California Institute of Technology

About: California Institute of Technology is a education organization based out in Pasadena, California, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Galaxy & Population. The organization has 57649 authors who have published 146691 publications receiving 8620287 citations. The organization is also known as: Caltech & Cal Tech.

Lyman Break Galaxies at z>4 and the Evolution of the UV Luminosity Density at High Redshift

Abstract: We present initial results of a survey for star-forming galaxies in the redshift range 3.8 z 4.5. This sample consists of a photometric catalog of 244 galaxies culled from a total solid angle of 0.23 deg2 to an apparent magnitude of IAB = 25.0. Spectroscopic redshifts in the range 3.61 ? z ? 4.81 have been obtained for 48 of these galaxies; their median redshift is z = 4.13. Selecting these galaxies in a manner entirely analogous to our large survey for Lyman-break galaxies at smaller redshift (2.7 z 3.4) allows a relatively clean differential comparison between the populations and integrated luminosity density at these two cosmic epochs. Over the same range of UV luminosity, the spectroscopic properties of the galaxy samples at z ~ 4 and z ~ 3 are indistinguishable, as are the luminosity function shapes and the total integrated UV luminosity densities [?UV(z = 3)/?UV(z = 4) = 1.1 ? 0.3]. We see no evidence at these bright magnitudes for the steep decline in the star formation density inferred from fainter photometric Lyman-break galaxies in the Hubble deep field (HDF). The HDF provides the only existing data on Lyman-break galaxy number densities at fainter magnitudes. We have reanalyzed the z ~ 3 and z ~ 4 Lyman-break galaxies in the HDF using our improved knowledge of the spectral energy distributions of these galaxies, and we find, like previous authors, that faint Lyman-break galaxies appear to be rarer at z ~ 4 than z ~ 3. This might signal a large change in the faint-end slope of the Lyman-break galaxy luminosity function between redshifts z ~ 3 and z ~ 4, or, more likely, be due to significant variance in the number counts within the small volumes probed by the HDF at high redshifts (~160 times smaller than the ground-based surveys discussed here). If the true luminosity density at z ~ 4 is somewhat higher than implied by the HDF, as our ground-based sample suggests, then the emissivity of star formation as a function of redshift would appear essentially constant for all z > 1 once internally consistent corrections for dust are made. This suggests that there may be no obvious peak in star formation activity and that the onset of substantial star formation in galaxies might occur at z 4.5.

Gut biogeography of the bacterial microbiota

Abstract: Animals assemble and maintain a diverse but host-specific gut microbial community. In addition to characteristic microbial compositions along the longitudinal axis of the intestines, discrete bacterial communities form in microhabitats, such as the gut lumen, colonic mucus layers and colonic crypts. In this Review, we examine how the spatial distribution of symbiotic bacteria among physical niches in the gut affects the development and maintenance of a resilient microbial ecosystem. We consider novel hypotheses for how nutrient selection, immune activation and other mechanisms control the biogeography of bacteria in the gut, and we discuss the relevance of this spatial heterogeneity to health and disease.

Radar interferogram filtering for geophysical applications

Abstract: The use of SAR interferometry is often impeded by decorrelation from thermal noise, temporal change, and baseline geometry. Power spectra of interferograms are typically the sum of a narrow-band component combined with broad-band noise. We describe a new adaptive filtering algorithm that dramatically lowers phase noise, improving both measurement accuracy and phase unwrapping, while demonstrating graceful degradation in regions of pure noise. The performance of the filter is demonstrated with SAR data from the ERS satellites over the Jakobshavns glacier of Greenland.

The infrared spectrograph (irs) on the spitzer space telescope

Abstract: The Infrared Spectrograph (IRS) is one of three science instruments on the Spitzer Space Telescope .T he IRS comprises four separate spectrograph modules covering the wavelength range from 5.3 to 38 � m with spectral resolutions, R ¼ k=� k � 90 and 600, and it was optimized to take full advantage of the very low background in the space environment. The IRS is performing at or better than the prelaunch predictions. An autonomous target acquisition capability enables the IRS to locate the mid-infrared centroid of a source, providing the information so that the spacecraft can accurately offset that centroid to a selected slit. This feature is particularly useful when taking spectra of sources with poorly known coordinates. An automated data-reduction pipeline has been developed at the Spitzer Science Center. Subject headingg infrared: general — instrumentation: spectrographs — space vehicles: instruments

Invariant visual representation by single neurons in the human brain

Abstract: It takes a fraction of a second to recognize a person or an object even when seen under strikingly different conditions. How such a robust, high-level representation is achieved by neurons in the human brain is still unclear. In monkeys, neurons in the upper stages of the ventral visual pathway respond to complex images such as faces and objects and show some degree of invariance to metric properties such as the stimulus size, position and viewing angle. We have previously shown that neurons in the human medial temporal lobe (MTL) fire selectively to images of faces, animals, objects or scenes. Here we report on a remarkable subset of MTL neurons that are selectively activated by strikingly different pictures of given individuals, landmarks or objects and in some cases even by letter strings with their names. These results suggest an invariant, sparse and explicit code, which might be important in the transformation of complex visual percepts into long-term and more abstract memories.