The present study compared 30 patients with Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FS) to 30 healthy control subjects matched for age, sex, and estimated intellectual level on standardized measures of attention, concentration, and memory as well as subjective ratings of memory abilities and sleep quality. In addition, in order to investigate the relationship between cognitive functioning and other physical and psychological symptoms, subjects with FS completed psychological measures of pain severity, trait anxiety, and depression. Results indicated that patients with FS performed more poorly on tests of immediate and delayed recall, and sustained auditory concentration, and their ratings of both their memory abilities and sleep quality were lower than those of controls. Furthermore, perceived memory deficits of the FS subjects were disproportionately greater than their objective deficits. Results indicated significant correlations between performance on memory and concentration measures and scores on questionnaires of pain severity and trait anxiety. Implications of these results for multidisciplinary treatment programs are discussed.

The reliability of Type Ia supernovae (SNIa) may be limited by the imprint of their galactic origins. To investigate the connection between supernovae and their host characteristics, we developed an improved method to estimate the stellar population age of the host as well as the local environment around the site of the supernova. We use a Bayesian method to estimate the star formation history and mass weighted age of a supernova's environment by matching observed spectral energy distributions to a synthesized stellar population. Applying this age estimator to both the photometrically and spectroscopically classified Sloan Digital Sky Survey II supernovae (N=103) we find a 0.114±0.039 mag "step" in the average Hubble residual at a stellar age of ∼ 8 Gyr; it is nearly twice the size of the currently popular mass step. We then apply a principal component analysis on the SALT2 parameters, host stellar mass, and local environment age. We find that a new parameter, PC 1 , consisting of a linear combination of stretch, host stellar mass, and local age, shows a very significant (4.7σ) correlation with Hubble residuals. There is a much broader range of PC 1 values found in the Hubble flow sample when compared with the Cepheid calibration galaxies. These samples have mildly statistically different average PC 1 values, at ∼ 2.5σ, resulting in at most a 1.3% reduction in the evaluation of H 0 . Despite accounting for the highly significant trend in SNIa Hubble residuals, there remains a 9% discrepancy between the most recent precision estimates of H 0 using SNIa and the CMB.

Project AMIGA (Absorption Maps In the Gas of Andromeda) is a survey of the circumgalactic medium (CGM) of Andromeda (M31, R vir ;300 kpc) along 43 QSO sightlines at impact parameters 25 R569 kpc (25 at RR vir). We use ultraviolet absorption measurements of Si II, Si III, Si IV, C II, and C IV from the Hubble Space Telescope/Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and O VI from the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer to provide an unparalleled look at how the physical conditions and metals are distributed in the CGM of M31. We find that Si III and O VI have a covering factor near unity for R1.2 R vir and 1.9 R vir , respectively, demonstrating that M31 has a very extended ∼10 4-10 5.5 K ionized CGM. The metal and baryon masses of the 10 4-10 5.5 K CGM gas within R vir are 10 8 and 4×10 10 (Z/0.3 Z e) −1 M e , respectively. There is not much azimuthal variation in the column densities or kinematics, but there is with R. The CGM gas at R0.5 R vir is more dynamic and has more complicated, multiphase structures than at larger radii, perhaps a result of more direct impact of galactic feedback in the inner regions of the CGM. Several absorbers are projected spatially and kinematically close to M31 dwarf satellites, but we show that those are unlikely to give rise to the observed absorption. Cosmological zoom simulations of ∼L * galaxies have O VI extending well beyond R vir as observed for M31 but do not reproduce well the radial column density profiles of the lower ions. However, some similar trends are also observed, such as the lower ions showing a larger dispersion in column density and stronger dependence on R than higher ions. Based on our findings, it is likely that the Milky Way has a ∼10 4-10 5.5 K CGM as extended as for M31 and their CGM (especially the warm-hot gas probed by O VI) are overlapping.

The true importance of the warm, AGN-driven outflows for the evolution of galaxies remains uncertain. Measurements of the radial extents of the outflows are key for quantifying their masses and kinetic powers, and also establishing whether the AGN outflows are galaxy-wide. Therefore, as part of a larger project to investigate the significance of warm, AGN-driven outflows in the most rapidly evolving galaxies in the local universe, here we present deep Hubble Space Telescope (HST) narrow-band [OIII]λ5007 observations of a complete sample of 8 nearby ULIRGs with optical AGN nuclei. Combined with the complementary information provided by our ground-based spectroscopy, the HST images show that the warm gas outflows are relatively compact for most of the objects in the sample: in three objects the outflow regions are barely resolved at the resolution of HST (0.065 < R [OIII] < 0.12 kpc); in a further four cases the outflows are spatially resolved but with flux weighted mean radii in the range 0.65 < R [OIII] < 1.2 kpc; and in only one object (Mrk273) is there clear evidence for a more extended outflow, with a maximum extent of R [OIII] ∼ 5 kpc. Overall, our observations show little evidence for the galaxy-wide outflows predicted by some models of AGN feedback.

We present a search for H I in the circumgalactic medium (CGM) of 21 massive ( log M ∼ 11.4), luminous red galaxies (LRGs) at z ∼ 0.5. Using UV spectroscopy of QSO sightlines projected within 500 kpc (∼R vir ) of these galaxies, we detect H I absorption in 11/21 sightlines, including two partial Lyman limit systems and two Lyman limit systems. The covering factor of log N (H I) ≥ 16.0 gas within the virial radius of these LRGs is f c (ρ ≤ R vir ) = 0.27 +0.11 −0.10 , while for optically-thick gas (log N (−0.07 . Combining this sample of massive galaxies with previous galaxy-selected CGM studies, we find no strong dependence of the H I covering factor on galaxy mass, although star-forming galaxies show marginally higher covering factors. There is no evidence for a critical mass above which dense, cold (T ∼ 10 4 K) gas is suppressed in the CGM of galaxies (spanning stellar masses 9.5 log M 11.8). The metallicity distribution in LRGs is indistinguishable from those found about lower-mass star-forming galaxies, and we find low-metallicity gas with [X/H] ≈ −1.8 (1.5% solar) and below about massive galaxies. About half the cases show super-solar [Fe II/Mg II] abundances as seen previously in cool gas near massive galaxies. While the high-metallicity cold gas seen in LRGs could plausibly result from condensation from a corona, the low-metallicity gas is inconsistent with this interpretation.