Multiple-orifice throttle valve

Multiple-orifice throttle valve is not subject to cold welding in a vacuum environment and is compatible with strong oxidizing fluid. The valve is of all metal construction using simple components that do not slide or rotate and excludes static or dynamic seals

The oxygen abundance in the IFU era

Spatially-resolved information of gas-phase emission provided by integral field units (IFUs) are allowing us to perform a new generation of emission-line surveys, based on large samples of HII regions and full two-dimensional coverage. Here we present two highlights of our current studies employing this technique: 1) A statistical approach to the abundance gradients of spiral galaxies, which indicates an -universal- radial gradient for oxygen abundance; and 2) The discovery of a new scaling relation of HII regions in spiral galaxies, the "local" mass-metallicity relation of star-forming galaxies.Comment: 6 pages, to appear in Highlights of Spanish Astrophysics VII, Proceedings of the X Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society held on July 9-13, 2012, in Valencia, Spai

Inner and outer star forming regions over the disks of spiral galaxies. I. Sample characterization

Context. The knowledge of abundance distributions is central to understanding the formation and evolution of galaxies. Most of the relations employed for the derivation of gas abundances have so far been derived from observations of outer disk HII regions, despite the known differences between inner and outer regions. Aims. Using integral field spectroscopy (IFS) observations we aim to perform a systematic study and comparison of two inner and outer HII regions samples. The spatial resolution of the IFS, the number of objects and the homogeneity and coherence of the observations allow a complete characterization of the main observational properties and differences of the regions. Methods. We analyzed a sample of 725 inner HII regions and a sample of 671 outer HII regions, all of them detected and extracted from the observations of a sample of 263 nearby, isolated, spiral galaxies observed by the CALIFA survey. Results. We find that inner HII regions show smaller equivalent widths, greater extinction and luminosities, along with greater values of [NII]{\lambda}6583/H{\alpha} and [OII]{\lambda}3727/[OIII]{\lambda}5007 emission-line ratios, indicating higher metallicites and lower ionization parameters. Inner regions have also redder colors and higher photometric and ionizing masses, although Mion/Mphot is slighty higher for the outer regions. Conclusions. This work shows important observational differences between inner and outer HII regions in star forming galaxies not previously studied in detail. These differences indicate that inner regions have more evolved stellar populations and are in a later evolution state with respect to outer regions, which goes in line with the inside-out galaxy formation paradigm.Comment: 16 page

A bisphosphonate for F-19-magnetic resonance imaging

19F-magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a promising technique that may allow us to measure the concentration of exogenous fluorinated imaging probes quantitatively in vivo. Here, we describe the synthesis and characterisation of a novel geminal bisphosphonate (19F-BP) that contains chemically-equivalent fluorine atoms that show a single and narrow 19F resonance and a bisphosphonate group that may be used for labelling inorganic materials based in calcium phosphates and metal oxides. The potential of 19F-BP to provide contrast was analysed in vitro and in vivo using 19F-MRI. In vitro studies demonstrated the potential of 19F-BP as an MRI contrast agent in the millimolar concentration range with signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) comparable to previously reported fluorinated probes. The preliminary in vivo MRI study reported here allowed us to visualise the biodistribution of 19F-BP, showing uptake in the liver and in the bladder/urinary system areas. However, bone uptake was not observed. In addition, 19F-BP showed undesirable toxicity effects in mice that prevent further studies with this compound at the required concentrations for MRI contrast. This study highlights the importance of developing 19F MRI probes with the highest signal intensity achievable

PPAK Wide-field Integral Field Spectroscopy of NGC 628: II. Emission line abundance analysis

In this second paper of the series, we present the 2-dimensional (2D) emission line abundance analysis of NGC 628, the largest object within the PPAK Integral Field Spectroscopy (IFS) Nearby Galaxies Survey: PINGS. We introduce the methodology applied to the 2D IFS data in order to extract and deal with large spectral samples, from which a 2D abundance analysis can be later performed. We obtain the most complete and reliable abundance gradient of the galaxy up-to-date, by using the largest number of spectroscopic points sampled in the galaxy, and by comparing the statistical significance of different strong-line metallicity indicators. We find features not previously reported for this galaxy that imply a multi-modality of the abundance gradient consistent with a nearly flat-distribution in the innermost regions of the galaxy, a steep negative gradient along the disc and a shallow gradient or nearly-constant metallicity beyond the optical edge of the galaxy. The N/O ratio seems to follow the same radial behaviour. We demonstrate that the observed dispersion in metallicity shows no systematic dependence with the spatial position, signal-to-noise or ionization conditions, implying that the scatter in abundance for a given radius is reflecting a true spatial physical variation of the oxygen content. Furthermore, by exploiting the 2D IFS data, we were able to construct the 2D metallicity structure of the galaxy, detecting regions of metal enhancement, and showing that they vary depending on the choice of the metallicity estimator. The analysis of axisymmetric variations in the disc of NGC 628 suggest that the physical conditions and the star formation history of different-symmetric regions of the galaxy have evolved in a different manner.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS, 40 pages, 22 figures, online data: http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/ioa/research/ping

Blocked All-Pairs Shortest Paths Algorithm on Intel Xeon Phi KNL Processor: A Case Study

Manycores are consolidating in HPC community as a way of improving performance while keeping power efficiency. Knights Landing is the recently released second generation of Intel Xeon Phi architecture. While optimizing applications on CPUs, GPUs and first Xeon Phi's has been largely studied in the last years, the new features in Knights Landing processors require the revision of programming and optimization techniques for these devices. In this work, we selected the Floyd-Warshall algorithm as a representative case study of graph and memory-bound applications. Starting from the default serial version, we show how data, thread and compiler level optimizations help the parallel implementation to reach 338 GFLOPS.Comment: Computer Science - CACIC 2017. Springer Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 79

Transport properties of graphene quantum dots

In this work we present a theoretical study of transport properties of a double crossbar junction composed by segments of graphene ribbons with different widths forming a graphene quantum dot structure. The systems are described by a single-band tight binding Hamiltonian and the Green's function formalism using real space renormalization techniques. We show calculations of the local density of states, linear conductance and I-V characteristics. Our results depict a resonant behavior of the conductance in the quantum dot structures which can be controlled by changing geometrical parameters such as the nanoribbon segments widths and relative distance between them. By applying a gate voltage on determined regions of the structure, it is possible to modulate the transport response of the systems. We show that negative differential resistance can be obtained for low values of gate and bias voltages applied.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, accepted to Phys. Rev.

Decoherence of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering

We consider two systems A and B that share Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) steering correlations and study how these correlations will decay, when each of the systems are independently coupled to a reservoir. EPR steering is a directional form of entanglement, and the measure of steering can change depending on whether the system A is steered by B, or vice versa. First, we examine the decay of the steering correlations of the two-mode squeezed state. We find that if the system B is coupled to a reservoir, then the decoherence of the steering of A by B is particularly marked, to the extent that there is a sudden death of steering after a finite time. We find a different directional effect, if the reservoirs are thermally excited. Second, we study the decoherence of the steering of a Schr\"odinger cat state, modeled as the entangled state of a spin and harmonic oscillator, when the macroscopic system (the cat) is coupled to a reservoir