37,676 research outputs found
Is the cosmic microwave background really non-Gaussian?
Two recent papers have claimed detection of non-Gaussian features in the COBE
DMR sky maps of the cosmic microwave background. We confirm these results, but
argue that Gaussianity is still not convincingly ruled out. Since a score of
non-Gaussianity tests have now been published, one might expect some mildly
significant results even by chance. Moreover, in the case of one measure which
yields a detection, a bispectrum statistic, we find that if the non-Gaussian
feature is real, it may well be due to detector noise rather than a
non-Gaussian sky signal, since a signal-to-noise analysis localizes it to
angular scales smaller than the beam. We study its spatial origin in case it is
nonetheless due to a sky signal (eg, a cosmic string wake or flat-spectrum
foreground contaminant). It appears highly localized in the direction b=39.5,
l=257, since removing a mere 5 pixels inside a single COBE beam area centered
there makes the effect statistically insignificant. We also test Guassianity
with an eigenmode analysis which allows a sky map to be treated as a random
number generator. A battery of tests of this generator all yield results
consistent with Gaussianity.Comment: Revised to match accepted ApJL version. 4 pages with 2 figs included.
Links and color fig at http://www.sns.ias.edu/~max/gaussianity_frames.html or
from [email protected]
The relativistic Iron K-alpha line from an accretion disc onto a static non-baryonic compact object
This paper continues the study of the properties of an accretion disc
rotating around a non-baryonic (assumed super-massive) compact object. This
kind of objects, generically known as boson stars, were earlier proposed as a
possible alternative scenario to the existence of super-masive black holes in
the center of every galaxy. A dilute boson star has also been proposed as a
large part of the non-baryonic dark matter, flattening galactic rotational
velocities curves. In this contribution, we compute the profile of the emission
lines of Iron; its shape has been for long known as a useful diagnosis of the
space-time geometry. We compare with the case of a Schwarzschild black hole,
concluding that the differences are observationally distinguishable.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure
GHASP: an H{\alpha} kinematic survey of spiral and irregular galaxies -- IX. The NIR, stellar and baryonic Tully-Fisher relations
We studied, for the first time, the near infrared, stellar and baryonic
Tully-Fisher relations for a sample of field galaxies taken from an homogeneous
Fabry-Perot sample of galaxies (the GHASP survey). The main advantage of GHASP
over other samples is that maximum rotational velocities were estimated from 2D
velocity fields, avoiding assumptions about the inclination and position angle
of the galaxies. By combining these data with 2MASS photometry, optical colors,
HI masses and different mass-to-light ratio estimators, we found a slope of
4.48\pm0.38 and 3.64\pm0.28 for the stellar and baryonic Tully-Fisher relation,
respectively. We found that these values do not change significantly when
different mass-to-light ratios recipes were used. We also point out, for the
first time, that rising rotation curves as well as asymmetric rotation curves
show a larger dispersion in the Tully-Fisher relation than flat ones or than
symmetric ones. Using the baryonic mass and the optical radius of galaxies, we
found that the surface baryonic mass density is almost constant for all the
galaxies of this sample. In this study we also emphasize the presence of a
break in the NIR Tully-Fisher relation at M(H,K)\sim-20 and we confirm that
late-type galaxies present higher total-to-baryonic mass ratios than early-type
spirals, suggesting that supernova feedback is actually an important issue in
late-type spirals. Due to the well defined sample selection criteria and the
homogeneity of the data analysis, the Tully-Fisher relation for GHASP galaxies
can be used as a reference for the study of this relation in other environments
and at higher redshifts.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA
Eye-CU: Sleep Pose Classification for Healthcare using Multimodal Multiview Data
Manual analysis of body poses of bed-ridden patients requires staff to
continuously track and record patient poses. Two limitations in the
dissemination of pose-related therapies are scarce human resources and
unreliable automated systems. This work addresses these issues by introducing a
new method and a new system for robust automated classification of sleep poses
in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) environment. The new method,
coupled-constrained Least-Squares (cc-LS), uses multimodal and multiview (MM)
data and finds the set of modality trust values that minimizes the difference
between expected and estimated labels. The new system, Eye-CU, is an affordable
multi-sensor modular system for unobtrusive data collection and analysis in
healthcare. Experimental results indicate that the performance of cc-LS matches
the performance of existing methods in ideal scenarios. This method outperforms
the latest techniques in challenging scenarios by 13% for those with poor
illumination and by 70% for those with both poor illumination and occlusions.
Results also show that a reduced Eye-CU configuration can classify poses
without pressure information with only a slight drop in its performance.Comment: Ten-page manuscript including references and ten figure
Evidence of defect-induced ferromagnetism in ZnFeO thin films
X-ray absorption near-edge and grazing incidence X-ray fluorescence
spectroscopy are employed to investigate the electronic structure of
ZnFeO thin films. The spectroscopy techniques are used to determine
the non-equilibrium cation site occupancy as a function of depth and oxygen
pressure during deposition and its effects on the magnetic properties. It is
found that low deposition pressures below 10 mbar cause iron
superoccupation of tetrahedral sites without Zn inversion, resulting in
an ordered magnetic phase with high room temperature magnetic moment.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
NGC 2782: a merger remnant with young stars in its gaseous tidal tail
We have searched for young star-forming regions around the merger remnant NGC
2782. By using GALEX FUV and NUV imaging and HI data we found seven UV sources,
located at distances greater than 26 kpc from the center of NGC 2782, and
coinciding with its western HI tidal tail. These regions were resolved in
several smaller systems when Gemini/GMOS r-band images were used. We compared
the observed colors to stellar population synthesis models and we found that
these objects have ages of ~1 to 11 Myr and masses ranging from 10^3.9 to
10^4.6 Msun. By using Gemini/GMOS spectroscopic data we confirm memberships and
derive high metallicities for three of the young regions in the tail
(12+log(O/H)=8.74\pm0.20, 8.81\pm0.20 and 8.78\pm0.20). These metallicities are
similar to the value presented by the nuclear region of NGC 2782 and also
similar to the value presented for an object located close to the main body of
NGC 2782. The high metallicities measured for the star-forming regions in the
gaseous tidal tail of NGC 2782 could be explained if they were formed out of
highly enriched gas which was once expelled from the center of the merging
galaxies when the system collided. An additional possibility is that the tail
has been a nursery of a few generations of young stellar systems which
ultimately polluted this medium with metals, further enriching the already
pre-enriched gas ejected to the tail when the galaxies collided.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA
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