The Rapid Imaging Planetary Spectrograph

The Rapid Imaging Planetary Spectrograph (RIPS) was designed as a long-slit high-resolution spectrograph for the specific application of studying atmospheres of spatially extended solar system bodies. With heritage in terrestrial airglow instruments, RIPS uses an echelle grating and order-sorting filters to obtain optical spectra at resolving powers up to R~127,000. An ultra-narrowband image from the reflective slit jaws is captured concurrently with each spectrum on the same EMCCD detector. The "rapid" portion of RIPS' moniker stems from its ability to capture high frame rate data streams, which enables the established technique known as "lucky imaging" to be extended to spatially resolved spectroscopy. Resonantly scattered emission lines of alkali metals, in particular, are sufficiently bright to be measured in short integration times. RIPS has mapped the distributions of Na and K emissions in Mercury's tenuous exosphere, which exhibit dynamic behavior coupled to the planet's plasma and meteoroid environment. An important application is daylight observations of Mercury at solar telescopes since synoptic context on the exosphere's distribution comprises valuable ground-based support for the upcoming BepiColombo orbital mission. As a conventional long slit spectrograph, RIPS has targeted the Moon's surface-bound exosphere where structure in linewidth and brightness as a function of tangent altitude are observed. At the Galilean moons, RIPS can study the plasma interaction with Io and place new constraints on the sputtered atmosphere of Europa, which in turn provides insight into the salinity of Europa's subsurface ocean. The instrumental design and construction are described herein, and these astronomical observations are presented to illustrate RIPS' performance as a visiting instrument at three different telescope facilities.Comment: Accepted for publication by Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (07-2023

Cortical AAV-CNTF gene therapy combined with intraspinal mesenchymal precursor cell transplantation promotes functional and morphological outcomes after spinal cord injury in adult rats

Ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF) promotes survival and enhances long-distance regeneration of injured axons in parts of the adult CNS. Here we tested whether CNTF gene therapy targeting corticospinal neurons (CSN) in motor-related regions of the cerebral cortex promotes plasticity and regrowth of axons projecting into the female adult F344 rat spinal cord after moderate thoracic (T10) contusion injury (SCI). Cortical neurons were transduced with a bicistronic adeno-associated viral vector (AAV1) expressing a secretory form of CNTF coupled to mCHERRY (AAV-CNTFmCherry) or with control AAV only (AAV-GFP) two weeks prior to SCI. In some animals, viable or nonviable F344 rat mesenchymal precursor cells (rMPCs) were injected into the lesion site two weeks after SCI to modulate the inhibitory environment. Treatment with AAV-CNTFmCherry, as well as with AAV-CNTFmCherry combined with rMPCs, yielded functional improvements over AAV-GFP alone, as assessed by open-field and Ladderwalk analyses. Cyst size was significantly reduced in the AAV-CNTFmCherry plus viable rMPC treatment group. Cortical injections of biotinylated dextran amine (BDA) revealed more BDA-stained axons rostral and alongside cysts in the AAV-CNTFmCherry versus AAV-GFP groups. After AAV-CNTFmCherry treatments, many sprouting mCherry-immunopositive axons were seen rostral to the SCI, and axons were also occasionally found caudal to the injury site. These data suggest that CNTF has the potential to enhance corticospinal repair by transducing parent CNS populations

Spatially explicit integrated modeling and economic valuation of climate driven land use change and its indirect effects

We present an integrated model of the direct consequences of climate change on land use, and the indirect effects of induced land use change upon the natural environment. The model predicts climate-driven shifts in the profitability of alternative uses of agricultural land. Both the direct impact of climate change and the induced shift in land use patterns will cause secondary effects on the water environment, for which agriculture is the major source of diffuse pollution. We model the impact of changes in such pollution on riverine ecosystems showing that these will be spatially heterogeneous. Moreover, we consider further knock-on effects upon the recreational benefits derived from water environments, which we assess using revealed preference methods. This analysis permits a multi-layered examination of the economic consequences of climate change, assessing the sequence of impacts from climate change through farm gross margins, land use, water quality and recreation, both at the individual and catchment scale

The development and validation of a scoring tool to predict the operative duration of elective laparoscopic cholecystectomy

Background: The ability to accurately predict operative duration has the potential to optimise theatre efficiency and utilisation, thus reducing costs and increasing staff and patient satisfaction. With laparoscopic cholecystectomy being one of the most commonly performed procedures worldwide, a tool to predict operative duration could be extremely beneficial to healthcare organisations. Methods: Data collected from the CholeS study on patients undergoing cholecystectomy in UK and Irish hospitals between 04/2014 and 05/2014 were used to study operative duration. A multivariable binary logistic regression model was produced in order to identify significant independent predictors of long (> 90 min) operations. The resulting model was converted to a risk score, which was subsequently validated on second cohort of patients using ROC curves. Results: After exclusions, data were available for 7227 patients in the derivation (CholeS) cohort. The median operative duration was 60 min (interquartile range 45–85), with 17.7% of operations lasting longer than 90 min. Ten factors were found to be significant independent predictors of operative durations > 90 min, including ASA, age, previous surgical admissions, BMI, gallbladder wall thickness and CBD diameter. A risk score was then produced from these factors, and applied to a cohort of 2405 patients from a tertiary centre for external validation. This returned an area under the ROC curve of 0.708 (SE = 0.013, p  90 min increasing more than eightfold from 5.1 to 41.8% in the extremes of the score. Conclusion: The scoring tool produced in this study was found to be significantly predictive of long operative durations on validation in an external cohort. As such, the tool may have the potential to enable organisations to better organise theatre lists and deliver greater efficiencies in care

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Averting biodiversity collapse in tropical forest protected areas

The rapid disruption of tropical forests probably imperils global biodiversity more than any other contemporary phenomenon¹⁻³. With deforestation advancing quickly, protected areas are increasingly becoming final refuges for threatened species and natural ecosystem processes. However, many protected areas in the tropics are themselves vulnerable to human encroachment and other environmental stresses⁴⁻⁹. As pressures mount, it is vital to know whether existing reserves can sustain their biodiversity. A critical constraint in addressing this question has been that data describing a broad array of biodiversity groups have been unavailable for a sufficiently large and representative sample of reserves. Here we present a uniquely comprehensive data set on changes over the past 20 to 30 years in 31 functional groups of species and 21 potential drivers of environmental change, for 60 protected areas stratified across the world’s major tropical regions. Our analysis reveals great variation in reserve ‘health’: about half of all reserves have been effective or performed passably, but the rest are experiencing an erosion of biodiversity that is often alarmingly widespread taxonomically and functionally. Habitat disruption, hunting and forest-product exploitation were the strongest predictors of declining reserve health. Crucially, environmental changes immediately outside reserves seemed nearly as important as those inside in determining their ecological fate, with changes inside reserves strongly mirroring those occurring around them. These findings suggest that tropical protected areas are often intimately linked ecologically to their surrounding habitats, and that a failure to stem broad-scale loss and degradation of such habitats could sharply increase the likelihood of serious biodiversity declines.Keywords: Ecology, Environmental scienc

A corporate conundrum : the reform of Australian rural research and development

This thesis examines the revolution that occurred during the 1980s in the organisation, resourcing and management of Australian rural research and development. This revolution was based upon philosophies that advocated the need for research and development to move from being conducted in disparate and isolated organisations to being market-driven and industryrelevant. The implications of this change, the people responsible for its implementation and the processes used to implement such far-reaching reforms provide the basis for a case study that is rich in controversy and debate. Corporatisation provided the focal point for the reforms experienced in Australian ·rural research and development. As such, the thesis has as its central concern four key questions: what is corporatisation?, why did corporatisation occur? who was involved in the corporatisation process? and, has corporatisation achieved the goals it was designed to attain? An examination of the historical, social, political and economic contexts within which these reforms took place has been undertaken in order to answer these questions. This work is broadened to consider international trends in the management of rural research and development, with New Zealand providing an in-depth comparison. This approach reveals that, contrary to some accounts of the Australian rural research and development reforms as being a seamless and evolutionary process of change, the reforms experienced were ad hoc, sporadic and dependent upon the actions of a few key individuals. This challenges accounts of the past and analyses the impact of government decisionmaking upon organisations and individuals, the nature and extent of reform processes and the problems associated with organisations that must attempt to reconcile both public good and private sector demands

MEK5 and ERK5 are mediators of the pro-myogenic actions of IGF-2

During the differentiation of muscle satellite cells, committed myoblasts respond to specific signalling cues by exiting the cell cycle, migrating, aligning, expressing muscle-specific genes and finally fusing to form multinucleated myotubes. The predominant foetal growth factor, IGF-2, initiates important signals in myogenesis. The aim of this study was to investigate whether ERK5 and its upstream MKK activator, MEK5, were important in the pro-myogenic actions of IGF-2. ERK5 protein levels, specific phosphorylation and kinase activity increased in differentiating C2 myoblasts. ERK5-GFP translocated from the cytoplasm to the nucleus after activation by upstream MEK5, whereas phospho-acceptor site mutated (dominant-negative) ERK5AEF-GFP remained cytoplasmic. Exogenous IGF-2 increased MHC levels, myogenic E box promoter-reporter activity, ERK5 phosphorylation and kinase activity, and rapidly induced nuclear localisation of ERK5. Transfection with antisense Igf2 decreased markers of myogenesis, and reduced ERK5 phosphorylation, kinase and transactivation activity. These negative effects of antisense Igf2 were rescued by constitutively active MEK5, whereas transfection of myoblasts with dominant-negative MEK5 blocked the pro-myogenic action of IGF-2. Our findings suggest that the MEK5-ERK5 pathway is a novel key mediator of IGF-2 action in myoblast differentiation