748 research outputs found
Bringing Elites Sociology Back in European Integration Theories: A Case Study Based on Commissioners and Directors General
Founded on an analysis of biographies and carriers of topârank officials and members of the
European Commission, this paper suggest that a lot of recent polemic within the EU Institutions
(such as Verheugen controversy, Kinnock reform, etc.) are the expressions of the tensions
originating from socioâmorphological transformations. To put it simply, the gap between the
members and the officials of the Commission has never been so wide on this score.
Commissioners seem to be gaining in political capitals to the detriment of a professional
commitment in European politics, which implies for example a minimum degree of attendance
in the political space of the EU or the accumulation of capitals relating to this space. Conversely,
the topâlevel officials increasingly appear to owe their positions to longâterm investment in
institutions involving the production and, simultaneously, the accumulation of European
capitals, a general tendency whereof the meaning is precisely questioned within the conjuncture
of the Kinnock reform and more widely that of the political issues which characterised the mid
2000s. Beyond the conventional issue of the differentiation or deâdifferentiation processes of
the political and administrative elites, this approach enables to underline the unique
relationship between these staff categories in the case of the EU and to point out, to a greater
extent, an opposition between temporary and intermittent staff which seems to be a correct
indicator of inequal objectivation process of the European institutions
Searching for X-ray luminous 'normal' galaxies in 2dfGRS
We cross-correlated the Chandra XASSIST and XMM-Newton Serendipitous Source
Catalogues with the 2 degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dfGRS) database.
Our aim was to identify the most X-ray luminous (L_X > 10^42 erg s^-1) examples
of galaxies in the local Universe whose X-ray emission is dominated by stellar
processes rather than AGN activity ('normal' galaxies) as well as to test the
empirical criterion log(f_X/f_O) < -2 for separating AGN from NGs. With
XMM-Newton (Chandra) we covered an area of ~8.2 (~5.8)deg^2 down to a flux
limit of ~10^-15 (~1.6 x 10^-15) erg cm^-2 s^-1 and found 18 (20) 2dfGRS
galaxies. Using emission-line intensity ratios, we classified 6 2dfGRS spectra
as star-forming, H II nuclei, and 2 spectra as possible H II nuclei. The rest
of the objects are absorption-line galaxies and AGN, including 3 possible
LINERs. No luminous 'normal' galaxies have been found but out of 19 'normal'
galaxies in this sample 5 H II and 3 absorption-line galaxies have log(f_X/f_O)
> -2. We performed a similar search in two nearby-galaxy samples from the
literature. All 44 galaxies in the Zezas (2001) sample have log(f_X/f_O) < -2
and L_X < 10^42 erg s^-1. In the Fabbiano et al. (1992) sample, out of a total
of 170 'normal' galaxies, we found 16 galaxies with log(f_X/f_O) >-2, the
majority of which are massive ellipticals. Three of these have L_X > 10^42 erg
s^-1 .Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy &
Astrophysic
Recommended from our members
NAVI: Novel authentication with visual information
Text-based passwords, despite their well-known drawbacks, remain the dominant user authentication scheme implemented. Graphical password systems, based on visual information such as the recognition of photographs and / or pictures, have emerged as a promising alternative to the aggregate reliance on text passwords. Nevertheless, despite the advantages offered they have not been widely used in practice since many open issues need to be resolved. In this paper we propose a novel graphical password scheme, NAVI, where the credentials of the user are his username and a password formulated by drawing a route on a predefined map. We analyze the strength of the password generated by this scheme and present a prototype implementation in order to illustrate the feasibility of our proposal. Finally, we discuss NAVIâs security features and compare it with existing graphical password schemes as well as text-based passwords in terms of key security features, such aspassword keyspace, dictionary attacks and guessing attacks. The proposed scheme appears to have the same or better performance in the majority of the security features examined
The Phoenix survey: the pairing fraction of faint radio sources
The significance of tidal interactions in the evolution of the faint radio
population (sub-mJy) is studied using a deep and homogeneous radio survey (1.4
GHz), covering an area of 3.14 deg and complete to a flux density of 0.4
mJy. Optical photometric and spectroscopic data are also available for this
sample. A statistical approach is employed to identify candidate physical
associations between radio sources and optically selected `field' galaxies. We
find an excess of close pairs around optically identified faint radio sources,
albeit at a low significance level, implying that the pairing fraction of the
sub-mJy radio sources is similar to that of `field' galaxies (at the same
magnitude limit) but higher than that of local galaxies.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS Letter
X-rays across the galaxy population - III. The incidence of AGN as a function of star formation rate
We map the co-eval growth of galaxies and their central supermassive black
holes in detail by measuring the incidence of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) in
galaxies as a function of star formation rate (SFR) and redshift (to z~4). We
combine large galaxy samples with deep Chandra X-ray imaging to measure the
probability distribution of specific black hole accretion rates (LX relative to
stellar mass) and derive robust AGN fractions and average specific accretion
rates. First, we consider galaxies along the main sequence of star formation.
We find a linear correlation between the average SFR and both the AGN fraction
and average specific accretion rate across a wide range in stellar mass () and to at least z~2.5, indicating that AGN in
main-sequence galaxies are driven by the stochastic accretion of cold gas. We
also consider quiescent galaxies and find significantly higher AGN fractions
than predicted, given their low SFRs, indicating that AGN in quiescent galaxies
are fuelled by additional mechanisms (e.g. stellar winds). Next, we bin
galaxies according to their SFRs relative to the main sequence. We find that
the AGN fraction is significantly elevated for galaxies that are still
star-forming but with SFRs below the main sequence, indicating further
triggering mechanisms enhance AGN activity within these sub-main-sequence
galaxies. We also find that the incidence of high-accretion-rate AGN is
enhanced in starburst galaxies and evolves more mildly with redshift than
within the rest of the galaxy population, suggesting mergers play a role in
driving AGN activity in such high-SFR galaxies.Comment: 19 pages, 15 figures. This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced
version of an article accepted for publication in MNRAS following peer revie
The radio spectra of reddened 2MASS QSOs: evidence for young radio jets
Multifrequency radio continuum observations (1.4-22 GHz) of a sample of
reddened QSOs are presented. We find a high incidence (13/16) of radio spectral
properties, such as low frequency turnovers, high frequency spectral breaks or
steep power-law slopes, similar to those observed in powerful compact steep
spectrum (CSS) and gigahertz-peaked spectrum (GPS) sources. The radio data are
consistent with relatively young radio jets with synchotron ages <1e6-1e7yr.
This calculation is limited by the lack of high resolution (milli-arcsec) radio
observations. For the one source in the sample that such data are available a
much younger radio age is determined, <2e3yr, similar to those of GPS/CSS
sources. These findings are consistent with claims that reddened QSOs are young
systems captured at the first stages of the growth of their supermassive black
holes. It also suggests that expanding radio lobes may be an important feedback
mode at the early stages of the evolution of AGN.Comment: 9 pages, to appear in MNRA
XMM and Chandra measurements of the AGN intrinsic absorption: dependence on luminosity and redshift
We combine bright XMM data with the Chandra Deep Field South observations in
order to explore the behavior of the intrinsic AGN absorption, as a function of
redshift and luminosity.Our sample consists of 359 sources selected in the hard
2-8 keV band, spanning the flux range 6\times10^{-16}-$3\times10^{-13} erg s^-1
cm^-2 with a high rate of spectroscopic or photometric redshift completeness
(100 and 85 per cent respectively for the Chandra and XMM data. We derive the
column density values using X-ray spectral fits. We find that the fraction of
obscured AGN falls with increasing luminosity in agreement with previous
findings. The fraction of obscured AGN shows an apparent increase at high
redshifts (z>2). Simulations show that this effect can be most probably
attributed to the fact that at high redshifts the column densities are
overestimated.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, A&A accepte
The Clustering of XMM-Newton Hard X-ray Sources
We present the clustering properties of hard (2-8 keV) X-ray selected sources
detected in a wide field (~2 deg^{2}) shallow [f(2-8 keV)~ 10^{-14} erg cm^{-2}
s^{-1}] and contiguous XMM-Newton survey. We perform an angular correlation
function analysis using a total of 171 sources to the above flux limit. We
detect a ~ 4\sigma correlation signal out to 300 arcsec with w(theta <
300^{''}) ~ 0.13 +- 0.03. Modeling the two point correlation function as a
power law of the usual form we find: theta_o=48.9^{+15.8}_{-24.5} arcsec and
gamma=2.2 +- 0.30. Fixing the correlation function slope to gamma=1.8 we obtain
theta_o=22.2^{+9.4}_{-8.6} arcsec. Using Limber's integral equation and a
variety of possible luminosity functions of the hard X-ray population, we find
a relatively large correlation length, ranging from r_o ~ 9 to 19 h^{-1} Mpc
(for gamma=1.8 and the concordance cosmological model), with this range
reflecting also different evolutionary models for the source luminosities and
clustering characteristics.Comment: In "Multiwavelength AGN Surveys" (Cozumel, December 8-12 2003), ed.
R. Maiolino and R. Mujica, Singapore: World Scientific, 200
Cold gas and star formation in a merging galaxy sequence
We explore the evolution of the cold gas and star-formation activity during
galaxy interactions, using a merging galaxy sequence comprising both pre- and
post-mergers. Data for this study come from the literature but supplemented by
new radio observations presented here. Firstly, we confirm that the
star-formation efficiency (SFE) increases close to nuclear coalescence. At
post-merger stages there is evidence that the SFE declines to values typical of
ellipticals. This trend can be attributed to M(H_2) depletion due to
interaction induced star-formation. However, there is significant scatter,
likely to arise from differences in the interaction details of individual
systems. Secondly, we find that the central molecular hydrogen surface density,
increases close to the final stages of the merging of the two nuclei. Such a
trend is also predicted by numerical simulations. Furthermore, there is
evidence for a decreasing fraction of cold gas mass from early interacting
systems to merger remnants, attributed to gas conversion into other forms. The
evolution of the total-radio to blue-band luminosity ratio, reflecting the
disk+nucleus star-formation activity, is also investigated. Although this ratio
is on average higher than that of isolated spirals, we find a marginal increase
along the merging sequence, attributed to the relative insensitivity of disk
star-formation to interactions. However, a similar result is also obtained for
the nuclear radio emission, although galaxy interactions are believed to
significantly affect the activity in the central galaxy regions. Finally, we
find that the FIR--radio flux ratio distribution of interacting galaxies is
consistent with star-formation being the main energising source.Comment: 18 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
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