12,490 research outputs found
Dust-to-gas ratio, factor and CO-dark gas in the Galactic anticentre: an observational study
We investigate the correlation between extinction and H~{\sc i} and CO
emission at intermediate and high Galactic latitudes (|b|>10\degr) within the
footprint of the Xuyi Schmidt Telescope Photometric Survey of the Galactic
anticentre (XSTPS-GAC) on small and large scales. In Paper I (Chen et al.
2014), we present a three-dimensional dust extinction map within the footprint
of XSTPS-GAC, covering a sky area of over 6,000\,deg at a spatial angular
resolution of 6\,arcmin. In the current work, the map is combined with data
from gas tracers, including H~{\sc i} data from the Galactic Arecibo L-band
Feed Array H~{\sc i} survey and CO data from the Planck mission, to constrain
the values of dust-to-gas ratio and CO-to-
conversion factor for the entire GAC
footprint excluding the Galactic plane, as well as for selected star-forming
regions (such as the Orion, Taurus and Perseus clouds) and a region of diffuse
gas in the northern Galactic hemisphere. For the whole GAC footprint, we find
\, and \,. We have also
investigated the distribution of "CO-dark" gas (DG) within the footprint of GAC
and found a linear correlation between the DG column density and the -band
extinction: . The mass fraction of DG is found to be toward
the Galactic anticentre, which is respectively about 23 and 124 per cent of the
atomic and CO-traced molecular gas in the same region. This result is
consistent with the theoretical work of Papadopoulos et al. but much larger
than that expected in the cloud models by Wolfire et al.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
Entanglement-enhanced measurement of a completely unknown phase
The high-precision interferometric measurement of an unknown phase is the
basis for metrology in many areas of science and technology. Quantum
entanglement provides an increase in sensitivity, but present techniques have
only surpassed the limits of classical interferometry for the measurement of
small variations about a known phase. Here we introduce a technique that
combines entangled states with an adaptive algorithm to precisely estimate a
completely unspecified phase, obtaining more information per photon that is
possible classically. We use the technique to make the first ab initio
entanglement-enhanced optical phase measurement. This approach will enable
rapid, precise determination of unknown phase shifts using interferometry.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure
Cloning and characterization of a y-type inactive HMW glutenin subunit gene from Triticum durum cultivar youmangbingmai
The high molecular weight glutenin subunits (HMW-GS) are key factors of the breadmaking quality of common wheat flour. In the present study, one unexpressed 1By gene from Triticum durum cultivar youmangbingmai was cloned and characterized. The results indicated that the silenced 1By gene in youmangbingmai showed the highest homology to that of previously published 1By8, suggesting that the unexpressed 1By may have originated from 1By8. However, compared to expressed 1By8, the silenced 1By in youmangbingmai had a deletion of 247bp at 5' segment. The deletion resulted in the intact of DNA sequences responsible for signal peptide and N- terminal domains. The deletion also resulted in frameshift mutation in C-terminal domains and central region. Therefore, 1By gene in youmangbingmai had no the typical structure as did normal HMW-GS genes and thus this gene can be not translated into normal HWM-GS. This may be the molecular mechanism of silence for 1By gene in youmangbingmai. This molecular mechanism is different from those previously reported. Previous studies indicated that the insertion of transposon elements or the presence of premature stop codon is the molecular mechanisms responsible for silence of HWM-GS genes. Moreover, this deletion of 247 nucleotides in YMBM produced a new reading frame. This reading frame may produce a new protein, which is different from HWM-GS
A three dimensional extinction map of the Galactic Anticentre from multi-band photometry
We present a three dimensional extinction map in band. The map has a
spatial angular resolution, depending on latitude, between 3 -- 9\,arcmin and
covers the entire XSTPS-GAC survey area of over 6,000\, for Galactic
longitude and latitude . By cross-matching the photometric catalog of the Xuyi Schmidt
Telescope Photometric Survey of the Galactic Anticentre (XSTPS-GAC) with those
of 2MASS and WISE, we have built a multi-band photometric stellar sample of
about 30 million stars and applied spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting
to the sample. By combining photometric data from the optical to the
near-infrared, we are able to break the degeneracy between the intrinsic
stellar colours and the amounts of extinction by dust grains for stars with
high photometric accuracy, and trace the extinction as a function of distance
for low Galactic latitude and thus highly extincted regions. This has allowed
us to derive the best-fit extinction and distance information of more than 13
million stars, which are used to construct the three dimensional extinction
map. We have also applied a Rayleigh-Jeans colour excess (RJCE) method to the
data using the 2MASS and WISE colour . The resulting RJCE extinction
map is consistent with the integrated two dimensional map deduced using the
best-fit SED algorithm. However for individual stars, the amounts of extinction
yielded by the RJCE method suffer from larger errors than those given by the
best-fit SED algorithm.Comment: 20 pages, 18 figures, accepted in MNRA
The evolution of stellar metallicity gradients of the Milky Way disk from LSS-GAC main sequence turn-off stars: a two-phase disk formation history?
We use 297 042 main sequence turn-off stars selected from the LSS-GAC to
determine the radial and vertical gradients of stellar metallicity of the
Galactic disk in the anti-center direction. We determine ages of those turn-off
stars by isochrone fitting and measure the temporal variations of metallicity
gradients. Our results show that the gradients, both in the radial and vertical
directions, exhibit significant spatial and temporal variations. The radial
gradients yielded by stars of oldest ages (>11 Gyr) are essentially zero at all
heights from the disk midplane, while those given by younger stars are always
negative. The vertical gradients deduced from stars of oldest ages (>11Gyr) are
negative and show only very weak variations with the Galactocentric distance in
the disk plane, , while those yielded by younger stars show strong
variations with . After being essentially flat at the earliest epochs of
disk formation, the radial gradients steepen as age decreases, reaching a
maxima (steepest) at age 7-8 Gyr, and then they flatten again. Similar temporal
trends are also found for the vertical gradients. We infer that the assemblage
of the Milky Way disk may have experienced at least two distinct phases. The
earlier phase is probably related to a slow, pressure-supported collapse of
gas, when the gas settles down to the disk mainly in the vertical direction. In
the later phase, there are significant radial flows of gas in the disk, and the
rate of gas inflow near the solar neighborhood reaches a maximum around a
lookback time of 7-8 Gyr. The transition of the two phases occurs around a
lookback time between 8 and 11 Gyr. The two phases may be responsible for the
formation of the Milky Way thick and thin disks, respectively. And, as a
consequence, we recommend that stellar age is a natural, physical criterion to
distinguish thin and thick disk stars. ... (abridged)Comment: 31 pages, 17 figures, Accepted for publication in a special issue of
Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics on LAMOST science
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