Here we report an all-sky soft gamma-ray source catalog based on IBIS observations performed during the first 1000 orbits of INTEGRAL. The database for the construction of the source list consists of ...all good-quality data available, from the launch in 2002, up to the end of 2010. This corresponds to ~110 Ms of scientific public observations, with a concentrated coverage on the Galactic Plane and extragalactic deep exposures. This new catalog includes 939 sources above a 4.5sigma significance threshold detected in the 17-100 keV energy band, of which 120 sources represent previously undiscovered soft gamma-ray emitters. The source positions are determined, mean fluxes are provided in two main energy bands, and these are both reported together with the overall source exposure. Indicative levels of variability are provided, and outburst times and durations are given for transient sources. A comparison is made with previous IBIS catalogs and catalogs from other similar missions.
Among couples undergoing up to six cycles of in vitro fertilization (IVF) at one large infertility center, the overall live-birth rate was 72% with an optimistic analysis (assuming that women lost to ...follow-up had the same chance of pregnancy as women who continued treatment) and 51% with a conservative analysis (assuming that there were no live births among women lost to follow-up). These rates decreased significantly with increasing maternal age.
Among couples undergoing up to six cycles of in vitro fertilization (IVF) at one large infertility center, the overall live-birth rate was 72% with an optimistic analysis and 51% with a conservative analysis.
When a couple presents to a physician for a fertility evaluation and requires in vitro fertilization (IVF), their main question is whether this treatment will result in a baby. The statistic commonly quoted to couples is the outcome per cycle according to maternal age. The primary reason for the frequent use of this cross-sectional statistic is the simplicity with which it can be calculated. The national reporting systems in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Australia, and New Zealand are cross-sectional and list IVF outcomes as pregnancies per cycle. However, this statistic has limited value for individual patients because it . . .
ABSTRACT
In this work, we analyse three average-luminosity hard X-ray selected AGN: ESO 506-G27, IGR J19039+3344, and NGC 7465. They have simultaneous Swift/XRT and NuSTAR data never published before ...and have been poorly studied at X-ray energies. These sources make for interesting targets both from a methodological and scientific point of view. Scientifically, they are of interest since they are possibly heavily absorbed objects, belong to a peculiar class and are variable both in flux and in spectral shape. Methodologically, because it is an interesting exercise to understand how existing spectral models can be applied to faint sources and how the use of NuSTAR data alone and then simultaneous and/or average data impacts on the spectral parameters determination. In this work, we demonstrate that simultaneous data are not sufficient if their statistical quality is poor. Moreover, we show that also the use of time-averaged data when dealing with faint AGN does not always provide confident results as for brighter AGN. Regardless of the poor data quality employed in our analysis, we are able to provide insights into the spectral characteristics of each source. We analyse in detail for the first time the iron line complex of ESO 506-G27, finding not only the presence of the iron K α and K β lines, but also of the iron K edge around 7 keV in the NuSTAR data. We also highlight changes in the absorption properties of IGR J19039+3344 and confirm NGC 7465 to be an unabsorbed type 1 LINER.
Forests are major components of the global carbon cycle, providing substantial feedback to atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. Our ability to understand and predict changes in the forest ...carbon cycle--particularly net primary productivity and carbon storage--increasingly relies on models that represent biological processes across several scales of biological organization, from tree leaves to forest stands. Yet, despite advances in our understanding of productivity at the scales of leaves and stands, no consensus exists about the nature of productivity at the scale of the individual tree, in part because we lack a broad empirical assessment of whether rates of absolute tree mass growth (and thus carbon accumulation) decrease, remain constant, or increase as trees increase in size and age. Here we present a global analysis of 403 tropical and temperate tree species, showing that for most species mass growth rate increases continuously with tree size. Thus, large, old trees do not act simply as senescent carbon reservoirs but actively fix large amounts of carbon compared to smaller trees; at the extreme, a single big tree can add the same amount of carbon to the forest within a year as is contained in an entire mid-sized tree. The apparent paradoxes of individual tree growth increasing with tree size despite declining leaf-level and stand-level productivity can be explained, respectively, by increases in a tree's total leaf area that outpace declines in productivity per unit of leaf area and, among other factors, age-related reductions in population density. Our results resolve conflicting assumptions about the nature of tree growth, inform efforts to undertand and model forest carbon dynamics, and have additional implications for theories of resource allocation and plant senescence.
We have analysed the NRAO Very Large Array Sky Survey and Sydney University Molonglo Sky Survey data at 1.4 GHz and 843 MHz for a well-defined complete sample of hard X-ray AGN observed by INTEGRAL. ...A large number (70/79) of sources are detected in the radio band, showing a wide range of radio morphologies, from unresolved or slightly resolved cores to extended emission over several hundreds of kpc scales. The radio fluxes have been correlated with the 2–10 keV and 20–100 keV emission, revealing significant correlations with slopes consistent with those expected for radiatively efficient accreting systems. The high-energy emission coming from the inner accretion regions correlates with the radio emission averaged over hundreds of kpc scales (i.e. thousands of years).
•Extended version of the SEMA4A ontology with concepts about evacuation.•Improved methodology for identifying, acquiring, creating and organizing knowledge.•Implementation of the ontology using the ...standard Web Ontology Language (OWL).•Evaluation of the ontology with both a quantitative and a qualitative method.•Deployment of a use case demonstrating the usage of SEMA4A in a real scenario.
Providing alert communication in emergency situations is vital to reduce the number of victims. However, this is a challenging goal for researchers and professionals due to the diverse pool of prospective users, e.g. people with disabilities as well as other vulnerable groups. Moreover, in the event of an emergency situation, many people could become vulnerable because of exceptional circumstances such as stress, an unknown environment or even visual impairment (e.g. fire causing smoke). Within this scope, a crucial activity is to notify affected people about safe places and available evacuation routes. In order to address this need, we propose to extend an ontology, called SEMA4A (Simple EMergency Alert 4 for All), developed in a previous work for managing knowledge about accessibility guidelines, emergency situations and communication technologies. In this paper, we introduce a semi-automatic technique for knowledge acquisition and modeling on accessible evacuation routes. We introduce a use case to show applications of the ontology and conclude with an evaluation involving several experts in evacuation procedures.
Context.
Water megamaser emission at 22 GHz has proven to be a powerful tool for astrophysical studies of active galactic nuclei (AGN) because it allows an accurate determination of the mass of the ...central black hole and of the accretion disc geometry and dynamics. However, after searches among thousands of galaxies, only about 200 of them have shown such spectroscopic features, most of them of uncertain classification. In addition, the physical and geometrical conditions under which a maser activates are still unknown.
Aims.
We characterize the occurrence of water maser emission in an unbiased sample of AGN by investigating the relation with the X-ray properties and the possible favourable geometry that is required to detect water maser.
Methods.
We searched for 22 GHz maser emission in a hard X-ray selected sample of AGN, taken from the INTEGRAL/IBIS survey above 20 keV. Only half of the 380 sources in the sample have water maser data. We also considered a volume-limited sub-sample of 87 sources, for which we obtained new observations with the Green Bank and Effelsberg telescopes (for 35 sources). We detected one new maser and increased its radio coverage to 75%.
Results.
The detection rate of water maser emission in the total sample is 15 ± 3%. This fraction increases to 19 ± 5% for the complete sub-sample, especially when we consider type 2 (22 ± 5% and 31 ± 10% for the total and complete samples, respectively) and Compton-thick AGN (56 ± 18% and 50 ± 35% for the total and complete samples, respectively). No correlation is found between water maser and X-ray luminosity. We note that all types of masers (disc and jet) are associated with hard X-ray selected AGN.
Conclusions.
These results demonstrate that the hard X–ray selection may significantly enhance the maser detection efficiency over comparably large optical or infrared surveys. A possible decline in detection fraction with increasing luminosity might suggest that an extremely luminous nuclear environment does not favour maser emission. The large fraction of CT AGN with water maser emission could be explained in terms of geometrical effects. The maser medium would then be the very edge-on portion of the obscuring medium.
In this paper, we present the hard-X-ray spectral analysis of a complete sample of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) detected by INTEGRAL/IBIS. In conjunction with IBIS spectra, we make use of Swift/BAT ...data, with the aim of cross-calibrating the two instruments, studying source variability and constraining some important spectral parameters. We find that flux variability is present in at least 14 per cent of the sample, while spectral variability is found only in one object. There is general good agreement between BAT and IBIS spectra, despite a systematic mismatch of about 22 per cent in normalization. When fitted with a simple power-law model, type 1 and type 2 sources appear to have very similar average photon indices, suggesting that they are powered by the same mechanism. As expected, we also find that a simple power law does not always describe the data sufficiently well, thus indicating a certain degree of spectral complexity, which can be ascribed to features like a high energy cut-off and/or a reflection component. Fixing the reflection to be 0, 1 or 2, we find that our sample covers quite a large range in photon indices as well as cut-off energies; however, the spread is due only to a small number of objects, while the majority of the AGNs lie within well-defined boundaries of photon index (1 ≤ Γ ≤ 2) and cut-off energy (30 ≤ E
cut ≤ 300 keV).
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