UCD Candidates in the Hydra Cluster

NGC 3311, the giant cD galaxy in the Hydra cluster (A1060), has one of the largest globular cluster systems known. We describe new Gemini GMOS (g',i') photometry of the NGC 3311 field which reveals that the red, metal-rich side of its globular cluster population extends smoothly upward into the mass range associated with the new class of Ultra-Compact Dwarfs (UCDs). We identify 29 UCD candidates with estimated masses > 6x10^6 solar masses and discuss their characteristics. This UCD-like sequence is the most well defined one yet seen, and reinforces current ideas that the high-mass end of the globular cluster sequence merges continuously into the UCD sequence, which connects in turn to the E galaxy structural sequence.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

Investigation of sputtering effects on the moon's surface Eleventh quarterly status report, 25 Oct. 1965 - 24 Jan. 1966

Implications of Lunar 9 moon probe, sputtering yield reduction due to surface roughness, water formation by solar wind bombardment, photometric function of moon, and chemical sputterin

The Personality Traits of Populist Leaders and Their Foreign Policies: Hugo Chávez and Donald Trump

This paper seeks to advance the study of the nexus of populism and foreign policy by showing the connection between the personality traits of the leader and the foreign policy behavior of the state that they represent. It focuses on the political personality profiles of two populist leaders who can be characterized as antiplural, Hugo Chávez and Donald Trump, as a way to empirically further substantiate the recent research agenda on populism in world politics. The paper builds the two populist leaders’ political profiles through the use of the leader trait analysis approach. It contends that there are patterns in populist leaders’ personalities that can act as key drivers of their noncooperative and conflict-inducing behavior in foreign policy. The results show the characteristics that appear as the strongest predictors of their behavior in the international arena are their low task orientation and high focus on relationships

A strong converse for classical channel coding using entangled inputs

A fully general strong converse for channel coding states that when the rate of sending classical information exceeds the capacity of a quantum channel, the probability of correctly decoding goes to zero exponentially in the number of channel uses, even when we allow code states which are entangled across several uses of the channel. Such a statement was previously only known for classical channels and the quantum identity channel. By relating the problem to the additivity of minimum output entropies, we show that a strong converse holds for a large class of channels, including all unital qubit channels, the d-dimensional depolarizing channel and the Werner-Holevo channel. This further justifies the interpretation of the classical capacity as a sharp threshold for information-transmission.Comment: 9 pages, revte

The Fate of Diazinon Applied to Thatched Turf

Diazinon (0,0-diethyl-0-(2-isopropyl-6-methyl-4-primidinyl) phosphorothioate) is widely used to control turfgrass insect pests. Poor control of soil-inhabiting insects has been found where diazinon has been applied to thatched turfgrass stands. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the environmental fate of diazinon applied to turfgrass stands. A microecosystem was used to follow the fate of radiolabeled diazinon surface applied to Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis L.) turfs, with or without a thatch layer, growing on Flanigan silt loam (fine, montmorillonitic, mesic Aquic Argiudoll) irrigated daily or every 4 days. Loss of diazinon by volatilization, leaching, and degradation accompanied by release of 14CO2 or incorporation of label into soil compounds was measured. The most degradation of parent compound occurred on turf containing a thatch layer irrigated daily where only 7% of the applied diazinon remained after 3 weeks. Between 32 and 47% of the parent compound remained in either turf with thatch irrigated every 4 days or turfs without thatch. The majority of the diazinon (96%) remained in the top 10 mm of the turf profile regardless of whether this was thatch or soil. In the presence of thatch, there was an accelerated rate of diazinon degradation as measured by release of 14CO2 from the two position on the pyrmidine ring. Increasing irrigation frequency on the thatched turf did not cause an increase in leaching but did increase diazinon breakdown. The results of the study suggest that where thatch is present, reduced control of insects is due both to a failure of the insecticide to move through the thatch and an increased rate of degradation

Iron Fertilization of Kentucky Bluegrass

Iron applications are sometimes used to enhance the color (darker green) of turfgrass stands even when iron is not deficient. A study was conducted to determine the feasibility of replacing a portion of the total yearly N applied to Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis L.) with iron. Turfgrass response to iron chelate (Sequestrene 330) applications at 2.2 kg Fe ha-1 in combination with three liquid-applied N sources (urea, Formolene, and FLUF) at 25 kg N ha-1 was compared to turf response from applications of the N sources at 49 kg N ha-1. Iron was substituted for part of the N in either the first and second, second and third, or third application in a four application per year program. The study was conducted for three years, and the fertilized turf was rated for color weekly during the growing season. Depending on N source and frequency of Fe application, turf treated with N received higher color ratings compared to turf receiving Fe + N on 13 (Formolene + Fe in third application) to 36% (Fluf + Fe in first and second application) of the rating dates. Turf color was judged acceptable on 78 to 85% of the rating dates for turf treated with N and 62 to 85% of the rating dates for turf treated with Fe + N. The results indicate that it is feasible to substitute iron for a portion of the N in a urea or Formolene fertilization program but that caution should be used when replacing N from FLUF with iron

Probability tree algorithm for general diffusion processes

Motivated by path-integral numerical solutions of diffusion processes, PATHINT, we present a new tree algorithm, PATHTREE, which permits extremely fast accurate computation of probability distributions of a large class of general nonlinear diffusion processes

Entropic uncertainty relations and locking: tight bounds for mutually unbiased bases

We prove tight entropic uncertainty relations for a large number of mutually unbiased measurements. In particular, we show that a bound derived from the result by Maassen and Uffink for 2 such measurements can in fact be tight for up to sqrt{d} measurements in mutually unbiased bases. We then show that using more mutually unbiased bases does not always lead to a better locking effect. We prove that the optimal bound for the accessible information using up to sqrt{d} specific mutually unbiased bases is log d/2, which is the same as can be achieved by using only two bases. Our result indicates that merely using mutually unbiased bases is not sufficient to achieve a strong locking effect, and we need to look for additional properties.Comment: 9 pages, RevTeX, v3: complete rewrite, new title, many new results, v4: minor changes, published versio

From Supermassive Black Holes to Dwarf Elliptical Nuclei: a Mass Continuum

Considerable evidence suggests that supermassive black holes reside at the centers of massive galactic bulges. At a lower galactic mass range, many dwarf galaxies contain extremely compact nuclei that structurally resemble massive globular clusters. We show that both these types of central massive objects (CMO's) define a single unbroken relation between CMO mass and the luminosity of their host galaxy spheroid. Equivalently, M_CMO is directly proportional to the host spheroid mass over 4 orders of magnitude. We note that this result has been simultaneously and independently identified by Cote et al. (2006), see also Ferrarese et al. (2006). We therefore suggest that the dE,N nuclei may be the low-mass analogs of supermassive black holes, and that these two types of CMO's may have both developed starting from similar initial formation processes. The overlap mass interval between the two types of CMO's is small, and suggests that for M_CMO > 10^7 M_sun, the formation of a black hole was strongly favored, perhaps because the initial gas infall to the center was too rapid and violent for star formation to occur efficiently.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, submitted to ApJ

Hypertonicity-induced cation channels rescue cells from staurosporine-elicited apoptosis

Cell shrinkage is one of the earliest events during apoptosis. Cell shrinkage also occurs upon hypertonic stress, and previous work has shown that hypertonicity-induced cation channels (HICCs) underlie a highly efficient mechanism of recovery from cell shrinkage, called the regulatory volume increase (RVI), in many cell types. Here, the effects of HICC activation on staurosporine-induced apoptotic volume decrease (AVD) and apoptosis were studied in HeLa cells by means of electronic cell sizing and whole-cell patch-clamp recording. It was found that hypertonic stress reduces staurosporine-induced AVD and cell death (associated with caspase-3/7 activation and DNA fragmentation), and that this effect was actually due to activation of the HICC. On the other hand, staurosporine was found to significantly reduce osmotic HICC activation. It is concluded that AVD and RVI reflect two fundamentally distinct functional modes in terms of the activity and role of the HICC, in a shrunken cell. Our results also demonstrate, for the first time, the ability of the HICC to rescue cells from the process of programmed cell death