Photoluminescence and Terahertz Emission from Femtosecond Laser-Induced Plasma Channels

Luminescence as a mechanism for terahertz emission from femtosecond laser-induced plasmas is studied. By using a fully microscopic theory, Coulomb scattering between electrons and ions is shown to lead to luminescence even for a spatially homogeneous plasma. The spectral features introduced by the rod geometry of laser-induced plasma channels in air are discussed on the basis of a generalized mode-function analysis.Comment: 4 pages with 2 figures

An infrared study of the double nucleus in NGC3256

We present new resolved near and mid-IR imaging and N-band spectroscopy of the two nuclei in the merger system NGCA3256, the most IR luminous galaxy in the nearby universe. The results from the SED fit to the data are consistent with previous estimates of the amount of obscuration towards the nuclei and the nuclear star formation rates. However, we also find substantial differences in the infrared emission from the two nuclei which cannot be explained by obscuration alone. We conclude that the northern nucleus requires an additional component of warm dust in order to explain its properties. This suggests that local starforming conditions can vary significantly within the environment of a single system.Comment: Accepted for publication (MNRAS

New Additions to the Flora of San Nicolas Island, Ventura County, California

Ongoing collecting efforts on San Nicolas Island have substantially increased the number of plant species documented from the island. Here we report thirty-one plants previously unrecorded from the island. The list includes six eudicots, one monocot, four liverworts and twenty mosses. Five of these species are understood to be introduced on San Nicolas and the remainder are believed to be native. The native vascular plants are Logfia filaginoides, Cistanthe maritima and Muhlenbergia microsperma. Of the twenty-four new bryophytes, one—Asterella bolanderi—is the first record from the Channel Islands. Specific ecological and locality information are provided for the new vascular plant finds and general patterns of bryophyte richness and ecological preferences are discussed

On Forward J/\psi Production at Fermilab Tevatron

The D0 Collaboration has recently reported the measurement of J/\psi production at low angle. We show here that the inclusion of color octet contributions in any framework is able to reproduce this data.Comment: 1 page, Revtex, uses epsfig.sty, 2 postscript figure

The Chronus Quantum (ChronusQ) Software Package

The Chronus Quantum (ChronusQ) software package is an open source (under the GNU General Public License v2) software infrastructure which targets the solution of challenging problems that arise in ab initio electronic structure theory. Special emphasis is placed on the consistent treatment of time dependence and spin in the electronic wave function, as well as the inclusion of relativistic effects in said treatments. In addition, ChronusQ provides support for the inclusion of uniform finite magnetic fields as external perturbations through the use of gauge-including atomic orbitals (GIAO). ChronusQ is a parallel electronic structure code written in modern C++ which utilizes both message passing (MPI) and shared memory (OpenMP) parallelism. In addition to the examination of the current state of code base itself, a discussion regarding ongoing developments and developer contributions will also be provided.Comment: 43 pages, 2 figure

The Precise Formula in a Sine Function Form of the norm of the Amplitude and the Necessary and Sufficient Phase Condition for Any Quantum Algorithm with Arbitrary Phase Rotations

In this paper we derived the precise formula in a sine function form of the norm of the amplitude in the desired state, and by means of he precise formula we presented the necessary and sufficient phase condition for any quantum algorithm with arbitrary phase rotations. We also showed that the phase condition: identical rotation angles, is a sufficient but not a necessary phase condition.Comment: 16 pages. Modified some English sentences and some proofs. Removed a table. Corrected the formula for kol on page 10. No figure

Correlated errors in Hipparcos parallaxes towards the Pleiades and the Hyades

We show that the errors in the Hipparcos parallaxes towards the Pleiades and the Hyades open clusters are spatially correlated over angular scales of 2 to 3 deg, with an amplitude of up to 2 mas. This correlation is stronger than expected based on the analysis of the Hipparcos catalog. We predict the parallaxes of individual cluster members, pi_pm, from their Hipparcos proper motions, assuming that all cluster members have the same space velocity. We compare pi_pm with their Hipparcos parallaxes, pi_Hip, and find that there are significant spatial correlations in pi_Hip. We derive a distance modulus to the Pleiades of 5.58 +- 0.18 mag using the radial-velocity gradient method. This value, agrees very well with the distance modulus of 5.60 +- 0.04 mag determined using the main-sequence fitting technique, compared with the value of 5.33 +- 0.06 inferred from the average of the Hipparcos parallaxes of the Pleiades members. We show that the difference between the main-sequence fitting distance and the Hipparcos parallax distance can arise from spatially correlated errors in the Hipparcos parallaxes of individual Pleiades members. Although the Hipparcos parallax errors towards the Hyades are spatially correlated in a manner similar to those of the Pleiades, the center of the Hyades is located on a node of this spatial structure. Therefore, the parallax errors cancel out when the average distance is estimated, leading to a mean Hyades distance modulus that agrees with the pre-Hipparcos value. We speculate that these spatial correlations are also responsible for the discrepant distances that are inferred using the mean Hipparcos parallaxes to some open clusters. Finally, we note that our conclusions are based on a purely geometric method and do not rely on any models of stellar isochrones.Comment: 33 pages including 10 Figures, revised version accepted for publication in Ap

Menstrual cycle phase modulates emotional conflict processing in women with and without premenstrual syndrome (PMS): A pilot study

Background Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is characterized by a cluster of psychological and somatic symptoms during the late luteal phase of the menstrual cycle that disappear after the onset of menses. Behavioral differences in emotional and cognitive processing have been reported in women with PMS, and it is of particular interest whether PMS affects the parallel execution of emotional and cognitive processing. Related to this is the question of how the performance of women with PMS relates to stress levels compared to women without PMS. Cortisol has been shown to affect emotional processing in general and it has also been shown that women with severe PMS have a particular cortisol profile. Methods We measured performance in an emotional conflict task and stress levels in women with PMS (n = 15) and women without PMS (n = 15) throughout their menstrual cycle. Results We found a significant increase (p = 0.001) in the mean reaction time for resolving emotional conflict from the follicular to the luteal cycle phase in all subjects. Only women with PMS demonstrated an increase in physiological and subjective stress measures during the luteal menstrual cycle phase. Conclusions Our findings suggest that the menstrual cycle modulates the integration of emotional and cognitive processing in all women. Preliminary data are supportive of the secondary hypothesis that stress levels are mediated by the menstrual cycle phase only in women with PMS. The presented evidence for menstrual cycle-specific differences in integrating emotional and cognitive information highlights the importance of controlling for menstrual cycle phase in studies that aim to elucidate the interplay of emotion and cognition