Improving Water Quality Through BMPs For Crop Production Systems Whole Farm Soil and Water Management

The major objective of this demonstration project was to assess the usefulness of Global Positioning Systems/Geographic Information Systems (GPS/GIS), water testing, soil testing and yield monitoring in a whole farm water and soil management plan. An important part of this objective was to make recommendations to increase crop productivity and decrease the potential for surface water degradation through erosion and runoff at the farm. The farm was located on 2400 acres in the Bayou de View watershed in Monroe County, Arkansas. The farm lies approximately five miles southwest of the town of Brinkley straddling Highway 17 just south of its intersection with County Road 302 and with U. S. Highway 70. Slightly over 2200 acres were under cultivation and this was generally in a 1 :2 ratio of rice to soybeans, with approximately half of the soybean fields double-cropped with winter wheat each year

LensPerfect: Gravitational Lens Massmap Reconstructions Yielding Exact Reproduction of All Multiple Images

We present a new approach to gravitational lens massmap reconstruction. Our massmap solutions perfectly reproduce the positions, fluxes, and shears of all multiple images. And each massmap accurately recovers the underlying mass distribution to a resolution limited by the number of multiple images detected. We demonstrate our technique given a mock galaxy cluster similar to Abell 1689 which gravitationally lenses 19 mock background galaxies to produce 93 multiple images. We also explore cases in which far fewer multiple images are observed, such as four multiple images of a single galaxy. Massmap solutions are never unique, and our method makes it possible to explore an extremely flexible range of physical (and unphysical) solutions, all of which perfectly reproduce the data given. Each reconfiguration of the source galaxies produces a new massmap solution. An optimization routine is provided to find those source positions (and redshifts, within uncertainties) which produce the "most physical" massmap solution, according to a new figure of merit developed here. Our method imposes no assumptions about the slope of the radial profile nor mass following light. But unlike "non-parametric" grid-based methods, the number of free parameters we solve for is only as many as the number of observable constraints (or slightly greater if fluxes are constrained). For each set of source positions and redshifts, massmap solutions are obtained "instantly" via direct matrix inversion by smoothly interpolating the deflection field using a recently developed mathematical technique. Our LensPerfect software is straightforward and easy to use and is made publicly available via our website.Comment: 17 pages, 18 figures, accepted by ApJ. Software and full-color version of paper available at http://www.its.caltech.edu/~coe/LensPerfect

Humour as social dreaming:Stand-up comedy as therapeutic performance

Stand-up comedy binds dramatic cultural spectacle to ritualised, intimate exposure. Examining ‘case’ examples from live comic performance, this paper describes stand-up as a kind of social dreaming. The article proposes a theoretical frame drawing on Thomas Ogden’s notion of ‘talking as dreaming’ and psychoanalytic accounts connecting humour and melancholia. Locating the stand-up comedian’s propensity for humour in a specialist capacity to hone, display and process traumata, the paper characterises stand-up as a performative oscillation evoking paranoid-schizoid and depressive anxieties. A psychosocial gloss places stand-up as a cultural resource in the service of the popular-as-therapeutic. The paper articulates complementarities between Henri Bergson’s formulations on the function of laughter and an emergent object relations account in order to help to recognise ‘containing’ and ‘cultural-restorative’ aspects of much stand-up, understood as contemporary psychosocial ritual

Electron microscopy structure of human APC/C-CDH1-EMI1 reveals multimodal mechanism of E3 ligase shutdown.

The anaphase-promoting complex/cyclosome (APC/C) is a similar to 1.5-MDa multiprotein E3 ligase enzyme that regulates cell division by promoting timely ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis of key cell-cycle regulatory proteins. Inhibition of human APC/C-CDH1 during interphase by early mitotic inhibitor 1 (EMI1) is essential for accurate coordination of DNA synthesis and mitosis. Here, we report a hybrid structural approach involving NMR, electron microscopy and enzymology, which reveal that EMI1's 143-residue C-terminal domain inhibits multiple APC/C-CDH1 functions. The intrinsically disordered D-box, linker and tail elements, together with a structured zinc-binding domain, bind distinct regions of APC/C-CDH1 to synergistically both block the substrate-binding site and inhibit ubiquitin-chain elongation. The functional importance of intrinsic structural disorder is explained by enabling a small inhibitory domain to bind multiple sites to shut down various functions of a 'molecular machine' nearly 100 times its size

Planck's Dusty GEMS: Gravitationally lensed high-redshift galaxies discovered with the Planck survey

We present an analysis of 11 bright far-IR/submm sources discovered through a combination of the Planck survey and follow-up Herschel-SPIRE imaging. Each source has a redshift z=2.2-3.6 obtained through a blind redshift search with EMIR at the IRAM 30-m telescope. Interferometry obtained at IRAM and the SMA, and optical/near-infrared imaging obtained at the CFHT and the VLT reveal morphologies consistent with strongly gravitationally lensed sources. Additional photometry was obtained with JCMT/SCUBA-2 and IRAM/GISMO at 850 um and 2 mm, respectively. All objects are bright, isolated point sources in the 18 arcsec beam of SPIRE at 250 um, with spectral energy distributions peaking either near the 350 um or the 500 um bands of SPIRE, and with apparent far-infrared luminosities of up to 3x10^14 L_sun. Their morphologies and sizes, CO line widths and luminosities, dust temperatures, and far-infrared luminosities provide additional empirical evidence that these are strongly gravitationally lensed high-redshift galaxies. We discuss their dust masses and temperatures, and use additional WISE 22-um photometry and template fitting to rule out a significant contribution of AGN heating to the total infrared luminosity. Six sources are detected in FIRST at 1.4 GHz. Four have flux densities brighter than expected from the local far-infrared-radio correlation, but in the range previously found for high-z submm galaxies, one has a deficit of FIR emission, and 6 are consistent with the local correlation. The global dust-to-gas ratios and star-formation efficiencies of our sources are predominantly in the range expected from massive, metal-rich, intense, high-redshift starbursts. An extensive multi-wavelength follow-up programme is being carried out to further characterize these sources and the intense star-formation within them.Comment: A&A accepte

Design and operation of automated ice-tethered profilers for real-time seawater observations in the polar oceans

An automated, easily-deployed Ice-Tethered Profiler (ITP) has been developed for deployment on perennial sea ice in polar oceans to measure changes in upper ocean temperature and salinity in all seasons. The ITP system consists of three components: a surface instrument that sits atop an ice floe, a weighted, plastic-jacketed wire-rope tether of arbitrary length (up to 800 m) suspended from the surface instrument, and an instrumented underwater unit that profiles up and down the wire tether. The profiling underwater unit is similar in shape and dimension to an ARGO float except that the float's variable-buoyancy system is replaced with a traction drive unit. Deployment of ITPs may be conducted either from ice caps or icebreakers, utilizing a self contained tripod/winch system that requires no power. Careful selection of an appropriate multiyear ice floe is needed to prolong the lifetime of the system (up to 3 years depending on the profiling schedule). Shortly after deployment, each ITP begins profiling the water column at its programmed sampling interval. After each acquired temperature and salinity profile, the underwater unit (PROCON) transfers the data and engineering files using an inductive modem to the surface controller (SURFCON). SURFCON also accumulates battery voltages, buoy temperature, and locations from GPS at specified intervals in status files, and queues that information for transmission at the start of each new day. At frequent intervals, an Iridium satellite transceiver in the surface package calls and transmits queued status and CTD data files onto a WHOI logger computer, which are subsequently processed and displayed in near-real time at http://www.whoi.edu/itp. In 2004 and 2005, three ITP prototypes were deployed in the Arctic Ocean. Each system was programmed with accelerated sampling schedules of multiple one-way traverses per day between 10 and 750-760 m depth in order to quickly evaluate endurance and component fatigue. Two of the ITPs are continuing to function after more than 10 months and 1200 profiles. Larger motor currents are observed at times of fast ice floe motion when larger wire angles develop and drag forces on the profiler are increased. The CTD profile data so far obtained document interesting spatial variations in the major water masses of the Beaufort Gyre, show the double-diffusive thermohaline staircase that lies above the warm, salty Atlantic layer, and many mesoscale eddys. Deployed together with CRREL Ice Mass Balance (IMB) buoys, these ITP systems also operate as part of an Ice Based Observatory (IBO). Data returned from an array of IBOs within an Arctic Observing Network will provide valuable real time observations, support studies of ocean processes, and facilitate numerical model initialization and validation.Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation under Contract Nos. OCE-0324233 and ARC-0519899

A Lyman-alpha-only AGN from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey has discovered a z=2.4917 radio-loud active galactic nucleus (AGN) with a luminous, variable, low-polarization UV continuum, H I two-photon emission, and a moderately broad Lyman-alpha line (FWHM = 1430 km/s) but without obvious metal-line emission. SDSS J113658.36+024220.1 does have associated metal-line absorption in three distinct, narrow systems spanning a velocity range of 2710 km/s. Despite certain spectral similarities, SDSS J1136+0242 is not a Lyman-break galaxy. Instead, the Ly-alpha and two-photon emission can be attributed to an extended, low-metallicity narrow-line region. The unpolarized continuum argues that we see SDSS J1136+0242 very close to the axis of any ionization cone present. We can conceive of two plausible explanations for why we see a strong UV continuum but no broad-line emission in this `face-on radio galaxy' model for SDSS J1136+0242: the continuum could be relativistically beamed synchrotron emission which swamps the broad-line emission; or, more likely, SDSS J1136+0242 could be similar to PG 1407+265, a quasar in which for some unknown reason the high-ionization emission lines are very broad, very weak, and highly blueshifted.Comment: AJ, in press, 10 pages emulateapj forma

Cost of abortions in Zambia: a comparison of safe abortion and post abortion care

Unsafe abortion is a significant but preventable cause of maternal mortality. Although induced abortion has been legal in Zambia since 1972, many women still face logistical, financial, social, and legal obstacles to access safe abortion services, and undergo unsafe abortion instead. This study provides the first estimates of costs of post abortion care (PAC) after an unsafe abortion and the cost of safe abortion in Zambia. In the absence of routinely collected data on abortions, we used multiple data sources: key informant interviews, medical records and hospital logbooks. We estimated the costs of providing safe abortion and PAC services at the University Teaching Hospital, Lusaka and then projected these costs to generate indicative cost estimates for Zambia. Due to unavailability of data on the actual number of safe abortions and PAC cases in Zambia, we used estimates from previous studies and from other similar countries, and checked the robustness of our estimates with sensitivity analyses. We found that PAC following an unsafe abortion can cost 2.5 times more than safe abortion care. The Zambian health system could save as much as US$0.4 million annually if those women currently treated for an unsafe abortion instead had a safe abortion

Spectroscopic Observations and Analysis of the Unusual Type Ia SN 1999ac

We present optical spectra of the peculiar Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) 1999ac. The data extend from -15 to +42 days with respect to B-band maximum and reveal an event that is unusual in several respects. Prior to B-band maximum, the spectra resemble those of SN 1999aa, a slowly declining event, but possess stronger SiII and CaII signatures (more characteristic of a spectroscopically normal SN). Spectra after B-band maximum appear more normal. The expansion velocities inferred from the Iron lines appear to be lower than average; whereas, the expansion velocity inferred from Calcium H and K are higher than average. The expansion velocities inferred from SiII are among the slowest ever observed, though SN 1999ac is not particularly dim. The analysis of the parameters v_10, R(SiII), dv(SiII)/dt, and d_m15 further underlines the unique characteristics of SN 1999ac. We find convincing evidence of CII 6580 in the day -15 spectrum with ejection velocity v > 16,000 km/s, but this signature disappears by day -9. This rapid evolution at early times highlights the importance of extremely early-time spectroscopy.Comment: 40 pages, 24 figures, accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journa

Rural health systems in Oklahoma: What is a community health center

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