Development of an improved protective cover/light block for multilayer insulation

The feasibility of using a scrim-reinforced, single metallized, 4-mil Tedlar film as a replacement for the Teflon coated Beta-cloth/single metallized 3-mil Kapton film presently used as the protective cover/light block for multilayer insulation (MLI) on the Orbiter, Spacelab, and other space applications was demonstrated. The proposed Tedlar concept is lighter and potentially lower in cost. Thermal analysis with the proper concept was much simpler than with the present system. Tests have already demonstrated that white Tedlar has low alpha (adsorption) degradation in space from U.V. The proposed concept was 4400 percent cheaper with nominal weight savings of 50 percent

A Note On Fixed-point Theorems

In an earlier note, S. P. Singh gave an extension of a theorem of Brosowski in a normed linear space setting. Variants of this theorem are considered in the context of strictly convex, reflexive, and inner product spaces. © 1982

Application of Sentinel-2A data for pasture biomass monitoring using a physically based radiative transfer model

A large proportion of the global land surface is covered by pasture. The advent of the Sentinel satellites program provides free datasets with good spatiotemporal resolution that can be a valuable source of information for monitoring pasture resources. We combined optical remote sensing data (proximal hyperspectral and Sentinel 2A) with a radiative transfer model (PROSAIL) to estimate leaf area index (LAI), and biomass, in a dairy farming context. Three sites in Southern England were used: two pasture farms that differed in pasture type and management, and a set of small agronomy trial plots with different mixtures of grasses, legumes and herbs, as well as pure perennial ryegrass. The proximal and satellite spectral data were used to retrieve LAI via PROSAIL model inversion, which were compared against field observations of LAI. The potential of bands of Sentinel 2A that corresponded with a 10 m resolution was studied by convolving narrow spectral bands (from a handheld hyperspectral sensor) into Sentinel 2A bands (10 m). Retrieved LAI, using these spectrally resampled S2A data, compared well with measured LAI, for all sites, even for those with mixed species cover (although retrieved LAI was somewhat overestimated for pasture mixtures with high LAI). This proved the suitability of 10 m Sentinel 2A spectral bands for capturing LAI dynamics for different types of pastures. We also found that inclusion of 20 m bands in the inversion scheme did not lead to any further improvement in retrieved LAI. Sentinel 2A image based retrieval yielded good agreement with LAI measurements obtained for a typical perennial ryegrass based pasture farm. LAI retrieved in this way was used to create biomass maps (that correspond to indirect biomass measurements by Rising Plate Meter (RPM)), for mixed-species paddocks for a farm for which limited field data were available. These maps compared moderately well with farmer-collected RPM measurements for this farm. We propose that estimates of paddock-averaged and within-paddock variability of biomass are more reliably obtained from a combined Sentinel 2A-PROSAIL approach, rather than by manual RPM measurements. The physically based radiative transfer model inversion approach outperformed the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index based retrieval method, and does not require site specific calibrations of the inversion scheme

Short communication: a survey of grass-clover ley management and creation of a near infra-red reflectance spectroscopy equation to predict clover concentration

The purpose of the present study was, firstly, to examine current practice for the agronomy of grass-clover mixed swards used for silage-making in the UK, and secondly, to develop and validate a Near Infra-Red Reflectance Spectroscopy (NIRS) equation capable of predicting clover concentration (CC) in undried and unmilled grass-clover silage samples. A calibration set of 94 grass-clover (white, trifolium repens, and red, trifolium pratense) mixture silage samples were sourced from UK farms and an accompanying questionnaire was used to obtain information on the sward agronomy used to produce each sample. Questionnaire data highlighted that (i) reducing the use of fertiliser inputs (ii) increasing uptake of new varieties, and (iii) increasing the farmer’s ability to measure botanical composition as potential strategies for improving the utilisation of clover in grass swards. Botanical composition was measured by hand separation for each sample and a new NIRS equation was created and assessed using blind validation with an independent set of 30 grass-clover samples. The relative standard error of cross validation (SECV, as a percentage of the measured mean) of the optimised equation produced was 36.8%, and, in an independent validation test, the ratio of standard error of prediction to the standard deviation of the reference data set (RPD) was 1.56. The equation could be improved by increasing accuracy at high CCs but showed promise as a simple tool to assist growers in sward management decisions

Neighborhoods of trees in circular orderings

In phylogenetics, a common strategy used to construct an evolutionary tree for a set of species X is to search in the space of all such trees for one that optimizes some given score function (such as the minimum evolution, parsimony or likelihood score). As this can be computationally intensive, it was recently proposed to restrict such searches to the set of all those trees that are compatible with some circular ordering of the set X. To inform the design of efficient algorithms to perform such searches, it is therefore of interest to find bounds for the number of trees compatible with a fixed ordering in the neighborhood of a tree that is determined by certain tree operations commonly used to search for trees: the nearest neighbor interchange (nni), the subtree prune and regraft (spr) and the tree bisection and reconnection (tbr) operations. We show that the size of such a neighborhood of a binary tree associated with the nni operation is independent of the tree’s topology, but that this is not the case for the spr and tbr operations. We also give tight upper and lower bounds for the size of the neighborhood of a binary tree for the spr and tbr operations and characterize those trees for which these bounds are attained

Autophagy is Required for mTOR-Mediated Anabolism in Skeletal Muscle

PURPOSE: While much has been discovered about the role autophagy in protein degradation, recent evidence suggests that autophagy is required for muscular adaptations to exercise, hinting at a hitherto unknown cross-talk between autophagic proteolysis and muscle protein anabolism. Here, we set out to further elucidate the metabolic mechanisms by which autophagy may influence protein anabolism. METHODS: L6 myoblasts received either electrical pulse stimulation (EPS) to induce muscle contraction or were unstimulated to serve as controls, and were then treated with an inhibitor of the ATG4 enzyme which catalyzes the initial step of autophagy NSC185058 (NSC, 100 μM) or DMSO as a vehicle control (VC). After 24 hours, cells were lysed and Western immunoblotted for P70S6K, DEPTOR, MAPK, AMPK, LC3, and P62. Differences between VC and NSC treated groups were assessed by a two-tailed t-test, while comparisons between VC, EPS, and EPS+NSC groups were made using one-way ANOVA and SNK post-hoc test, with α levels set at 0.05. RESULTS: EPS induced a 97% increase in P70S6K phosphorylation (p\u3c0.05), with NSC treatment blunting this effect, leading to a 22% increase (P\u3e0.05). EPS resulted in a 37% reduction in DEPTOR content (p\u3c0.05); however, NSC treatment alone produced a 166% decrease in DEPTOR level (p\u3c0.05), with EPS+NSC leading to an even larger reduction (-766%) in DEPTOR than EPS alone. NSC treatment led to a decrease (-85%, p\u3e0.05) LC3II/I ratio relative to VC, which was reduced in both the EPS (-68%, p\u3c0.05) and EPS+NSC (-87%, p\u3c0.05) conditions. P62 content increased by 749% with EPS (p\u3c0.05), with no significant difference in P62 level between VC and EPS+NSC, and NSC treatment alone led to a 61% decrease in P62 (p\u3c0.05). MAPK phosphorylation was elevated in both EPS (99.9%, p\u3e0.05) and EPS+NSC (149.13, p\u3c0.05). Neither NSC nor EPS+NSC altered phosphorylation status of AMPK. CONCLUSION: Despite reductions in DEPTOR, mTOR activity was blunted in EPS+NSC cells, indicating that mTOR mediated anabolic signaling requires autophagy post muscle contraction. This is particular to the mTOR pathway, as an increase in MAPK phosphorylation was still observed in EPS+NSC. While the decrease in LC3II/I ratio and accumulation of P62 seen after EPS are likely due to inhibition of autophagy due to mTOR activity, our data indicate that inhibition of ATG4 by NSC185058 blunts mTOR activity after muscle contraction. This effect is not due to activation of the cellular energy sensor AMPK, as we found no increase in AMPK phosphorylation in any condition. Further work will be required to fully elucidate the mechanism by which NSC185058 inhibits mTOR-mediated anabolism