1,210 research outputs found
The Herschel/PACS view of disks around low-mass stars in Chamaleon-I
Circumstellar disks are expected to be the birthplaces of planets. The
potential for forming one or more planets of various masses is essentially
driven by the initial mass of the disks. We present and analyze Herschel/PACS
observations of disk-bearing M-type stars that belong to the young ~2 Myr old
Chamaleon-I star forming region. We used the radiative transfer code RADMC to
successfully model the SED of 17 M-type stars detected at PACS wavelengths. We
first discuss the relatively low detection rates of M5 and later spectral type
stars with respect to the PACS sensitivity, and argue their disks masses, or
flaring indices, are likely to be low. For M0 to M3 stars, we find a relatively
broad range of disk masses, scale heights, and flaring indices. Via a
parametrization of dust stratification, we can reproduce the peak fluxes of the
10 m emission feature observed with Spitzer/IRS, and find that disks
around M-type stars may display signs of dust sedimentation. The Herschel/PACS
observations of low-mass stars in Cha-I provide new constraints on their disk
properties, overall suggesting that disk parameters for early M-type stars are
comparable to those for more massive stars (e.g., comparable scale height and
flaring angles). However, regions of the disks emitting at about 100 m may
still be in the optically thick regime, preventing direct determination of disk
masses. Thus the modeled disk masses should be considered as lower limits.
Still, we are able to extend the wavelength coverage of SED models and start
characterizing effects such as dust sedimentation, an effort leading the way
towards ALMA observations of these low-mass stars
Cross-Sector Partnerships and the Co-creation of Dynamic Capabilities for Stakeholder Orientation
This is the final version of the article. Available from Springer Verlag via the DOI in this record.This paper explores the relationship between business experience in cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) and the co-creation of what we refer to as ‘dynamic capabilities for stakeholder orientation,’ consisting of the four dimensions of (1) sensing, (2) interacting with, (3) learning from and (4) changing based on stakeholders. We argue that the co-creation of dynamic capabilities for stakeholder orientation is crucial for CSPs to create societal impact, as stakeholder-oriented organizations are more suited to deal with “wicked problems,” i.e., problems that are large, messy, and complex (Rittel and Webber, Policy Sciences 4:155–169, 1973; Waddock, Paper presented at the 3rd international symposium on cross sector social interactions, 2012). By means of a grounded theory approach of inductive research, we collected and interpreted data on four global agri-food companies which have heterogeneous experience in participating in CSPs. The results of this paper highlight that only companies’ capability of interacting with stakeholders continually increases, while their capabilities of sensing, learning from, and changing based on stakeholders first increase and then decrease as companies gain more experience in CSP participation. To a large extent, this can be attributed to the development of corporate strategies on sustainability after a few years of CSP participation, which entails a shift from a reactive to a proactive attitude towards sustainability issues and which may decrease the need or motivation for stakeholder orientation. These findings open up important issues for discussion and for future research on the impact of CSPs in a context of wicked problems
New estimation of the post little ice age relative sea level rise
The study area is located in NW Sardinia Island (Italy), Mediterranean Sea. Sardinia is considered stable since the late Pliocene with a negligible subsidence of about 0.01 mm/y. It is therefore normally used to reconstruct the Pleistocene and Holocene sea level curves. Our research focusses on the sea-facing city of Alghero that from 1353 to 1720 was under the Spanish government. During this time, the city was renovated and new buildings edified. Dimension stones were quarried all around Alghero both in the nearby inland and along the coast. Coastal quarries were considered the most suitable for both rock quality and the easiest way to transport the quarried material by boat. The quarried rocks are late Pleistocene dune and beach sandstones deposited from the 132 ka (Marine Isotopic Stage-MIS5) to about 65 ka (MIS4). Sandstones crop out from few cm to 3 m above the present sea level and underwent several consolidation processes related to loading and marine weathering. This latter favoured dissolution and circulation of calcium carbonate which cemented the rocks. It is reported that the Spanish were looking for these "marine" sandstones for their high geotechnical characteristics. Different rules were adopted through time for the size of the dimension stones and this has allowed us to establish a quarry exploitation chronology. For example, "40 x 60 x 20" cm was the size of the dimension stones used for the Alghero Cathedral dated at 1505-1593. Nowadays most of the coastal Spanish quarry floors are 30 centimetres below mean sea level (tidal range is 30 cm). Accordingly, we infer that relative sea level from 1830 AD (and of the Little Ice Age) rose in about 200 years to the present level at the rate of about 1.4 mm/y. Considering that relative sea level rise during the Medieval warm period was of 0.6 mm/y over a period of about 400 years, we may deduce that human influence was strong enough to lead to a relative sea-level rise faster and in shorter time
Modifying the Response of Male Broiler Chickens to Heat Stress Through Early Age Feed Restriction and Thermal Conditioning
Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of early age feed
restriction and heat conditioning on tolerance to acute and chronic heat stress in
male broiler chickens. In both experiments, equal numbers of chickens were
subjected to (i) 60% feed restriction on day 4, 5, and 6 (FR), (ii) exposure to
36±IoC and 50-60% relative humidity for 1 hour from day 1 to 21 (HT), (iii)
60% feed restriction on day 4, 5, and 6 and exposure to 36± l oC and 50-60%
relative humidity for 1 hour from day 1 to 21 (FRHT). (iv) ad libitum feeding
and no heat treatment (control). In experiment I, on day 35, all birds were
exposed to 39± l oC for 6 hours and 50% relative humidity. Subjecting chicks to
FR, HT and FRHT reduced HLR response to the heat challenge. Following heat
exposure, the FR and FRHT chick had greater heat shock protein (hsp) 70
density than those of controls. The hsp 70 response of HT birds was not
significantly different from the other three groups. The FRHT birds were more
hyperthermic than controls during heat challenge. In experiment II, from day 36- 50, all birds were exposed to 38± l oC and 80 % relative humidity for 2
hours/day. One day following heat exposure (day 37), all birds were
administrated intranasally with infectious bursal disease (IBD) vaccine virus.
The dosage used was l Ox of the recommended level. Subjecting chicks to FRHT
improved relative weight gain and resistance to IBD infection and reduced HLR
in response to the heat treatment as compared with the control birds. Although
there is evidence that FR and HT can improve heat tolerance, the FRHT
combination may further enhance the ability of birds to withstand chronic heat
stress. The acquired improved heat tolerance resulting from FRHT, FR, and HT
could be attributed to enhanced hsp 70 response. The trend of hsp 70 response
correlated well with IBD lesion scores, suggesting hsp 70 may play a role in
resistance against viral infection. Based on experiment I and II, it can be
concluded that the present findings confirmed earlier studies that FR is effective
in alleviating the adverse effects of heat stress. Subjecting birds to FRHT can
further improve tolerance to chronic but not acute heat stress
The First Detailed Look at a Brown Dwarf Disk
The combination of mid-infrared and recent submm/mm measurements allows us to
set up the first comprehensive spectral energy distribution (SED) of the
circumstellar material around a young Brown Dwarf. Simple arguments suggest
that the dust is distributed in the form of a disk. We compare basic models to
explore the disk parameters. The modeling shows that a flat disk geometry fits
well the observations. A flared disk explains the SED only if it has a
puffed-up inner rim and an inner gap much larger than the dust sublimation
radius. Similarities and differences with disks around T Tauri stars are
discussed.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figur
An eighteenth century tunnel as possible archive for palaeoclimate studies
The former Silva Lake (present “Pian del Lago”, Siena, Italy) developed during late Quaternary and formed as a poljie on the Triassic limestones. The depression, nowadays completely drained, is N-S oriented, 4.5 km wide and 12 km long. The lake never exceeded 6 m in depth, and it was mainly a grassy swamp during the dry season. The lake depression is filled with 20 to 30 m of a reddish siltyclayey succession. Starting from the Middle Age till late 18th century, the shallow waters of the lake and the humid area around acted as a swampy area infested by malaria.
In 1766 a Sienese nobleman, Francesco Bindi Sergardi drained the lake excavating a drainage 2124m-long tunnel in Triassic limestones to connect the Silva Lake with the closeby Rigo Creek. However, quite often the tunnel was filled with debris and the lake swamped up again. In 1780 Pietro Leopoldo Grand Duke of Tuscany definitively reclaimed the Silva Lake and completed the construction of the drainage tunnel by paving and extending it for an additional 197 m. Since then, the tunnel is called the ”Canale del Gran Duca”.
The entrance altitude of the canal is at 252 m a.s.l., and the exit is at 247 m a.s.l. The altitude difference is therefore of 5 m, and the canal floor has a slope of 0.2 %.
The canal is for the most part paved but, in places, solid walls of Triassic limestone are still visible. Diffuse karst features are forming locally. Stalactites have lengths varying from 5 to 10 cm, and flowstones occur along the tunnel walls. The presence of these speleothems has allowed geochemical investigations to establish climatic variations of the last two centuries. The tunnel was probably
cleaned and well maintained for sometime after its construction (1780), and it is likely that all the remaining speleothems have developed in the last two centuries with an estimated growth of a 0.5/6 mm per year. A petrographic investigation of a well laminated flowstone with a parasitic stalagmite has been undertaken to determine the growth mechanisms. Oxygen and carbon isotope data (δ18O
and δ13C values) were used as indirect proxies for palaeoenvironmental reconstructions. Preliminary, data show significant variations along the axis of the flowstone possibly related to environmental and climatic variations within and above the “canale”
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Volumetric data analysis using Morse-Smale complexes
The 3D Morse-Smale complex is a fundamental topological construct that partitions the domain of a real-valued function into regions having uniform gradient flow behavior. In this paper, we consider the construction and selective presentation of cells of the Morse-Smale complex and their use in the analysis and visualization of scientific datasets. We take advantage of the fact that cells of different dimension often characterize different types of features present in the data. For example, critical points pinpoint changes in topology by showing where components of the level sets are created, destroyed or modified in genus. Edges of the Morse-Smale complex extract filament-like features that are not explicitly modeled in the original data. Interactive selection and rendering of portions of the Morse-Smale complex introduces fundamental data management challenges due to the unstructured nature of the complex even for structured inputs. We describe a data structure that stores the Morse-Smale complex and allows efficient selective traversal of regions of interest. Finally, we illustrate the practical use of this approach by applying it to cryo-electron microscopy data of protein molecules
Dust Spreading in Debris Discs: Do Small Grains Cling on to Their Birth Environment?
Debris discs are dusty belts of planetesimals around main-sequence stars,
similar to the asteroid and Kuiper belts in our solar system. The planetesimals
cannot be observed directly, yet they produce detectable dust in mutual
collisions. Observing the dust, we can try to infer properties of invisible
planetesimals. Here we address the question of what is the best way to measure
the location of outer planetesimal belts that encompass extrasolar planetary
systems. A standard method is using resolved images at mm-wavelengths, which
reveal dust grains with sizes comparable to the observational wavelength.
Smaller grains seen in the infrared (IR) are subject to several
non-gravitational forces that drag them away from their birth rings, and so may
not closely trace the parent bodies. In this study, we examine whether imaging
of debris discs at shorter wavelengths might enable determining the spatial
location of the exo-Kuiper belts with sufficient accuracy. We find that around
M-type stars the dust best visible in the mid-IR is efficiently displaced
inward from their birth location by stellar winds, causing the discs to look
more compact in mid-IR images than they actually are. However, around
earlier-type stars where the majority of debris discs is found, discs are still
the brightest at the birth ring location in the mid-IR regime. Thus, sensitive
IR facilities with good angular resolution, such as MIRI on JWST, will enable
tracing exo-Kuiper belts in nearby debris disc systems.Comment: 16 page
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