2,423 research outputs found
Handbook for Learning-centred evaluation of Computer-facilitated learning projects in higher education
This handbook supports a project funded by the Australian Government Committee for University Teaching and Staff Development (CUTSD). The amended project title is âStaff Development in Evaluation of Technology-based Teaching Development Projects: An Action Inquiry Approachâ.
The project is hosted by Murdoch University on behalf of the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ASCILITE), as a consortium of 11 universities.
The rationale of the project is to guide a group of university staff through the evaluation of a Computer-facilitated Learning (CFL1) project by a process of action inquiry and mentoring, supported by the practical and theoretical material contained in this handbook
The Large, Oxygen-Rich Halos of Star-Forming Galaxies Are A Major Reservoir of Galactic Metals
The circumgalactic medium (CGM) is fed by galaxy outflows and accretion of
intergalactic gas, but its mass, heavy element enrichment, and relation to
galaxy properties are poorly constrained by observations. In a survey of the
outskirts of 42 galaxies with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph onboard the
Hubble Space Telescope, we detected ubiquitous, large (150 kiloparsec) halos of
ionized oxygen surrounding star-forming galaxies, but we find much less ionized
oxygen around galaxies with little or no star formation. This ionized CGM
contains a substantial mass of heavy elements and gas, perhaps far exceeding
the reservoirs of gas in the galaxies themselves. It is a basic component of
nearly all star-forming galaxies that is removed or transformed during the
quenching of star formation and the transition to passive evolution.Comment: This paper is part of a set of three papers on circumgalactic gas
observed with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph on HST, to be published in
Science, together with related papers by Tripp et al. and Lehner & Howk, in
the November 18, 2011 edition. This version has not undergone final
copyediting. Please see Science online for the final printed versio
Multiphase Gas In Galaxy Halos: The OVI Lyman-limit System toward J1009+0713
We have serendipitously detected a strong O VI-bearing Lyman limit system at
z_abs = 0.3558 toward the QSO J1009+0713 (z_em = 0.456) in our survey of
low-redshift galaxy halos with the Hubble Space Telescope's Cosmic Origins
Spectrograph. Its rest-frame equivalent width of W_r = 835 +/- 49 mA is the
highest for an intervening absorber yet detected in any low-redshift QSO
sightline, with absorption spanning 400 km s^-1 in its rest frame. HST/WFC3
images of the galaxy field show that the absorber is associated with two
galaxies lying at 14 and 46 kpc from the QSO line of sight. The bulk of the
absorbing gas traced by H I resides in two strong, blended component groups
that possess a total logN(HI) = 18 - 18.8. The ion ratios and column densities
of C, N, O, Mg, Si, S, and Fe, except the O VI, can be accommodated into a
simple photoionization model in which diffuse, low-metallicity halo gas is
exposed to a photoionizing field from stars in the nearby galaxies that
propagates into the halo at 10% efficiency. We constrain the metallicity firmly
within the range 0.1 - 1 Zsun, and photoionization modeling indirectly
indicates a subsolar metallicity of 0.05 - 0.5 Zsun. The appearance of strong O
VI and nine Mg II components and our review of similar systems in the
literature support the "interface" picture of high-velocity O VI: the total
strength of the O VI shows a positive correlation with the number of detected
components in the low-ionization gas, however the total O VI column densities
still far exceed the values expected from interface models for the number of
detected clouds.Comment: 20 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
QSO Absorption Systems Detected in Ne VIII: High-Metallicity Clouds with a Large Effective Cross Section
Using high resolution, high signal-to-noise ultraviolet spectra of the z =
0.9754 quasar PG1148+549 obtained with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) on
the Hubble Space Telescope, we study the physical conditions and abundances of
NeVIII+OVI absorption line systems at z(abs) =0.68381, 0.70152, 0.72478. In
addition to NeVIII and OVI, absorption lines from multiple ionization stages of
oxygen (OII, OIII, OIV) are detected and are well-aligned with the more highly
ionized species. We show that these absorbers are multiphase systems including
hot gas (T ~ 10^{5.7} K) that produces NeVIII and OVI, and the gas metallicity
of the cool phase ranges from Z = 0.3 Z_{solar} to supersolar. The cool
(~10^{4} K) phases have densities n_{H} ~ 10^{-4} cm^{-3} and small sizes (<
4kpc); these cool clouds are likely to expand and dissipate, and the NeVIII may
be within a transition layer between the cool gas and a surrounding, much
hotter medium. The NeVIII redshift density, dN/dz = 7^{+7}_{-3}, requires a
large number of these clouds for every L > 0.1L* galaxy and a large effective
absorption cross section (>~ 100 kpc), and indeed, we find a star forming ~L*
galaxy at the redshift of the z(abs)=0.72478 system, at an impact parameter of
217 kpc. Multiphase absorbers like these NeVIII systems are likely to be an
important reservoir of baryons and metals in the circumgalactic media of
galaxies.Comment: Final published version (Astrophysical Journal
A Deep Search For Faint Galaxies Associated With Very Low-redshift C IV Absorbers: III. The Mass- and Environment-dependent Circumgalactic Medium
Using Hubble Space Telescope Cosmic Origins Spectrograph observations of 89
QSO sightlines through the Sloan Digital Sky Survey footprint, we study the
relationships between C IV absorption systems and the properties of nearby
galaxies as well as large-scale environment. To maintain sensitivity to very
faint galaxies, we restrict our sample to 0.0015 < z < 0.015, which defines a
complete galaxy survey to L > 0.01 L* or stellar mass log M_* > 8 Msun. We
report two principal findings. First, for galaxies with impact parameter rho <
1 rvir, C IV detection strongly depends on the luminosity/stellar mass of the
nearby galaxy. C IV is preferentially associated with galaxies with log M_* >
9.5 Msun; lower mass galaxies rarely exhibit significant C IV absorption
(covering fraction f = 9 +12-6% for 11 galaxies with log M_* < 9.5 Msun).
Second, C IV detection within the log M_* > 9.5 Msun population depends on
environment. Using a fixed-aperture environmental density metric for galaxies
with rho < 160 kpc at z < 0.055, we find that 57+/-12% (8/14) of galaxies in
low-density regions (regions with fewer than seven L > 0.15 L* galaxies within
1.5 Mpc) have affiliated C IV absorption; however, none (0/7) of the galaxies
in denser regions show C IV. Similarly, the C IV detection rate is lower for
galaxies residing in groups with dark-matter halo masses of log Mhalo > 12.5
Msun. In contrast to C IV, H I is pervasive in the CGM without regard to mass
or environment. These results indicate that C IV absorbers with log N(C IV) >
13.5 cm^-2 trace the halos of log M_* > 9.5 Msun galaxies but also reflect
larger scale environmental conditions.Comment: 26 pages, 13 figures. ApJ, in pres
Luminosity distributions of Type Ia Supernovae
We have assembled a dataset of 165 low redshift, 0.06, publicly available type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia). We produce maximum light magnitude ( and ) distributions of SNe Ia to explore the diversity of parameter space that they can fill. Before correction for host galaxy extinction we find that the mean and of SNe Ia are mag and mag respectively. Host galaxy extinction is corrected using a new method based on the SN spectrum. After correction, the mean values of and of SNe Ia are and mag respectively. After correction for host galaxy extinction, `normal' SNeIa (mag) fill a larger parameter space in the Width-Luminosity Relation (WLR) than previously suggested, and there is evidence for luminous SNe Ia with large . We find a bimodal distribution in , with a pronounced lack of transitional events at =1.6 mag. We confirm that faster, low-luminosity SNe tend to come from passive galaxies. Dividing the sample by host galaxy type, SNe Ia from star-forming (S-F) galaxies have a mean mag, while SNe Ia from passive galaxies have a mean mag. Even excluding fast declining SNe, `normal' ( mag) SNe Ia from S-F and passive galaxies are distinct. In the -band, there is a difference of 0.40.13 mag between the median () values of the `normal' SN Ia population from passive and S-F galaxies. This is consistent with (10)% of `normal' SNe Ia from S-F galaxies coming from an old stellar population
High-velocity clouds as streams of ionized and neutral gas in the halo of the Milky Way
High-velocity clouds (HVC), fast-moving ionized and neutral gas clouds found
at high galactic latitudes, may play an important role in the evolution of the
Milky Way. The extent of this role depends sensitively on their distances and
total sky covering factor. We search for HVC absorption in HST high resolution
ultraviolet spectra of a carefully selected sample of 133 AGN using a range of
atomic species in different ionization stages. This allows us to identify
neutral, weakly ionized, or highly ionized HVCs over several decades in HI
column densities. The sky covering factor of UV-selected HVCs with |v_LSR|>90
km/s is 68%+/-4% for the entire Galactic sky. We show that our survey is
essentially complete, i.e., an undetected population of HVCs with extremely low
N(H) (HI+HII) is unlikely to be important for the HVC mass budget. We confirm
that the predominantly ionized HVCs contain at least as much mass as the
traditional HI HVCs and show that large HI HVC complexes have generally ionized
envelopes extending far from the HI contours. There are also large regions of
the Galactic sky that are covered with ionized high-velocity gas with little HI
emission nearby. We show that the covering factors of HVCs with 90<|v_LSR|<170
km/s drawn from the AGN and stellar samples are similar. This confirms that
these HVCs are within 5-15 kpc of the sun. The covering factor of these HVCs
drops with decreasing vertical height, which is consistent with HVCs being
decelerated or disrupted as they fall to the Milky Way disk. The HVCs with
|v_LSR|>170 km/s are largely associated with the Magellanic Stream at b<0 and
its leading arm at b>0 as well as other large known HI complexes. Therefore
there is no evidence in the Local Group that any galaxy shows a population of
HVCs extending much farther away than 50 kpc from its host, except possibly for
those tracing remnants of galaxy interaction.Comment: Submitted to MNRAS (19 pages, 11 figures). Comments are welcom
Modeling Rare Species Distribution at the Edge: The Case for the Vulnerable Endemic Pyrenean Desman in France
The endemic Pyrenean Desman (Galemys pyrenaicus) is an elusive, rare, and vulnerable species declining over its entire and narrow range (Spain, Portugal, France, and Andorra). The principal set of conservation measures in France is a 5-years National Action Plan based on 25 conservation actions. Priority is given to update its present distribution and develop tools for predictive distribution models. We aim at building the first species distribution model and map for the northern edge of the range of the Desman and confronting the outputs of the model to target conservation efforts in the context of environmental change. Contrasting to former comparable studies, we derive a simpler model emphasizing the importance of factors linked to precipitation and not to the temperature. If temperature is one of the climate change key factors, depicted shrinkage in Desman distribution could be lower or null at the northern (French) edge suggesting thus a major role for this northern population in terms of conservation of the species. Finally, we question the applied issue of temporal and spatial transferability for such environmental favourability models when it is made at the edge of the distribution range
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