13,331 research outputs found
Political Fragmentation and Municipal Tax Base Resources in the Montreal Metropolitan Area
Cette étude montre que l'inégalité des ressources et des besoins dans une agglomération urbaine semble liée au degré de morcellement de cette agglomération. Il en ressort que le fusionnement municipal peut conduire à une distribution plus équitable des charges foncières. L'étude propose aussi une approche à l'évaluation des impacts du morcellement urbain.This paper presents the argument that in a politically fragmented agglomeration there is spatial segregation of the resources and needs related to public service provision and that this can be reduced by local government amalgamations. It also reports the findings of a study of the Montréal metropolitan area in which ways of measuring the impact of fragmentation were devised and applied. The results of this study indicate that municipal amalgamations can lead to a more equitable distribution of tax base resources
Atomic Gas in Debris Discs
We have conducted a search for optical circumstellar absorption lines in the
spectra of 16 debris disc host stars. None of the stars in our sample showed
signs of emission line activity in either H, Ca II or Na I,
confirming their more evolved nature. Four stars were found to exhibit narrow
absorption features near the cores of the photospheric Ca II and Na I D lines
(when Na I D data were available). We analyse the characteristics of these
spectral features to determine whether they are of circumstellar or
interstellar origins. The strongest evidence for circumstellar gas is seen in
the spectrum of HD110058, which is known to host a debris disc observed close
to edge-on. This is consistent with a recent ALMA detection of molecular gas in
this debris disc, which shows many similarities to the Pictoris system.Comment: Accepted 13/12/2016. Received 2/12/2016; Deposited on 22/11/2016. -
13 Pages, 9 Figures - MNRAS Advance Access published December 15, 201
Unravelling the chemical inhomogeneity of PNe with VLT FLAMES integral-field unit spectroscopy
Recent weak emission-line long-slit surveys and modelling studies of PNe have
convincingly argued in favour of the existence of an unknown component in the
planetary nebula plasma consisting of cold, hydrogen-deficient gas, as an
explanation for the long-standing recombination-line versus forbidden-line
temperature and abundance discrepancy problems. Here we describe the rationale
and initial results from a detailed spectroscopic study of three Galactic PNe
undertaken with the VLT FLAMES integral-field unit spectrograph, which advances
our knowledge about the small-scale physical properties, chemical abundances
and velocity structure of these objects across a two-dimensional field of view,
and opens up for exploration an uncharted territory in the study and modelling
of PNe and photoionized nebulae in general.Comment: 4 pages; 3 figures; invited paper to appear in proceedings of IAU
Symp. No. 234, 2006, Planetary Nebulae in our Galaxy and Beyond (held in
Hawaii, April 2006
Atomic and molecular interstellar absorption lines toward the high galactic latitude stars HD~141569 and HD~157841 at ultra-high resolution
We present ultra-high resolution (0.32 km/s) spectra obtained with the 3.9m
Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) and Ultra-High-Resolution Facility (UHRF), of
interstellar NaI D1, D2, Ca II K, K I and CH absorption toward two high
galactic latitude stars HD141569 and HD157841. We have compared our data with
21-cm observations obtained from the Leiden/Dwingeloo HI survey. We derive the
velocity structure, column densities of the clouds represented by the various
components and identify the clouds with ISM structures seen in the region at
other wavelengths. We further derive abundances, linear depletions and H2
fractional abundances for these clouds, wherever possible. Toward HD141569, we
detect two components in our UHRF spectra : a weak, broad component at - 15
km/s, seen only in CaII K absorption and another component at 0 km/s, seen in
NaI D1, D2, Ca II K, KI and CH absorption. In the case of the HD157841
sightline, a total of 6 components are seen on our UHRF spectra in NaI D1, D2
Ca II K, K I and CH absorption. 2 of these 6 components are seen only in a
single species.Comment: 16 pages, Latex, 4 figures, ps files Astrophysical Journal (in press
Bystander B cells rapidly acquire antigen receptors from activated B cells by membrane transfer: a novel mechanism for enhancing specific antigen presentation
The B cell antigen receptor (BCR) efficiently facilitates the capture and processing of a specific antigen for presentation on MHC class II molecules to antigen specific CD4+ T cells (1). Despite this, the majority of B cells are only thought to play a limited role in CD4+ T cell activation since BCRs are clonotypically expressed. Here we show, however, that activated B cells can, both in vitro and in vivo, rapidly donate their BCR to bystander B cells, a process that is mediated by direct membrane transfer between adjacent B cells and is amplified by the interaction of the BCR with specific antigen. This results in a dramatic expansion in the number of antigen-binding B cells in vivo, with the transferred BCR endowing recipient B cells with the ability to present specific antigen to antigen-specific CD4+ T cells
New accurate measurement of 36ArH+ and 38ArH+ ro-vibrational transitions by high resolution IR absorption spectroscopy
The protonated Argon ion, ArH, has been identified recently in
the Crab Nebula (Barlow et al. 2013) from Herschel spectra. Given the
atmospheric opacity at the frequency of its =1-0 and =2-1 rotational
transitions (617.5 and 1234.6 GHz, respectively), and the current lack of
appropriate space observatories after the recent end of the Herschel mission,
future studies on this molecule will rely on mid-infrared observations. We
report on accurate wavenumber measurements of ArH and
ArH rotation-vibration transitions in the =1-0 band in the
range 4.1-3.7 m (2450-2715 cm). The wavenumbers of the (0)
transitions of the =1-0 band are 2612.501350.00033 and
2610.701770.00042 cm () for ArH and
ArH, respectively. The calculated opacity for a gas thermalized at
a temperature of 100 K and a linewidth of 1 km.s of the (0) line is
(ArH). For column densities of
ArH larger than cm, significant absorption
by the (0) line can be expected against bright mid-IR sources
The efficiency of grain growth in the diffuse interstellar medium
Grain growth by accretion of gas-phase metals is a common assumption in models of dust evolution, but in dense gas, where the timescale is short enough for accretion to be effective, material is accreted in the form of ice mantles rather than adding to the refractory grain mass. It has been suggested that negatively-charged small grains in the diffuse interstellar medium (ISM) can accrete efficiently due to the Coulomb attraction of positively-charged ions, avoiding this issue. We show that this inevitably results in the growth of the small-grain radii until they become positively charged, at which point further growth is effectively halted. The resulting gas-phase depletions under diffuse ISM conditions are significantly overestimated when a constant grain size distribution is assumed. While observed depletions can be reproduced by changing the initial size distribution or assuming highly efficient grain shattering, both options result in unrealistic levels of far-ultraviolet extinction. We suggest that the observed elemental depletions in the diffuse ISM are better explained by higher initial depletions, combined with inefficient dust destruction by supernovae at moderate (nH ∼ 30 cm−3) densities, rather than by higher accretion efficiences
The impact of metallicity-dependent dust destruction on the dust-to-metals ratio in galaxies
The ratio of the mass of interstellar dust to the total mass of metals (the dust-to-metals/DTM ratio) tends to increase with metallicity. This can be explained by the increasing efficiency of grain growth in the interstellar medium (ISM) at higher metallicities, with a corollary being that the low DTM ratios seen at low metallicities are due to inefficient stellar dust production. This interpretation assumes that the efficiency of dust destruction in the ISM is constant, whereas it might be expected to increase at low metallicity; the decreased cooling efficiency of low-metallicity gas should result in more post-shock dust destruction via thermal sputtering. We show that incorporating a sufficiently strong metallicity dependence into models of galaxy evolution removes the need for low stellar dust yields. The contribution of stellar sources to the overall dust budget may be significantly underestimated, and that of grain growth overestimated, by models assuming a constant destruction efficiency
Crossing Statistic: Bayesian interpretation, model selection and resolving dark energy parametrization problem
By introducing Crossing functions and hyper-parameters I show that the
Bayesian interpretation of the Crossing Statistics [1] can be used trivially
for the purpose of model selection among cosmological models. In this approach
to falsify a cosmological model there is no need to compare it with other
models or assume any particular form of parametrization for the cosmological
quantities like luminosity distance, Hubble parameter or equation of state of
dark energy. Instead, hyper-parameters of Crossing functions perform as
discriminators between correct and wrong models. Using this approach one can
falsify any assumed cosmological model without putting priors on the underlying
actual model of the universe and its parameters, hence the issue of dark energy
parametrization is resolved. It will be also shown that the sensitivity of the
method to the intrinsic dispersion of the data is small that is another
important characteristic of the method in testing cosmological models dealing
with data with high uncertainties.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, discussions extended, 1 figure and two
references added, main results unchanged, matches the final version to be
published in JCA
The Alexander-Orbach conjecture holds in high dimensions
We examine the incipient infinite cluster (IIC) of critical percolation in
regimes where mean-field behavior has been established, namely when the
dimension d is large enough or when d>6 and the lattice is sufficiently spread
out. We find that random walk on the IIC exhibits anomalous diffusion with the
spectral dimension d_s=4/3, that is, p_t(x,x)= t^{-2/3+o(1)}. This establishes
a conjecture of Alexander and Orbach. En route we calculate the one-arm
exponent with respect to the intrinsic distance.Comment: 25 pages, 2 figures. To appear in Inventiones Mathematica
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