LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products

(Abridged) We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A vast array of science will be enabled by a single wide-deep-fast sky survey, and LSST will have unique survey capability in the faint time domain. The LSST design is driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system sited at Cerro Pach\'{o}n in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg$^2$ field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel camera. The standard observing sequence will consist of pairs of 15-second exposures in a given field, with two such visits in each pointing in a given night. With these repeats, the LSST system is capable of imaging about 10,000 square degrees of sky in a single filter in three nights. The typical 5$\sigma$ point-source depth in a single visit in $r$ will be $\sim 24.5$ (AB). The project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations by 2022. The survey area will be contained within 30,000 deg$^2$ with $\delta<+34.5^\circ$, and will be imaged multiple times in six bands, $ugrizy$, covering the wavelength range 320--1050 nm. About 90\% of the observing time will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will uniformly observe a 18,000 deg$^2$ region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the anticipated 10 years of operations, and yield a coadded map to $r\sim27.5$. The remaining 10\% of the observing time will be allocated to projects such as a Very Deep and Fast time domain survey. The goal is to make LSST data products, including a relational database of about 32 trillion observations of 40 billion objects, available to the public and scientists around the world.Comment: 57 pages, 32 color figures, version with high-resolution figures available from https://www.lsst.org/overvie

LIBOR: Origins, Economics, Crisis, Scandal, and Reform

The London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) is a widely used indicator of funding conditions in the interbank market. As of 2013, LIBOR underpins more than $300 trillion of financial contracts, including swaps and futures, in addition to trillions more in variable-rate mortgage and student loans. LIBOR's volatile behavior during the financial crisis provoked questions surrounding its credibility. Ongoing regulatory investigations have uncovered misconduct by a number of financial institutions. Policymakers across the globe now face the task of reforming LIBOR in the aftermath of the scandal and crisis

TRY plant trait database – enhanced coverage and open access

Plant traits - the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants - determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait‐based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits - almost complete coverage for ‘plant growth form’. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait–environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives

Design and evaluation of a rabbitry structure at different environments and feeding requirements

This study, focused on a designed cage structure, had a main objective on evaluating the growth performance of caged rabbits at three (3) stocking/spacing reared at three (3) growing conditions. Thirty-six (36) samples of 35-days old Californian White x Local (CWxL) rabbits were reared under three (3) blockings (air-conditioned room, open rabbitry housing and under the trees’ shade). Moreover, spacing (A treatment) and feed plan (B treatment) was organized in a 3 x 4 Factorial RCBD. A 2nd factor (feed plan) was used in order to determine the interaction effect of spacing on the rabbits fed with varying levels of nutrition. Results indicated that the treatments and blockings (growing conditions) had significant effects on the Body Weight Gains (BWGs) of rabbits. Similarly, the BWGs were significantly affected by the feed plan but was not affected by spacing and the interaction of these two (2) factors. While no significant effects on BWGs were found out on rabbits placed in small (ai), medium (a2) and large (a3) cages, as highest BWGs were seen in the rabbits in medium cages, this cage structure (381 mm x 508 mm x 406 mm per rabbit) seemed enough to properly house the rabbits

Archived - General Information (DO NOT USE)

DO NOT USE - The goal of this component was to document the data collection process of the Silent Cities Dataset. This component is just left for archive

Containment measures

OBSOLETE (project finished) - Description of containment measures during COVID'19 lockdown, in the context of SIlent Cities project. Please request access to Silent Cities if neede