Parkes radio science system design and testing for Voyager Neptune encounter

The Radio Science System installed at Parkes, Australia for the Voyager Neptune encounter was specified to meet the same stringent requirements that were imposed upon the Deep Space Network Radio Science System. The system design and test methodology employed to meet these requirements at Parkes are described, and data showing the measured performance of the system are presented. The results indicate that the system operates with a comfortable margin on the requirements. There was a minor problem with frequency-dependent spurious signals which could not be fixed before the encounter. Test results characterizing these spurious signals are included

Molecular Population Genetics of the Atlantic Sand Fiddler Crab, Uca Pugilator, Along the Atlantic Coast

Author\u27s abstract: The Atlantic sand fiddler crab, Uca pugilator, is an extremely abundant fiddler crab found along the eastern and Gulf coast of the United States. Fiddler crabs have a life cycle with an obligatory planktonic larval phase of 30-90 days, which might be expected to lead to widespread larval dispersal and consequent genetic homogeneity over considerable distances. However a large amount of morphological and behavioral variation is found between northern and southern populations along the eastern coast. This study was undertaken to determine the population genetic structure of U. pugilator and to determine whether these differences may have a genetic basis. The population structure of the fiddler crab was analyzed using 576 individuals collected from 12 sites along the eastern coast. PCR-base single stand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) was used to analyze segments of the mitochondrial 16S rRNA and the nuclear internal transcribed spacer 1 (ITS1) genes of these individuals. The ITS1 marker did not prove to be informative when screened by SSCP for this study. The 16S marker revealed a moderate amount of population structure (FST = 0.292) between populations. The results of this study reveal frequent gene flow between nearby localities, but reduced levels between populations separated by large distances. Despite the potential for high dispersal by planktonic larvae, population differentiation and isolation by distance was found between populations U. pugilator. Northern and southern regions are separated by a genetic distance of 0.3866 suggesting the potential for morphological and behavioral differentiation across the species range. INDEX WORDS: Uca pugilator, Fiddler crab, Population structure, Gene flow, Larval dispersal, Single-stand conformational polymorphism, 16S rDNA, ITS-

A correlation of the environmental reactions of various animals of the arid steppe

Bibliography: p. 12-13https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/unm_bulletin/1021/thumbnail.jp

DSN radio science system design and testing for Voyager-Neptune encounter

The Deep Space Network (DSN) Radio Science System presently implemented within the Deep Space Network was designed to meet stringent requirements imposed by the demands of the Voyager-Neptune encounter and future missions. One of the initial parameters related to frequency stability is discussed. The requirement, specification, design, and methodology for measuring this parameter are described. A description of special instrumentation that was developed for the test measurements and initial test data resulting from the system tests performed at Canberra, Australia and Usuda, Japan are given

Three-gene phylogeny of the genus Solanum (Solanaceae)

Journal ArticleSolanum, with approximately 1,500 species, is the largest genus in the Solanaceae and includes economically important species such as the tomato, potato, and eggplant. In part due to its large size and tropical center of diversity, resolving evolutionary relationships across Solanum as a whole has been challenging

Eggplant origins: out of Africa, into the Orient

Journal ArticleThe eggplant (Solanum melongena L.), also known as aubergine or brinjal, has been cultivated for centuries in the Old World and is currently a crop species of global importance. Despite this, hypotheses of eggplant evolution have been fraught with controversy. Previous conclusions have relied solely on morphological characters or have been based on insufficient taxonomic sampling, leading to conflicting opinions of the number of species, phylogenetic relationships, and patterns of domestication in a group of related taxa termed the S. melongena complex. The S. melongena complex shows a series of morphological intermediates from small-fruited spiny plants to large-fruited non-spiny plants. We use DNA sequence data to show that eggplants arose in Africa and were dispersed throughout the Middle East to Asia. Solanum linnaeanum, a wild species not previously associated with eggplant evolution, is a member of the S. melongena complex. These data provide the most comprehensive evidence to date for the evolution of the cultivated eggplant

RazerS - Fast Read Mapping with Sensitivity Control

Second-generation sequencing technologies deliver DNA sequence data at unprecedented high throughput. Common to most biological applications is a mapping of the reads to an almost identical or highly similar reference genome. Due to the large amounts of data, efficient algorithms and implementations are crucial for this task. We present an efficient read mapping tool called RazerS. It allows the user to align sequencing reads of arbitrary length using either the Hamming distance or the edit distance. Our tool can work either lossless or with a user-defined loss rate at higher speeds. Given the loss rate, we present an approach that guarantees not to lose more reads than specified. This enables the user to adapt to the problem at hand and provides a seamless tradeoff between sensitivity and running time