New ozone-nitrogen model shows early senescence onset is the primary cause of ozone-induced reduction in grain quality of wheat

Ozone (O3) air pollution is well known to adversely affect both the grain and protein yield of wheat, an important staple crop. This study aims to identify and model the key plant processes influencing the effect of O3 on wheat protein. We modified the DO3SE-Crop model to incorporate nitrogen (N) processes, and parameterised the O3 effect on stem, leaf and grain N using O3 fumigation datasets spanning 3 years and 4 O3 treatments. Our results show the new model captures the O3 effect on grain N concentrations, and anthesis leaf and stem concentration, well. However, the O3 effect on harvest leaf and stem N is exaggerated. Further, a sensitivity analysis revealed that, irrespective of O3 treatment, accelerated senescence onset was the primary plant process affecting grain N. This modelling study therefore demonstrates the capability of the DO3SE-CropN model to simulate processes by which O3 affects N content, and thereby determines that senescence onset is the main driver of O3 reductions in grain protein yield. The implication of the sensitivity analysis is that breeders should focus their efforts on stay-green cultivars that do not experience a protein penalty when developing O3 tolerant lines, to maintain both wheat yield and nutritional quality under O3 exposure

The Milky Way in Context: Building an integral-field spectrograph data cube of the Galaxy

The Milky Way (MW) is by far the best-studied galaxy and has been regarded as an ideal laboratory for understanding galaxy evolution. However, direct comparisons of Galactic and extra-galactic observations are marred by many challenges, including selection effects and differences in observations and methodology. In this study, we present a novel code GalCraft to address these challenges by generating mock integral-field spectrograph data cubes of the MW using simple stellar population models and a mock stellar catalog of the Galaxy derived from E-Galaxia. The data products are in the same format as external galaxies, allowing for direct comparisons. We investigate the ability of pPXF to recover kinematics and stellar population properties for an edge-on mock observation of the MW. We confirm that pPXF can distinguish kinematic and stellar population differences between thin and thick disks. However, pPXF struggles to recover star formation history, where the SFR is overestimated in the ranges between 2-4 and 12-14 Gyr compared to the expected values. This is likely due to the template age spacing, pPXF regularization algorithm, and spectral similarities in old population templates. Furthermore, we find systematic offsets in the recovered kinematics, potentially due to insufficient spectral resolution and the variation of line-of-sight velocity with [M/H] and age through a line-of-sight. With future higher resolution and multi-[$\alpha$/Fe] SSP templates, GalCraft will be useful to identify key signatures such as [$\alpha$/Fe]-[M/H] distribution at different $R$ and $|z|$ and potentially measure radial migration and kinematic heating efficiency to study detailed chemodynamical evolution of MW-like galaxies.Comment: 27 pages, 27 figures (8 figs in appendix), submitted to MNRAS. Comments are welcom

New ozone-nitrogen model shows early senescence onset is the primary cause of ozone-induced reduction in grain quality of wheat

Ozone (O3) air pollution is well known to adversely affect both the grain and protein yield of wheat, an important staple crop. This study aims to identify and model the key plant processes influencing the effect of O3 on wheat protein. We modified the DO3SE-Crop model to incorporate nitrogen (N) processes, and parameterised the O3 effect on stem, leaf and grain N using O3 fumigation datasets spanning 3 years and 4 O3 treatments. Our results show the new model captures the O3 effect on grain N concentrations, and anthesis leaf and stem concentration, well. However, the O3 effect on harvest leaf and stem N is exaggerated. Further, a sensitivity analysis revealed that, irrespective of O3 treatment, accelerated senescence onset was the primary plant process affecting grain N. This modelling study therefore demonstrates the capability of the DO3SE-CropN model to simulate processes by which O3 affects N content, and thereby determines that senescence onset is the main driver of O3 reductions in grain protein yield. The implication of the sensitivity analysis is that breeders should focus their efforts on stay-green cultivars that do not experience a protein penalty when developing O3 tolerant lines, to maintain both wheat yield and nutritional quality under O3 exposure

The SAMI Galaxy Survey: Environmental analysis of the orbital structures of passive galaxies

Most dynamical models of galaxies to date assume axisymmetry, which is not representative of a significant fraction of massive galaxies. We have built triaxial orbit-superposition Schwarzschild models of galaxies observed by the SAMI Galaxy Survey, in order to reconstruct their inner orbital structure and mass distribution. The sample consists of 153 passive galaxies with total stellar masses in the range $10^{9.5}$ to $10^{12} M_{\odot}$. We present an analysis of the internal structures and intrinsic properties of these galaxies as a function of their environment. We measure their environment using three proxies: central or satellite designation, halo mass and local $5^{th}$ nearest neighbour galaxy density. We find that although these intrinsic properties correlate most strongly with stellar mass, environment does play a secondary role: at fixed stellar mass, galaxies in the densest regions are more radially anisotropic. In addition, central galaxies, and galaxies in high local densities show lower values of edge-on spin parameter proxy \lam. We also find suggestions of a possible trend of the fractions of orbits with environment for lower-mass galaxies (between $10^{9.5}$ and $10^{11} M_{\odot}$) such that, at fixed stellar mass, galaxies in higher local densities and halo mass have higher fractions of hot orbits and lower fractions of warm orbits. Our results demonstrate that after stellar mass, environment does play a role in shaping present-day passive galaxies.Comment: 21 pages. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Toll-like receptor polymorphisms and cerebral malaria: <it>TLR2 </it>Δ22 polymorphism is associated with protection from cerebral malaria in a case control study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In malaria endemic areas, host genetics influence whether a <it>Plasmodium falciparum</it>-infected child develops uncomplicated or severe malaria. TLR2 has been identified as a receptor for <it>P. falciparum</it>-derived glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI), and polymorphisms within the TLR2 gene may affect disease pathogenesis. There are two common polymorphisms in the 5' un-translated region (UTR) of TLR2, a 22 base pair deletion in the first unstranslated exon (Δ22), and a GT dinucleotide repeat in the second intron (GTn).</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>These polymorphisms were examined in a Ugandan case control study on children with either cerebral malaria or uncomplicated malaria. Serum cytokine levels were analysed by ELISA, according to genotype and disease status. In vitro TLR2 expression was measured according to genotype.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Both Δ22 and GTn polymorphisms were highly frequent, but only Δ22 heterozygosity was associated with protection from cerebral malaria (OR 0.34, 95% confidence intervals 0.16, 0.73). In vitro, heterozygosity for Δ22 was associated with reduced pam3cys inducible TLR2 expression in human monocyte derived macrophages. In uncomplicated malaria patients, Δ22 homozygosity was associated with elevated serum IL-6 (<it>p </it>= 0.04), and long GT repeat alleles were associated with elevated TNF (<it>p </it>= 0.007).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Reduced inducible TLR2 expression may lead to attenuated pro-inflammatory responses, a potential mechanism of protection from cerebral malaria present in individuals heterozygous for the TLR2 Δ22 polymorphism.</p

PIMMS: Photonic integrated multimode microspectrograph

We present the first integrated multimode photonic spectrograph, a device we call PIMMS #1. The device comprises a set of multimode fibres that convert to single-mode propagation using a matching set of photonic lanterns. These feed to a stack of cyclic array waveguides (AWGs) that illuminate a common detector. Such a device greatly reduces the size of an astronomical instrument at a fixed spectroscopic resolution. Remarkably, the PIMMS concept is largely independent of the telescope diameter, input focal ratio and entrance aperture - i.e. one size fits all! The instrument architecture can also exploit recent advances in astrophotonics (e.g. OH suppression fibres). We present a movie of the instrument's operation and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this approach.9 page(s

Co-Designing an Air Quality Web App with School Pupils and Staff : The SAMHE Web App

This methods paper describes a new UK-wide citizen science project, the Schools’ Air Quality Monitoring for Health and Education (SAMHE) project, which is exploring indoor air quality (IAQ) in schools. Central to the project is a Web App, where school teachers and pupils can see air quality and environmental data from their classroom, learn about the significance of the data that their monitor collects, enter important contextual information to support data analysis by researchers, and are supported to do their own experiments related to air quality. School use of the SAMHE Web App is essential to the project’s aims to 1) improve understanding of air quality in schools; 2) empower teachers and pupils to make informed decisions about management of their classroom environment, including ventilation; and 3) support the UK’s next generation to think differently about air quality. Therefore, it is critical that the SAMHE Web App was co-designed with schools, to maximise its acceptability within schools, and to ensure that teachers and pupils engage with it. This paper describes the co-design process used within SAMHE, how co-design has helped shape the web app (including overall theme, visualisation of data, and supporting materials), and some lessons learned from the process that will be useful for future software development and citizen science projects with schools