The mass-to-light ratio of rich star clusters

We point out a strong time-evolution of the mass-to-light conversion factor eta commonly used to estimate masses of unresolved star clusters from observed cluster spectro-photometric measures. We present a series of gas-dynamical models coupled with the Cambridge stellar evolution tracks to compute line-of-sight velocity dispersions and half-light radii weighted by the luminosity. We explore a range of initial conditions, varying in turn the cluster mass and/or density, and the stellar population's IMF. We find that eta, and hence the estimated cluster mass, may increase by factors as large as 3 over time-scales of 50 million years. We apply these results to an hypothetic cluster mass distribution function (d.f.) and show that the d.f. shape may be strongly affected at the low-mass end by this effect. Fitting truncated isothermal (Michie-King) models to the projected light profile leads to over-estimates of the concentration parameter c of delta c ~ 0.3 compared to the same functional fit applied to the projected mass density.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the "Young massive star clusters", Granada, Spain, September 200

New genetic loci link adipose and insulin biology to body fat distribution.

Body fat distribution is a heritable trait and a well-established predictor of adverse metabolic outcomes, independent of overall adiposity. To increase our understanding of the genetic basis of body fat distribution and its molecular links to cardiometabolic traits, here we conduct genome-wide association meta-analyses of traits related to waist and hip circumferences in up to 224,459 individuals. We identify 49 loci (33 new) associated with waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index (BMI), and an additional 19 loci newly associated with related waist and hip circumference measures (P < 5 × 10(-8)). In total, 20 of the 49 waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for BMI loci show significant sexual dimorphism, 19 of which display a stronger effect in women. The identified loci were enriched for genes expressed in adipose tissue and for putative regulatory elements in adipocytes. Pathway analyses implicated adipogenesis, angiogenesis, transcriptional regulation and insulin resistance as processes affecting fat distribution, providing insight into potential pathophysiological mechanisms

UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Acquiring and implementing phonetic knowledge ACQUIRING AND IMPLEMENTING PHONETIC KNOWLEDGE

Abstract Proper early acquisition of speech and language appears to be a necessary process to reach mature speech communication. In modeling the process of natural (and pathological) speech production and speech perception, we frequently concentrate on specific aspects of phonetic knowledge. But also to improve the performance of speech technological systems, an intelligent interpretation of the abundant, but sometimes also incomplete or absent, phonetic information is highly advisable. The above framework was used to discuss the progress made in speech science and technology over the past 30 years. This slightly modified pape

Proceedings 24 (2001), 15–26. STRUCTURE AND ACCESS OF THE OPEN SOURCE IFA-CORPUS∗

At the Institute of Phonetic Sciences (IFA) we have collected a corpus of spoken Dutch of 4 male and 4 female speakers, containing informal as well as read speech, plus lists of sentences, words, and syllables taken from the transcribed conversation text, and then spoken in isolation. This pertains to about 5.5 hours of speech. All this material is segmented and labeled at the phoneme level. This information plus all meta data are stored in a relational database which makes all material accessible through SQL. All information is freely available under the GNU General Public License. This material will also be used in INTAS project 915, in which a comparison will be made of phonetic properties in Dutch, Finnish and Russian. As an initial result we will present some durational and spectral data of full and reduced phoneme realizations