourier analysis to calculate multiple
frequencies for all stars in the sample. Over 50 stars show a relatively strong
signal with a period equal to the Kepler-year and a characteristic phase
dependence across the whole field-of-view. We interpret this as a so far
unidentified systematic effect in the Kepler data. We discuss the presence of
regular patterns in the distribution of multiple periodicities and amplitudes.
In the period-amplitude plane we find that it is possible to distinguish
between solar-like oscillations and larger amplitude pulsations which are
characteristic for Mira/SR stars. This may indicate the region of the
transition between two types of oscillations as we move upward along the giant
branch.Comment: 12 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS. The
normalized light curves are available upon reques
Radio masers on WX UMa : hints of a Neptune-sized planet, or magnetospheric reconnection?
RDK acknowledges funding received from the Irish Research Council (IRC) through the Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship Programme. RDK and AAV acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 817540, ASTROFLOW). We acknowledge the provisions of the Space Weather Modelling Framework (SWMF) code from the Center for Space Environment Modeling (CSEM) at the University of Michigan, and the computational resources of the Irish Centre for High End Computing (ICHEC), both of which were utilised in this work.The nearby M dwarf WX UMa has recently been detected at radio wavelengths with LOFAR. The combination of its observed brightness temperature and circular polarisation fraction suggests that the emission is generated via the electron-cyclotron maser instability. Two distinct mechanisms have been proposed to power such emission from low-mass stars: either a sub-Alfvénic interaction between the stellar magnetic field and an orbiting planet, or reconnection at the edge of the stellar magnetosphere. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of both mechanisms, utilising the information about the star’s surrounding plasma environment obtained from modelling its stellar wind. Using this information, we show that a Neptune-sized exoplanet with a magnetic field strength of 10 – 100 G orbiting at ∼0.034 au can accurately reproduce the observed radio emission from the star, with corresponding orbital periods of 7.4 days. Due to the stellar inclination, a planet in an equatorial orbit is unlikely to transit the star. While such a planet could induce radial velocity semi-amplitudes from 7 to 396 m s−1, it is unlikely that this signal could be detected with current techniques due to the activity of the host star. The application of our planet-induced radio emission model here illustrates its exciting potential as a new tool for identifying planet-hosting candidates from long-term radio monitoring. We also develop a model to investigate the reconnection-powered emission scenario. While this approach produces less favourable results than the planet-induced scenario, it nevertheless serves as a potential alternative emission mechanism which is worth exploring further.PostprintPeer reviewe
Catalytic enantioselective arylative cyclizations of alkynyl 1,3-diketones by 1,4-rhodium(i) migration
The enantioselective synthesis of densely functionalized polycarbocycles by the rhodium(I)-catalyzed reaction of arylboronic acids with 1,3-diketones is described. The key step in these desymmetrizing domino addition–cyclization reactions is an alkenyl-to-aryl 1,4-Rh(I) migration, which enables arylboronic acids to function effectively as 1,2-dimetalloarene surrogates
The Spectral Energy Distribution of Powerful Starburst Galaxies I: Modelling the Radio Continuum
We have acquired radio continuum data between 70\,MHz and 48\,GHz for a
sample of 19 southern starburst galaxies at moderate redshifts () with the aim of separating synchrotron and free-free emission
components. Using a Bayesian framework we find the radio continuum is rarely
characterised well by a single power law, instead often exhibiting low
frequency turnovers below 500\,MHz, steepening at mid-to-high frequencies, and
a flattening at high frequencies where free-free emission begins to dominate
over the synchrotron emission. These higher order curvature components may be
attributed to free-free absorption across multiple regions of star formation
with varying optical depths. The decomposed synchrotron and free-free emission
components in our sample of galaxies form strong correlations with the
total-infrared bolometric luminosities. Finally, we find that without
accounting for free-free absorption with turnovers between 90 to 500\,MHz the
radio-continuum at low frequency (\,MHz) could be overestimated by
upwards of a factor of twelve if a simple power law extrapolation is used from
higher frequencies. The mean synchrotron spectral index of our sample is
constrained to be , which is steeper then the canonical value of
for normal galaxies. We suggest this may be caused by an intrinsically
steeper cosmic ray distribution
The SAMI Galaxy Survey: The Low-Redshift Stellar Mass Tully-Fisher Relation
We investigate the Tully-Fisher Relation (TFR) for a morphologically and
kine- matically diverse sample of galaxies from the SAMI Galaxy Survey using 2
dimensional spatially resolved Halpha velocity maps and find a well defined
relation across the stellar mass range of 8.0 < log(M*) < 11.5. We use an
adaptation of kinemetry to parametrise the kinematic Halpha asymmetry of all
galaxies in the sample, and find a correlation between scatter (i.e. residuals
off the TFR) and asymmetry. This effect is pronounced at low stellar mass,
corresponding to the inverse relationship between stellar mass and kinematic
asymmetry found in previous work. For galaxies with log(M*) < 9.5, 25 +/- 3%
are scattered below the root mean square (RMS) of the TFR, whereas for galaxies
with log(M*) > 9.5 the fraction is 10 +/- 1% We use 'simulated slits' to
directly compare our results with those from long slit spectroscopy and find
that aligning slits with the photometric, rather than the kinematic, position
angle, increases global scatter below the TFR. Further, kinematic asymmetry is
correlated with misalignment between the photometric and kinematic position
angles. This work demonstrates the value of 2D spatially resolved kinematics
for accurate TFR studies; integral field spectroscopy reduces the
underestimation of rotation velocity that can occur from slit positioning off
the kinematic axis
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