3,340 research outputs found
Deterioration and fragmentation of rivers in Malta
Malta, situated in the Mediterranean Sea south of Sicily, is a small island of less than 300 km2. Two hundred years ago Malta was a wet and sodden country. The limestone was like a sponge, with numerous perennial springs, great and small, and so full of water that most flat areas did not drain, but were marsh. Water from springs, rivers and marshes was in ample supply. In the space of two centuries, Malta's rivers have passed from being good, spring-regulated watercourses with a mixed community of clean limewater plants, to the present-day situation where many if not all are on the verge of extinction. This is the result of human impact, not climate change, and is set to continue and increase. Unfortunately the best wetland-type valley communities were scheduled to be destroyed in 1997 but, after a change of Government and vigorous representations, these may now be spared. However, there is at least a great opportunity to prevent further fragmentation of remaining rivers and to reclaim some of the fragmented portions
No detectable radio emission from the magnetar-like pulsar in Kes 75
The rotation-powered pulsar PSR J1846-0258 in the supernova remnant Kes 75
was recently shown to have exhibited magnetar-like X-ray bursts in mid-2006.
Radio emission has not yet been observed from this source, but other
magnetar-like sources have exhibited transient radio emission following X-ray
bursts. We report on a deep 1.9 GHz radio observation of PSR J1846-0258 with
the 100-m Green Bank Telescope in late 2007 designed to search for radio
pulsations or bursts from this target. We have also analyzed three shorter
serendipitous 1.4 GHz radio observations of the source taken with the 64-m
Parkes telescope during the 2006 bursting period. We detected no radio emission
from PSR J1846-0258 in either the Green Bank or Parkes datasets. We place an
upper limit of 4.9 \mu Jy on coherent pulsed emission from PSR J1846-0258 based
on the 2007 November 2 observation, and an upper limit of 27 \mu Jy around the
time of the X-ray bursts. Serendipitously, we observed radio pulses from the
nearby RRAT J1846-02, and place a 3\sigma confidence level upper limit on its
period derivative of 1.7 * 10^{-13}, implying its surface dipole magnetic field
is less than 2.6 * 10^{13} G.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Ap
A Limit on the Polarized Anisotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background at Subdegree Angular Scales
A ground-based polarimeter, PIQUE, operating at 90 GHz has set a new limit on
the magnitude of any polarized anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background.
The combination of the scan strategy and full width half maximum beam of 0.235
degrees gives broad window functions with average multipoles, l = 211+294-146
and l = 212+229-135 for the E- and B-mode window functions, respectively. A
joint likelihood analysis yields simultaneous 95% confidence level flat band
power limits of 14 and 13 microkelvin on the amplitudes of the E- and B-mode
angular power spectra, respectively. Assuming no B-modes, a 95% confidence
limit of 10 microkelvin is placed on the amplitude of the E-mode angular power
spectrum alone.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Astrophysical Journal Letter
Deterioration and fragmentation of rivers in Malta
Malta, situated in the Mediterranean Sea south of Sicily, is a small island ofless than 300 km2, comparable in size to the Isle of Wight. It is physicallydiverse, composed of Coralline limestone plateaux reaching almost 300 metresin height, blue clay slopes below the plateaux, undercliff areas where limestonemeets the sea, flat basins (due to faulting, erosion and deposition), andGlobigerina limestone areas of gently sloping land. Surprisingly, for such asmall area, Malta has ca. 100 km of sizeable watercourses and ca. 200 km ofminor ones
Does tiny-scale atomic structure exist in the interstellar medium ?
We report on preliminary results from the recent multi-epoch neutral hydrogen
absorption measurements toward three pulsars, B0823+26, B1133+16 and B2016+28,
using the Arecibo telescope. We do not find significant variations in optical
depth profiles over periods of 0.3 and 9--10 yr, or on spatial scales of 10--20
and 70--85 AU. The large number of non detections of the tiny scale atomic
structure suggests that the AU-sized structure is not ubiquitous in the
interstellar medium and could be quite a rare phenomenon.Comment: Accepted by ApJ Letters, 5 pages, 2 figure
Profiling of Glycan Receptors for Minute Virus of Mice in Permissive Cell Lines Towards Understanding the Mechanism of Cell Recognition
The recognition of sialic acids by two strains of minute virus of mice (MVM), MVMp (prototype) and MVMi (immunosuppressive), is an essential requirement for successful infection. To understand the potential for recognition of different modifications of sialic acid by MVM, three types of capsids, virus-like particles, wild type empty (no DNA) capsids, and DNA packaged virions, were screened on a sialylated glycan microarray (SGM). Both viruses demonstrated a preference for binding to 9-O-methylated sialic acid derivatives, while MVMp showed additional binding to 9-O-acetylated and 9-O-lactoylated sialic acid derivatives, indicating recognition differences. The glycans recognized contained a type-2 Galβ1-4GlcNAc motif (Neu5Acα2-3Galβ1-4GlcNAc or 3′SIA-LN) and were biantennary complex-type N-glycans with the exception of one. To correlate the recognition of the 3′SIA-LN glycan motif as well as the biantennary structures to their natural expression in cell lines permissive for MVMp, MVMi, or both strains, the N- and O-glycans, and polar glycolipids present in three cell lines used for in vitro studies, A9 fibroblasts, EL4 T lymphocytes, and the SV40 transformed NB324K cells, were analyzed by MALDI-TOF/TOF mass spectrometry. The cells showed an abundance of the sialylated glycan motifs recognized by the viruses in the SGM and previous glycan microarrays supporting their role in cellular recognition by MVM. Significantly, the NB324K showed fucosylation at the non-reducing end of their biantennary glycans, suggesting that recognition of these cells is possibly mediated by the Lewis X motif as in 3′SIA-LeX identified in a previous glycan microarray screen
Detection of Gravitational Lensing in the Cosmic Microwave Background
Gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), a
long-standing prediction of the standard cosmolgical model, is ultimately
expected to be an important source of cosmological information, but first
detection has not been achieved to date. We report a 3.4 sigma detection, by
applying quadratic estimator techniques to all sky maps from the Wilkinson
Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite, and correlating the result with
radio galaxy counts from the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS). We present our
methodology including a detailed discussion of potential contaminants. Our
error estimates include systematic uncertainties from density gradients in
NVSS, beam effects in WMAP, Galactic microwave foregrounds, resolved and
unresolved CMB point sources, and the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect.Comment: 27 pages, 20 figure
Sensitivity Comparison of Macro- and Micro-electrochemical Biosensors for Human Chorionic Gonadotropin Biomarker Detection
Evidence for a Weak Galactic Center Magnetic Field from Diffuse Low Frequency Nonthermal Radio Emission
New low-frequency 74 and 330 MHz observations of the Galactic center (GC)
region reveal the presence of a large-scale (6\arcdeg\times 2\arcdeg) diffuse
source of nonthermal synchrotron emission. A minimum energy analysis of this
emission yields a total energy of ergs
and a magnetic field strength of \muG (where is
the proton to electron energy ratio and is the filling factor of the
synchrotron emitting gas). The equipartition particle energy density is
\evcm, a value consistent with cosmic-ray data. However,
the derived magnetic field is several orders of magnitude below the 1 mG field
commonly invoked for the GC. With this field the source can be maintained with
the SN rate inferred from the GC star formation. Furthermore, a strong magnetic
field implies an abnormally low GC cosmic-ray energy density. We conclude that
the mean magnetic field in the GC region must be weak, of order 10 \muG (at
least on size scales \ga 125\arcsec).Comment: 12 pages, 1 JPEG figure, uses aastex.sty; Accepted for publication,
ApJL (2005, published
An iterative destriping technique for diffuse background polarization data
We describe a simple but effective iterative procedure specifically designed
to destripe Q and U Stokes parameter data as those collected by the SPOrt
experiment onboard the International Space Station (ISS). The method is general
enough to be useful for other experiments, both in polarization and total
intensity. The only requirement for the algorithm to work properly is that the
receiver knee frequency must be lower than the signal modulation frequency,
corresponding in our case to the ISS orbit period. Detailed performances of the
technique are presented in the context of the SPOrt experiment, both in terms
of added rms noise and residual correlated noise.Comment: Accepted for publication by A&A (8 pages, 6 figures
- …