On the stability of non-isothermal Bonnor-Ebert spheres. II. The effect of gas temperature on the stability

Aims. We investigate the stability of non-isothermal Bonnor-Ebert spheres with a model that includes a self-consistent calculation of the gas temperature. This way we can discard the assumption of equality between the dust and gas temperatures, and study the stability as the gas temperature changes with chemical evolution of the gas. Methods. We use a gas-grain chemical model including a time-dependent treatment of depletion onto grain surfaces, which strongly influences the gas temperature as the main coolant, CO, depletes from the gas. Dust and gas temperatures are solved with radiative transfer. For comparison with previous work, we assume that the cores are deeply embedded in a larger external structure, corresponding to visual extinction $A_{\rm V}^{\rm ext}=10$ mag. Results. We find that the critical non-dimensional radius $\xi_1$ derived here is similar to our previous work where we assumed $T_{\rm dust}=T_{\rm gas}$; the $\xi_1$ values lie below the isothermal critical value $\xi_0\sim6.45$, but the difference is less than 10%. Chemical evolution does not affect notably the stability condition of low-mass cores (<0.75 $M_\odot$). For higher masses the decrease of cooling owing to CO depletion causes substantial temporal changes in the temperature and density profiles of the cores. In the mass range 1-2 $M_\odot$ , $\xi_1$ decreases with chemical evolution, whereas above 3 $M_\odot$ , $\xi_1$ instead increases. We also find that decreasing $A_{\rm V}^{\rm ext}$ increases the gas temperature especially when the gas is chemically old, causing $\xi_1$ to increase with respect to models with higher $A_{\rm V}^{\rm ext}$. The derived $\xi_1$ values are close to $\xi_0$. The density contrast between the core center and edge varies between 8 to 16 depending on core mass and the chemical age of the gas, compared to the constant value $\sim$ 14.1 for the isothermal BES.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures; accepted for publication in A&A; abstract (heavily) abridged for arXi

Benefits and challenges of adopting virtual reality in primary education

Abstract. This bachelor’s thesis discusses the suitability of virtual reality in primary education. Therefore, the research question is: “How can virtual reality benefit primary school education and what are the challenges of adopting it”. First this paper focuses on what is virtual reality and how it can be used in education. Then this research considers the benefits and challenges of adopting virtual reality technology in primary education. The reason for this research is that currently virtual reality has not yet been adopted properly in educational fields, except for some early adopters or some specific higher education. Virtual reality has had too many technological challenges for it to have been properly adopted in primary education. Therefore, problems like money and lack of technology have limited the adoption of it, but more recent innovations may have changed the situation. As such, a review was needed to evaluate the current feasibility and state of virtual reality in primary education. The method for this research was literature review. Fair amount of studies have been conducted regarding virtual reality, with some focusing directly on different aspects of education. This paper discussed and compiled the existing literature and drew conclusions based on them

Modelling line emission of deuterated H_3^+ from prestellar cores

Context: The depletion of heavy elements in cold cores of interstellar molecular clouds can lead to a situation where deuterated forms of H_3^+ are the most useful spectroscopic probes of the physical conditions. Aims: The aim is to predict the observability of the rotational lines of H_2D^+ and D_2H^+ from prestellar cores. Methods: Recently derived rate coefficients for the H_3^+ + H_2 isotopic system were applied to the "complete depletion" reaction scheme to calculate abundance profiles in hydrostatic core models. The ground-state lines of H_2D^+(o) (372 GHz) and D_2H^+(p) (692 GHz) arising from these cores were simulated. The excitation of the rotational levels of these molecules was approximated by using the state-to-state coefficients for collisions with H_2. We also predicted line profiles from cores with a power-law density distribution advocated in some previous studies. Results: The new rate coefficients introduce some changes to the complete depletion model, but do not alter the general tendencies. One of the modifications with respect to the previous results is the increase of the D_3^+ abundance at the cost of other isotopologues. Furthermore, the present model predicts a lower H_2D^+ (o/p) ratio, and a slightly higher D_2H^+ (p/o) ratio in very cold, dense cores, as compared with previous modelling results. These nuclear spin ratios affect the detectability of the submm lines of H_2D^+(o) and D_2H^+(p). The previously detected H_2D^+ and D_2H^+ lines towards the core I16293E, and the H_2D^+ line observed towards Oph D can be reproduced using the present excitation model and the physical models suggested in the original papers.Comment: 10 pages, 11 Figures; ver2: updated some of the Figures, added some references, added an entry to acknowledgement

HD depletion in starless cores

Aims: We aim to investigate the abundances of light deuterium-bearing species such as HD, H2D+ and D2H+ in a gas-grain chemical model including an extensive description of deuterium and spin state chemistry, in physical conditions appropriate to the very centers of starless cores. Methods: We combine a gas-grain chemical model with radiative transfer calculations to simulate density and temperature structure in starless cores. The chemical model includes deuterated forms of species with up to 4 atoms and the spin states of the light species H2, H2+ and H3+ and their deuterated forms. Results: We find that HD eventually depletes from the gas phase because deuterium is efficiently incorporated to grain-surface HDO, resulting in inefficient HD production on grains. HD depletion has consequences not only on the abundances of e.g. H2D+ and D2H+, whose production depends on the abundance of HD, but also on the spin state abundance ratios of the various light species, when compared with the complete depletion model where heavy elements do not influence the chemistry. Conclusions: While the eventual HD depletion leads to the disappearance of light deuterium-bearing species from the gas phase in a relatively short timescale at high density, we find that at late stages of core evolution the abundances of H2D+ and D2H+ increase toward the core edge and the disributions become extended. The HD depletion timescale increases if less oxygen is initially present in the gas phase, owing to chemical interaction between the gas and the dust predecing the starless core phase. Our results are greatly affected if H2 is allowed to tunnel on grain surfaces, and therefore more experimental data not only on tunneling but also on the O + H2 surface reaction in particular is needed.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, abstract abridged; accepted for publication in A &

A study of the cc-C3HD\mathrm{C_{3}HD}/cc-C3H2\mathrm{C_{3}H_{2}} ratio in low-mass star forming regions

We use the deuteration of $c$-$\mathrm{C_{3}H_{2}}$ to probe the physical parameters of starless and protostellar cores, related to their evolutionary states, and compare it to the $\mathrm{N_{2}H^{+}}$-deuteration in order to study possible differences between the deuteration of C- and N-bearing species. We observed the main species $c$-$\mathrm{C_{3}H_{2}}$, the singly and doubly deuterated species $c$-$\mathrm{C_{3}HD}$ and $c$-$\mathrm{C_{3}D_{2}}$, as well as the isotopologue $c$-$\mathrm{{H^{13}CC_{2}H}}$ toward 10 starless cores and 5 protostars in the Taurus and Perseus Complexes. We examined the correlation between the $N$($c$-$\mathrm{C_{3}HD}$)/$N$($c$-$\mathrm{C_{3}H_{2}}$) ratio and the dust temperature along with the $\mathrm{H_2}$ column density and the CO depletion factor. The resulting $N$($c$-$\mathrm{C_{3}HD}$)/$N$($c$-$\mathrm{C_{3}H_{2}}$) ratio is within the error bars consistent with $10\%$ in all starless cores with detected $c$-$\mathrm{C_{3}HD}$. This also accounts for the protostars except for the source HH211, where we measure a high deuteration level of $23\%$. The deuteration of $\mathrm{N_{2}H^{+}}$ follows the same trend but is considerably higher in the dynamically evolved core L1544. Toward the protostellar cores the coolest objects show the largest deuterium fraction in $c$-$\mathrm{C_{3}H_{2}}$. We show that the deuteration of $c$-$\mathrm{C_{3}H_{2}}$ can trace the early phases of star formation and is comparable to that of $\mathrm{N_{2}H^{+}}$. However, the largest $c$-$\mathrm{C_{3}H_{2}}$ deuteration level is found toward protostellar cores, suggesting that while $c$-$\mathrm{C_{3}H_{2}}$ is mainly frozen onto dust grains in the central regions of starless cores, active deuteration is taking place on ice

Bones of contention: a double-blind study of experts’ ability to classify sheep and goat astragali from images

In zooarchaeology, animal bones are normally identified using comparative macro-morphological methods, which involve visual comparison of the bone with reference materials. However, recent work has oppugned the reliability of these methods. Although previous studies applying macro-morphological methods to identify sheep and goat bones have found low error rates, these results are based on small numbers of analysts and large numbers of different bone types and do not properly account for ambiguous ‘sheep/goat’ classifications. We present an extensive blind study of performance and reliability for binary macro-morphological species identification using just the astragalus. Each participant made independent comparative identifications on a random subset, including repeat presentations for consistency analysis. No sheep/goat category was offered. Instead, participants reported confidence scores on each sample. The participants also reported the reference materials used and indicated their regions of attention in each image. Findings indicate that neither the use of reference materials nor experience is a good predictor of accuracy, although more experienced analysts are found to be more consistent. Forcing binary classifications leads to a more transparent analysis but indicates lower performance scores than reported elsewhere, while corresponding confidence scores positively correlate with accuracy. Qualitative analysis of reported attention regions indicates that mistakes can occur when there is an overlap in the morphologies of the two species. We conclude that overreliance on reference materials impacts performance when the morphology of reference materials is not representative of the population variance, which is especially evident when the wider bone morphology is not adequately integrated into the classification decision

Calculating the 3D magnetic field of ITER for European TBM studies

The magnetic perturbation due to the ferromagnetic test blanket modules (TBMs) may deteriorate fast ion confinement in ITER. This effect must be quantified by numerical studies in 3D. We have implemented a combined finite element method (FEM) -- Biot-Savart law integrator method (BSLIM) to calculate the ITER 3D magnetic field and vector potential in detail. Unavoidable geometry simplifications changed the mass of the TBMs and ferritic inserts (FIs) up to 26%. This has been compensated for by modifying the nonlinear ferromagnetic material properties accordingly. Despite the simplifications, the computation geometry and the calculated fields are highly detailed. The combination of careful FEM mesh design and using BSLIM enables the use of the fields unsmoothed for particle orbit-following simulations. The magnetic field was found to agree with earlier calculations and revealed finer details. The vector potential is intended to serve as input for plasma shielding calculations.Comment: In proceedings of the 28th Symposium on Fusion Technolog

Cavitating propeller flows predicted by RANS solver with structured grid and small reynolds number turbulence model approach

Within the EU research project VIRTUE, a propeller is investigated in uniform and nonuniform inflow conditions by means of a RANS equation solver, FINFLO. The analyses are made in wetted and cavitating conditions. The propeller analyzed in this paper is the INSEAN E779A propeller. The paper contains calculations at three different grid resolutions in wetted conditions and at the two finest grid resolutions in cavitating conditions in uniform inflow. The mediumsize grid is used for the propeller in nonuniform inflow simulations. The simulations are conducted on a model scale and the results are compared with the measurements and cavitation tests performed by INSEAN. The nonuniform inflow is generated by modeling the geometry of the artificial wake generator used in the cavitation tests in the calculation domain. The experimental results are published in several papers, for example in [1] and [2]. The predicted propeller open water thrust and torque are found to be within 5 % of the measured ones. The pressure peak at the leading edge of a blade is found to be sensitive to the grid resolution. The predicted cavitation behavior of the propeller blades is in reasonable accordance with the cavitation test observations. In uniform inflow the vaporized region is overpredicted. Contrastingly, the vaporized region is Underpredicted in the nonuniform inflow calculations. Side entrant jets could be identified in the cavity region in the nonuniform inflow simulations. The predicted vaporized regions in several blade positions together with photographs of the cavitating propeller are shown for comparison. The cavitation behavior trends seemed to be similar in the simulations and observations in nonuniform inflow, except that the rollup of detached sheet cavitation into a tip vortex could not be captured in the calculations. The total wake is measured between the propeller plane and the wake generator. The predicted wake is found to be too strong, but the width of the wake is relatively close to the measurements. The propeller loading history is shown over one propeller revolution. It shows qualitatively reasonable trends. The loading histories of the wetted and cavitating propeller are almost the same due to the relative small cavitating region in the investigated conditions. The pressure distributions at several blade positions on the suction side of the propeller are shown in wetted and cavitating conditions for comparison.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/84244/1/CAV2009-final45.pd