Heard Island and McDonald Islands

The sub-Antarctic Heard Island and McDonald Islands (HIMI) group is an Australian external territory located in the Indian Ocean sector of the Southern Ocean. The island group was inscribed on the World Heritage list in 1997 for its outstanding natural universal values, primarily due to the relative absence of human influence on the natural environment. The Territory also forms part of a 65 000 km2 Marine Reserve, declared under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 in 2002 to protect the conservation values of the islands and the surrounding unique and vulnerable marine ecosystems. The Territory and Marine Reserve are managed by the Australian Antarctic Division of the Department of Environment and Water Resources, in accordance with the Heard Island and McDonald Islands Marine Reserve Management Plan 2005, which aims to address a range of potential human pressures, most notably the risk of introduced species

Magnetic Field Structure and Stochastic Reconnection in a Partially Ionized Gas

We consider stochastic reconnection in a magnetized, partially ionized medium. Stochastic reconnection is a generic effect, due to field line wandering, in which the speed of reconnection is determined by the ability of ejected plasma to diffuse away from the current sheet along magnetic field lines, rather than by the details of current sheet structure. We consider the limit of weak stochasticity, so that the mean magnetic field energy density is greater than either the turbulent kinetic energy density or the energy density associated with the fluctuating component of the field. We consider field line stochasticity generated through a turbulent cascade, which leads us to consider the effect of neutral drag on the turbulent cascade of energy. In a collisionless plasma, neutral particle viscosity and ion-neutral drag will damp mid-scale turbulent motions, but the power spectrum of the magnetic perturbations extends below the viscous cutoff scale. We give a simple physical picture of the magnetic field structure below this cutoff, consistent with numerical experiments. We provide arguments for the reemergence of the turbulent cascade well below the viscous cut-off scale and derive estimates for field line diffusion on all scales. We note that this explains the persistence of a single power law form for the turbulent power spectrum of the interstellar medium, from scales of tens of parsecs down to thousands of kilometers. We find that under typical conditions in the ISM stochastic reconnection speeds are reduced by the presence of neutrals, but by no more than an order of magnitude.Comment: Astrophysical Journal in pres

Contagious risk taking: social information and context influence wild jackdaws' responses to novelty and risk.

Although wild animals increasingly encounter human-produced food and objects, it is unknown how they learn to discriminate beneficial from dangerous novelty. Since social learning allows animals to capitalize on the risk-taking of others, and avoid endangering themselves, social learning should be used around novel and unpredictable stimuli. However, it is unclear whether animals use social cues equally around all types of novelty and at all times of year. We assessed whether wild, individually marked jackdaws-a highly neophobic, yet adaptable species-are equally influenced by social cues to consume novel, palatable foods and to approach a startling object. We conducted these tests across two seasons, and found that in both seasons observers were more likely to consume novel foods after seeing a demonstrator do so. In contrast, observers only followed the demonstrator in foraging next to the object during breeding season. Throughout the year more birds were wary of consuming novel foods than wary of approaching the object, potentially leading to jackdaws' greater reliance on social information about food. Jackdaws' dynamic social cue usage demonstrates the importance of context in predicting how social information is used around novelty, and potentially indicates the conditions that facilitate animals' adjustment to anthropogenic disturbance.A.L.G. is supported by the generosity of the Gates-Cambridge Trust. A.T. was supported by a BBSRC David Phillips Fellowship (BB/H021817/1).This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Nature Publishing Group via http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep2776

Magnetic cycles of the planet-hosting star Tau Bootis: II. a second magnetic polarity reversal

In this paper, we present new spectropolarimetric observations of the planet-hosting star Tau Bootis, using ESPaDOnS and Narval spectropolarimeters at Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) and Telescope Bernard Lyot (TBL), respectively. We detected the magnetic field of the star at three epochs in 2008. It is a weak magnetic field of only a few Gauss, oscillating between a predominant toroidal component in January and a dominant poloidal component in June and July. A magnetic polarity reversal was observed relative to the magnetic topology in June 2007. This is the second such reversal observed in two years on this star, suggesting that Tau Boo has a magnetic cycle of about 2 years. This is the first detection of a magnetic cycle for a star other than the Sun. The role of the close-in massive planet in the short activity cycle of the star is questioned. Tau Boo has strong differential rotation, a common trend for stars with shallow convective envelope. At latitude 40 deg., the surface layer of the star rotates in 3.31 d, equal to the orbital period. Synchronization suggests that the tidal effects induced by the planet may be strong enough to force at least the thin convective envelope into corotation. Tau Boo shows variability in the Ca H & K and Halpha throughout the night and on a night to night time scale. We do not detect enhancement in the activity of the star that may be related to the conjunction of the planet. Further data is needed to conclude about the activity enhancement due to the planet.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables Accepted to MNRA

Spectropolarimetric observations of the transiting planetary system of the K dwarf HD 189733

With a Jupiter-mass planet orbiting at a distance of only 0.031 AU, the active K2 dwarf HD 189733 is a potential candidate in which to study the magnetospheric interactions of a cool star with its recently-discovered close-orbiting giant planet. We decided to explore the strength and topology of the large-scale magnetosphere of HD 189733, as a future benchmark for quantitative studies for models of the star/planet magnetic interactions. To this end, we used ESPaDOnS, the new generation spectropolarimeter at the Canada-France-Hawaii 3.6m telescope, to look for Zeeman circular polarisation signatures in the line profiles of HD 189733 in 2006 June and August. Zeeman signatures in the line profiles of HD 189733 are clearly detected in all spectra, demonstrating that a field is indeed present at the surface of the star. The Zeeman signatures are not modulated with the planet's orbital period but apparently vary with the stellar rotation cycle. The reconstructed large-scale magnetic field, whose strength reaches a few tens of G, is significantly more complex than that of the Sun; it involves in particular a significant toroidal component and contributions from magnetic multipoles of order up to 5. The CaII H & K lines clearly feature core emission, whose intensity is apparently varying mostly with rotation phase. Our data suggest that the photosphere and magnetic field of HD 189733 are sheared by a significant amount of differential rotation. Our initial study confirms that HD 189733 is an optimal target for investigating activity enhancements induced by closely orbiting planets. More data are needed, densely covering both the orbital and rotation cycles, to investigate whether and how much the planet contributes to the overall activity level of HD 189733.Comment: Accepted in Astronomy and Astrophysics, 12 page

Planet Migration and Disk Destruction due to Magneto-Centrifugal Stellar Winds

This paper investigates the influence of magneto-centrifugally driven or simply magnetic winds of rapidly-rotating, strongly-magnetized T Tauri stars in causing the inward or outward migration of close-in giant planets. The azimuthal ram pressure of the magnetized wind acting on the planet tends to increase the planet's angular momentum and cause outward migration if the star's rotation period $P_*$ is less than the planet's orbital period $P_p$. In the opposite case, $P_* > P_p$, the planet migrates inward. Thus, planets orbiting at distances larger (smaller) than $0.06 {\rm AU}(P_*/5{\rm d})^{2/3}$ tend to be pushed outward (inward), where $P_*$ is the rotation period of the star assumed to have the mass of the sun. The magnetic winds are likely to occur in T Tauri stars where the thermal speed of the gas close to the star is small, where the star's magnetic field is strong, and where the star rotates rapidly. The time-scale for appreciable radial motion of the planet is estimated as $\sim 2 - 20$ Myr. A sufficiently massive close-in planet may cause tidal locking and once this happens the radial migration due to the magnetic wind ceases. The magnetic winds are expected to be important for planet migration for the case of a multipolar magnetic field rather than a dipole field where the wind is directed away from the equatorial plane and where a magnetospheric cavity forms. The influence of the magnetic wind in eroding and eventually destroying the accretion disk is analyzed. A momentum integral is derived for the turbulent wind/disk boundary layer and this is used to estimate the disk erosion time-scale as $\sim 1-10^2$ Myr, with the lower value favored.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

Magnetic field, differential rotation and activity of the hot-Jupiter hosting star HD 179949

HD 179949 is an F8V star, orbited by a giant planet at ~8 R* every 3.092514 days. The system was reported to undergo episodes of stellar activity enhancement modulated by the orbital period, interpreted as caused by Star-Planet Interactions (SPIs). One possible cause of SPIs is the large-scale magnetic field of the host star in which the close-in giant planet orbits. In this paper we present spectropolarimetric observations of HD 179949 during two observing campaigns (2009 September and 2007 June). We detect a weak large-scale magnetic field of a few Gauss at the surface of the star. The field configuration is mainly poloidal at both observing epochs. The star is found to rotate differentially, with a surface rotation shear of dOmega=0.216\pm0.061 rad/d, corresponding to equatorial and polar rotation periods of 7.62\pm0.07 and 10.3\pm0.8 d respectively. The coronal field estimated by extrapolating the surface maps resembles a dipole tilted at ~70 degrees. We also find that the chromospheric activity of HD 179949 is mainly modulated by the rotation of the star, with two clear maxima per rotation period as expected from a highly tilted magnetosphere. In September 2009, we find that the activity of HD 179949 shows hints of low amplitude fluctuations with a period close to the beat period of the system.Comment: Accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of The Royal Astronomical Societ

Searching for star-planet magnetic interaction in CoRoT observations

Close-in massive planets interact with their host stars through tidal and magnetic mechanisms. In this paper, we review circumstantial evidence for star-planet interaction as revealed by the photospheric magnetic activity in some of the CoRoT planet-hosting stars, notably CoRoT-2, CoRoT-4, and CoRoT-6. The phenomena are discussed in the general framework of activity-induced features in stars accompanied by hot Jupiters. The theoretical mechanisms proposed to explain the activity enhancements possibly related with hot Jupiter are also briefly reviewed with an emphasis on the possible effects at photospheric level. The unique advantages of CoRoT and Kepler observations to test these models are pointed out.Comment: Invited review paper accepted by Astrophysics and Space Science, 13 pages, 5 figure

Magnetogenesis from Cosmic String Loops

Large-scale coherent magnetic fields are observed in galaxies and clusters, but their ultimate origin remains a mystery. We reconsider the prospects for primordial magnetogenesis by a cosmic string network. We show that the magnetic flux produced by long strings has been overestimated in the past, and give improved estimates. We also compute the fields created by the loop population, and find that it gives the dominant contribution to the total magnetic field strength on present-day galactic scales. We present numerical results obtained by evolving semi-analytic models of string networks (including both one-scale and velocity-dependent one-scale models) in a Lambda-CDM cosmology, including the forces and torques on loops from Hubble redshifting, dynamical friction, and gravitational wave emission. Our predictions include the magnetic field strength as a function of correlation length, as well as the volume covered by magnetic fields. We conclude that string networks could account for magnetic fields on galactic scales, but only if coupled with an efficient dynamo amplification mechanism.Comment: 10 figures; v3: small typos corrected to match published version. MagnetiCS, the code described in paper, is available at http://markcwyman.com/ and http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/dhw22/code/index.htm

Transgressing the moral economy: Wheelerism and management of the nationalised coal industry in Scotland

This article illuminates the links between managerial style and political economy in post-1945 Britain, and explores the origins of the 1984–1985 miners' strike, by examining in longer historical context the abrasive attitudes and policies of Albert Wheeler, Scottish Area Director of the National Coal Board (NCB). Wheeler built on an earlier emphasis on production and economic criteria, and his micro-management reflected pre-existing centralising tendencies in the industries. But he was innovative in one crucial aspect, transgressing the moral economy of the Scottish coalfield, which emphasised the value of economic security and changes by joint industrial agreement