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Managing the nutrition of plants and people
One definition of food security is having sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet dietary needs. This paper highlights the role of plant mineral nutrition in food production, delivering of essential mineral elements to the human diet, and preventing harmful mineral elements entering the food chain. To maximise crop production, the gap between actual and potential yield must be addressed. This gap is 15–95% of potential yield, depending on the crop and agricultural system. Current research in plant mineral nutrition aims to develop appropriate agronomy and improved genotypes, for both infertile and productive soils, that allow inorganic and organic fertilisers to be utilised more efficiently. Mineral malnutrition affects two-thirds of the world's population. It can be addressed by the application of fertilisers, soil amelioration, and the development of genotypes that accumulate greater concentrations of mineral elements lacking in human diets in their edible tissues. Excessive concentrations of harmful mineral elements also compromise crop production and human health. To reduce the entry of these elements into the food chain, strict quality requirements for fertilisers might be enforced, agronomic strategies employed to reduce their phytoavailability, and crop genotypes developed that do not accumulate high concentrations of these elements in edible tissues
Defining the gap between research and practice in public relations programme evaluation - towards a new research agenda
The current situation in public relations programme evaluation is neatly summarized by McCoy who commented that 'probably the most common buzzwords in public relations in the last ten years have been evaluation and accountability' (McCoy 2005, 3). This paper examines the academic and practitioner-based literature and research on programme evaluation and it detects different priorities and approaches that may partly explain why the debate on acceptable and agreed evaluation methods continues. It analyses those differences and proposes a research agenda to bridge the gap and move the debate forward
Swift/XRT monitoring of five orbital cycles of LSI +61 303
LSI +61 303 is one of the most interesting high-mass X-ray binaries owing to
its spatially resolved radio emission and its TeV emission, generally
attributed to non-thermal particles in an accretion-powered relativistic jet or
in the termination shock of the relativistic wind of a young pulsar. Also, the
nature of the compact object is still debated. Only LS 5039 and PSR B1259-63
(which hosts a non-accreting millisecond pulsar) have similar characteristics.
We study the X-ray emission from LSI +61 303 covering both short-term and
orbital variability. We also investigate the source spectral properties in the
soft X-ray (0.3-10 keV) energy range. 25 snapshot observations of LSI +61 303
have been collected in 2006 with the XRT instrument on-board the Swift
satellite over a period of four months, corresponding to about five orbital
cycles. Since individual data sets have too few counts for a meaningful
spectral analysis, we extracted a cumulative spectrum. The count rate folded at
the orbital phase shows a clear modulation pattern at the 26.5 days period and
suggests that the X-ray peak occurs around phase 0.65. Moreover, the X-ray
emission appears to be variable on a timescale of ~1 ks. The cumulative
spectrum is well described by an absorbed power-law model, with hydrogen column
density Nh=(5.7+/-0.3)E+21 cm^-2 and photon index 1.78+/-0.05. No accretion
disk signatures, such as an iron line, are found in the spectrum.Comment: Revised to match the A&A versio
Examining the Effects of Formal Education Level on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment
Background: Brief, global assessments such as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) are widely used in primary care for assessing cognition in older adults. Like other neuropsychological instruments, lower formal education can influence MoCA interpretation.
Methods: Data from 2 large studies of cognitive aging were used—Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) and National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center (NACC). Both use comprehensive examinations to determine cognitive status and have brain amyloid status for many participants. Mixed models were used to account for random variation due to data source.
Results: Cognitively intact participants with lower education (≤12 years) were more likely than those with higher education (\u3e12 years) to be classified as potentially impaired using the MoCA cutoff of \u3c26 (P \u3c .01). Backwards selection revealed 4 MoCA items significantly associated with education (cube copy, serial subtraction, phonemic fluency, abstraction). Subtracting these items scores yielded an alternative MoCA score with a maximum of 24 and a cutoff of ≤19 for classifying participants with mild cognitive impairment. Using the alternative MoCA score and cutoff, among cognitively intact participants, both education groups were similarly likely to be classified as potentially impaired (P \u3e .67).
Conclusions: The alternative MoCA score neutralized the effects of formal education. Although further research is needed, this alternative score offers a simple procedure for interpreting MoCAs administered to older adults with ≤12 years education. These educational effects also highlight that the MoCA is part of the assessment process—not a singular diagnostic test—and a comprehensive workup is necessary to accurately diagnose cognitive impairments
Soil organic carbon, extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), and soil structural stability as affected by previous and current land-use
While soil microbial ecology, soil organic carbon (SOC) and soil physical quality are widely understood to be interrelated — the underlying drivers of emergent properties, from land management to biochemistry, are hotly debated. Biological binding agents, microbial exudates, or ‘extracellular polymeric substances’ (EPS) in soil are now receiving increased attention due to several of the existing methodological challenges having been overcome. We applied a recently developed approach to quantify soil EPS, as extracellular protein and extracellular polysaccharide, on the well-characterised soils of the Highfield Experiment, Rothamsted Research, UK. Our aim was to investigate the links between agricultural land use, SOC, transient binding agents known as EPS, and their impacts on soil physical quality (given by mean weight diameter of water stable aggregates; MWD). We compared the legacy effects from long-term previous land-uses (unfertilised grassland, fertilised arable, and fallow) which were established >50 years prior to investigation, crossed with the same current land-uses established for a duration of only 2.5 years prior to sampling. Continuously fallow and grassland soils represented the poorest and greatest states of structural integrity, respectively. Total SOC and %N were found to be affected by both previous and current land-uses, while extractable EPS and MWD were driven primarily by the current land-use. Land-use change between these two extremes (fallow→grass; grass→fallow) resulted in smaller SOC differences (64% increase or 37% loss) compared to MWD (125% increase or 78% loss). SOC concentration correlated well to MWD (adjusted R2 = 0.72) but the high SOC content from previous grassland was not found to contribute directly to the current stability (p < 0.05). Our work thus supports the view that certain distinct components of SOC, rather than the total pool, have disproportionately important effects on a soil’s structural stability. EPS-protein was more closely related to aggregate stability than EPS-polysaccharide (p values of 0.002 and 0.027, respectively), and ranking soils with the 5 highest concentrations of EPS-protein to their corresponding orders of stability (MWD) resulted in a perfect match. We confirmed that both EPS-protein and EPS-polysaccharide were transient fractions: supporting the founding models for aggregate formation. We suggest that management of transient binding agents such as EPS —as opposed to simply increasing the total SOC content— may be a more feasible strategy to improve soil structural integrity and help achieve environmental objectives
Detection of a redshift 3.04 filament
The filamentary structure of the early universe has until now only been seen
in numerical simulations. Despite this lack of direct observational evidence,
the prediction of early filamentary structure formation in a Cold Dark Matter
dominated universe has become a paradigm for our understanding of galaxy
assembly at high redshifts. Clearly observational confirmation is required.
Lyman Break galaxies are too rare to be used as tracers of filaments and we
argue that to map out filaments in the high z universe, one will need to
identify classes of objects fainter than those currently accessible via the
Lyman Break technique. Objects selected via their Ly-alpha emission, and/or as
DLA absorbers, populate the faintest accessible part of the high redshift
galaxy luminosity function, and as such make up good candidates for objects
which will map out high redshift filaments. Here we present the first direct
detection of a filament (at z=3.04) mapped by those classes of objects. The
observations are the deepest yet to have been done in Ly-alpha imaging at high
redshift, and they reveal a single string of proto-galaxies spanning about 5
Mpc (20 Mpc comoving). Expanding the cosmological test proposed by Alcock &
Paczynski (1979), we outline how observations of this type can be used to
determine Omega_Lambda at z=3.Comment: 5 pages, LaTeX, 3 PostScript figures; Accepted for publication in
A&A-Letter
Forming a biomathematical learning alliance across traditional academic departments
Across the United States, many generalized programs have focused on retention of minority students in the sciences with varying degrees of success. Paradoxically, this challenge exists despite expanding career opportunities in industry, academia, and government for those skilled at the intersection of biology and mathematics. Here we describe a cross-departmental learning alliance (iBLEND- an Integrative Biomathematics Learning and Empowerment Network for Diversity) which directly targets these recognized challenges. Our goal is for the iBLEND project to have significant spillover effects for our university by developing new interdisciplinary collaborations that benefit our students. The iBLEND is a proactive, intensive approach in order to bridge campus chasms for both faculty and undergraduate students by positively influencing academic programs through interdisciplinary training coupled with strong evaluation and assessments. By leveraging our recent surge of competitive research activity, innovative instruction, and collaboration, the iBLEND advances our transformation to the next level by establishing a broader bridge for our undergraduates at the interface of mathematics and biology. In working together, the math and biology students learned to bridge language barriers inhibiting interdisciplinary explorations. Students were closely involved with faculty mentors in core laboratories and developed cross-disciplinary research skills that enhanced their post-graduate career opportunities. Using systems biology tools combined with targeted mathematics classroom work, students merged data from their lab bench experiments with mathematical models to determine how various changes impacted an overall organism and its functions. The students had hands-on training with a myriad of computational, simulations, data mining and data analysis tools needed in approaching their projects
Models of the ICM with Heating and Cooling: Explaining the Global and Structural X-ray Properties of Clusters
(Abridged) Theoretical models that include only gravitationally-driven
processes fail to match the observed mean X-ray properties of clusters. As a
result, there has recently been increased interest in models in which either
radiative cooling or entropy injection play a central role in mediating the
properties of the intracluster medium. Both sets of models give reasonable fits
to the mean properties of clusters, but cooling only models result in fractions
of cold baryons in excess of observationally established limits and the
simplest entropy injection models do not treat the "cooling core" structure
present in many clusters and cannot account for entropy profiles revealed by
recent X-ray observations. We consider models that marry radiative cooling with
entropy injection, and confront model predictions for the global and structural
properties of massive clusters with the latest X-ray data. The models
successfully and simultaneously reproduce the observed L-T and L-M relations,
yield detailed entropy, surface brightness, and temperature profiles in
excellent agreement with observations, and predict a cooled gas fraction that
is consistent with observational constraints. The model also provides a
possible explanation for the significant intrinsic scatter present in the L-T
and L-M relations and provides a natural way of distinguishing between clusters
classically identified as "cooling flow" clusters and dynamically relaxed
"non-cooling flow" clusters. The former correspond to systems that had only
mild levels (< 300 keV cm^2) of entropy injection, while the latter are
identified as systems that had much higher entropy injection. This is borne out
by the entropy profiles derived from Chandra and XMM-Newton.Comment: 20 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical
Journa
ROXA: a new multi-frequency selected large sample of blazars with SDSS and 2dF optical spectroscopy
Context. Although Blazars are a small fraction of the overall AGN population
they are expected to be the dominant population of extragalactic sources in the
hard X-ray and gamma-ray bands and have been shown to be the largest
contaminant of CMB fluctuation maps. So far the number of known blazars is of
the order of several hundreds, but the forthcoming AGILE, GLAST and Planck
space observatories will detect several thousand of objects of this type. Aims.
In preparation for these missions it is necessary to identify new samples of
blazars to study their multi-frequency characteristics and statistical
properties. Methods. We compiled a sample of objects with blazar-like
properties via a cross-correlation between large radio (NVSS, ATCAPMN) and X-
ray surveys (RASS) using the SDSS-DR4 and 2dF survey data to spectroscopically
identify our candidates and test the validity of the selection method. Results.
We present the Radio - Optical - X-ray catalog built at ASDC (ROXA), a list of
816 objects among which 510 are confirmed blazars. Only 19% of the candidates
turned out to be certainly non-blazars demonstrating the high efficiency of our
selection method. Conclusions. Our catalog includes 173 new blazar
identifications, or about 10% of all presently known blazars. The relatively
high flux threshold in the X-ray energy band (given by the RASS survey)
preferentially selects objects with high fx / fr ratio leading to the discovery
of new High Energy Peaked BL Lac (HBLs). Our catalog therefore includes many
new potential targets for GeV-TeV observations.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figure, 2 table
The build-up of the colour-magnitude relation in galaxy clusters since z~0.8
Using galaxy clusters from the ESO Distant Cluster Survey, we study how the
distribution of galaxies along the colour-magnitude relation has evolved since
z~0.8. While red-sequence galaxies in all these clusters are well described by
an old, passively evolving population, we confirm our previous finding of a
significant evolution in their luminosity distribution as a function of
redshift. When compared to galaxy clusters in the local Universe, the high
redshift EDisCS clusters exhibit a significant "deficit" of faint red galaxies.
Combining clusters in three different redshift bins, and defining as `faint'
all galaxies in the range 0.4 > L/L* > 0.1, we find a clear decrease in the
luminous-to-faint ratio of red galaxies from z~0.8 to z~0.4. The amount of such
a decrease appears to be in qualitative agreement with predictions of a model
where the blue bright galaxies that populate the colour-magnitude diagram of
high redshift clusters, have their star formation suppressed by the hostile
cluster environment. Although model results need to be interpreted with
caution, our findings clearly indicate that the red-sequence population of
high-redshift clusters does not contain all progenitors of nearby red-sequence
cluster galaxies. A significant fraction of these must have moved onto the
red-sequence below z~0.8.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
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