Sodium Atoms in the Lunar Exotail: Observed Velocity and Spatial Distributions

The lunar sodium tail extends long distances due to radiation pressure on sodium atoms in the lunar exosphere. Our earlier observations measured the average radial velocity of sodium atoms moving down the lunar tail beyond Earth (i.e., near the anti-lunar point) to be ~ 12.5 km/s. Here we use the Wisconsin H-alpha Mapper to obtain the first kinematically resolved maps of the intensity and velocity distribution of this emission over a 15 x 15 deg region on the sky near the anti-lunar point. We present both spatially and spectrally resolved observations obtained over four nights bracketing new Moon in October 2007. The spatial distribution of the sodium atoms is elongated along the ecliptic with the location of the peak intensity drifting 3 deg east along the ecliptic per night. Preliminary modeling results suggest the spatial and velocity distributions in the sodium exotail are sensitive to the near surface lunar sodium velocity distribution. Future observations of this sort along with detailed modeling offer new opportunities to describe the time history of lunar surface sputtering over several days

Information Literacy in Students Entering Higher Education in the French Speaking Community of Belgium: lessons learned from an evaluation

Although universities are providing more and more information literacy training for their undergraduate students, the students’ real level of information literacy at the beginning of their studies has never been assessed. Hence EduDOC has decided to team up with the CIUF ‘Library’ Commission in order to organize a wide study aiming at objectively describing this initial level of information literacy, at identifying the students’ main weaknesses, as well as allowing instructors to adjust their training on this basis. The questionnaire was based on a similar study carried out in Québec and contains 20 questions grouped in five themes relating to information search steps. It was sent in September 2007 to a random sample of students entering a higher education institution in the French Speaking Community of Belgium for the first time. The students’ rather poor results confirm that organizing an information literacy program is imperative if students are to perform well in their studies.Peer reviewe

Age at first birth in women is genetically associated with increased risk of schizophrenia

Prof. Paunio on PGC:n jäsenPrevious studies have shown an increased risk for mental health problems in children born to both younger and older parents compared to children of average-aged parents. We previously used a novel design to reveal a latent mechanism of genetic association between schizophrenia and age at first birth in women (AFB). Here, we use independent data from the UK Biobank (N = 38,892) to replicate the finding of an association between predicted genetic risk of schizophrenia and AFB in women, and to estimate the genetic correlation between schizophrenia and AFB in women stratified into younger and older groups. We find evidence for an association between predicted genetic risk of schizophrenia and AFB in women (P-value = 1.12E-05), and we show genetic heterogeneity between younger and older AFB groups (P-value = 3.45E-03). The genetic correlation between schizophrenia and AFB in the younger AFB group is -0.16 (SE = 0.04) while that between schizophrenia and AFB in the older AFB group is 0.14 (SE = 0.08). Our results suggest that early, and perhaps also late, age at first birth in women is associated with increased genetic risk for schizophrenia in the UK Biobank sample. These findings contribute new insights into factors contributing to the complex bio-social risk architecture underpinning the association between parental age and offspring mental health.Peer reviewe

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

The Need for Laboratory Measurements and Ab Initio Studies to Aid Understanding of Exoplanetary Atmospheres

Laboratory astrophysics and astrochemistr

Strict paternal inheritance of chloroplast DNA and maternal inheritance of mitochondrial DNA in intraspecific crosses of kiwifruit

International audienc

Strict paternal inheritance of chloroplast DNA and maternal inheritance of mitochondrial DNA in intraspecific crosses of kiwifruit

International audienc

Unusually high Deca-BDE concentrations and new flame retardants in a Canadian Arctic top predator, the glaucous gull

Despite a sustained effort in surveying flame retardants (FRs) in wildlife from industrialized regions, their occurrence in birds or any other wildlife species spanning the Arctic regions, particularly in North America, has received limited attention. This study investigated in the top predator glaucous gull (Larus hyperboreus) breeding in the Eastern Canadian Arctic (Cape Dorset, Nunavut) a comprehensive suite of FRs including unstudied halogenated and non-halogenated FRs of potential health concern, along with legacy organochlorines and mercury. The influence of diet acquired locally and in wintering areas on the tissue contaminant profiles was also investigated using δ15N and δ13C signatures in liver and feathers. The principal constituent in the Deca-brominated diphenyl ether (BDE) mixture, BDE-209, was remarkably the most concentrated PBDE congener determined in liver samples of Eastern Canadian Arctic glaucous gulls. This suggests dietary exposure from the local marine food web and perhaps also from nearby community landfills. Moreover, this study revealed for the first time the presence of 16 emerging halogenated and non-halogenated FRs in glaucous gulls from this Arctic region including HBB, DDC-CO (anti and syn isomers), PBEB, EHTBB, BEHTBP as well as a series of organophosphate esters (OPEs) (TCEP, TCIPP, TPP, TDCIPP, TDBPP, TBNP, TBOEP, TBEP, TCrP, EHDPP, and TEHP). With the exception of BDE-209, concentrations of other halogenated FRs and organochlorines were found to be in the lower range in liver of Eastern Canadian Arctic glaucous gulls compared to individuals from other circumpolar populations (Svalbard and Greenland). Mercury and methylmercury concentrations, however, were greater than reported elsewhere for glaucous gull populations

Remote land use impacts on river flows through atmospheric teleconnections

The effects of land-use change on river flows have usually been explained by changes within a river basin. However, land-atmosphere feedback such as moisture recycling can link local land-use change to modifications of remote precipitation, with further knock-on effects on distant river flows. Here, we look at river flow changes caused by both land-use change and water use within the basin, as well as modifications of imported and exported atmospheric moisture. We show that in some of the world's largest basins, precipitation was influenced more strongly by land-use change occurring outside than inside the basin. Moreover, river flows in several non-transboundary basins were considerably regulated by land-use changes in foreign countries. We conclude that regional patterns of land-use change and moisture recycling are important to consider in explaining runoff change, integrating land and water management, and informing water governance.Water Resource