201 research outputs found
Automated diffeomorphic registration of anatomical structures with rigid parts: application to dynamic cervical MRI.
International audienceWe propose an iterative two-step method to compute a diffeomorphic non-rigid transformation between images of anatomical structures with rigid parts, without any user intervention or prior knowledge on the image intensities. First we compute spatially sparse, locally optimal rigid transformations between the two images using a new block matching strategy and an efficient numerical optimiser (BOBYQA). Then we derive a dense, regularised velocity field based on these local transformations using matrix logarithms and M-smoothing. These two steps are iterated until convergence and the final diffeomorphic transformation is defined as the exponential of the accumulated velocity field. We show our algorithm to outperform the state-of-the-art log-domain diffeomorphic demons method on dynamic cervical MRI data
Quantifying the interplay between environmental and social effects on aggregated-fish dynamics
Demonstrating and quantifying the respective roles of social interactions and
external stimuli governing fish dynamics is key to understanding fish spatial
distribution. If seminal studies have contributed to our understanding of fish
spatial organization in schools, little experimental information is available
on fish in their natural environment, where aggregations often occur in the
presence of spatial heterogeneities. Here, we applied novel modeling approaches
coupled to accurate acoustic tracking for studying the dynamics of a group of
gregarious fish in a heterogeneous environment. To this purpose, we
acoustically tracked with submeter resolution the positions of twelve small
pelagic fish (Selar crumenophthalmus) in the presence of an anchored floating
object, constituting a point of attraction for several fish species. We
constructed a field-based model for aggregated-fish dynamics, deriving
effective interactions for both social and external stimuli from experiments.
We tuned the model parameters that best fit the experimental data and
quantified the importance of social interactions in the aggregation, providing
an explanation for the spatial structure of fish aggregations found around
floating objects. Our results can be generalized to other gregarious species
and contexts as long as it is possible to observe the fine-scale movements of a
subset of individuals.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures and 4 supplementary figure
Seeds of Life in Space (SOLIS). III. Zooming Into the Methanol Peak of the Prestellar Core L1544
Toward the prestellar core L1544, the methanol (CH3OH) emission forms an asymmetric ring around the core center, where CH3OH is mostly in solid form, with a clear peak at 4000 au to the northeast of the dust continuum peak. As part of the NOEMA Large Project SOLIS (Seeds of Life in Space), the CH3OH peak has been spatially resolved to study its kinematics and physical structure and to investigate the cause behind the local enhancement. We find that methanol emission is distributed in a ridge parallel to the main axis of the dense core. The centroid velocity increases by about 0.2 km sâ1 and the velocity dispersion increases from subsonic to transonic toward the central zone of the core, where the velocity field also shows complex structure. This could be an indication of gentle accretion of material onto the core or the interaction of two filaments, producing a slow shock. We measure the rotational temperature and show that methanol is in local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) only close to the dust peak, where it is significantly depleted. The CH3OH column density, N tot(CH3OH), profile has been derived with non-LTE radiative transfer modeling and compared with chemical models of a static core. The measured N tot(CH3OH) profile is consistent with model predictions, but the total column densities are one order of magnitude lower than those predicted by models, suggesting that the efficiency of reactive desorption or atomic hydrogen tunneling adopted in the model may be overestimated; or that an evolutionary model is needed to better reproduce methanol abundance
The composition of the protosolar disk and the formation conditions for comets
Conditions in the protosolar nebula have left their mark in the composition
of cometary volatiles, thought to be some of the most pristine material in the
solar system. Cometary compositions represent the end point of processing that
began in the parent molecular cloud core and continued through the collapse of
that core to form the protosun and the solar nebula, and finally during the
evolution of the solar nebula itself as the cometary bodies were accreting.
Disentangling the effects of the various epochs on the final composition of a
comet is complicated. But comets are not the only source of information about
the solar nebula. Protostellar disks around young stars similar to the protosun
provide a way of investigating the evolution of disks similar to the solar
nebula while they are in the process of evolving to form their own solar
systems. In this way we can learn about the physical and chemical conditions
under which comets formed, and about the types of dynamical processing that
shaped the solar system we see today.
This paper summarizes some recent contributions to our understanding of both
cometary volatiles and the composition, structure and evolution of protostellar
disks.Comment: To appear in Space Science Reviews. The final publication is
available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11214-015-0167-
Grain Surface Models and Data for Astrochemistry
AbstractThe cross-disciplinary field of astrochemistry exists to understand the formation, destruction, and survival of molecules in astrophysical environments. Molecules in space are synthesized via a large variety of gas-phase reactions, and reactions on dust-grain surfaces, where the surface acts as a catalyst. A broad consensus has been reached in the astrochemistry community on how to suitably treat gas-phase processes in models, and also on how to present the necessary reaction data in databases; however, no such consensus has yet been reached for grain-surface processes. A team of âŒ25 experts covering observational, laboratory and theoretical (astro)chemistry met in summer of 2014 at the Lorentz Center in Leiden with the aim to provide solutions for this problem and to review the current state-of-the-art of grain surface models, both in terms of technical implementation into models as well as the most up-to-date information available from experiments and chemical computations. This review builds on the results of this workshop and gives an outlook for future directions
Seeds of Life in Space (SOLIS) VI. Chemical evolution of sulfuretted species along the outflows driven by the low-mass protostellar binary NGC1333-IRAS4A
Context: Low-mass protostars drive powerful molecular outflows that can be observed with millimetre and submillimetre telescopes.
Various sulfuretted species are known to be bright in shocks and could be used to infer the physical and chemical conditions throughout
the observed outflows.
Aims: The evolution of sulfur chemistry is studied along the outflows driven by the NGC 1333-IRAS4A protobinary system located
in the Perseus cloud to constrain the physical and chemical processes at work in shocks.
Methods: We observed various transitions from OCS, CS, SO, and SO2 towards NGC 1333-IRAS4A in the 1.3, 2, and 3 mm bands
using the IRAM NOrthern Extended Millimeter Array and we interpreted the observations through the use of the Paris-Durham shock
model.
Results: The targeted species clearly show different spatial emission along the two outflows driven by IRAS4A. OCS is brighter
on small and large scales along the south outflow driven by IRAS4A1, whereas SO2 is detected rather along the outflow driven by
IRAS4A2 that is extended along the north eastâsouth west direction. SO is detected at extremely high radial velocity up to +25 km sâ1
relative to the source velocity, clearly allowing us to distinguish the two outflows on small scales. Column density ratio maps estimated
from a rotational diagram analysis allowed us to confirm a clear gradient of the OCS/SO2 column density ratio between the IRAS4A1
and IRAS4A2 outflows. Analysis assuming non Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium of four SO2 transitions towards several SiO emission peaks suggests that the observed gas should be associated with densities higher than 105
cmâ3
and relatively warm (T > 100 K)
temperatures in most cases.
Conclusions: The observed chemical differentiation between the two outflows of the IRAS4A system could be explained by a different chemical history. The outflow driven by IRAS4A1 is likely younger and more enriched in species initially formed in interstellar
ices, such as OCS, and recently sputtered into the shock gas. In contrast, the longer and likely older outflow triggered by IRAS4A2 is
more enriched in species that have a gas phase origin, such as SO2
Reactive Desorption of CO Hydrogenation Products under Cold Pre-stellar Core Conditions
The astronomical gas-phase detection of simple species and small organic
molecules in cold pre-stellar cores, with abundances as high as
n, contradicts the generally accepted idea
that at K, such species should be fully frozen out on grain surfaces. A
physical or chemical mechanism that results in a net transfer from solid-state
species into the gas phase offers a possible explanation. Reactive desorption,
i.e., desorption following the exothermic formation of a species, is one of the
options that has been proposed. In astronomical models, the fraction of
molecules desorbed through this process is handled as a free parameter, as
experimental studies quantifying the impact of exothermicity on desorption
efficiencies are largely lacking. In this work, we present a detailed
laboratory study with the goal of deriving an upper limit for the reactive
desorption efficiency of species involved in the CO-HCO-CHOH
solid-state hydrogenation reaction chain. The limit for the overall reactive
desorption fraction is derived by precisely investigating the solid-state
elemental carbon budget, using reflection absorption infrared spectroscopy and
the calibrated solid-state band-strength values for CO, HCO and CHOH.
We find that for temperatures in the range of to K, an upper limit of
for the overall elemental carbon loss upon CO conversion into
CHOH. This corresponds with an effective reaction desorption fraction of
per hydrogenation step, or per H-atom induced
reaction, assuming that H-atom addition and abstraction reactions equally
contribute to the overall reactive desorption fraction along the hydrogenation
sequence. The astronomical relevance of this finding is discussed.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure
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