Spectroscopic Confirmation of a Massive Red-Sequence-Selected Galaxy Cluster at z = 1.34 in the SpARCS-South Cluster Survey

The Spitzer Adaptation of the Red-sequence Cluster Survey (SpARCS) is a z'-passband imaging survey, consisting of deep (z' ~ 24 AB) observations made from both hemispheres using the CFHT 3.6m and CTIO 4m telescopes. The survey was designed with the primary aim of detecting galaxy clusters at z >~ 1. In tandem with pre-existing 3.6um observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope SWIRE Legacy Survey, SpARCS detects clusters using an infrared adaptation of the two-filter red-sequence cluster technique. The total effective area of the SpARCS cluster survey is 41.9 deg^2. In this paper, we provide an overview of the 13.6 deg^2 Southern CTIO/MOSAICII observations. The 28.3 deg^2 Northern CFHT/MegaCam observations are summarized in a companion paper by Muzzin et al. (2008). In this paper, we also report spectroscopic confirmation of SpARCS J003550-431224, a very rich galaxy cluster at z = 1.335, discovered in the ELAIS-S1 field. To date, this is the highest spectroscopically confirmed redshift for a galaxy cluster discovered using the red-sequence technique. Based on nine confirmed members, SpARCS J003550-431224 has a preliminary velocity dispersion of 1050 +/- 230 km/s. With its proven capability for efficient cluster detection, SpARCS is a demonstration that we have entered an era of large, homogeneously-selected z > 1 cluster surveys.Comment: 10 pages, 6 Figures, Submitted to the Ap

Spectroscopic Confirmation of Two Massive Red-Sequence-Selected Galaxy Clusters at z ~ 1.2 in the SpARCS-North Cluster Survey

The Spitzer Adaptation of the Red-sequence Cluster Survey (SpARCS) is a deep z'-band imaging survey covering the Spitzer Wide-Area Infrared Extragalactic Survey (SWIRE) Legacy fields designed to create the first large homogeneously selected sample of massive clusters at z > 1 using an infrared adaptation of the cluster red-sequence method. We present an overview of the northern component of the survey which has been observed with Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT)/MegaCam and covers 28.3 deg^2. The southern component of the survey was observed with Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO)/MOSAICII, covers 13.6 deg^2, and is summarized in a companion paper by Wilson et al. We also present spectroscopic confirmation of two rich cluster candidates at z ~ 1.2. Based on Nod-and-Shuffle spectroscopy from GMOS-N on Gemini, there are 17 and 28 confirmed cluster members in SpARCS J163435+402151 and SpARCS J163852+403843 which have spectroscopic redshifts of 1.1798 and 1.1963, respectively. The clusters have velocity dispersions of 490 ± 140 km s^(–1) and 650 ± 160 km s^(–1), respectively, which imply masses (M_(200)) of (1.0 ± 0.9) × 10^(14) M_⊙ and (2.4 ± 1.8) × 10^(14) M_⊙. Confirmation of these candidates as bonafide massive clusters demonstrates that two-filter imaging is an effective, yet observationally efficient, method for selecting clusters at z > 1

Evolutionary biology for the 21st century

New theoretical and conceptual frameworks are required for evolutionary biology to capitalize on the wealth of data now becoming available from the study of genomes, phenotypes, and organisms - including humans - in their natural environments.Molecular and Cellular BiologyOrganismic and Evolutionary Biolog

Concordance of freshwater and terrestrial biodiversity

Efforts to set global conservation priorities have largely ignored freshwater diversity, thereby excluding some of the world\u27s most speciose, threatened, and valuable taxa. Using a new global map of freshwater ecoregions and distribution data for about 13,300 fish species, we identify regions of exceptional freshwater biodiversity and assess their overlap with regions of equivalent terrestrial importance. Overlap is greatest in the tropics and is higher than expected by chance. These high-congruence areas offer opportunities for integrated conservation efforts, which could be of particular value when economic conditions force conservation organizations to narrow their focus. Areas of low overlap-missed by current terrestrially based priority schemes-merit independent freshwater conservation efforts. These results provide new information to conservation investors setting priorities at global or regional scales and argue for a potential reallocation of future resources to achieve representation of overlooked biomes. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

CFHTLenS tomographic weak lensing: Quantifying accurate redshift distributions

The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey (CFHTLenS) comprises deep multi-colour (u*g'r'i'z') photometry spanning 154 square degrees, with accurate photometric redshifts and shape measurements. We demonstrate that the redshift probability distribution function summed over galaxies provides an accurate representation of the galaxy redshift distribution accounting for random and catastrophic errors for galaxies with best fitting photometric redshifts z_p < 1.3. We present cosmological constraints using tomographic weak gravitational lensing by large-scale structure. We use two broad redshift bins 0.5 < z_p <= 0.85 and 0.85 < z_p <= 1.3 free of intrinsic alignment contamination, and measure the shear correlation function on angular scales in the range ~1-40 arcmin. We show that the problematic redshift scaling of the shear signal, found in previous CFHTLS data analyses, does not afflict the CFHTLenS data. For a flat Lambda-CDM model and a fixed matter density Omega_m=0.27, we find the normalisation of the matter power spectrum sigma_8=0.771 \pm 0.041. When combined with cosmic microwave background data (WMAP7), baryon acoustic oscillation data (BOSS), and a prior on the Hubble constant from the HST distance ladder, we find that CFHTLenS improves the precision of the fully marginalised parameter estimates by an average factor of 1.5-2. Combining our results with the above cosmological probes, we find Omega_m=0.2762 \pm 0.0074 and sigma_8=0.802 \pm 0.013.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figures, submitted to MNRA

A Once and Future Gulf of Mexico Ecosystem: Restoration Recommendations of an Expert Working Group

The Deepwater Horizon (DWH) well blowout released more petroleum hydrocarbons into the marine environment than any previous U.S. oil spill (4.9 million barrels), fouling marine life, damaging deep sea and shoreline habitats and causing closures of economically valuable fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico. A suite of pollutants — liquid and gaseous petroleum compounds plus chemical dispersants — poured into ecosystems that had already been stressed by overfishing, development and global climate change. Beyond the direct effects that were captured in dramatic photographs of oiled birds in the media, it is likely that there are subtle, delayed, indirect and potentially synergistic impacts of these widely dispersed, highly bioavailable and toxic hydrocarbons and chemical dispersants on marine life from pelicans to salt marsh grasses and to deep-sea animals. As tragic as the DWH blowout was, it has stimulated public interest in protecting this economically, socially and environmentally critical region. The 2010 Mabus Report, commissioned by President Barack Obama and written by the secretary of the Navy, provides a blueprint for restoring the Gulf that is bold, visionary and strategic. It is clear that we need not only to repair the damage left behind by the oil but also to go well beyond that to restore the anthropogenically stressed and declining Gulf ecosystems to prosperity-sustaining levels of historic productivity. For this report, we assembled a team of leading scientists with expertise in coastal and marine ecosystems and with experience in their restoration to identify strategies and specific actions that will revitalize and sustain the Gulf coastal economy. Because the DWH spill intervened in ecosystems that are intimately interconnected and already under stress, and will remain stressed from global climate change, we argue that restoration of the Gulf must go beyond the traditional “in-place, in-kind” restoration approach that targets specific damaged habitats or species. A sustainable restoration of the Gulf of Mexico after DWH must: 1. Recognize that ecosystem resilience has been compromised by multiple human interventions predating the DWH spill; 2. Acknowledge that significant future environmental change is inevitable and must be factored into restoration plans and actions for them to be durable; 3. Treat the Gulf as a complex and interconnected network of ecosystems from shoreline to deep sea; and 4. Recognize that human and ecosystem productivity in the Gulf are interdependent, and that human needs from and effects on the Gulf must be integral to restoration planning. With these principles in mind, we provide the scientific basis for a sustainable restoration program along three themes: 1. Assess and repair damage from DWH and other stresses on the Gulf; 2. Protect existing habitats and populations; and 3. Integrate sustainable human use with ecological processes in the Gulf of Mexico. Under these themes, 15 historically informed, adaptive, ecosystem-based restoration actions are presented to recover Gulf resources and rebuild the resilience of its ecosystem. The vision that guides our recommendations fundamentally imbeds the restoration actions within the context of the changing environment so as to achieve resilience of resources, human communities and the economy into the indefinite future

Once and Future Gulf of Mexico Ecosystem: Restoration Recommendations of an Expert Working Group

The Deepwater Horizon (DWH) well blowout released more petroleum hydrocarbons into the marine environment than any previous U.S. oil spill (4.9 million barrels), fouling marine life, damaging deep sea and shoreline habitats and causing closures of economically valuable fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico. A suite of pollutants—liquid and gaseous petroleum compounds plus chemical dispersants—poured into ecosystems that had already been stressed by overfishing, development and global climate change. Beyond the direct effects that were captured in dramatic photographs of oiled birds in the media, it is likely that there are subtle, delayed, indirect and potentially synergistic impacts of these widely dispersed, highly bioavailable and toxic hydrocarbons and chemical dispersants on marine life from pelicans to salt marsh grasses and to deep-sea animals. As tragic as the DWH blowout was, it has stimulated public interest in protecting this economically, socially and environmentally critical region. The 2010 Mabus Report, commissioned by President Barack Obama and written by the secretary of the Navy, provides a blueprint for restoring the Gulf that is bold, visionary and strategic. It is clear that we need not only to repair the damage left behind by the oil but also to go well beyond that to restore the anthropogenically stressed and declining Gulf ecosystems to prosperity-sustaining levels of historic productivity. For this report, we assembled a team of leading scientists with expertise in coastal and marine ecosystems and with experience in their restoration to identify strategies and specific actions that will revitalize and sustain the Gulf coastal economy. Because the DWH spill intervened in ecosystems that are intimately interconnected and already under stress, and will remain stressed from global climate change, we argue that restoration of the Gulf must go beyond the traditional "in-place, in-kind" restoration approach that targets specific damaged habitats or species. A sustainable restoration of the Gulf of Mexico after DWH must: 1. Recognize that ecosystem resilience has been compromised by multiple human interventions predating the DWH spill; 2. Acknowledge that significant future environmental change is inevitable and must be factored into restoration plans and actions for them to be durable; 3. Treat the Gulf as a complex and interconnected network of ecosystems from shoreline to deep sea; and 4. Recognize that human and ecosystem productivity in the Gulf are interdependent, and that human needs from and effects on the Gulf must be integral to restoration planning. With these principles in mind, the authors provide the scientific basis for a sustainable restoration program along three themes: 1. Assess and repair damage from DWH and other stresses on the Gulf; 2. Protect existing habitats and populations; and 3. Integrate sustainable human use with ecological processes in the Gulf of Mexico. Under these themes, 15 historically informed, adaptive, ecosystem-based restoration actions are presented to recover Gulf resources and rebuild the resilience of its ecosystem. The vision that guides our recommendations fundamentally imbeds the restoration actions within the context of the changing environment so as to achieve resilience of resources, human communities and the economy into the indefinite future

Galaxy-galaxy weak lensing in SDSS: intrinsic alignments and shear calibration errors

Galaxy-galaxy lensing has emerged as a powerful probe of the dark matter halos of galaxies, but is subject to contamination if intrinsically aligned satellites of the lens galaxy are used as part of the source sample. We present a measurement of this intrinsic shear using 200,747 lens galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) spectroscopic sample and a sample of satellites selected using photometric redshifts. The mean intrinsic shear at transverse separations of 30--446$h^{-1}$ kpc is constrained to be $-0.0062<\Delta\gamma<+0.0066$ (99.9 per cent confidence, including identified systematics), which limits contamination of the galaxy-galaxy lensing signal to at most $\sim 15$ per cent on these scales. We present these limits as a function of transverse separation and lens luminosity. We furthermore investigate shear calibration biases in the SDSS, which can also affect galaxy-galaxy lensing, and conclude that the shear amplitude is calibrated to better than 18 per cent. This includes noise-induced calibration biases in the ellipticity, which are small for the sample considered here, but which can be more important if low signal-to-noise or poorly resolved source galaxies are used.Comment: 23 pages, 13 figures, matches MNRAS accepted version. This is a preprint of an Article accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. (c)2004 The Royal Astronomical Societ

Treatment and outcome of fracture-related infection of the clavicle

Introduction: The number of operatively treated clavicle fractures has increased over the past decades. Consequently, this has led to an increase in secondary procedures required to treat complications such as fracture-related infection (FRI). The primary objective of this study was to assess the clinical and functional outcome of patients treated for FRI of the clavicle. The secondary objectives were to evaluate the healthcare costs and propose a standardized protocol for the surgical management of this complication. Methods: All patients with a clavicle fracture who underwent open reduction and internal fixation (ORIF) between 1 January 2015 and 1 March 2022 were retrospectively evaluated. This study included patients with an FRI who were diagnosed and treated according to the recommendations of a multidisciplinary team at the University Hospitals Leuven, Belgium. Results: We evaluated 626 patients with 630 clavicle fractures who underwent ORIF. In total, 28 patients were diagnosed with an FRI. Of these, eight (29%) underwent definitive implant removal, five (18%) underwent debridement, antimicrobial treatment and implant retention, and fourteen patients (50%) had their implant exchanged in either a single-stage procedure, a two-stage procedure or after multiple revisions. One patient (3.6%) underwent resection of the clavicle. Twelve patients (43%) underwent autologous bone grafting (tricortical iliac crest bone graft (n = 6), free vascularized fibular graft (n = 5), cancellous bone graft (n = 1)) to reconstruct the bone defect. The median follow-up was 32.3 (P25-P75: 23.9–51.1) months. Two patients (7.1%) experienced a recurrence of infection. The functional outcome was satisfactory, with 26 out of 28 patients (93%) having full range of motion. The median healthcare cost was € 11.506 (P25-P75: € 7.953–23.798) per patient. Conclusion: FRI is a serious complication that can occur after the surgical treatment of clavicle fractures. In our opinion, when treated adequately using a multidisciplinary patient-specific approach, the outcome of patients with an FRI of the clavicle is good. The median healthcare costs of these patients are up to 3.5 times higher compared to non-infected operatively treated clavicle fractures. Although not studied individually, we consider factors such as the size of the bone defect, condition of the soft tissue, and patient demand important when it comes to guiding our surgical decision making in cases of osseous defects.</p