Australian bat lyssavirus infection in a captive juvenile black flying fox.

The newly emerging Australian bat lyssavirus causes rabieslike disease in bats and humans. A captive juvenile black flying fox exhibited progressive neurologic signs, including sudden aggression, vocalization, dysphagia, and paresis over 9 days and then died. At necropsy, lyssavirus infection was diagnosed by fluorescent antibody test, immunoperoxidase staining, polymerase chain reaction, and virus isolation. Eight human contacts received postexposure vaccination

A single major QTL controls expression of larval Cry1F resistance trait in Ostrinia nubilalis (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) and is independent of midgut receptor genes

The European corn borer, Ostrinia nubilalis (Lepidoptera: Crambidae), is an introduced crop pest in North America that causes major damage to corn and reduces yield of food, feed, and biofuel materials. The Cry1F toxin from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) expressed in transgenic hybrid corn is highly toxic to O. nubilalis larvae and effective in minimizing feeding damage. A laboratory colony of O. nubilalis was selected for high levels of Cry1F resistance (\u3e12,000-fold compared to susceptible larvae) and is capable of survival on transgenic hybrid corn. Genetic linkage maps with segregating AFLP markers show that the Cry1F resistance trait is controlled by a single quantitative trait locus (QTL) on linkage group 12. The map position of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers indicated that midgut Bt toxin-receptor genes, alkaline phosphatase, aminopeptidase N, and cadherin, are not linked with the Cry1F QTL. Evidence suggests that genes within this genome interval may give rise to a novel Bt toxin resistance trait for Lepidoptera that appears independent of known receptor-based mechanisms of resistance

The ANU WiFeS SuperNovA Program (AWSNAP)

This paper presents the first major data release and survey description for the ANU WiFeS SuperNovA Program (AWSNAP). AWSNAP is an ongoing supernova spectroscopy campaign utilising the Wide Field Spectrograph (WiFeS) on the Australian National University (ANU) 2.3m telescope. The first and primary data release of this program (AWSNAP-DR1) releases 357 spectra of 175 unique objects collected over 82 equivalent full nights of observing from July 2012 to August 2015. These spectra have been made publicly available via the WISeREP supernova spectroscopy repository. We analyse the AWSNAP sample of Type Ia supernova spectra, including measurements of narrow sodium absorption features afforded by the high spectral resolution of the WiFeS instrument. In some cases we were able to use the integral-field nature of the WiFeS instrument to measure the rotation velocity of the SN host galaxy near the SN location in order to obtain precision sodium absorption velocities. We also present an extensive time series of SN 2012dn, including a near-nebular spectrum which both confirms its "super-Chandrasekhar" status and enables measurement of the sub-solar host metallicity at the SN site.Comment: Submitted to Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia (PASA). Spectra publicly released via WISeREP at http://wiserep.weizmann.ac.il

Measuring nickel masses in Type Ia supernovae using cobalt emission in nebular phase spectra

The light curves of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are powered by the radioactive decay of $^{56}$Ni to $^{56}$Co at early times, and the decay of $^{56}$Co to $^{56}$Fe from ~60 days after explosion. We examine the evolution of the [Co III] 5892 A emission complex during the nebular phase for SNe Ia with multiple nebular spectra and show that the line flux follows the square of the mass of $^{56}$Co as a function of time. This result indicates both efficient local energy deposition from positrons produced in $^{56}$Co decay, and long-term stability of the ionization state of the nebula. We compile 77 nebular spectra of 25 SN Ia from the literature and present 17 new nebular spectra of 7 SNe Ia, including SN2014J. From these we measure the flux in the [Co III] 5892 A line and remove its well-behaved time dependence to infer the initial mass of $^{56}$Ni ($M_{Ni}$) produced in the explosion. We then examine $^{56}$Ni yields for different SN Ia ejected masses ($M_{ej}$ - calculated using the relation between light curve width and ejected mass) and find the $^{56}$Ni masses of SNe Ia fall into two regimes: for narrow light curves (low stretch s~0.7-0.9), $M_{Ni}$ is clustered near $M_{Ni}$ ~ 0.4$M_\odot$ and shows a shallow increase as $M_{ej}$ increases from ~1-1.4$M_\odot$; at high stretch, $M_{ej}$ clusters at the Chandrasekhar mass (1.4$M_\odot$) while $M_{Ni}$ spans a broad range from 0.6-1.2$M_\odot$. This could constitute evidence for two distinct SN Ia explosion mechanisms.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures (main text), plus data tables in appendix. Spectra released on WISeREP. Submitted to MNRAS, comments welcom

The Grizzly, September 20, 1985

Forum Season Opens with Summit Diplomacy • The Fields Are Coming • Zeta Chi Escapes Suspension • Lack of Water • The Water Warden is Watching You • Intramural Squeeze • What\u27s Your Opinion? • Japanese Now Available • Prof Profile: Perreten Leads the List • Dominic O\u27Brien Joins the Education Team • Album Review: Squeeze Producing the Same Old Sound • Jamison Appointed to Library Director • Football Team Stretches for New Goals • Women\u27s Field Hockey Climbing the Ladder! • Volleyball Team Has Promise • The Harriers are Off • Bears Win Ugly • More Talk About South Africa • New Forum Force • Whiteley: A Model of Desire and Determination •New Security Column • Grant Me Thishttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1144/thumbnail.jp

The superluminous transient ASASSN-15lh as a tidal disruption event from a Kerr black hole

When a star passes within the tidal radius of a supermassive black hole, it will be torn apart1. For a star with the mass of the Sun (M ⊙) and a non-spinning black hole with a mass 108 M ⊙ 12,13, a star with the same mass as the Sun could be disrupted outside the event horizon if the black hole were spinning rapidly14. The rapid spin and high black hole mass can explain the high luminosity of this event. ASASSN-15lh was discovered by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) on 14 June 2015 at a redshift of z = 0.2326. Its light curve peaked at V ≈ 17 mag implying an absolute magnitude of M = −23.5 mag, more than twice as luminous as any known supernova 7 . Our long-term spectroscopic follow-up reveals that ASASSN-15lh went through three different spectroscopic phases (Fig. 1). During the first phase 7 , the spectra were dominated by two broad absorption features. While these features appear similar to those observed in superluminous supernovae (SLSNe; Supplementary Fig. 1), their physical origin is different. The features in SLSNe are due to O II 8,15 , but this would produce an additional strong feature at ∼4,400 Å (Supplementary Fig. 2). The feature at ∼4,100 Å cannot be easily identified in the tidal disruption event (TDE) framework either. Two possibilities are that it could be due to absorption of Mg ii or high-velocity He ii 16 . After the initial broad absorption features disappeared, the spectra of ASASSN-15lh were dominated by two emission features. A possible identification for these features is He ii λλ3,202 and 4,686 Å, which are both consistently blue-shifted by ∼15,000 km s−1 (Supplementary Fig. 3). He ii emission is commonly seen in optically discovered TDEs 4,5 at different blueshifts, albeit typically at lower velocities, but it has not been seen in H-poor SLSNe. These features disappeared after day +75 (measured in rest frame from the peak) and the later spectra were mostly featureless, with the exception of two emission features at ∼4,000 and 5,200 Å. The spectra remained much bluer than those of SLSNe 17 for many months after the peak and never revealed nebular features, even up to day +256.We acknowledge support from the European Union FP7 programme through the following European Research Council grants: 320360 (M.F., H.C.), 647208 (P.G.J.), 291222 (S.J.S.), 615929 (M.S.). We also acknowledge: Einstein Postdoctoral Fellowship PF5-160145 (N.C.S.), Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship HST-HF2-51350 (S.v.V.), STFC grants ST/I001123/1 ST/L000709/1 (S.J.S.) and ST/L000679/1 (M.S.), Australian Research Council Future Fellowship FT140101082 (J.C.A.M.-J.), a Royal Society University Research Fellowship (J.R.M.), a Sofja Kovalevskaja Award to P. Schady (T.Kr., T.-W.C.), a Ramón y Cajal fellowship and the Spanish research project AYA 2014-58381 (A.de U.P.), CONICYT-Chile FONDECYT grants 3130488 (S.K.), 3140534 (S.S.), 3140563 (H.K.), 3150238 (C.R.-C.), a PRIN-INAF 2014 project (N.E.-R.), support from IDA (D.M.), an Ernest Rutherford Fellowship (K.M.), CAASTRO project number CE110001020 (B.E.T.), National Science Foundation grant AST 11-09881 and NASA grant HST-AR-13726.02 (J.C.W.). This work used observations from the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT) and was based upon work supported by National Science Foundation grant 131348