Formation of voids in the Universe within the Lemaître–Tolman model

We develop models of void formation starting from a small initial fluctuation at recombination and growing to a realistic present-day density profile in agreement with observations of voids. The model construction is an extension of previously developed algorithms for finding a Lemaître–Tolman metric that evolves between two profiles of either density or velocity specified at two times. Of the four profiles of concern (those of density and velocity at recombination and at the present day), two can be specified and the other two follow from the derived model.
We find that, in order to reproduce the present-day void density profiles, the initial velocity profile is more important than the initial density profile.
Extrapolation of current cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations to the scales relevant to protovoids is very uncertain. Even so, we find that it is very difficult to make both the initial density and velocity fluctuation amplitudes small enough and still obtain a realistic void by today.     

鳗弧菌(Vibrio anguillarum)侵染对青蛤(Cyclina sinensis)髓样分化因子88基因表达的影响

经转录组测序后筛选并克隆得到青蛤(Cyclina sinensis)髓样分化因子88(myeloid differenttiation factor 88,My D88)的c DNA序列。在鳗弧菌(Vibrio anguillarum)胁迫下,采用荧光定量PCR法分析了My D88基因在青蛤体内的表达过程。结果显示,青蛤My D88基因的开放阅读框为1521bp,编码506个氨基酸,分子量约为57.14k Da,氨基酸N段存在DEATH结构域,C段存在TIR结构域(Toll/Interleukin-1 receptor domain)。My D88基因在青蛤血淋巴、肝脏、外套膜、鳃和闭壳肌等组织中普遍表达,但在血淋巴中表达量最高,与其它组织出现显著性差异(P0.05)。通过检测鳗弧菌刺激下My D88基因在青蛤血淋巴中的表达值,发现My D88基因在24h开始升高,48h达到最大值,约为对照组的10倍,实验组与对照组及空白组均出现了极显著性差异(P0.01);研究结果表明,该基因在软体动物的免疫应答反应中对革兰氏阴性菌有识别作用。     

TM65 m射电望远镜低频段系统噪声温度测试和分析

首先介绍了天马65 m射电望远镜(简称TM65 m)接收系统,包括L、S、C、X 4个频段各部分的噪声指标.然后对系统噪声温度的几种测试方法进行了讨论;对影响系统噪声温度测量的若干关键因素进行了分析,包括非线性误差、馈源网络插入损耗和失配误差等.采用Y因子法对试验室的噪声源定标值进行了校核,校核后偏差达到0.2 K左右.最后给出了TM65 m 4个低频段系统噪声温度的实测结果,并进行了分析.     

Biases on the cosmological parameters and thermal Sunyaev–Zel'dovich residuals

We examine the biases induced on cosmological parameters when the presence of secondary anisotropies is not taken into account in cosmic microwave background analyses. We first develop an exact analytical expression for computing the biases on parameters when any additive signal is neglected in the analysis. We then apply it in the context of the forthcoming Planck experiment. For illustration, we investigate the effect of the sole residual thermal Sunyaev–Zel'dovich signal that remains after cluster extraction. We find, in particular, that analyses neglecting the presence of this contribution introduce on the cosmological parameters n _s and τ biases, at least ∼6.5 and 2.9 times their 1σ confidence intervals. The Ω_b parameter is also biased to a lesser extent.     

A fast Bayesian approach to discrete object detection in astronomical data sets – PowellSnakes I

A new fast Bayesian approach is introduced for the detection of discrete objects immersed in a diffuse background. This new method, called PowellSnakes, speeds up traditional Bayesian techniques by (i) replacing the standard form of the likelihood for the parameters characterizing the discrete objects by an alternative exact form that is much quicker to evaluate; (ii) using a simultaneous multiple minimization code based on Powell's direction set algorithm to locate rapidly the local maxima in the posterior and (iii) deciding whether each located posterior peak corresponds to a real object by performing a Bayesian model selection using an approximate evidence value based on a local Gaussian approximation to the peak. The construction of this Gaussian approximation also provides the covariance matrix of the uncertainties in the derived parameter values for the object in question. This new approach provides a speed up in performance by a factor of '100' as compared to existing Bayesian source extraction methods that use Monte Carlo Markov chain to explore the parameter space, such as that presented by Hobson & McLachlan. The method can be implemented in either real or Fourier space. In the case of objects embedded in a homogeneous random field, working in Fourier space provides a further speed up that takes advantage of the fact that the correlation matrix of the background is circulant. We illustrate the capabilities of the method by applying to some simplified toy models. Furthermore, PowellSnakes has the advantage of consistently defining the threshold for acceptance/rejection based on priors which cannot be said of the frequentist methods. We present here the first implementation of this technique (version I). Further improvements to this implementation are currently under investigation and will be published shortly. The application of the method to realistic simulated Planck observations will be presented in a forthcoming publication.     

The study of topology of the Universe using multipole vectors

We study a multipole vector-based decomposition of cosmic microwave background data in order to search for signatures of a multiconnected topology of the universe. Using 10⁶ simulated maps, we analyse the multipole vector distribution on the sky for the lowest order multipoles together with the probability distribution function of statistics based on the sum of the dot products of the multipole vectors for both the simply connected flat universe and universes with the topology of a 3 torus. The estimated probabilities of obtaining lower values for these statistics as compared to the 5-yr Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe data indicate that the observed alignment of the quadrupole and octopole is statistically favoured in a 3-torus topology where at least one dimension of the fundamental domain is significantly shorter than the diameter of the observable Universe, as compared to the usual standard simply connected universe. However, none of the obtained results is able to clearly rule out the latter (at more than 97 per cent confidence level). Multipole vector statistics do not appear to be very sensitive to the signatures of a 3-torus topology if the shorter dimension of the domain becomes comparable to the diameter of the observable Universe. Unfortunately, the signatures are also significantly diluted by the integrated Sachs–Wolfe effect.