This paper describes a new determination of the primordial helium abundance (YP), based on the abundance analysis of five metal-poor extragalactic H II regions. For three regions of the sample (SBS 0335-052, I Zw 18, and H29) we present tailored photoionization models based on improved calculations with respect to previous models. In particular, we

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The SIRTF Wide-Area Infrared Extragalactic Survey (SWIRE), the largest SIRTF Legacy program, is a wide-area imaging survey to trace the evolution of dusty, star-forming galaxies, evolved stellar populations, and active galactic nuclei (AGNs) as a function of environment, from redshifts z~3 to the current epoch. SWIRE will survey seven high-latitude

We derive a new perturbative quantum master equation for the reduced density matrix of a system interacting with an environment (with a dense spectrum of energy levels). The total system energy (system plus environment) is constant and finite. This equation takes into account the finite energy effects of the environment due to the total energy

Stellar clusters with the same general physical properties (e.g., total mass, age, and star-formation mode) may have very different stellar mass spectra due to the incomplete sampling of the underlying mass function; such differences are especially relevant in the high-mass tail of the mass function due to the smaller absolute number of massive

The numerical simulation method for variable white dwarfs of Ising & Koester (2001) is extended to variable DB stars (DBVs or V777 Herculis stars). We find the same general behavior of nonlinear effects, with a sinusoidal light-curve at small amplitudes, strongly non-sinusoidal variations at intermediate amplitudes and a change back to smaller and