Aircraft-based observations and high-resolution simulations of an Icelandic dust storm

The first aircraft-based observations of an Icelandic dust storm are presented. The measurements were carried out over the ocean near Iceland's south coast in February 2007. This dust event occurred in conjunction with an easterly barrier jet of more than 30 m s<sup>−1</sup>. The aircraft measurements show high particle mass mixing ratios in an area of low wind speeds in the wake of Iceland near the coast, decreasing abruptly towards the jet. Simulations from the Weather Research and Forecasting Model coupled with Chemistry (WRF/Chem) indicate that the measured high mass mixing ratios and observed low visibility inside the wake are due to dust transported from Icelandic sand fields towards the ocean. This is confirmed by meteorological station data. Glacial outwash terrains located near the Mýrdalsjökull glacier are among simulated dust sources. Sea salt aerosols produced by the impact of strong winds on the ocean surface started to dominate as the aircraft flew away from Iceland into the jet. The present results support recent studies which suggest that Icelandic deserts should be considered as important dust sources in global and regional climate models

Advanced Diagnostics for the Study of Linearly Polarized Emission. II: Application to Diffuse Interstellar Radio Synchrotron Emission

Diagnostics of polarized emission provide us with valuable information on the Galactic magnetic field and the state of turbulence in the interstellar medium, which cannot be obtained from synchrotron intensity alone. In Paper I (Herron et al. 2017b), we derived polarization diagnostics that are rotationally and translationally invariant in the $Q$-$U$ plane, similar to the polarization gradient. In this paper, we apply these diagnostics to simulations of ideal magnetohydrodynamic turbulence that have a range of sonic and Alfv\'enic Mach numbers. We generate synthetic images of Stokes $Q$ and $U$ for these simulations, for the cases where the turbulence is illuminated from behind by uniform polarized emission, and where the polarized emission originates from within the turbulent volume. From these simulated images we calculate the polarization diagnostics derived in Paper I, for different lines of sight relative to the mean magnetic field, and for a range of frequencies. For all of our simulations, we find that the polarization gradient is very similar to the generalized polarization gradient, and that both trace spatial variations in the magnetoionic medium for the case where emission originates within the turbulent volume, provided that the medium is not supersonic. We propose a method for distinguishing the cases of emission coming from behind or within a turbulent, Faraday rotating medium, and a method to partly map the rotation measure of the observed region. We also speculate on statistics of these diagnostics that may allow us to constrain the physical properties of an observed turbulent region.Comment: 34 pages, 25 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Winds, B-Fields, and Magnetotails of Pulsars

We investigate the emission of rotating magnetized neutron stars due to the acceleration and radiation of particles in the relativistic wind and in the magnetotail of the star. We consider that the charged particles are accelerated by driven collisionless reconnection. Outside of the light cylinder, the star's rotation acts to wind up the magnetic field to form a predominantly azimuthal, slowly decreasing with distance, magnetic field of opposite polarity on either side of the equatorial plane normal to the star's rotation axis. The magnetic field annihilates across the equatorial plane with the magnetic energy going to accelerate the charged particles to relativistic energies. For a typical supersonically moving pulsar, the star's wind extends outward to the standoff distance with the interstellar medium. At larger distances, the power output of pulsar's wind $\dot{E}_w$ of electromagnetic field and relativistic particles is {\it redirected and collimated into the magnetotail} of the star. In the magnetotail it is proposed that equipartition is reached between the magnetic energy and the relativistic particle energy. For such conditions, synchrotron radiation from the magnetotails may be a significant fraction of $\dot{E}_w$ for high velocity pulsars. An equation is derived for the radius of the magnetotail $r_m(z^\prime)$ as a function of distance $z^\prime$ from the star. For large distances $z^\prime$, of the order of the distance travelled by the star, we argue that the magnetotail has a `trumpet' shape owing to the slowing down of the magnetotail flow.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

A Proteomics Approach to the Identification of Mammalian Mitochondrial Small Subunit Ribosomal Proteins

Mammalian mitochondrial small subunit ribosomal proteins were separated by two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The proteins in six individual spots were subjected to in-gel tryptic digestion. Peptides were separated by capillary liquid chromatography, and the sequences of selected peptides were obtained by electrospray tandem mass spectrometry. The peptide sequences obtained were used to screen human expressed sequence tag data bases, and complete consensus cDNAs were assembled. Mammalian mitochondrial small subunit ribosomal proteins from six different classes of ribosomal proteins were identified. Only two of these proteins have significant sequence similarities to ribosomal proteins from prokaryotes. These proteins correspond to Escherichia coli S10 and S14. Homologs of two human mitochondrial proteins not found in prokaryotes were observed in the genomes of Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans. A homolog of one of these proteins was observed in D. melanogaster but not in C. elegans, while a homolog of the other was present in C. elegans but not in D. melanogaster. A homolog of one of the ribosomal proteins not found in prokaryotes was tentatively identified in the yeast genome. This latter protein is the first reported example of a ribosomal protein that is shared by mitochondrial ribosomes from lower and higher eukaryotes that does not have a homolog in prokaryotes

The GALFA-HI Compact Cloud Catalog

We present a catalog of 1964 isolated, compact neutral hydrogen clouds from the Galactic Arecibo L-Band Feed Array Survey Data Release One (GALFA-HI DR1). The clouds were identified by a custom machine-vision algorithm utilizing Difference of Gaussian kernels to search for clouds smaller than 20'. The clouds have velocities typically between |VLSR| = 20-400 km/s, linewidths of 2.5-35 km/s, and column densities ranging from 1 - 35 x 10^18 cm^-2. The distances to the clouds in this catalog may cover several orders of magnitude, so the masses may range from less than a Solar mass for clouds within the Galactic disc, to greater than 10^4 Solar Masses for HVCs at the tip of the Magellanic Stream. To search for trends, we separate the catalog into five populations based on position, velocity, and linewidth: high velocity clouds (HVCs); galaxy candidates; cold low velocity clouds (LVCs); warm, low positive-velocity clouds in the third Galactic Quadrant; and the remaining warm LVCs. The observed HVCs are found to be associated with previously-identified HVC complexes. We do not observe a large population of isolated clouds at high velocities as some models predict. We see evidence for distinct histories at low velocities in detecting populations of clouds corotating with the Galactic disc and a set of clouds that is not corotating.Comment: 34 Pages, 9 Figures, published in ApJ (2012, ApJ, 758, 44), this version has the corrected fluxes and corresponding flux histogram and masse

Nucleation of vortex arrays in rotating anisotropic Bose-Einstein condensates

The nucleation of vortices and the resulting structures of vortex arrays in dilute, trapped, zero-temperature Bose-Einstein condensates are investigated numerically. Vortices are generated by rotating a three-dimensional, anisotropic harmonic atom trap. The condensate ground state is obtained by propagating the Gross-Pitaevskii equation in imaginary time. Vortices first appear at a rotation frequency significantly larger than the critical frequency for vortex stabilization. This is consistent with a critical velocity mechanism for vortex nucleation. At higher frequencies, the structures of the vortex arrays are strongly influenced by trap geometry.Comment: 5 pages, two embedded figures. To appear in Phys. Rev. A (RC

Decreased MCM2-6 in Drosophila S2 cells does not generate significant DNA damage or cause a marked increase in sensitivity to replication interference.

A reduction in the level of some MCM proteins in human cancer cells (MCM5 in U20S cells or MCM3 in Hela cells) causes a rapid increase in the level of DNA damage under normal conditions of cell proliferation and a loss of viability when the cells are subjected to replication interference. Here we show that Drosophila S2 cells do not appear to show the same degree of sensitivity to MCM2-6 reduction. Under normal cell growth conditions a reduction of >95% in the levels of MCM3, 5, and 6 causes no significant short term alteration in the parameters of DNA replication or increase in DNA damage. MCM depleted cells challenged with HU do show a decrease in the density of replication forks compared to cells with normal levels of MCM proteins, but this produces no consistent change in the levels of DNA damage observed. In contrast a comparable reduction of MCM7 levels has marked effects on viability, replication parameters and DNA damage in the absence of HU treatment

The Finokalia Aerosol Measurement Experiment – 2008 (FAME-08): an overview

A month (4 May to 8 June 2008) of ambient aerosol, air ion and gas phase sampling (Finokalia Aerosol Measurement Experiment 2008, FAME-08) was conducted at Finokalia, on the island of Crete, Greece. The purpose of the study was to characterize the physical and chemical properties of aged aerosol and to investigate new particle formation. Measurements included aerosol and air ion size distributions, size-resolved chemical composition, organic aerosol thermal volatility, water uptake and particle optical properties (light scattering and absorption). Statistical analysis of the aerosol mass concentration variations revealed the absence of diurnal patterns suggesting the lack of strong local sources. Sulfates accounted for approximately half of the particulate matter less than 1 micrometer in diameter (PM<sub>1</sub>) and organics for 28%. The PM<sub>1</sub> organic aerosol fraction was highly oxidized with 80% water soluble. The supermicrometer particles were dominated by crustal components (50%), sea salt (24%) and nitrates (16%). The organic carbon to elemental carbon (OC/EC) ratio correlated with ozone measurements but with a one-day lag. The average OC/EC ratio for the study period was equal to 5.4. For three days air masses from North Africa resulted in a 6-fold increase of particulate matter less than 10 micrometers in diameter (PM<sub>10</sub>) and a decrease of the OC/EC ratio by a factor of 2. Back trajectory analysis, based on FLEXPART footprint plots, identified five source regions (Athens, Greece, Africa, other continental and marine), each of which influenced the PM<sub>1</sub> aerosol composition and properties. Marine air masses had the lowest PM<sub>1</sub> concentrations and air masses from the Balkans, Turkey and Eastern Europe the highest

Nonequilibrium wetting

When a nonequilibrium growing interface in the presence of a wall is considered a nonequilibrium wetting transition may take place. This transition can be studied trough Langevin equations or discrete growth models. In the first case, the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation, which defines a very robust universality class for nonequilibrium moving interfaces, with a soft-wall potential is considered. While in the second, microscopic models, in the corresponding universality class, with evaporation and deposition of particles in the presence of hard-wall are studied. Equilibrium wetting is related to a particular case of the problem, it corresponds to the Edwards-Wilkinson equation with a potential in the continuum approach or to the fulfillment of detailed balance in the microscopic models. In this review we present the analytical and numerical methods used to investigate the problem and the very rich behavior that is observed with them.Comment: Review, 36 pages, 16 figure