304,817 research outputs found
Direct gaze modulates face recognition in young infants
From birth, infants prefer to look at faces that engage them in direct eye contact. In adults, direct gaze is known to modulate the processing of faces, including the recognition of individuals. In the present study, we investigate whether direction of gaze has any effect on face recognition in four-month-old infants. Four-month infants were shown faces with both direct and averted gaze, and subsequently given a preference test involving the same face and a novel one. A novelty preference during test was only found following initial exposure to a face with direct gaze. Further, face recognition was also generally enhanced for faces with both direct and with averted gaze when the infants started the task with the direct gaze condition. Together, these results indicate that the direction of the gaze modulates face recognition in early infancy
Unveiling the nature of INTEGRAL objects through optical spectroscopy. VIII. Identification of 44 newly detected hard X-ray sources
(abridged) Hard X-ray surveys performed by the INTEGRAL satellite have
discovered a conspicuous fraction (up to 30%) of unidentified objects among the
detected sources. Here we continue our identification program by selecting
probable optical candidates using positional cross-correlation with soft X-ray,
radio, and/or optical archives, and performing optical spectroscopy on them. As
a result, we identified or more accurately characterized 44 counterparts of
INTEGRAL sources: 32 active galactic nuclei, with redshift 0.019 < z < 0.6058,
6 cataclysmic variables (CVs), 5 high-mass X-ray binaries (2 of which in the
Small Magellanic Cloud), and 1 low-mass X-ray binary. This was achieved by
using 7 telescopes of various sizes and archival data from two online
spectroscopic surveys. The main physical parameters of these hard X-ray sources
were also determined using the available multiwavelength information. AGNs are
the most abundant population among hard X-ray objects, and our results confirm
this tendency when optical spectroscopy is used as an identification tool. The
deeper sensitivity of recent INTEGRAL surveys enables one to begin detecting
hard X-ray emission above 20 keV from sources such as LINER-type AGNs and
non-magnetic CVs.Comment: 22 pages, 14 figures, 6 tables, accepted for publication on A&A, main
journa
Mathieu twining characters for K3
The analogue of the McKay-Thompson series for the proposed Mathieu group
action on the elliptic genus of K3 is analysed. The corresponding NS-sector
twining characters have good modular properties and satisfy remarkable
replication identities. These observations provide strong support for the
conjecture that the elliptic genus of K3 carries indeed an action of the
Mathieu group M24.Comment: 19 page
The helium spread in the Globular cluster 47 Tuc
Spectroscopy has shown the presence of the CN band dicothomy and the Na-O
anticorrelations for 50--70% of the investigated samples in the cluster 47 Tuc,
otherwise considered a "normal" prototype of high metallicity clusters from the
photometric analysis. Very recently, the re-analysis of a large number of
archival HST data of the cluster core has been able to put into evidence the
presence of structures in the Sub Giant Branch: it has a brighter component
with a spread in magnitude by 0.06 mag and a second one, made of about
10% of stars, a little fainter (by 0.05 mag). These data also show that
the Main Sequence of the cluster has an intrinsic spread in color which, if
interpreted as due to a small spread in helium abundance, suggests
Y0.027. In this work we examine in detail whether the Horizontal
Branch morphology and the Sub Giant structure provide further independent
indications that a real --although very small-helium spread is present in the
cluster. We re--analyze the HST archival data for the Horizontal Branch of 47
Tuc, obtaining a sample of 500 stars with very small photometric errors,
and build population synthesis based on new models to show that its particular
morphology can be better explained by taking into account a spread in helium
abundance of 2% in mass. The same variation in helium is able to explain the
spread in luminosity of the Sub Giant Branch, while a small part of the second
generation is characterized by a small C+N+O increase and provides an
explanation for the fainter Sub Giant Branch. We conclude that three
photometric features concur to form the paradigm that a small but real helium
spread is present in a cluster that has no spectacular evidence for multiple
populations like those shown by other massive clusters.Comment: Accepted for publication in the MNRAS on 2010 June 8. Received 2010
May 19; in original form 2010 February 9. 7 pages and 3 figures. No table
The backreaction of anti-D3 branes on the Klebanov-Strassler geometry
We present the full numerical solution for the 15-dimensional space of
linearized deformations of the Klebanov-Strassler background which preserve the
SU(2) X SU(2) X Z_2 symmetries. We identify within this space the solution
corresponding to anti-D3 branes, (modulo the presence of a certain subleading
singularity in the infrared). All the 15 integration constants of this solution
are fixed in terms of the number of anti-D3 branes, and the solution differs in
the UV from the supersymmetric solution into which it is supposed to decay by a
mode corresponding to a rescaling of the field theory coordinates. Deciding
whether two solutions that differ in the UV by a rescaling mode are dual to the
same theory is involved even for supersymmetric Klebanov-Strassler solutions,
and we explain in detail some of the subtleties associated to this.Comment: 41 pages, 5 figures, LaTe
Unveiling the nature of INTEGRAL objects through optical spectroscopy. IX. 22 more identifications, and a glance into the far hard X-ray Universe
(Abridged) Since its launch in October 2002, the INTEGRAL satellite has
revolutionized our knowledge of the hard X-ray sky thanks to its unprecedented
imaging capabilities and source detection positional accuracy above 20 keV.
Nevertheless, many of the newly-detected sources in the INTEGRAL sky surveys
are of unknown nature. The combined use of available information at longer
wavelengths (mainly soft X-rays and radio) and of optical spectroscopy on the
putative counterparts of these new hard X-ray objects allows us to pinpoint
their exact nature. Continuing our long-standing program that has been running
since 2004, and using 6 different telescopes of various sizes, we report the
classification through optical spectroscopy of 22 more unidentified or poorly
studied high-energy sources detected with the IBIS instrument onboard INTEGRAL.
We found that 16 of them are active galactic nuclei (AGNs), while the remaining
6 objects are within our Galaxy. Among the identified extragalactic sources, 14
are Type 1 AGNs; of these, 6 lie at redshift larger than 0.5 and one has z =
3.12, which makes it the second farthest object detected in the INTEGRAL
surveys up to now. The remaining AGNs are of type 2, and one of them is a pair
of interacting Seyfert 2 galaxies. The Galactic objects are identified as two
cataclysmic variables, one high-mass X-ray binary, one symbiotic binary and two
chromospherically active stars. We thus still find that AGNs are the most
abundant population among hard X-ray objects identified through optical
spectroscopy. Moreover, we note that the higher sensitivity of the more recent
INTEGRAL surveys is now enabling the detection of high-redshift AGNs, thus
allowing the exploration of the most distant hard X-ray emitting sources and
possibly of the most extreme blazars.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, 8 tables, accepted for publication on Astronomy
& Astrophysics, main journa
Fibril elongation mechanisms of HET-s prion-forming domain: Topological evidence for growth polarity
The prion-forming C-terminal domain of the fungal prion HET-s forms
infectious amyloid fibrils at physiological pH. The conformational switch from
the non-prion soluble form to the prion fibrillar form is believed to have a
functional role, since HET-s in its prion form participates in a recognition
process of different fungal strains. Based on the knowledge of the
high-resolution structure of HET-s(218-289) (the prion forming-domain) in its
fibrillar form, we here present a numerical simulation of the fibril growth
process which emphasizes the role of the topological properties of the
fibrillar structure. An accurate thermodynamic analysis of the way an
intervening HET-s chain is recruited to the tip of the growing fibril suggests
that elongation proceeds through a dock and lock mechanism. First, the chain
docks onto the fibril by forming the longest -strands. Then, the
re-arrangement in the fibrillar form of all the rest of molecule takes place.
Interestingly, we predict also that one side of the HET-s fibril is more
suitable for substaining its growth with respect to the other. The resulting
strong polarity of fibril growth is a consequence of the complex topology of
HET-s fibrillar structure, since the central loop of the intervening chain
plays a crucially different role in favouring or not the attachment of the
C-terminus tail to the fibril, depending on the growth side.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figure
Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV
The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS
has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions
at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection
criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined.
For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a
muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the
whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4,
while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The
efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than
90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall
momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The
transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity
for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be
better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions
of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO
Energy Localization in the Peyrard-Bishop DNA model
We study energy localization on the oscillator-chain proposed by Peyrard and
Bishop to model the DNA. We search numerically for conditions with initial
energy in a small subgroup of consecutive oscillators of a finite chain and
such that the oscillation amplitude is small outside this subgroup for a long
timescale. We use a localization criterion based on the information entropy and
we verify numerically that such localized excitations exist when the nonlinear
dynamics of the subgroup oscillates with a frequency inside the reactive band
of the linear chain. We predict a mimium value for the Morse parameter (the only parameter of our normalized model), in agreement with the
numerical calculations (an estimate for the biological value is ).
For supercritical masses, we use canonical perturbation theory to expand the
frequencies of the subgroup and we calculate an energy threshold in agreement
with the numerical calculations
SWKB for the Angular Momentum
In this paper we solve the eigenvalue problem of the angular momentum
operator by using the supersymmetric semiclassical quantum mechanics (SWKB),
and show that it gives the correct quantization already at the leading order.Comment: latex, 9 pages, no figures, to be published in Modern Physics Letters
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