Neogene stratigraphic architecture and tectonic evolution of Wanganui, King Country, and eastern Taranaki Basins, New Zealand

Analysis of the stratigraphic architecture of the fills of Wanganui, King Country, and eastern Taranaki Basins reveals the occurrence of five 2nd order Late Paleocene and Neogene sequences of tectonic origin. The oldest is the late Eocene-Oligocene Te Kuiti Sequence, followed by the early-early Miocene (Otaian) Mahoenui Sequence, followed by the late-early Miocene (Altonian) Mokau Sequence, all three in King Country Basin. The fourth is the middle Miocene to early Pliocene Whangamomona Sequence, and the fifth is the middle Pliocene-Pleistocene Rangitikei Sequence, both represented in the three basins. Higher order sequences (4th, 5th, 6th) with a eustatic origin occur particularly within the Whangamomona and Rangitikei Sequences, particularly those of 6th order with 41 000 yr periodicity

Binar Space Program: Binar-1 Results and Lessons Learned

The Binar Space Program is a recently formed space research and education group part of the Space Science and Technology Center at Curtin University in Western Australia. Recently launching the first CubeSat from the state, Binar-1, the team is making steps towards creating a sustainable mission schedule for research and education. The Binar-1 mission primary objective was to demonstrate the custom designed systems made by PhD students and engineers at the university. The main technology being demonstrated was the integrated Binar CubeSat Core, which compacted the Electrical Power System, Attitude Determination and Control System, and flight computer system into 0.25U. Alongside this, the team also aimed to learn about end-to-end spacecraft mission design and engage with the public to build an understanding of the importance of space industry and research in the country. Binar-1 was deployed from the International Space Station on the 6th of October 2021, and initially was silent for 15 days until the Binar team was able to make contact by enabling a secondary beacon. This paper will present the Binar-1 mission including the custom design, operations, failure analysis, and results before finally summarizing the lessons learned by the team while flying Western Australia’s first space capability

Clustering of Ly-alpha emitters around luminous quasars at z = 2-3: an alternative probe of reionization on galaxy formation

Narrowband observations have detected no Ly-alpha emission within a 70 pMpc^3 volume centered on the z = 2.168 quasar PKS 0424-131. This is in contrast to surveys of Ly-alpha emitters in the field at similar redshifts and flux limits, which indicate that tens of sources should be visible within the same volume. The observed difference indicates that the quasar environment has a significant influence on the observed density of Ly-alpha emitters. To quantify this effect we have constructed a semi-analytic model to simulate the effect of a luminous quasar on nearby Ly-alpha emitters. We find the null detection around PKS 0424-131 implies that the minimum isothermal temperature of Ly-alpha emitter host halos is greater than 3.4 x 10^6 K (68% level), corresponding to a virial mass of ~1.2 x 10^12 M_solar. This indicates that the intense UV emission of the quasar may be suppressing the star formation in nearby galaxies. Our study illustrates that low redshift quasar environments may serve as a surrogate for studying the radiative suppression of galaxy formation during the epoch of reionization.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, submitted to MNRA

Synthesis and evaluation of human phosphodiesterases (PDE) 5 inhibitor analogs as trypanosomal PDE inhibitors. 1. Sildenafil analogs

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2012. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters 22 (2012): 2579-2581, doi:10.1016/j.bmcl.2012.01.119.Parasitic diseases, such as African sleeping sickness, have a significant impact on the health and well-being in the poorest regions of the world. Pragmatic drug discovery efforts are needed to find new therapeutic agents. In this report we describe target repurposing efforts focused on trypanosomal phosphodiesterases. We outline the synthesis and biological evaluation of analogs of sildenafil (1), a human PDE5 inhibitor, for activities against trypanosomal PDEB1 (TbrPDEB1). We find that, while low potency analogs can be prepared, this chemical class is a sub-optimal starting point for further development of TbrPDE inhibitors.This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (R01AI082577), Boston University and Northeastern University

Binar Space Program: Mission Two Payloads and Operations Plan

The second mission of Western Australia’s Binar Space Program consists of three 1U CubeSats targeting a 2023 launch. Aiming to improve the platform for future missions, the primary purpose of Binar 2, 3 and 4 is on-orbit testing of radiation shielding alloys developed by CSIRO. In this first-of-its-kind experiment, all three simultaneously deployed Binar spacecraft will contain radiation sensing payloads to assess the efficacy of various compositions of Australian made radiation shielding alloys. Alongside this, hardware changes to the Binar platform are discussed, including deployable solar arrays, additional communications solutions, and a removable payload bay. The Iridium network will be leveraged to test its suitability for CubeSat targeted re-entry. Several software-based payloads are implemented, including on-board hardware emulation, enabling an industry partner to control the spacecraft in a demonstration of remote operations capability. An undergraduate student lead project will continue on from Binar-1 to see a star tracker flown for testing alternative methods of attitude determination. From a community perspective, strengthening the engagement between amateur radio operators and the Binar Space Program will be explored by expanding on what amateurs can do with on-orbit satellites. Lastly, autonomous agile mission planning will be tested through an on-board multipurpose simulation running on the dual-core flight computer

H-ATLAS/GAMA and HeViCS - dusty early-type galaxies in different environments

NKA acknowledges the support of the Science and Technology Facilities Council. LD, RJI and SJM acknowledge support from the European Research Council Advanced Grant COSMICISM. IDL gratefully acknowledges the support of the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research (FWO-Vlaanderen). KR acknowledges support from the European Research Council Starting Grant SEDmorph (P.I. V. Wild). Date of acceptance: 22/05/2015The Herschel Space Observatory has had a tremendous impact on the study of extragalactic dust. Specifically, early-type galaxies (ETG) have been the focus of several studies. In this paper, we combine results from two Herschel studies -a Virgo cluster study Herschel Virgo Cluster Survey (HeViCS) and a broader, low-redshift Herschel-Astrophysical Terahertz Large Area Survey (H-ATLAS)/Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) study -and contrast the dust and associated properties for similar mass galaxies. This comparison is motivated by differences in results exhibited between multiple Herschel studies of ETG. A comparison between consistent modified blackbody derived dust mass is carried out, revealing strong differences between the two samples in both dust mass and dust-to-stellar mass ratio. In particular, the HeViCS sample lacks massive ETG with as high a specific dust content as found in H-ATLAS. This is most likely connected with the difference in environment for the two samples. We calculate nearest neighbour environment densities in a consistent way, showing that H-ATLAS ETG occupy sparser regions of the local Universe, whereas HeViCS ETG occupy dense regions. This is also true for ETG that are not Herschel-detected but are in the Virgo and GAMA parent samples. Spectral energy distributions are fit to the panchromatic data. From these, we find that in H-ATLAS the specific star formation rate anticorrelates with stellar mass and reaches values as high as in our Galaxy. On the other hand HeViCS ETG appear to have little star formation. Based on the trends found here, H-ATLAS ETG are thought to have more extended star formation histories and a younger stellar population than HeViCS ETG.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Wide-field dynamic astronomy in the near-infrared with Palomar Gattini-IR and DREAMS

There have been a dramatic increase in the number of optical and radio transient surveys due to astronomical transients such as gravitational waves and gamma ray bursts, however, there have been a limited number of wide-field infrared surveys due to narrow field-of-view and high cost of infrared cameras, we present two new wide-field near-infrared fully automated surveyors; Palomar Gattini-IR and the Dynamic REd All-sky Monitoring Survey (DREAMS). Palomar Gattini-IR, a 25 square degree J-band imager that begun science operations at Palomar Observatory, USA in October 2018; we report on survey strategy as well as telescope and observatory operations and will also providing initial science results. DREAMS is a 3.75 square degree wide-field imager that is planned for Siding Spring Observatory, Australia; we report on the current optical and mechanical design and plans to achieve on-sky results in 2020. DREAMS is on-track to be one of the first astronomical telescopes to use an Indium Galium Arsenide (InGaAs) detector and we report initial on-sky testing results for the selected detector package. DREAMS is also well placed to take advantage and provide near-infrared follow-up of the LSST