Evaluation of the progression of visual field damage in patients suffering from early manifest glaucoma

Abstract BACKGROUND: This retrospective study aimed to determine how often a perimetric examination should be carried out in order to identify visual field (VF) changes in patients with relatively early manifestation glaucoma. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Patients included had a relatively recent manifestation of primary open-angle glaucoma. Patients with a minimum follow-up of 5 years and a minimum of seven VF tests were included. Statistical analysis was performed to verify the trend of variations in mean defect (MD) over time (PeriData). The results were subjected to a t-test for a comparative analysis of progression of VF changes over time. The annual rate of progression provided by PeriData considering all the VFs analyzed was compared with that obtained on half of the VF examinations during the same follow-up period. An analysis of the MD trend over time was also carried out in relationship to the number of VF tests done and by dividing the sample into a high-frequency group (more than eight VFs) and a low-frequency group (fewer than eight VFs) in the follow-up period. RESULTS: A total of 96 eyes of 96 patients were included, and overall 846 VFs were examined. The paired t-test performed comparing the MD index of all the VFs against half of them did not show statistical significance (P=0.537). The high-frequency group comprised 39 eyes (average VF 11.05±1.91, average time interval 0.76 years) while the low-frequency group comprised 57 eyes (average VF 6.95±0.6, average time interval 1.21 years). The analysis of the MD trend in the high-frequency patients showed significance (P=0.017); the low-frequency group did not show statistical significance (P=0.08). CONCLUSION: The number of VFs in a determined time interval was not significant. However, a greater frequency of tests provides a predictive evaluation of the rate of progression of early manifestation open-angle glaucoma

Analysis of the Spectral Energy Distributions of Fermi bright blazars

Blazars are a small fraction of all extragalactic sources but, unlike other objects, they are strong emitters across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. In this study we have conducted a detailed investigation of the broad-band spectral properties of the gamma-ray selected blazars of the Fermi-LAT Bright AGN Sample (LBAS). By combining the accurately estimated Fermi gamma-ray spectra with Swift, radio, NIR-Optical and hard-X/gamma-ray data, collected within three months of the LBAS data taking period, we were able to assemble high-quality and quasi-simultaneous Spectral Energy Distributions (SED) for 48 LBAS blazars.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures, "2009 Fermi Symposium", "eConf Proceedings C091122

Functional biases in GRB's spectral parameter correlations

Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) show evidence of different spectral shapes, light curves, duration, host galaxies and they explode within a wide redshift range. However, the most of them seems to follow very tight correlations among some observed quantities relating to their energetic. If true, these correlations have significant implications on burst physics, giving constraints on theoretical models. Moreover, several suggestions have been made to use these correlations in order to calibrate GRBs as standard candles and to constrain the cosmological parameters. We investigate the cosmological relation between low energy $\alpha$ index in GRBs prompt spectra and the redshift $z$. We present a statistical analysis of the relation between the total isotropic energy $E_{iso}$ and the peak energy $E_p$ (also known as Amati relation) in GRBs spectra searching for possible functional biases. Possible implications on the $E_{iso}$ vs $E_p$ relation of the $\alpha$ vs $(1+z)$ correlation are evaluated. We used MonteCarlo simulations and the boostrap method to evaluate how large are the effects of functional biases on the $E_{iso}$ vs $E_p$. We show that high values of the linear correlation coefficent, up to about 0.8, in the $E_{iso}$ vs $E_p$ relation are obtained for random generated samples of GRBs, confirming the relevance of functional biases. Astrophysical consequences from $E_{iso}$ vs $E_p$ relation are then to be revised after a more accurate and possibly bias free analysis.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, conference poster session: "070228: The Next Decade of Gamma-Ray Burst Afterglows", Amsterdam, March 2007, MNRAS submitte

Blazar surveys with WMAP and Swift

We present the preliminary results from two new surveys of blazars that have direct implications on the GLAST detection of extragalactic sources from two different perspectives: microwave selection and a combined deep X-ray/radio selection. The first one is a 41 GHz flux-limited sample extracted from the WMAP 3-yr catalog of microwave point sources. This is a statistically well defined sample of about 200 blazars and radio galaxies, most of which are expected to be detected by GLAST. The second one is a new deep survey of Blazars selected among the radio sources that are spatially coincident with serendipitous sources detected in deep X-ray images (0.3-10 keV) centered on the Gamma Ray Bursts (GRB) discovered by the Swift satellite. This sample is particularly interesting from a statistical viewpoint since a) it is unbiased as GRBs explode at random positions in the sky, b) it is very deep in the X-ray band (\fx \simgt $10^{-15}$ \ergs) with a position accuracy of a few arc-seconds, c) it will cover a fairly large (20-30 square deg.) area of sky, d) it includes all blazars with radio flux (1.4 GHz) larger than 10 mJy, making it approximately two orders of magnitude deeper than the WMAP sample and about one order of magnitude deeper than the deepest existing complete samples of radio selected blazars, and e) it can be used to estimate the amount of unresolved GLAST high latitude gamma-ray background and its anisotropy spectrum.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Proc. of the 1st GLAST Symposium, Feb 5-8, 2007, Stanford, AIP, Eds. S. Ritz, P. F. Michelson, and C. Meega

Swift and Fermi observations of X-ray flares: the case of Late Internal Shock

Simultaneous Swift and Fermi observations of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) offer a unique broadband view of their afterglow emission, spanning more than ten decades in energy. We present the sample of X-ray flares observed by both Swift and Fermi during the first three years of Fermi operations. While bright in the X-ray band, X-ray flares are often undetected at lower (optical), and higher (MeV to GeV) energies. We show that this disfavors synchrotron self-Compton processes as origin of the observed X-ray emission. We compare the broadband properties of X-ray flares with the standard late internal shock model, and find that, in this scenario, X-ray flares can be produced by a late-time relativistic (Gamma>50) outflow at radii R~10^13-10^14 cm. This conclusion holds only if the variability timescale is significantly shorter than the observed flare duration, and implies that X-ray flares can directly probe the activity of the GRB central engine.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Systematic search for gamma-ray periodicity in active galactic nuclei detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope

We use nine years of gamma-ray data provided by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) to systematically study the light curves of more than two thousand active galactic nuclei (AGN) included in recent Fermi-LAT catalogs. Ten different techniques are used, which are organized in an automatic periodicity-search pipeline, in order to search for evidence of periodic emission in gamma rays. Understanding the processes behind this puzzling phenomenon will provide a better view about the astrophysical nature of these extragalactic sources. However, the observation of temporal patterns in gamma-ray light curves of AGN is still challenging. Despite the fact that there have been efforts on characterizing the temporal emission of some individual sources, a systematic search for periodicities by means of a full likelihood analysis applied to large samples of sources was missing. Our analysis finds 11 AGN, of which 9 are identified for the first time, showing periodicity at more than 4sigma in at least four algorithms. These findings will help in solving questions related to the astrophysical origin of this periodic behavior.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables. Accepted by Ap