240 research outputs found
Resolving the Formation of Protogalaxies. II. Central Gravitational Collapse
Numerous cosmological hydrodynamic studies have addressed the formation of
galaxies. Here we choose to study the first stages of galaxy formation,
including non-equilibrium atomic primordial gas cooling, gravity and
hydrodynamics. Using initial conditions appropriate for the concordance
cosmological model of structure formation, we perform two adaptive mesh
refinement simulations of ~10^8 M_sun galaxies at high redshift. The
calculations resolve the Jeans length at all times with more than 16 cells and
capture over 14 orders of magnitude in length scales. In both cases, the dense,
10^5 solar mass, one parsec central regions are found to contract rapidly and
have turbulent Mach numbers up to 4. Despite the ever decreasing Jeans length
of the isothermal gas, we only find one site of fragmentation during the
collapse. However, rotational secular bar instabilities transport angular
momentum outwards in the central parsec as the gas continues to collapse and
lead to multiple nested unstable fragments with decreasing masses down to
sub-Jupiter mass scales. Although these numerical experiments neglect star
formation and feedback, they clearly highlight the physics of turbulence in
gravitationally collapsing gas. The angular momentum segregation seen in our
calculations plays an important role in theories that form supermassive black
holes from gaseous collapse.Comment: Replaced with accepted version. To appear in ApJ v681 (July 1
Using Gamma-Ray Burst Prompt Emission to Probe Relativistic Shock Acceleration
It is widely accepted that the prompt transient signal in the 10 keV - 10 GeV
band from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) arises from multiple shocks internal to the
ultra-relativistic expansion. The detailed understanding of the dissipation and
accompanying acceleration at these shocks is a currently topical subject. This
paper explores the relationship between GRB prompt emission spectra and the
electron (or ion) acceleration properties at the relativistic shocks that
pertain to GRB models. The focus is on the array of possible high-energy
power-law indices in accelerated populations, highlighting how spectra above 1
MeV can probe the field obliquity in GRB internal shocks, and the character of
hydromagnetic turbulence in their environs. It is emphasized that diffusive
shock acceleration theory generates no canonical spectrum at relativistic MHD
discontinuities. This diversity is commensurate with the significant range of
spectral indices discerned in prompt burst emission. Such system diagnostics
are now being enhanced by the broadband spectral coverage of bursts by the
Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope; while the Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor (GBM)
provides key diagnostics on the lower energy portions of the particle
population, the focus here is on constraints in the non-thermal, power-law
regime of the particle distribution that are provided by the Large Area
Telescope (LAT).Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures. Accepted for publication in Advances of Space
Researc
HST Imaging of the Host Galaxies of High Redshift Radio-Loud Quasars
We present rest-frame UV and Ly-alpha images of spatially-resolved structures
around five high-redshift radio-loud quasars obtained with the WFPC2 camera on
the Hubble Space Telescope. We find that all five quasars are extended and this
"fuzz" contains ~5-40% of the total continuum flux and 15-65% of the Ly-alpha
flux within a radius of about 1.5 arcsec. The rest-frame UV luminosities of the
hosts are log lambda P_lambda = 11.9 to 12.5 solar luminosities (assuming no
internal dust extinction), comparable to the luminous radio galaxies at similar
redshifts and a factor 10 higher than both radio-quiet field galaxies at z~2-3
and the most UV-luminous low redshift starburst galaxies. The Ly-alpha
luminosities of the hosts are (in the log) approximately 44.3-44.9 erg/s which
are also similar to the those of luminous high redshift radio galaxies and
considerably larger than the Ly-alpha luminosities of high redshift field
galaxies. To generate the Ly-alpha luminosities of the hosts would require
roughly a few percent of the total observed ionizing luminosity of the quasar.
We find good alignment between the extended Ly-alpha and the radio sources,
strong evidence for jet-cloud interactions in two cases, again resembling radio
galaxies, and what is possibly the most luminous radio-UV synchrotron jet in
one of the hosts at z=2.110.Comment: 36 pages (latex, aas macros), 3 figures (3 gif and 10 postscript
files), accepted for publication in the the Astrophysical Journal Supplement
Serie
Host Galaxy Evolution in Radio-Loud AGN
We investigate the luminosity evolution of the host galaxies of radio-loud
AGN through Hubble Space Telescope imaging of 72 BL Lac objects, including new
STIS imaging of nine z > 0.6 BL Lacs. With their intrinsically low accretion
rates and their strongly beamed jets, BL Lacs provide a unique opportunity to
probe host galaxy evolution independent of the biases and ambiguities implicit
in quasar studies. We find that the host galaxies of BL Lacs evolve strongly,
consistent with passive evolution from a period of active star formation in the
range 0.5 <~ z <~ 2.5, and inconsistent with either passive evolution from a
high formation redshift or a non-evolving population. This evolution is broadly
consistent with that observed in the hosts of other radio-loud AGN, and
inconsistent with the flatter luminosity evolution of quiescent early types and
radio-quiet hosts. This indicates that active star formation, and hence galaxy
interactions, are associated with the formation for radio-loud AGN, and that
these host galaxies preferentially accrete less material after their formation
epoch than galaxies without powerful radio jets. We discuss possible
explanations for the link between merger history and the incidence of a radio
jet.Comment: 37 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ, for full PDF
incl. figures see
http://www.ph.unimelb.edu.au/~modowd/papers/odowdurry2005.pd
Cosmological Studies with Radio Galaxies and Supernovae
Physical sizes of extended radio galaxies can be employed as a cosmological
"standard ruler", using a previously developed method. Eleven new radio
galaxies are added to our previous sample of nineteen sources, forming a sample
of thirty objects with redshifts between 0 and 1.8. This sample of radio
galaxies are used to obtain the best fit cosmological parameters in a
quintessence model in a spatially flat universe, a cosmological constant model
that allows for non-zero space curvature, and a rolling scalar field model in a
spatially flat universe. Results obtained with radio galaxies are compared with
those obtained with different supernova samples, and with combined radio galaxy
and supernova samples. Results obtained with different samples are consistent,
suggesting that neither method is seriously affected by systematic errors. Best
fit radio galaxy and supernovae model parameters determined in the different
cosmological models are nearly identical, and are used to determine
dimensionless coordinate distances to supernovae and radio galaxies, and
distance moduli to the radio galaxies. The distance moduli to the radio
galaxies can be combined with supernovae samples to increase the number of
sources, particularly high-redshift sources, in the samples. The constraints
obtained here with the combined radio galaxy plus supernovae data set in the
rolling scalar field model are quite strong. The best fit parameter values
suggest a value of omega is less than about 0.35, and the model parameter alpha
is close to zero; that is, a cosmological constant provides a good description
of the data. We also obtain new constraints on the physics of engines that
power the large-scale radio emission.Comment: 32 pages. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa
The Escape of High-Energy Photons from Gamma-Ray Bursts
Eleven bright gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) detected by BATSE have also been seen
at much higher energies by EGRET, six at energies above 10 MeV. Such
observations imply that these bursts are optically thin to photon-photon pair
production at all observed energies. For bursts more than about 30pc away,
internal transparency can be achieved only if the source is moving with a
relativistic bulk Lorentz factor , or if the radiation is highly
beamed. Early calculations of considerations for GRBs
were limited to cases of a beam with opening half-angle \Thetab\sim 1/\Gamma,
or expansions of infinitely thin spherical shells. This paper presents our
extension of pair production optical depth calculations in relativistically
expanding sources to more general geometries, including shells of finite
thickness and arbitrary opening angle. The problem is reduced analytically to a
single integral in the broadly applicable case of observing photons along the
axis of the expansion. We find that the minimum bulk Lorentz factor for the
EGRET sources to be optically thin is only moderately dependent on the shell
thickness and virtually independent of its opening solid angle if
\Thetab\gtrsim 1/\Gamma. This insensitivity to \Thetab relieves the
commonly-perceived number problem for non-repeating sources at cosmological
distances, i.e. it is not necessary to invoke small \Thetab to effect photon
escape.Comment: 51 pages, including 8 eps figures, to appear in ApJ, December 20 199
Neuroinflammation and structural injury of the fetal ovine brain following intra-amniotic Candida albicans exposure.
BackgroundIntra-amniotic Candida albicans (C. Albicans) infection is associated with preterm birth and high morbidity and mortality rates. Survivors are prone to adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes. The mechanisms leading to these adverse neonatal brain outcomes remain largely unknown. To better understand the mechanisms underlying C. albicans-induced fetal brain injury, we studied immunological responses and structural changes of the fetal brain in a well-established translational ovine model of intra-amniotic C. albicans infection. In addition, we tested whether these potential adverse outcomes of the fetal brain were improved in utero by antifungal treatment with fluconazole.MethodsPregnant ewes received an intra-amniotic injection of 10(7) colony-forming units C. albicans or saline (controls) at 3 or 5 days before preterm delivery at 0.8 of gestation (term ~ 150 days). Fetal intra-amniotic/intra-peritoneal injections of fluconazole or saline (controls) were administered 2 days after C. albicans exposure. Post mortem analyses for fungal burden, peripheral immune activation, neuroinflammation, and white matter/neuronal injury were performed to determine the effects of intra-amniotic C. albicans and fluconazole treatment.ResultsIntra-amniotic exposure to C. albicans caused a severe systemic inflammatory response, illustrated by a robust increase of plasma interleukin-6 concentrations. Cerebrospinal fluid cultures were positive for C. albicans in the majority of the 3-day C. albicans-exposed animals whereas no positive cultures were present in the 5-day C. albicans-exposed and fluconazole-treated animals. Although C. albicans was not detected in the brain parenchyma, a neuroinflammatory response in the hippocampus and white matter was seen which was characterized by increased microglial and astrocyte activation. These neuroinflammatory changes were accompanied by structural white matter injury. Intra-amniotic fluconazole reduced fetal mortality but did not attenuate neuroinflammation and white matter injury.ConclusionsIntra-amniotic C. albicans exposure provoked acute systemic and neuroinflammatory responses with concomitant white matter injury. Fluconazole treatment prevented systemic inflammation without attenuating cerebral inflammation and injury
Inter-laboratory automation of the in vitro micronucleus assay using imaging flow cytometry and deep learning.
The in vitro micronucleus assay is a globally significant method for DNA damage quantification used for regulatory compound safety testing in addition to inter-individual monitoring of environmental, lifestyle and occupational factors. However, it relies on time-consuming and user-subjective manual scoring. Here we show that imaging flow cytometry and deep learning image classification represents a capable platform for automated, inter-laboratory operation. Images were captured for the cytokinesis-block micronucleus (CBMN) assay across three laboratories using methyl methanesulphonate (1.25-5.0 μg/mL) and/or carbendazim (0.8-1.6 μg/mL) exposures to TK6 cells. Human-scored image sets were assembled and used to train and test the classification abilities of the "DeepFlow" neural network in both intra- and inter-laboratory contexts. Harnessing image diversity across laboratories yielded a network able to score unseen data from an entirely new laboratory without any user configuration. Image classification accuracies of 98%, 95%, 82% and 85% were achieved for 'mononucleates', 'binucleates', 'mononucleates with MN' and 'binucleates with MN', respectively. Successful classifications of 'trinucleates' (90%) and 'tetranucleates' (88%) in addition to 'other or unscorable' phenotypes (96%) were also achieved. Attempts to classify extremely rare, tri- and tetranucleated cells with micronuclei into their own categories were less successful (≤ 57%). Benchmark dose analyses of human or automatically scored micronucleus frequency data yielded quantitation of the same equipotent concentration regardless of scoring method. We conclude that this automated approach offers significant potential to broaden the practical utility of the CBMN method across industry, research and clinical domains. We share our strategy using openly-accessible frameworks
Follow-up observations at 16 and 33 GHz of extragalactic sources from WMAP 3-year data: I - Spectral properties
We present follow-up observations of 97 point sources from the Wilkinson
Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) 3-year data, contained within the New
Extragalactic WMAP Point Source (NEWPS) catalogue between declinations of -4
and +60 degrees; the sources form a flux-density-limited sample complete to 1.1
Jy (approximately 5 sigma) at 33 GHz. Our observations were made at 16 GHz
using the Arcminute Microkelvin Imager (AMI) and at 33 GHz with the Very Small
Array (VSA). 94 of the sources have reliable, simultaneous -- typically a few
minutes apart -- observations with both telescopes. The spectra between 13.9
and 33.75 GHz are very different from those of bright sources at low frequency:
44 per cent have rising spectra (alpha < 0.0), where flux density is
proportional to frequency^-alpha, and 93 per cent have spectra with alpha <
0.5; the median spectral index is 0.04. For the brighter sources, the agreement
between VSA and WMAP 33-GHz flux densities averaged over sources is very good.
However, for the fainter sources, the VSA tends to measure lower values for the
flux densities than WMAP. We suggest that the main cause of this effect is
Eddington bias arising from variability.Comment: 12 pages, 13 figures, submitted to MNRA
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