Imprint of cyclone Phailin on water quality of Chilika lagoon

The very severe cyclonic storm Phailin, a category-5 hurricane, was developed over the north of Andaman and Nicobar Islands on 9 October 2013. Subsequently, it propagated towards north-northwest and made landfall at the Gopalpur coast, Odisha on 12 October1. Chilika lagoon, the largest brackish water lagoon in Asia, is in close proximity to Gopalpur

Distribution of hydro-biological parameters in coastal waters off Rushikulya Estuary, East Coast of India: A premonsoon case study

The hydro-biological parameters of coastal waters off Rushikulya estuary was investigated during premonsoon 2011. Important hydro-biological parameters such as water temperature, salinity, pH, DO, NO2, NO3, NH4, PO4, SiO4, TSM, Chl-α, phytoplankton and zooplankton were measured during the present study. Temperature established a strong positive correlation with salinity and pH during the present study. Chl-α found in positive relation with NO3, SiO4 and TSM. Analysis of variance revealed significant monthly variation in pH, salinity and TSM. Significant station wise variation was observed in DO and most of the nutrients i.e., NO3, NH4, PO4, SiO4. A total of 119 species of phytoplankton were identified of which 84 species are of diatoms, 22 species of dinoflagellates, 7 species of green algae, 5 species of cyanobacteria (blue green algae) and 1 species of cocolithophore. Phytoplankton abundance varied between 25543 (Nos. L-1) and 36309 (Nos. L-1). Diatoms dominated the phytoplankton community followed by dinoflagellates in all the months. Diatoms contributed to 82-89 of the total phytoplankton population density whereas dinoflagellates contributed to 6-12. The regression between Chl-α and phytoplankton abundance resulted with weak relation (R2 = 0.042). Zooplankton fauna composed of 134 species of holoplankton and 20 types of meroplankton were encountered during the study period. Zooplankton population dominated by copepod during all months and accounted for 74 to 85 to the total zooplankton. The population density ranged from 6959 to 35869 Nos./10 m3. Analysis of variance explained no significant variation in total zooplankton abundance and also for different groups of zooplankton

Oil pollution in Chilika lagoon: An anthropogenic threat to biodiversity

Chilika lagoon is situated on the east coast of India and is spread over three districts of Odisha, namely Puri, Khordha and Ganjam. The water spread area varies between 1165 and 906sq.km during monsoon and summer respectively. It is a hot spot for biodiversity, and the largest wintering ground for migratory avian guests on the Indian sub-continent

Probing Dark Matter

Recent novel observations have probed the baryonic fraction of the galactic dark matter that has eluded astronomers for decades. Late in 1993, the MACHO and EROS collaborations announced in this journal the detection of transient and achromatic brightenings of a handful of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud that are best interpreted as gravitational microlensing by low-mass foreground objects (MACHOS). This tantalized astronomers, for it implied that the population of cool, compact objects these lenses represent could be the elusive dark matter of our galactic halo. A year later in 1994, Sackett et al. reported the discovery of a red halo in the galaxy NGC 5907 that seems to follow the inferred radial distribution of its dark matter. This suggested that dwarf stars could constitute its missing component. Since NGC 5907 is similar to the Milky Way in type and radius, some surmised that the solution of the galactic dark matter problem was an abundance of ordinary low-mass stars. Now Bahcall et al., using the Wide-Field Camera of the recently repaired Hubble Space Telescope, have dashed this hope.Comment: 3 pages, Plain TeX, no figures, published as a News and Views in Nature 373, 191 (1995

Biological implications of cyclone Hudhud in the coastal waters of northwestern Bay of Bengal

A very severe cyclonic storm, Hudhud, equivalent to a category-4 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale (SSHWS), originated in the Andaman Sea on 6 October 2014. The cyclone propagated west-northwestward and made landfall near Visakhapatnam, northern coast of Andhra Pradesh on 12 October 2014. The study area, Gopalpur (southern coast of Odisha) was in the active influence zone of Hudhud and in close proximity (~260 km north) to the landfall point (Figure 1). This region is an important mass nesting rookery for vulnerable olive ridley sea turtles, which aggregate for breeding in the coastal waters off Odisha from November to May1. This region is also identified as a time-series station under the SATellite Coastal and Oceanographic REsearch (SATCORE) programme coordinated by the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS); it is being monitored since 2009

Time-domain Study of the Young Massive Cluster Westerlund 2 with the Hubble Space Telescope. I

Time-domain studies of pre-main-sequence (PMS) stars have long been used to investigate star properties during their early evolutionary phases and to trace the evolution of circumstellar environments. Historically these studies have been confined to the nearest, low-density, star-forming regions. We used the Wide Field Camera 3 on board the Hubble Space Telescope to extend, for the first time, the study of PMS variability to one of the few young massive clusters in the Milky Way, Westerlund 2. Our analysis reveals that at least one-third of the intermediate- and low-mass PMS stars in Westerlund 2 are variable. Based on the characteristics of their light curves, we classified ~11% of the variable stars as weak-line T Tauri candidates, ~52% as classical T Tauri candidates, ~5% as dippers, and ~26% as bursters. In addition, we found that 2% of the stars below 6 M ⊙ (~6% of the variables) are eclipsing binaries, with orbital periods shorter than 80 days. The spatial distribution of the different populations of variable PMS stars suggests that stellar feedback and UV radiation from massive stars play an important role in the evolution of circumstellar and planetary disks

Birth and early evolution of a planetary nebula

The final expulsion of gas by a star as it forms a planetary nebula --- the ionized shell of gas often observed surrounding a young white dwarf --- is one of the most poorly understood stages of stellar evolution. Such nebulae form extremely rapidly (about 100 years for the ionization) and so the formation process is inherently difficult to observe. Particularly puzzling is how a spherical star can produce a highly asymmetric nebula with collimated outflows. Here we report optical observations of the Stingray Nebula which has become an ionized planetary nebula within the past few decades. We find that the collimated outflows are already evident, and we have identified the nebular structure that focuses the outflows. We have also found a companion star, reinforcing previous suspicions that binary companions play an important role in shaping planetary nebulae and changing the direction of successive outflows.Comment: 9 pages + 3 figures. To appear in Nature, 2 April 199

A Multi-Label Predictor for Identifying the Subcellular Locations of Singleplex and Multiplex Eukaryotic Proteins

Subcellular locations of proteins are important functional attributes. An effective and efficient subcellular localization predictor is necessary for rapidly and reliably annotating subcellular locations of proteins. Most of existing subcellular localization methods are only used to deal with single-location proteins. Actually, proteins may simultaneously exist at, or move between, two or more different subcellular locations. To better reflect characteristics of multiplex proteins, it is highly desired to develop new methods for dealing with them. In this paper, a new predictor, called Euk-ECC-mPLoc, by introducing a powerful multi-label learning approach which exploits correlations between subcellular locations and hybridizing gene ontology with dipeptide composition information, has been developed that can be used to deal with systems containing both singleplex and multiplex eukaryotic proteins. It can be utilized to identify eukaryotic proteins among the following 22 locations: (1) acrosome, (2) cell membrane, (3) cell wall, (4) centrosome, (5) chloroplast, (6) cyanelle, (7) cytoplasm, (8) cytoskeleton, (9) endoplasmic reticulum, (10) endosome, (11) extracellular, (12) Golgi apparatus, (13) hydrogenosome, (14) lysosome, (15) melanosome, (16) microsome, (17) mitochondrion, (18) nucleus, (19) peroxisome, (20) spindle pole body, (21) synapse, and (22) vacuole. Experimental results on a stringent benchmark dataset of eukaryotic proteins by jackknife cross validation test show that the average success rate and overall success rate obtained by Euk-ECC-mPLoc were 69.70% and 81.54%, respectively, indicating that our approach is quite promising. Particularly, the success rates achieved by Euk-ECC-mPLoc for small subsets were remarkably improved, indicating that it holds a high potential for simulating the development of the area. As a user-friendly web-server, Euk-ECC-mPLoc is freely accessible to the public at the website http://levis.tongji.edu.cn:8080/bioinfo/Euk-ECC-mPLoc/. We believe that Euk-ECC-mPLoc may become a useful high-throughput tool, or at least play a complementary role to the existing predictors in identifying subcellular locations of eukaryotic proteins

The Galactic Halo from Microlensing

The status of the microlensing search for galactic dark matter in the form of massive astronomical compact halo objects (machos) is reviewed. Unresolved issues are discussed, as well as possible ways to solve these