The Gaia-ESO Survey::chemical signatures of rocky accretion in a young solar-type star

It is well known that newly formed planetary systems undergo processes of orbital reconfiguration and planetary migration. As a result, planets or protoplanetary objects may accrete onto the central star, being fused and mixed into its external layers. If the accreted mass is sufficiently high and the star has a sufficiently thin convective envelope, such events may result in a modification of the chemical composition of the stellar photosphere in an observable way, enhancing it with elements that were abundant in the accreted mass. The recent Gaia-ESO Survey observations of the 10-20 Myr old Gamma Velorum cluster have enabled identifying a star that is significantly enriched in iron with respect to other cluster members. In this Letter we further investigate the abundance pattern of this star, showing that its abundance anomaly is not limited to iron, but is also present in the refractory elements, whose overabundances are correlated with the condensation temperature. This finding strongly supports the hypothesis of a recent accretion of rocky material.Comment: Accepted for publicatio

Quantum Dot Light Emitting Devices For Photomedical Applications

While OLEDs have struggled to find a niche lighting application that can fully take advantage of their unique form factors as thin, flexible, lightweight and uniformly large-area luminaire, photomedical researchers have been in search of low-cost, effective illumination devices with such form factors that could facilitate widespread clinical applications of photodynamic therapy (PDT) or photobiomodulation (PBM). Although existing OLEDs with either fluorescent or phosphorescent emitters cannot achieve the required high power density at the right wavelength windows for photomedicine, the recently developed ultrabright and efficient deep red quantum dot light emitting devices (QLEDs) can nicely fit into this niche. Here, we report for the first time the in-vitro study to demonstrate that this QLED-based photomedical approach could increase cell metabolism over control systems for PBM and kill cancerous cells efficiently for PDT. The perspective of developing wavelength-specific, flexible QLEDs for two critical photomedical fields (wound repair and cancer treatment) will be presented with their potential impacts summarized. The work promises to generate flexible QLED-based light sources that could enable the widespread use and clinical acceptance of photomedical strategies including PDT and PBM

The effect of metastable level populations on the ionization fraction of Li-like ions

Lines from Li-like ions have been known to produce theoretical intensities under-estimated compared to lines of a similar formation temperature. Here we investigate this anomalous behaviour whereby the ionization fractions are calculated using the ADAS code considering the electron density dependence of dielectronic recombination coupled with collisional ionization from metastable levels. For the lines investigated, the line contribution functions show a clear dependence with increasing electron density. For example, C IV 1548 Angstrom shows over a factor of three enhancement for N-e = 10(12) cm(-3). The increase in the higher temperature lines is lower, but are still in the range of 30 to 60 Furthermore, all the lines have their peak contribution shifted to lower temperature. Calculating the total radiative power output at an electron density of 10(11) cm(-3), we find that the difference in the transition region is 10 - 15% while above 10(6) K the difference is around 30% compared to the low density value