Valuing the voluntary sector: rethinking economic analysis

The voluntary sector plays an important role in the sports industry, as a provider of sporting opportunities and in the development of sport, from increasing participation through to supporting excellence and elite performance. However, despite this importance, research on its contribution to sport-related economic activity is limited, with information on this sector remaining the weakest part of current economic assessments of the UK sports industry. The research presented in this article examines the economic importance of the voluntary sector, using a case study of Sheffield. It demonstrates that the sports voluntary sector in the city is considerably smaller than was predicted when using national estimates, and that this is largely a consequence of methodological issues relating to previous research. The article suggests that in the light of the findings and the increasing use of sport in urban policy, there is a need to rethink the methodology used to evaluate the economic contribution of the voluntary sector in the future.</p

The Herschel Virgo Cluster Survey - I. Luminosity function

We describe the Herschel Virgo Cluster Survey (HeViCS) and the first data obtained as part of the science demonstration phase (SDP). The data cover a central 4×4 sq deg region of the cluster. We use SPIRE and PACS photometry data to produce 100, 160, 250, 350 and 500 μm luminosity functions (LFs) for optically bright galaxies that are selected at 500 μm and detected in all bands. We compare these LFs with those previously derived using IRAS, BLAST and Herschel-ATLAS data. The Virgo cluster LFs do not have the large numbers of faint galaxies or examples of very luminous galaxies seen previously in surveys covering less dense environments

The quenching of star formation in accretion-driven clumpy turbulent tori of active galactic nuclei

Galactic gas-gas collisions involving a turbulent multiphase ISM share common ISM properties: dense extraplanar gas visible in CO, large linewidths (>= 50 km/s), strong mid-infrared H_2 line emission, low star formation activity, and strong radio continuum emission. Gas-gas collisions can occur in the form of ICM ram pressure stripping, galaxy head-on collisions, compression of the intragroup gas and/or galaxy ISM by an intruder galaxy which flies through the galaxy group at a high velocity, or external gas accretion on an existing gas torus in a galactic center. We suggest that the common theme of all these gas-gas interactions is adiabatic compression of the ISM leading to an increase of the turbulent velocity dispersion of the gas. The turbulent gas clouds are then overpressured and star formation is quenched. Within this scenario we developed a model for turbulent clumpy gas disks where the energy to drive turbulence is supplied by external infall or the gain of potential energy by radial gas accretion within the disk. The cloud size is determined by the size of a C-type shock propagating in dense molecular clouds with a low ionization fraction at a given velocity dispersion. We give expressions for the expected volume and area filling factors, mass, density, column density, and velocity dispersion of the clouds. The latter is based on scaling relations of intermittent turbulence whose open parameters are estimated for the CND in the Galactic Center. The properties of the model gas clouds and the external mass accretion rate necessary for the quenching of the star formation rate due to adiabatic compression are consistent with those derived from high-resolution H_2 line observations. Based on these findings, a scenario for the evolution of gas tori in galactic centers is proposed and the implications for star formation in the Galactic Center are discussed.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication by A&

Probing the Low Surface Brightness Dwarf Galaxy Population of the Virgo Cluster

We have used public data from the Next Generation Virgo Survey (NGVS) to investigate the dwarf galaxy population of the Virgo cluster beyond what has previously been discovered. We initially mask and smooth the data, and then use the object detection algorithm Sextractor to make our initial dwarf galaxy selection. All candidates are then visually inspected to remove artefacts and duplicates. We derive Sextractor parameters to best select low surface brightness galaxies using g band central surface brightness values of 22.5 to 26.0 mag sq arc sec and exponential scale lengths of 3.0 - 10.0 arc sec to identify 443 cluster dwarf galaxies - 303 of which are new detections. These new detections have a surface density that decreases with radius from the cluster centre. We also apply our selection algorithm to 'background', non-cluster, fields and find zero detections. In combination, this leads us to believe that we have isolated a cluster dwarf galaxy population. The range of objects we are able to detect is limited because smaller scale sized galaxies are confused with the background, while larger galaxies are split into numerous smaller objects by the detection algorithm. Using data from previous surveys combined with our data, we find a faint end slope to the luminosity function of -1.35+/-0.03, which does not significantly differ to what has previously been found for the Virgo cluster, but is a little steeper than the slope for field galaxies. There is no evidence for a faint end slope steep enough to correspond with galaxy formation models, unless those models invoke either strong feedback processes or use warm dark matter.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA

Evolutionary origins of ultrasonic hearing and laryngeal echolocation in bats inferred from morphological analyses of the inner ear

PMCID: PMC3598973This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Spectral Stability of the Neumann Laplacian

We prove the equivalence of Hardy- and Sobolev-type inequalities, certain uniform bounds on the heat kernel and some spectral regularity properties of the Neumann Laplacian associated with an arbitrary region of finite measure in Euclidean space. We also prove that if one perturbs the boundary of the region within a uniform H\"older category then the eigenvalues of the Neumann Laplacian change by a small and explicitly estimated amount. AMS subject classifications: 35P15, 35J25, 47A75, 47B25, 26D10, 46E35. Keywords: Neumann Laplacian, Sobolev inequalities, Hardy inequalities, spectral stability, H\"older continuity.Comment: 23 page

The intelligence cycle is dead, long live the intelligence cycle: Rethinking intelligence fundamentals for a new intelligence doctrine

In the spring of 2009 the UK Ministry of Defence elected to undertake a review of the existing military Joint Intelligence Doctrine. The existing doctrine, Joint Warfare Doctrine 2-00 (JWP 2-00) Intelligence Support to Joint Operations had been promulgated in 2003 largely on the basis of coalition-oriented expeditionary and peace support operations in the Balkans, Middle East and Afghanistan. This had replaced an earlier, first edition of JWP 2-00 issued in 1999

Flame: A Flexible Data Reduction Pipeline for Near-Infrared and Optical Spectroscopy

We present flame, a pipeline for reducing spectroscopic observations obtained with multi-slit near-infrared and optical instruments. Because of its flexible design, flame can be easily applied to data obtained with a wide variety of spectrographs. The flexibility is due to a modular architecture, which allows changes and customizations to the pipeline, and relegates the instrument-specific parts to a single module. At the core of the data reduction is the transformation from observed pixel coordinates (x, y) to rectified coordinates (lambda, gamma). This transformation consists in the polynomial functions lambda(x,y) and gamma(x,y) that are derived from arc or sky emission lines and slit edge tracing, respectively. The use of 2D transformations allows one to wavelength calibrate and rectify the data using just one interpolation step. Furthermore, the gamma(x,y) transformation includes also the spatial misalignment between frames, which can be measured from a reference star observed simultaneously with the science targets. The misalignment can then be fully corrected during the rectification, without having to further resample the data. Sky subtraction can be performed via nodding and/or modeling of the sky spectrum; the combination of the two methods typically yields the best results. We illustrate the pipeline by showing examples of data reduction for a near-infrared instrument (LUCI at the Large Binocular Telescope) and an optical one (LRIS at the Keck telescope).Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures, published in MNRAS. The pipeline is available at https://github.com/siriobelli/flam

Dust Emissivity in the Far-Infrared

We have derived the dust emissivity in the Far-Infrared (FIR) using data available in the literature. We use two wavelength dependences derived from spectra of Galactic FIR emission (Reach et al. 1995). A value for the emissivity, normalised to the extinction efficiency in the V band, has been retrieved from maps of Galactic FIR emission, dust temperature and extinction (Schlegel et al. 1998). Our results are similar to other measurements in the Galaxy but only marginally consistent with the widely quoted values of Hildebrand (1983) derived on one reflection nebula. The discrepancy with measurements on other reflection nebulae (Casey 1991) is higher and suggests a different grain composition in these environments with respect to the diffuse interstellar medium. We measure dust masses for a sample of six spiral galaxies with FIR observations and obtain gas-to-dust ratios close to the Galactic value.Comment: 5 pages, 1 ps file, A&A letter accepte