Characterizing spiral arm and interarm star formation

Interarm star formation contributes significantly to a galaxy's star formation budget, and provides an opportunity to study stellar birthplaces unperturbed by spiral arm dynamics. Using optical integral field spectroscopy of the nearby galaxy NGC 628 with VLT/MUSE, we construct Halpha maps including detailed corrections for dust extinction and stellar absorption to identify 391 HII regions at 35pc resolution over 12 kpc^2. Using tracers sensitive to the underlying gravitational potential, we associate HII regions with either arm (271) or interarm (120) environments. Using our full spectral coverage of each region, we find that most HII region physical properties (luminosity, size, metallicity, ionization parameter) are independent of environment. We calculate the fraction of Halpha luminosity due to the diffuse ionized gas (DIG) background contaminating each HII region, and find the DIG surface brightness to be higher within HII regions compared to the surroundings, and slightly higher within arm HII regions. Use of the temperature sensitive [SII]/Halpha line ratio map instead of the Halpha surface brightness to identify HII region boundaries does not change this result. Using the dust attenuation as a tracer of the gas, we find depletion times consistent with previous work (2 x 10^9 yr) with no differences between the arm and interarm, however this is very sensitive to the DIG correction. Unlike molecular clouds, which can be dynamically affected by the galactic environment, we see fairly consistent HII region properties in both arm and interarm environments. This suggests either a difference in arm star formation and feedback, or a decoupling of dense star forming clumps from the more extended surrounding molecular gas.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in Ap

IMPACTS OF PESTICIDE REGULATION ON THE CALIFORNIA STRAWBERRY INDUSTRY

Environmental regulation of agriculture is becoming increasingly important, and growers are increasingly concerned about the effects of regulations on their profitability. Regulations governing the use of a pesticide affect its economic value. Further, growers often face a choice among pesticide alternatives, each with its own set of regulatory restrictions. In this environment, the introduction of a new regulation can have complex effects on growers' profit-maximizing pesticide choices. Buffer zones and regional emissions caps mean that pesticide choices can have important spatial components. Our paper presents an optimization model that incorporates spatial considerations at the field and regional level. We apply our model to fumigant choice by California strawberry growers. The industry is facing an impending ban on the use of methyl bromide, which in conjunction with chloropicrin was the standard fumigant for over forty years. In addition to the forthcoming ban, the state government has imposed regulations governing methyl bromide application, including buffer zones, etc. These extreme use restrictions provide us with an interesting environment for modeling the effects of pesticide regulations. There are currently two legally available fumigants that may substitute for methyl bromide in strawberries: 1,3-D and chloropicrin. 1, 3-D is subject to township caps and other restrictions. Township caps limit total application in an area. The California Department of Pesticide Regulation is currently undertaking air monitoring and other activities to determine whether or not buffer zones and other restrictions should be applied to chloropicrin. We evaluate the effects of current and proposed regulations on field-level decisions and industry costs and returns. Methodology To the best of our knowledge, no study has examined the role of pesticide use regulations in determining growers' profit-maximizing pesticide choices at the field level. We do so by combining three datasets with a field-level spatial model of the profit-maximizing fumigation decision. The first dataset includes detailed field-level information regarding the costs and yields associated with alternative fumigants obtained from a multi-disciplinary research project. The second includes chemical-specific California use regulations regarding treatment rates, buffer zones, and other restrictions. The third includes information on the shapes and sizes of strawberry fields in California. Using these data, the optimization model computes the profit-maximizing treatment for each field including pattern of treatment and number of acres treated per day, etc. Field-level results are aggregated to evaluate the impact of regional pesticide regulations, and then to estimate the industry-level effects of current and proposed pesticide use regulations. We model the effects of the entire regulatory system on the fumigation decisions made by farmers. The restrictions on fumigants are integrated into a field-level programming model of a grower's fumigant decision choice. The program calculates the optimal fumigation plan for a field, given the field's size and shape, and use regulations, and per-acre costs and returns associated with each fumigant. The resulting field-level choices are aggregated in order to check for consistency with township caps. If caps are exceeded, the model is rerun using a number of allocation rules. All choices for all fields are aggregated in order to obtain industry-level results. We perform this procedure for the current set of restrictions and for several alternative sets, assessing the profitability of each alternative. For example, we remove the existing township caps on 1,3-D and evaluate how much the results change. We include varying buffer zone restrictions on chloropicrin, and evaluate whether growers' fumigant choices are sensitive to the size of the buffer zone. Relevance Environmental regulation of agriculture is becoming increasingly important. By explicitly analyzing the effect of regulations affecting methyl bromide alternatives in a model that includes both the spatial dimensions of some regulations and the costs and yields associated with each alternative, we will obtain a more detailed and accurate assessment of the costs of these regulations than is currently available. Our results will provide a greater understanding of the effects of these regulations on industry profitability, and how these regulations interact. Our model can be applied to other cases of pesticide regulations. Given the increasing importance of environmental regulation in agriculture, it is important to aid policymakers in understanding how regulations interact with each other, possibly in unexpected ways.Environmental Economics and Policy,

A morphological segmentation approach to determining bar lengths

Bars are important drivers of galaxy evolution, influencing many physical processes and properties. Characterising bars is a difficult task, especially in large-scale surveys. In this work, we propose a novel morphological segmentation technique for determining bar lengths based on deep learning. We develop U-Nets capable of decomposing galaxy images into pixel masks highlighting the regions corresponding to bars and spiral arms. We demonstrate the versatility of this technique through applying our models to galaxy images from two different observational datasets with different source imagery, and to RGB colour and monochromatic galaxy imaging. We apply our models to analyse SDSS and Subaru HSC imaging of barred galaxies from the NA10 and SAMI catalogues in order to determine the dependence of bar length on stellar mass, morphology, redshift and the spin parameter proxy $\lambda_{R_e}$. Based on the predicted bar masks, we show that the relative bar scale length varies with morphology, with early type galaxies hosting longer bars. While bars are longer in more massive galaxies in absolute terms, relative to the galaxy disc they are actually shorter. We also find that the normalised bar length decreases with increasing redshift, with bars in early-type galaxies exhibiting the strongest rate of decline. We show that it is possible to distinguish spiral arms and bars in monochrome imaging, although for a given galaxy the estimated length in monochrome tends to be longer than in colour imaging. Our morphological segmentation technique can be efficiently applied to study bars in large-scale surveys and even in cosmological simulations.Comment: 22 pages, 18 figures, submitted to MNRA

Assessment of Electricity Decarbonization Scenarios for New Zealand and Great Britain using a Plant Dispatch and Electrical Energy Storage Modelling Framework

This paper proposes a methodology to assess the impact of alternative electricity generation and energy storage scenarios for meeting electricity demand on a national level. The method combines real and synthetic electricity generation and demand data to investigate different decarbonization strategies using solar and wind generation and electrical energy storage. This method is applied to provide relevant case studies for two geographically similar electricity systems in New Zealand and Great Britain. Newly available solar and wind data sets at hourly resolution are used within this method for these systems to assess the potential contribution of these technologies and as such, to refresh understanding of the impact of these technologies on decarbonization strategies against historical and future demand patterns. Although wind, solar and storage technologies are found to reduce the carbon emissions in both electricity systems, a key result is quantifying the impact this has on traditional generation as a backup resource. In New Zealand an investment in wind and solar equivalent to less than 15% of the wind/solar capacity in Great Britain is found to (i) reduce fossil fuel use to less than 2% of annual electricity generation requirements in the data assessed and (ii) remove the need for continuous operation of fossil fuel plants. Further, it is shown that existing hydro storage potential could be used to create near complete decarbonization of New Zealand electricity

HDX and In Silico Docking Reveal that Excipients Stabilize G-CSF via a Combination of Preferential Exclusion and Specific Hotspot Interactions

Assuring the stability of therapeutic proteins is a major challenge in the biopharmaceutical industry, and a better molecular understanding of the mechanisms through which formulations influence their stability is an ongoing priority. While the preferential exclusion effects of excipients are well known, the additional presence and impact of specific protein–excipient interactions have proven to be more elusive to identify and characterize. We have taken a combined approach of in silico molecular docking and hydrogen deuterium exchange-mass spectrometry (HDX-MS) to characterize the interactions between granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF), and some common excipients. These interactions were related to their influence on the thermal-melting temperatures (Tm) for the nonreversible unfolding of G-CSF in liquid formulations. The residue-level interaction sites predicted in silico correlated well with those identified experimentally and highlighted the potential impact of specific excipient interactions on the Tm of G-CSF

Supporting home care for the dying: an evaluation of healthcare professionals' perspectives of an individually tailored hospice at home service

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To explore health care professionals' perspective of hospice at home service that has different components, individually tailored to meet the needs of patients. BACKGROUND: Over 50% of adults diagnosed with a terminal illness and the majority of people who have cancer, prefer to be cared for and to die in their own home. Despite this, most deaths occur in hospital. Increasing the options available for patients, including their place of care and death is central to current UK policy initiatives. Hospice at home services aim to support patients to remain at home, yet there are wide variations in the design of services and delivery. A hospice at home service was developed to provide various components (accompanied transfer home, crisis intervention and hospice aides) that could be tailored to meet the individual needs of patients. DESIGN: An evaluation study. METHODS: Data were collected from 75 health care professionals. District nurses participated in one focus group (13) and 31 completed an electronic survey. Palliative care specialist nurses participated in a focus group (9). One hospital discharge co-ordinator and two general practitioners participated in semi-structured interviews and a further 19 general practitioners completed the electronic survey. RESULTS: Health care professionals reported the impact and value of each of the components of the service, as helping to support patients to remain at home, by individually tailoring care. They also positively reported that support for family carers appeared to enable them to continue coping, rapid access to the service was suggested to contribute to faster hospital discharges and the crisis intervention service was identified as helping patients remain in their own home, where they wanted to be. CONCLUSIONS: Health care professionals perceived that the additional individualised support provided by this service contributed to enabling patients to continue be cared for and to die at home in their place of choice. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: This service offers various components of a hospice at home service, enabling a tailor made package to meet individual and local area needs. Developing an individually tailored package of care appears to be able to meet specific needs

The Contribution of the Pineal Gland on Daily Rhythms and Masking in Diurnal Grass Rats, Arvicanthis niloticus

Melatonin is a hormone rhythmically secreted at night by the pineal gland in vertebrates. In diurnal mammals, melatonin is present during the inactive phase of the rest/activity cycle, and in primates it directly facilitates sleep and decreases body temperature. However, the role of the pineal gland for the promotion of sleep at night has not yet been studied in non-primate diurnal mammalian species. Here, the authors directly examined the hypothesis that the pineal gland contributes to diurnality in Nile grass rats by decreasing activity and increasing sleep at night, and that this could occur via effects on circadian mechanisms or masking, or both. Removing the pineal gland had no effect on the hourly distribution of activity across a 12:12 light-dark (LD) cycle or on the patterns of sleep-like behavior at night. Masking effects of light at night on activity were also not significantly different in pinealectomized and control grass rats, as 1h pulses of light stimulated increases in activity of sham and pinealectomized animals to a similar extent. In addition, the circadian regulation of activity was unaffected by the surgical condition of the animals. Our results suggest that the pineal gland does not contribute to diurnality in the grass rat, thus highlighting the complexity of temporal niche transitions. The current data raise interesting questions about how and why genetic and neural mechanisms linking melatonin to sleep regulatory systems might vary among mammals that reached a diurnal niche via parallel and independent pathways