Flare in the Galactic stellar outer disc detected in SDSS-SEGUE data

Aims. We explore the outer Galactic disc up to a Galactocentric distance of 30 kpc to derive its parameters and measure the magnitude of its flare. Methods. We obtained the 3D density of stars of type F8V-G5V with a colour selection from extinction-corrected photometric data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey - Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration (SDSS-SEGUE) over 1,400 deg^2 in off-plane low Galactic latitude regions and fitted it to a model of flared thin+thick disc. Results. The best-fit parameters are a thin-disc scale length of 2.0 kpc, a thin-disc scale height at solar Galactocentric distance of 0.24 kpc, a thick-disc scale length of 2.5 kpc, and a thick-disc scale height at solar Galactocentric distance of 0.71 kpc. We derive a flaring in both discs that causes the scale height of the average disc to be multiplied with respect to the solar neighbourhood value by a factor of 3.3^{+2.2}_{-1.6} at R=15 kpc and by a factor of 12^{+20}_{-7} at R=25 kpc. Conclusions. The flare is quite prominent at large R and its presence explains the apparent depletion of in-plane stars that are often confused with a cut-off at R>15 kpc. Indeed, our Galactic disc does not present a truncation or abrupt fall-off there, but the stars are spread in off-plane regions, even at z of several kpc for R>20 kpc. Moreover, the smoothness of the observed stellar distribution also suggests that there is a continuous structure and not a combination of a Galactic disc plus some other substructure or extragalactic component: the hypothesis to interpret the Monoceros ring in terms of a tidal stream of a putative accreted dwarf galaxy is not only unnecessary because the observed flare explains the overdensity in the Monoceros ring observed in SDSS fields, but it appears to be inappropriate.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&

Complete Zeldovich approximation

We have developed a generalization of the Zeldovich approximation (ZA) that is exact in a wide variety of situations, including plannar, spherical and cilyndrical symmetries. We have shown that this generalization, that we call complete Zeldovich approximation (CZA), is exact to second order at an arbitrary point within any field. For gaussian fields, the third order error have been obtained and shown to be very small. For statistical purposes, the CZA leads to results exact to the third order.Comment: 11 pages+1 figure, accepted in ApJ Letter

Tests for the asymptotic behaviour of the gamma^* --> gamma pi^0 form factor

The gamma^* --> gamma pi^0 transition measured at different photon virtualities already provides us with a clean test for the behaviour of the pi^0 gamma^* gamma off-shell axial anomaly at large time-like squared momenta. It also allows reliable predictions for the branching ratio of heavy quarkonium decays into omega pi^0.Comment: Latex, 7 pages + 1 .ps figure, comments on the Brodsky-Lepage limit and 5 new references adde

Hopfield Networks in Relevance and Redundancy Feature Selection Applied to Classification of Biomedical High-Resolution Micro-CT Images

We study filter–based feature selection methods for classification of biomedical images. For feature selection, we use two filters — a relevance filter which measures usefulness of individual features for target prediction, and a redundancy filter, which measures similarity between features. As selection method that combines relevance and redundancy we try out a Hopfield network. We experimentally compare selection methods, running unitary redundancy and relevance filters, against a greedy algorithm with redundancy thresholds [9], the min-redundancy max-relevance integration [8,23,36], and our Hopfield network selection. We conclude that on the whole, Hopfield selection was one of the most successful methods, outperforming min-redundancy max-relevance when\ud more features are selected

New Precision Electroweak Tests of SU(5) x U(1) Supergravity

We explore the one-loop electroweak radiative corrections in $SU(5)\times U(1)$ supergravity via explicit calculation of vacuum-polarization and vertex-correction contributions to the $\epsilon_1$ and $\epsilon_b$ parameters. Experimentally, these parameters are obtained from a global fit to the set of observables $\Gamma_{l}, \Gamma_{b}, A^{l}_{FB}$, and $M_W/M_Z$. We include $q^2$-dependent effects, which induce a large systematic negative shift on $\epsilon_{1}$ for light chargino masses (m_{\chi^\pm_1}\lsim70\GeV). The (non-oblique) supersymmetric vertex corrections to \Zbb, which define the $\epsilon_b$ parameter, show a significant positive shift for light chargino masses, which for $\tan\beta\approx2$ can be nearly compensated by a negative shift from the charged Higgs contribution. We conclude that at the 90\%CL, for m_t\lsim160\GeV the present experimental values of $\epsilon_1$ and $\epsilon_b$ do not constrain in any way $SU(5)\times U(1)$ supergravity in both no-scale and dilaton scenarios. On the other hand, for m_t\gsim160\GeV the constraints on the parameter space become increasingly stricter. We demonstrate this trend with a study of the m_t=170\GeV case, where only a small region of parameter space, with \tan\beta\gsim4, remains allowed and corresponds to light chargino masses (m_{\chi^\pm_1}\lsim70\GeV). Thus $SU(5)\times U(1)$ supergravity combined with high-precision LEP data would suggest the presence of light charginos if the top quark is not detected at the Tevatron.Comment: LaTeX, 11 Pages+4 Figures(not included), the figures available upon request as an uuencoded file(0.4MB) or 4 PS files from [email protected], CERN-TH.7078/93, CTP-TAMU-68/93, ACT-24/9

Active elastic dimers: Cells moving on rigid tracks

Experiments suggest that the migration of some cells in the three-dimensional extra cellular matrix bears strong resemblance to one-dimensional cell migration. Motivated by this observation, we construct and study a minimal one-dimensional model cell made of two beads and an active spring moving along a rigid track. The active spring models the stress fibers with their myosin-driven contractility and alpha-actinin-driven extendability, while the friction coefficients of the two beads describe the catch/slip bond behavior of the integrins in focal adhesions. In the absence of active noise, net motion arises from an interplay between active contractility (and passive extendability) of the stress fibers and an asymmetry between the front and back of the cell due to catch bond behavior of integrins at the front of the cell and slip bond behavior of integrins at the back. We obtain reasonable cell speeds with independently estimated parameters. We also study the effects of hysteresis in the active spring, due to catch bond behavior and the dynamics of cross-linking, and the addition of active noise on the motion of the cell. Our model highlights the role of alpha-actinin in three-dimensional cell motility and does not require Arp2/3 actin filament nucleation for net motion.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figure