The intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) is usually analyzed in terms of the precipitation field. This study presents a new climatology of the ITCZ based on winds from ERA Interim reanalyses for the period 1990–2009. The central latitude of the ITCZ is defined as the zero crossing of the meridional wind averaged over 10 model levels below 900 hPa. Results of the zonal averaging of the meridional wind and wind convergence are compared with the zonally averaged precipitation from the ERA Interim and TRMM data sets. Collocation properties of precipitation maxima and the central latitude of the ITCZ are discussed for different land and ocean regions. It is found that the location of the ITCZ in wind and precipitation fields coincides over the Atlantic and east Pacific. Over other regions and especially over the tropical continents, the fields on average do not coincide.
COBISS.SI-ID: 2348132
The paper reports on discovery of the largest number of non-eclipsing binary stars so far. This is important, as the binary stars, and non-eclipsing variety in particular, are the most common stellar objects. Still it is quite difficult to discover them and to characterize their physical properties. The paper uses data from the Radial Velocity Experiment (RAVE, www.rave-survey.org), which we are co-leading (as a project scientist of the project) and which uses the UK Schmidt telescope at AAO in Australia. The previous article, published in 2010, discussed double lined spectroscopic binaries, while here we focus on more numerous single-lined spectroscopic binary stars (SB1). The RAVE latest internal database (VDR3) includes radial velocities, atmospheric parameters, and other parameters for approximately a quarter of a million different stars with slightly less than 300,000 observations. In the sample of ~20,000 stars observed more than once, 1333 stars with variable radial velocities were identified. Most of them are believed to be SB1 candidates. The fraction of SB1 candidates among stars with several observations is between 10% and 15%, which is the lower limit for binarity among RAVE stars. Due to the distribution of time spans between the re-observation that is biased toward relatively short timescales (days to weeks), the periods of the identified SB1 candidates are most likely in the same range. Because of the RAVE's narrow magnitude range most of the dwarf candidates belong to the thin Galactic disk while the giants are part of the thick disk with distances extending to up to a few kiloparsecs. The comparison of the list of SB1 candidates to the VSX catalog of variable stars yielded several pulsating variables among the giant population with radial velocity variations of up to few tens of km/s. There are 26 matches between the catalog of spectroscopic binary orbits (SB9) and the whole RAVE sample for which the given periastron time and the time of RAVE observation were close enough to yield a reliable comparison. RAVE measurements of radial velocities of known spectroscopic binaries are consistent with their published radial velocity curves. The sub-group for physics of stars and the Galaxy published 10 other scientific papers in IF)4 journals in 2011. The works of the sub-group have 353 clean citations in 2011, according to the WoS database.
COBISS.SI-ID: 378241
The appearance of the elementary particle families and the Higgs field is not understood at all. In the so far offered theories the number of families is assumed and so is the Higgs. Without understanding the appearance of both any progress in elementary particle physics and cosmology can hardly be expected. The ‘’spins-charge-family theory” is built on an original mechanism for the appearance of families, which explains the existence of families and of the scalar fields. The research group is building the proofs that the proposed theory manifests at low energies as the standard model. In this year we made an important step in these proofs, explaining that also the Higgs is an effective replacement for several scalar fields. In this paper we show that when higher dimensional space is almost compact the Witten's theorem, which states that Kaluza-Klein-like theories do not lead to the Standard model, does not apply. The proof is very important for the’’spin-charge-family theory’’ as well for all the theories which allow more then four dimensional space.
COBISS.SI-ID: 2371940