A Census of White Dwarfs Within 40 Parsecs of the Sun

Our aim is to compile a catalog of white dwarfs within 40 parsecs of the Sun, in which newly discovered objects would significantly increase the completeness of the current census. White dwarf candidates are identified from the SUPERBLINK proper motion database (Lepine & Shara 2005), which allows us to investigate stars down to a proper motion limit as low as 40 mas yr-1. The selection criteria and distance estimates are based on a combination of color-magnitude and reduced proper motion diagrams. Candidates with distances less than 50 parsecs are selected for spectroscopic follow-up. We present our preliminary sample of spectroscopically confirmed white dwarfs, as well as their atmospheric parameters. These parameters are obtained using the spectroscopic technique developed in Bergeron et al.(1992) for DA stars. DB, DQ, and DZ stars are also analyzed spectroscopically. For featureless spectra as well as those showing only Halpha, we perform a detailed photometric analysis of their energy distribution.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, to appear in AIP Conference Proceedings for the 17th European White Dwarf Worksho

Acoustic Attenuation in Fans and Ducts by Vaporization of Liquid Droplets

A cloud of small water droplets in saturated air attenuates acoustic disturbances by viscous drag, heat transfer, and vapor exchange with the ambient gas. The viscous and heat transfer phenomena attenuate at frequencies above 104 Hz for I-J.l droplets. The processes associated with phase exchange attenuate at a much lower frequency that may he controlled by choice of the liquid mass fraction. The strength of this attenuation is proportional to the mass of water vapor in the air, a factor controlled by air temperature. For plane waves, the attenuation magnitude e~ceeds 5 db!m ~t a temperature of 25°C with a cloud of 0.7 J.l radius droplets constituting 1 % of the gas mass. ThiS attenuation mcreases to more than 7 dbjm at frequencies above 1000 Hz where viscous and heat transfer mechanisms contribute significantly. The attenuation of higher order duct modes is strongly increased over the above values, similarly to the attenuation by duct lining. When the droplet cloud occupies only a fraction of the duct height close to the walls, the droplet clond may be up to twice as elfective as the uniform cloud, and a significant saving is possible in the water required to saturate the air and furnish the water droplets

Interplay between a hydrodynamic instability and a phase transition: the Faraday instability in dispersions of rodlike colloids

Strong effects of the Faraday instability on suspensions of rodlike colloidal particles are reported through measurements of the critical acceleration and of the surface wave amplitude. We show that the transition to parametrically excited surface waves displays discontinuous and hysteretic features. This subcritical behaviour is attributed to the shear-thinning properties of our colloidal suspensions thanks to a phenomenological model based on rheological data under large amplitude oscillatory shear. Birefringence measurements provide direct evidence that Faraday waves induce local nematic ordering of the rodlike colloids. While local alignment simply follows the surface oscillations for dilute, isotropic suspensions, permanent nematic patches are generated by surface waves in samples close to the isotropic-to-nematic transition and above the transition large domains align in the flow direction. This strong coupling between the fluid microstructure and a hydrodynamic instability is confirmed by numerical computations based on the microstructural response of rodlike viruses in shear flow.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

Automated characterization of single-photon avalanche photodiode

We report an automated characterization of a single-photon detector based on commercial silicon avalanche photodiode (PerkinElmer C30902SH). The photodiode is characterized by I-V curves at different illumination levels (darkness, 10 pW and 10 uW), dark count rate and photon detection efficiency at different bias voltages. The automated characterization routine is implemented in C++ running on a Linux computer.Comment: Have permission to post journal-formatted version on arXi

Sorting Between and Within Industries: A Testable Model of Assortative Matching

We test Shimer\u27s (2005) theory of the sorting of workers between and within industrial sectors based on directed search with coordination frictions, deliberately maintaining its static general equilibrium framework. We fit the model to sector-specific wage, vacancy and output data, including publicly-available statistics that characterize the distribution of worker and employer wage heterogeneity across sectors. Our empirical method is general and can be applied to a broad class of assignment models. The results indicate that industries are the loci of sorting--more productive workers are employed in more productive industries. The evidence confirms that strong assortative matching can be present even when worker and employer components of wage heterogeneity are weakly correlated