2,363 research outputs found
Observations of microquasars with the MAGIC telescope
We report on the results from the observations in very high energy band (VHE,
E_gamma > 100GeV) of the black hole X-ray binary (BHXB) Cygnus X-1. The
observations were performed with the MAGIC telescope, for a total of 40 hours
during 26 nights, spanning the period between June and November 2006. We report
on the results of the searches for steady and variable gamma-ray signals,
including the first experimental evidence for an intense flare, of duration
between 1.5 and 24 hours.Comment: Contribution to the 30th ICRC, Merida Mexico, July 2007 on behalf of
the MAGIC Collaboratio
Gamma rays from microquasars Cygnus X-1 and Cygnus X-3
Gamma-ray observations of microquasars at high and very-high energies can
provide valuable information of the acceleration processes inside the jets, the
jet-environment interaction and the disk-jet coupling. Two high-mass
microquasars have been deeply studied to shed light on these aspects: Cygnus
X-1 and Cygnus X-3. Both systems display the canonical hard and soft X-ray
spectral states of black hole transients, where the radiation is dominated by
non-thermal emission from the corona and jets and by thermal emission from the
disk, respectively. Here, we report on the detection of Cygnus X-1 above 60 MeV
using 7.5 yr of Pass8 Fermi-LAT data, correlated with the hard X-ray state. A
hint of orbital flux modulation was also found, as the source is only detected
in phases around the compact object superior conjunction. We conclude that the
high-energy gamma-ray emission from Cygnus X-1 is most likely associated with
jets and its detection allow us to constrain the production site. Moreover, we
include in the discussion the final results of a MAGIC long-term campaign on
Cygnus X-1 that reaches almost 100 hr of observations at different X-ray
states. On the other hand, during summer 2016, Cygnus X-3 underwent a flaring
activity period in radio and high-energy gamma rays, similar to the one that
led to its detection in the high-energy regime in 2009. MAGIC performed
comprehensive follow-up observations for a total of about 70 hr. We discuss our
results in a multi-wavelength context.Comment: Proceedings of the 35th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC
2017), Bexco, Busan, Korea (arXiv:1708.05153
Benchmarking microbiome transformations favors experimental quantitative approaches to address compositionality and sampling depth biases
While metagenomic sequencing has become the tool of preference to study host-associated microbial communities, downstream analyses and clinical interpretation of microbiome data remains challenging due to the sparsity and compositionality of sequence matrices. Here, we evaluate both computational and experimental approaches proposed to mitigate the impact of these outstanding issues. Generating fecal metagenomes drawn from simulated microbial communities, we benchmark the performance of thirteen commonly used analytical approaches in terms of diversity estimation, identification of taxon-taxon associations, and assessment of taxon-metadata correlations under the challenge of varying microbial ecosystem loads. We find quantitative approaches including experimental procedures to incorporate microbial load variation in downstream analyses to perform significantly better than computational strategies designed to mitigate data compositionality and sparsity, not only improving the identification of true positive associations, but also reducing false positive detection. When analyzing simulated scenarios of low microbial load dysbiosis as observed in inflammatory pathologies, quantitative methods correcting for sampling depth show higher precision compared to uncorrected scaling. Overall, our findings advocate for a wider adoption of experimental quantitative approaches in microbiome research, yet also suggest preferred transformations for specific cases where determination of microbial load of samples is not feasible
Data model issues in the Cherenkov Telescope Array project
The planned Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), a future ground-based
Very-High-Energy (VHE) gamma-ray observatory, will be the largest project of
its kind. It aims to provide an order of magnitude increase in sensitivity
compared to currently operating VHE experiments and open access to guest
observers. These features, together with the thirty years lifetime planned for
the installation, impose severe constraints on the data model currently being
developed for the project.
In this contribution we analyze the challenges faced by the CTA data model
development and present the requirements imposed to face them. While the full
data model is still not completed we show the organization of the work, status
of the design, and an overview of the prototyping efforts carried out so far.
We also show examples of specific aspects of the data model currently under
development.Comment: In Proceedings of the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference
(ICRC2015), The Hague, The Netherlands. All CTA contributions at
arXiv:1508.0589
Mean Field Approximations and Multipartite Thermal Correlations
The relationship between the mean-field approximations in various interacting
models of statistical physics and measures of classical and quantum
correlations is explored. We present a method that allows us to bound the total
amount of correlations (and hence entanglement) in a physical system in thermal
equilibrium at some temperature in terms of its free energy and internal
energy. This method is first illustrated using two qubits interacting through
the Heisenberg coupling, where entanglement and correlations can be computed
exactly. It is then applied to the one dimensional Ising model in a transverse
magnetic field, for which entanglement and correlations cannot be obtained by
exact methods. We analyze the behavior of correlations in various regimes and
identify critical regions, comparing them with already known results. Finally,
we present a general discussion of the effects of entanglement on the
macroscopic, thermodynamical features of solid-state systems. In particular, we
exploit the fact that a dimensional quantum system in thermal equilibrium
can be made to corresponds to a d+1 classical system in equilibrium to
substitute all entanglement for classical correlations.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figure
Rotifers from selected inland saline waters in the Chihuahuan Desert of MĂ©xico
© 2008 Walsh et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens
Effect of Parathion-Methyl on Amazonian fish and freshwater invertebrates: a comparison of sensitivity with temperate data.
Parathion-methyl is an organophosphorous insecticide that is widely used in agricultural production sites in the Amazon. The use of this pesticide might pose a potential risk for the biodiversity and abundance of fish and invertebrate species inhabiting aquatic ecosystems adjacent to the agricultural fields. Due to a lack of toxicity data for Amazonian species, safe environmental concentrations used to predict the ecological risks of parathion-methyl in the Amazon are based on tests performed with temperate species, although it is unknown whether the sensitivity of temperate species is representative for those of Amazonian endemic species
Entanglement and alpha entropies for a massive scalar field in two dimensions
We find the analytic expression of the trace of powers of the reduced density
matrix on an interval of length L, for a massive boson field in 1+1 dimensions.
This is given exactly (except for a non universal factor) in terms of a finite
sum of solutions of non linear differential equations of the Painlev\'e V type.
Our method is a generalization of one introduced by Myers and is based on the
explicit calculation of quantities related to the Green function on a plane,
where boundary conditions are imposed on a finite cut. It is shown that the
associated partition function is related to correlators of exponential
operators in the Sine-Gordon model in agreement with a result by Delfino et al.
We also compute the short and long distance leading terms of the entanglement
entropy. We find that the bosonic entropic c-function interpolates between the
Dirac and Majorana fermion ones given in a previous paper. Finally, we study
some universal terms for the entanglement entropy in arbitrary dimensions
which, in the case of free fields, can be expressed in terms of the two
dimensional entropy functions.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figure
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