2,997 research outputs found
Living on the Edge: Against Epistemic Permissivism
Epistemic Permissivists face a special problem about the relationship between our first- and higher-order attitudes. They claim that rationality often permits a range of doxastic responses to the evidence. Given plausible assumptions about the relationship between your first- and higher-order attitudes, it can't be rational to adopt a credence on the edge of that range. But Permissivism says that, for some such range, any credence in that range is rational. Permissivism, in its traditional form, cannot be right. I consider some new ways of developing Permissivism to avoid this argument, but each has problems of its own
Chemical Abundances of M giants in the Galactic Center: a Single Metal-Rich Population with Low [alpha/Fe]
Context. The formation and evolution of the Milky Way bulge is still largely
an unanswered question. One of the most essential observables needed in its
modelling are the metallicity distribution and the trends of the alpha elements
as measured in stars. While Bulge regions beyond R > 50 pc of the centre has
been targeted in several surveys, the central part has escaped detailed study
due to the extreme extinction and crowding. The abundance gradients from the
center are, however, of large diagnostic value. Aims. We aim at investigating
the Galactic Centre environment by probing M giants in the field, avoiding
supergiants and cluster members. Methods. For 9 field M-giants in the Galactic
Centre region, we have obtained high- and low-resolution spectra observed
simultaneously with CRIRES and ISAAC on UT1 and UT3 of the VLT. The
low-resolution spectra provide a means of determining the effective
temperatures, and the high-resolution spectra provide detailed abundances of
Fe, Mg, Si, and Ca. Results. We find a metal-rich population at
[Fe/H]=+0.11+-0.15 and a lack of the metal-poor population, found further out
in the Bulge, corroborating earlier studies. Our [alpha/Fe] element trends,
however, show low values, following the outer Bulge trends. A possible
exception of the [Ca/Fe] trend is found and needs further investigation.
Conclusions. The results of the analysed field M-giants in the Galactic Centre
region, excludes a scenario with rapid formation, in which SNIIe played a
dominated role in the chemical enrichment of the gas. The metal-rich
metallicities together with low alpha-enhancement seems to indicate a bar-like
population perhaps related to the nuclear bar.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&
How Strong Is a Counterfactual?
The literature on counterfactuals is dominated by strict accounts and variably strict accounts. Counterexamples to the principle of Antecedent Strengthening were thought to be fatal to SA; but it has been shown that by adding dynamic resources to the view, such examples can be accounted for. We broaden the debate between VSA and SA by focusing on a new strengthening principle, Strengthening with a Possibility. We show dynamic SA classically validates this principle. We give a counterexample to it and show that extra dynamic resources cannot help SA. We then show VSA accounts for the counterexample if it allows for orderings on worlds that are not almost-connected, and that such an ordering naturally falls out of a Kratzerian ordering source semantics. We conclude that the failure of Strengthening with a Possibility tells strongly against Dynamic SA and in favor of an ordering source-based version of VSA
Field #3 of the Palomar-Groningen Survey I. Variable stars at the edge of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy
A catalogue is presented with variable (RR Lyrae, semiregular and Mira) stars
located inside field #3 of the Palomar-Groningen Survey, at the outer edge of
the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. One of the semiregular variables is a carbon
star, comparable with those found by Azzopardi et al. (1991). Serendipity
provides the suggestion, that their carbon stars might not be located inside,
but behind the bulge in the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy.Comment: 3 pages TeX with 3 postscript figures. Table 1 and the finding charts
are available on request. Accepted for publication in A&A Supplement Serie
Temperatures and metallicities of M giants in the galactic Bulge from low-resolution K-band spectra
With the existing and upcoming large multi-fibre low-resolution
spectrographs, the question arises how precise stellar parameters such as Teff
and [Fe/H] can be obtained from low-resolution K-band spectra with respect to
traditional photometric temperature measurements. Until now, most of the
effective temperatures in galactic Bulge studies come directly from photometric
techniques. Uncertainties in interstellar reddening and in the assumed
extinction law could lead to large systematic errors. We aim to obtain and
calibrate the relation between Teff and the first overtone bands
for M giants in the galactic Bulge covering a wide range in metallicity. We use
low-resolution spectra for 20 M giants with well-studied parameters from
photometric measurements covering the temperature range 3200 < Teff < 4500 K
and a metallicity range from 0.5 dex down to -1.2 dex and study the behaviour
of Teff and [Fe/H] on the spectral indices. We find a tight relation between
Teff and the band with a dispersion of 95 K as well as
between Teff and the with a dispersion of 120 K. We do not
find any dependence of these relations on the metallicity of the star, making
them relation attractive for galactic Bulge studies. This relation is also not
sensitive to the spectral resolution allowing to apply this relation in a more
general way.
We also found a correlation between the combination of the NaI, CaI and the
band with the metallicity of the star. However this relation is
only valid for sub-solar metallicities. We show that low-resolution spectra
provide a powerful tool to obtain effective temperatures of M giants. We show
that this relation does not depend on the metallicity of the star within the
investigated range and is also applicable to different spectral resolution.Comment: 6 pages, accepted for publication in Astronomy&Astrophysic
The dynamic consequences of invasion: negative plant-soil feedbacks on natives increase ver the time course of invasion
*a) Background/Questions/Methods*
Exotic species can negatively impact native community members, directly through interference competition, or indirectly by altering interactions between native species and other species such as pathogens and mutualists. Soil microbial communities have been shown to respond to invasive species, yet are relatively stable and may take time to respond to perturbations. For this reason, microbe-mediated effects of invasives on natives may take time to develop and may change throughout the invasion process. Few studies have investigated how species interactions between natives and exotics change during invasions.

_Acer platanoides_ was introduced into the US from Europe in 1756 and has since invaded intact forests, lowering understory diversity and inhibiting native tree species regeneration. We hypothesize that _A. platanoides_ invasion will decrease seedling survival in the native _A. saccharum_ by changing the soil microbial community through plant-soil feedbacks (PSF), and this relationship will intensify over the course of an invasion. We collected soil samples from beneath the canopies of both species co-occurring in Michigan forests that had been invaded by _A. platanoides_ for varying time periods. In the greenhouse, we inoculated seedlings of both species with the microbial communities to determine how the soil community affects seedling survival and growth.

*b) Results/Conclusion*
The microbe-mediated negative effects of _A. platanoides_ on survival of the native congener _A. saccharum_ increased with increasing invasion age (negative correlation between invasion age and _A. saccharum_ survival; r = -0.806, R^2^ = 0.65, p = 0.032). This result was not related to _A. platanoides_ density, suggesting that age of invasion drives this pattern. Contrastingly, invasion age did not significantly influence survival of _A. platanoides_ seedlings, indicating that _A. platanoides’_ PSF impacts native species but not on conspecific regeneration. Overall, _A. platanoides_ seedlings had increased growth (more and larger leaves) when grown in soil communities collected from the native _A. saccharum_, but _A. saccharum_ seedlings had reduced growth when grown in conspecific soil (p = 0.044). These results suggest that invasive species may have increased performance in exotic ranges by their ability to modify the soil microbial community in a manner that suppresses the growth of native species.

We show the microbial community cultivated by an invader alters the performance of a native plant species, and this effect increases over the course of an invasion. In future work, we plan to identify changes in microbial community composition and the relative abundances of mutualists versus antagonists in response to invasion to identify potential mechanisms
Abundances of disk and bulge giants from hi-res optical spectra: II. O, Mg, Ca, and Ti in the bulge sample
Determining elemental abundances of bulge stars can, via chemical evolution
modeling, help to understand the formation and evolution of the bulge. Recently
there have been claims both for and against the bulge having a different
[/Fe] vs. [Fe/H]-trend as compared to the local thick disk possibly
meaning a faster, or at least different, formation time scale of the bulge as
compared to the local thick disk. We aim to determine the abundances of oxygen,
magnesium, calcium, and titanium in a sample of 46 bulge K-giants, 35 of which
have been analyzed for oxygen and magnesium in previous works, and compare them
to homogeneously determined elemental abundances of a local disk sample of 291
K-giants. We use spectral synthesis to determine both the stellar parameters as
well as the elemental abundances of the bulge stars analyzed here. The method
is exactly the same as was used for analyzing the comparison sample of 291
local K-giants in Paper I of this series. Compared to the previous analysis of
the 35 stars in our sample, we find lower [Mg/Fe] for [Fe/H]>-0.5, and
therefore contradict the conclusion about a declining [O/Mg] for increasing
[Fe/H]. We instead see a constant [O/Mg] over all the observed [Fe/H] in the
bulge. Furthermore, we find no evidence for a different behavior of the
alpha-iron trends in the bulge as compared to the local thick disk from our two
samples.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&
Stellar sources in the ISOGAL intermediate bulge fields
We present a study of ISOGAL sources in the "intermediate" galactic bulge
( 2, 1--4), observed by
ISOCAM at 7 and 15 . In combination with near-infrared (I, J, K) data of DENIS survey, complemented by 2MASS data, we discuss the nature of
the ISOGAL sources, their luminosities, the interstellar extinction and the
mass-loss rates. A large fraction of the 1464 detected sources at 15
are AGB stars above the RGB tip, a number of them show an excess in
([7]-[15]) and (K-[15]) colours, characteristic
of mass-loss. The latter, especially (K-[15]), provide
estimates of the mass-loss rates and show their distribution in the range
10 to 10 M/yr.Comment: 16 pages, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic
Field #3 of the Palomar-Groningen Survey II. Near-infrared photometry of semiregular variables
Near-infrared photometry (JHKL'M) was obtained for 78 semiregular variables
(SRVs) in field #3 of the Palomar-Groningen survey (PG3, l=0, b=-10). Together
with a sample of Miras in this field a comparison is made with a sample of
field SRVs and Miras. The PG3 SRVs form a sequence (period-luminosity
& period-colour) with the PG3 Miras, in which the SRVs are the short period
extension to the Miras. The field and PG3 Miras follow the same P/(J--K)o
relation, while this is not the case for the field and PG3 SRVs. Both the PG3
SRVs and Miras follow the SgrI period-luminosity relation adopted from Glass et
al. (1995, MNRAS 273, 383). They are likely pulsating in the fundamental mode
and have metallicities spanning the range from intermediate to approximately
solar.Comment: 14 pages LaTeX (2 tables, 8 figures), to appear in A&A 338 (1998);
minor modifications in tex
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