Search results for " planetary"
showing 10 items of 5408 documents
Impact of Structural, Photochemical and Instrumental Effects on Leaf and Canopy Reflectance Variability in the 500–600 nm Range
2021
Current rapid technological improvement in optical radiometric instrumentation provides an opportunity to develop innovative measurements protocols where the remote quantification of the plant physiological status can be determined with higher accuracy. In this study, the leaf and canopy reflectance variability in the PRI spectral region (i.e., 500–600 nm) is quantified using different laboratory protocols that consider both instrumental and experimental set-up aspects, as well as canopy structural effects and vegetation photoprotection dynamics. First, we studied how an incorrect characterization of the at-target incoming radiance translated into an erroneous vegetation reflectance spectru…
A Long Journey into the Investigation of the Structure–Dynamics–Function Paradigm in Proteins through the Activities of the Palermo Biophysics Group
2022
An overview of the biophysics activity at the Department of Physics and Chemistry Emilio Segrè of the University of Palermo is given. For forty years, the focus of the research has been on the protein structure–dynamics–function paradigm, with the aim of understanding the molecular basis of the relevant mechanisms and the key role of solvent. At least three research lines are identified; the main results obtained in collaboration with other groups in Italy and abroad are presented. This review is dedicated to the memory of Professors Massimo Ugo Palma, Maria Beatrice Palma Vittorelli, and Lorenzo Cordone, which were the founders of the Palermo School of Biophysics. We all have been, directl…
Exotic Spin-Orbital Physics in Hybrid Oxides
2016
We compare the effective spin-orbital super\-exchange triggered by magnetic $3d$ impurities with $d^3$ and $d^2$ configurations and either no orbital degree of freedom (orbital dilution) or hole replacing a doublon (charge dilution) in a $4d^4$ Mott insulator with $S=1$ spins. Impurities causing orbital dilution act either as spin defects decoupled from the surrounding ions, or generate orbital polarons along $d^3$-$d^4$ hybrid bonds. The exchange on these bonds determines which orbital is occupied by a doublon on the host site. In case of charge dilution by $3d^2$ impurities additional $\propto T_i^+T_j^+$ terms arise which enhance orbital fluctuations. We show that such terms may radicall…
Urban Heat Island Monitoring and Impacts on Citizen's General Health Status in Isfahan Metropolis: A Remote Sensing and Field Survey Approach.
2020
Urban heat islands (UHIs) are one of the urban management challenges, especially in metropolises, which can affect citizens’ health and well-being. This study used a combination of remote sensing techniques with field survey to investigate systematically the effects of UHI on citizens’ health in Isfahan metropolis, Iran. For this purpose, the land surface temperature (LST) over a three-year period was monitored by Landsat-8 satellite imagery based on the split window algorithm. Then, the areas where UHI and urban cold island (UCI) phenomena occurred were identified and a general health questionnaire-28 (GHQ-28) was applied to evaluate the health status of 800 citizens in terms o…
The XMM-Newton Extended Survey of the Taurus Molecular Cloud (XEST)
2007
(abridged:) The XMM-Newton Extended Survey of the Taurus Molecular Cloud (XEST) surveys the most populated ~5 square degrees of the Taurus star formation region, using the XMM-Newton X-ray observatory to study the thermal structure, variability, and long-term evolution of hot plasma, to investigate the magnetic dynamo, and to search for new potential members of the association. Many targets are also studied in the optical, and high-resolution X-ray grating spectroscopy has been obtained for selected bright sources. The X-ray spectra have been coherently analyzed with two different thermal models (2-component thermal model, and a continuous emission measure distribution model). We present ov…
Spectral properties of X-ray bright variable sources in the Taurus Molecular Cloud
2006
We analyze 19 bright variable X-ray sources detected in the XMM-Newton Extended Survey of the Taurus Molecular Cloud (XEST), in order to characterize the variations with time of their coronal properties and to derive informations on the X-ray emitting structures. We performed time-resolved spectroscopy of the EPIC PN and MOS spectra of the XEST sources, using a model with one or two thermal components, and we used the time evolution of the temperatures and emission measures during the decay phase of flares to derive the size of the flaring loops. The light curves of the selected sources show different types of variability: flares, long-lasting decay or rise through the whole observation, sl…
Stochastic gravito-inertial modes discovered by CoRoT in the hot Be star HD 51452
2012
International audience; Context. Be stars are rapidly rotating stars with a circumstellar decretion disk. They usually undergo pressure and/or gravity pulsation modes excited by the κ-mechanism, i.e. an effect of the opacity of iron-peak elements in the envelope of the star. In the Milky Way, p-modes are observed in stars that are hotter than or equal to the B3 spectral type, while g-modes are observed at the B2 spectral type and cooler. Aims. We observed a B0IVe star, HD 51452, with the high-precision, high-cadence photometric CoRoT satellite and high-resolution, ground-based HARPS and SOPHIE spectrographs to study its pulsations in great detail. We also used the lower resolution spectra a…
High Energy Emission and its Variability in Young Stellar Objects
2019
Young stars show a variety of highly energetic phenomena, from accretion and outflow processes to hot coronal plasmas confined in their outer atmosphere, all regulated by the intense stellar magnetic fields. Many aspects on each of these phenomena are debated, but, most notably, their complex mutual interaction remains obscure. In this work I report how these phenomena are simultaneously responsible for the high-energy emission from young stars, with a special focus on the expected and observed variability in the X-ray band. Investigating variations in the X-ray emission from young stars allows us to pose constraints on flare and coronal plasma properties, coronal heating, accretion stream …
Chemical Cartography with APOGEE: Multi-element Abundance Ratios
2019
We map the trends of elemental abundance ratios across the Galactic disk, spanning R = 3-15 kpc and midplane distance |Z|= 0-2 kpc, for 15 elements in a sample of 20,485 stars measured by the SDSS/APOGEE survey (O, Na, Mg, Al, Si, P, S, K, Ca, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni). Adopting Mg rather than Fe as our reference element, and separating stars into two populations based on [Fe/Mg], we find that the median trends of [X/Mg] vs. [Mg/H] in each population are nearly independent of location in the Galaxy. The full multi-element cartography can be summarized by combining these nearly universal median sequences with our measured metallicity distribution functions and the relative proportions of the lo…
The Gaia-ESO Survey: impact of extra mixing on C and N abundances of giant stars
2018
The GES survey using FLAMES at the VLT has obtained high-resolution UVES spectra for a large number of giant stars, allowing a determination of the abundances of the key chemical elements C and N at their surface. The surface abundances of these chemical species are well-known to change in stars during their evolution on the red giant branch after the first dredge-up episod, as a result of extra-mixing phenomena. We investigate the effects of thermohaline mixing on C and N abundances using the first comparison between the GES [C/N] determinations with simulations of the observed fields using a model of stellar population synthesis. We explore the effects of thermohaline mixing on the chemic…