3,145 research outputs found
Flux calibration of the AAO/UKST SuperCOSMOS H-alpha Survey
The AAO/UKST SuperCOSMOS H Survey (SHS) was, when completed in 2003,
a powerful addition to extant wide-field surveys. The combination of areal
coverage, spatial resolution and sensitivity in a narrow imaging band, still
marks it out today as an excellent resource for the astronomical community. The
233 separate fields are available online in digital form, with each field
covering 25 square degrees. The SHS has been the motivation for equivalent
surveys in the north, and new digital H surveys now beginning in the
south such as VPHAS+. It has been the foundation of many important discovery
projects with the Macquarie/AAO/Strasbourg H planetary nebula project
being a particularly successful example. However, the full potential of the SHS
has been hampered by lack of a clear route to acceptable flux calibration from
the base photographic data. We have determined the calibration factors for 170
individual SHS fields, and present a direct pathway to the measurement of
integrated H fluxes and surface brightnesses for resolved nebulae
detected in the SHS. We also include a catalogue of integrated H fluxes
for 100 planetary and other nebulae measured from the SHS, and use these
data to show that fluxes, accurate to 0.10 - 0.14 dex (25-35 per
cent), can be obtained from these fields. For the remaining 63 fields, a mean
calibration factor of 12.0 counts pix R can be used, allowing the
determination of reasonable integrated fluxes accurate to better than 0.2
dex (50 per cent). We outline the procedures involved and the caveats
that need to be appreciated in achieving such flux measurements. This paper
forms a handy reference source that will significantly increase the scientific
utility of the SHS.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, 2 tables (plus 7 pp. of supplementary online
information). Version to appear in MNRA
Is there a Supermassive Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way?
This review outlines the observations that now provide an overwhelming
scientific case that the center of our Milky Way Galaxy harbors a supermassive
black hole. Observations at infrared wavelength trace stars that orbit about a
common focal position and require a central mass (M) of 4 million solar masses
within a radius of 100 Astronomical Units. Orbital speeds have been observed to
exceed 5,000 km/s. At the focal position there is an extremely compact radio
source (Sgr A*), whose apparent size is near the Schwarzschild radius
(2GM/c^2). This radio source is motionless at the ~1 km/s level at the
dynamical center of the Galaxy. The mass density required by these observations
is now approaching the ultimate limit of a supermassive black hole within the
last stable orbit for matter near the event horizon.Comment: Invited review submitted to International Journal of Modern Physics
D; 23 pages; 10 figure
Limits on the Position Wander of Sgr A*
We present measurements with the VLBA of the variability in the centroid
position of Sgr A* relative to a background quasar at 7-mm wavelength. We find
an average centroid wander of 71 +/- 45 micro-arcsec for time scales between 50
and 100 min and 113 +/- 50 micro-arcsec for timescales between 100 and 200 min,
with no secular trend. These are sufficient to begin constraining the viability
of the hot-spot model for the radio variability of Sgr A*. It is possible to
rule out hot spots with orbital radii above 15GM_SgrA*/c^2 that contribute more
than 30% of the total 7-mm flux. However, closer or less luminous hot spots
remain unconstrained. Since the fractional variability of Sgr A* during our
observations was ~20% on time scales of hours, the hot-spot model for Sgr A*'s
radio variability remains consistent with these limits. Improved monitoring of
Sgr A*'s centroid position has the potential to place significant constraints
upon the existence and morphology of inhomogeneities in a supermassive black
hole accretion flow.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures submitted to Ap
The Megamaser Cosmology Project. VII. Investigating disk physics using spectral monitoring observations
We use single-dish radio spectra of known 22 GHz HO megamasers, primarily
gathered from the large dataset observed by the Megamaser Cosmology Project, to
identify Keplerian accretion disks and to investigate several aspects of the
disk physics. We test a mechanism for maser excitation proposed by Maoz & McKee
(1998), whereby population inversion arises in gas behind spiral shocks
traveling through the disk. Though the flux of redshifted features is larger on
average than that of blueshifted features, in support of the model, the
high-velocity features show none of the predicted systematic velocity drifts.
We find rapid intra-day variability in the maser spectrum of ESO 558-G009 that
is likely the result of interstellar scintillation, for which we favor a nearby
( pc) scattering screen. In a search for reverberation in six
well-sampled sources, we find that any radially-propagating signal must be
contributing 10% of the total variability. We also set limits on the
magnetic field strengths in seven sources, using strong flaring events to check
for the presence of Zeeman splitting. These limits are typically 200--300 mG
(), but our most stringent limits reach down to 73 mG for the galaxy
NGC 1194.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap
When evolution is the solution to pollution : key principles, and lessons from rapid repeated adaptation of killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus) populations
Ā© The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Evolutionary Applications 10 (2017): 762ā783, doi:10.1111/eva.12470.For most species, evolutionary adaptation is not expected to be sufficiently rapid to buffer the effects of human-mediated environmental changes, including environmental pollution. Here we review how key features of populations, the characteristics of environmental pollution, and the genetic architecture underlying adaptive traits, may interact to shape the likelihood of evolutionary rescue from pollution. Large populations of Atlantic killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus) persist in some of the most contaminated estuaries of the United States, and killifish studies have provided some of the first insights into the types of genomic changes that enable rapid evolutionary rescue from complexly degraded environments. We describe how selection by industrial pollutants and other stressors has acted on multiple populations of killifish and posit that extreme nucleotide diversity uniquely positions this species for successful evolutionary adaptation. Mechanistic studies have identified some of the genetic underpinnings of adaptation to a well-studied class of toxic pollutants; however, multiple genetic regions under selection in wild populations seem to reflect more complex responses to diverse native stressors and/or compensatory responses to primary adaptation. The discovery of these pollution-adapted killifish populations suggests that the evolutionary influence of anthropogenic stressors as selective agents occurs widely. Yet adaptation to chemical pollution in terrestrial and aquatic vertebrate wildlife may rarely be a successful āsolution to pollutionā because potentially adaptive phenotypes may be complex and incur fitness costs, and therefore be unlikely to evolve quickly enough, especially in species with small population sizes.National Science Foundation Grant Numbers: DEB-1265282, OCE-1314567, DEB-1120263;
National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences Grant Numbers: R01ES021934-01, P42ES007381;
Postdoctoral Research Program at the US Environmental Protection (US EPA);
Office of Research and Development;
Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) Grant Number: DW92429801;
US Department of Energ
The Extreme Spin of the Black Hole in Cygnus X-1
The compact primary in the X-ray binary Cygnus X-1 was the first black hole
to be established via dynamical observations. We have recently determined
accurate values for its mass and distance, and for the orbital inclination
angle of the binary. Building on these results, which are based on our favored
(asynchronous) dynamical model, we have measured the radius of the inner edge
of the black hole's accretion disk by fitting its thermal continuum spectrum to
a fully relativistic model of a thin accretion disk. Assuming that the spin
axis of the black hole is aligned with the orbital angular momentum vector, we
have determined that Cygnus X-1 contains a near-extreme Kerr black hole with a
spin parameter a/M>0.95 (3\sigma). For a less probable (synchronous) dynamical
model, we find a/M>0.92 (3\sigma). In our analysis, we include the
uncertainties in black hole mass, orbital inclination angle and distance, and
we also include the uncertainty in the calibration of the absolute flux via the
Crab. These four sources of uncertainty totally dominate the error budget. The
uncertainties introduced by the thin-disk model we employ are particularly
small in this case given the extreme spin of the black hole and the disk's low
luminosity.Comment: Paper III of three papers on Cygnus X-1; 21 pages including 5 figures
and 12 tables, ApJ in press. The paper is significantly restructured; two
further tests of the robustness of our spin measurement are presented, and
our error analysis has been substantially improved; the conclusions are
unchange
Neonicotinoid-induced pathogen susceptibility is mitigated by Lactobacillus plantarum immune stimulation in a Drosophila melanogaster model
Ā© 2017 The Author(s). Pesticides are used extensively in food production to maximize crop yields. However, neonicotinoid insecticides exert unintentional toxicity to honey bees (Apis mellifera) that may partially be associated with massive population declines referred to as colony collapse disorder. We hypothesized that imidacloprid (common neonicotinoid; IMI) exposure would make Drosophila melanogaster (an insect model for the honey bee) more susceptible to bacterial pathogens, heat stress, and intestinal dysbiosis. Our results suggested that the immune deficiency (IMD) pathway is necessary for D. melanogaster survival in response to IMI toxicity. IMI exposure induced alterations in the host-microbiota as noted by increased indigenous Acetobacter and Lactobacillus spp. Furthermore, sub-lethal exposure to IMI resulted in decreased D. melanogaster survival when simultaneously exposed to bacterial infection and heat stress (37 Ā°C). This coincided with exacerbated increases in TotA and Dpt (IMD downstream pro-survival and antimicrobial genes, respectively) expression compared to controls. Supplementation of IMI-exposed D. melanogaster with Lactobacillus plantarum ATCC 14917 mitigated survival deficits following Serratia marcescens (bacterial pathogen) septic infection. These findings support the insidious toxicity of neonicotinoid pesticides and potential for probiotic lactobacilli to reduce IMI-induced susceptibility to infection
Epstein - Barr virus latent membrane protein 1 suppresses reporter activity through modulation of promyelocytic leukemia protein-nuclear bodies
The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) encoded Latent Membrane Protein 1 (LMP1) has been shown to increase the expression of promyelocytic leukemia protein (PML) and the immunofluorescent intensity of promyelocytic leukemia nuclear bodies (PML NBs). PML NBs have been implicated in the modulation of transcription and the association of reporter plasmids with PML NBs has been implicated in repression of reporter activity. Additionally, repression of various reporters in the presence of LMP1 has been noted. This study demonstrates that LMP1 suppresses expression of reporter activity in a dose responsive manner and corresponds with the LMP1 induced increase in PML NB intensity. Disruption of PML NBs with arsenic trioxide or a PML siRNA restores reporter activity. These data offer an explanation for previously conflicting data on LMP1 signaling and calls attention to the possibility of false-positives and false-negatives when using reporter assays as a research tool in cells expressing LMP1
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