A typology of natural resource use for livelihood impact assessments in Nusa Tenggara Barat Province, Indonesia

The vulnerability of less developed regions is exacerbated by a lack of information to inform appropriate adaptation planning. We addressed this challenge in the islands of Lombok and Sumbawa (Nusa Tenggara Barat Province, Indonesia) by combining multiple sources of knowledge to develop a typology of natural resource use by communities of the province. This enabled an assessment of future impacts of drivers of change such as population growth and climate change. The typology was developed by cluster analysis of an inventory of the use of ecosystem goods and services (EGS) by the 105 rural subdistricts in the province. The data were largely elicited from expert knowledge, augmented by a rapid rural appraisal of communities' marine resource use in Sumbawa. Exploratory analysis of existing secondary data on livelihoods and land use provided context and skeleton data, which were developed further by experts. Overall, 82 EGS were identified from nine terrestrial, coastal, marine and freshwater habitats. EGS included livestock, cropping, forestry, wildlife hunting, fishing, aquaculture, mining, water (for drinking and agriculture) and tourism. The typology comprised seven types that captured 42% of the variation in the data matrix. The types were moderately spatially aggregated and showed some congruence with administrative (district) boundaries. We discuss the implications of the results for planning livelihood adaptation strategies, and out-scaling these among subdistricts of matching types

Good Vibrations : The evolution of whisking in small mammals

Special Issue: Extreme Anatomy: Living Beyond the Edge. January 2020Abstract While most mammals have whiskers, some tactile specialists - mainly small, nocturnal and arboreal species - can actively move their whiskers in a symmetrical, cyclic movement called whisking. Whisking enables mammals to rapidly, tactually scan their environment in order to efficiently guide locomotion and foraging in complex habitats. The muscle architecture that enables whisking is preserved from marsupials to primates, prompting researchers to suggest that a common ancestor might have had moveable whiskers. Studying the evolution of whisker touch sensing is difficult, and we suggest that measuring an aspect of skull morphology that correlates with whisking would enable comparisons between extinct and extant mammals. We find that whisking mammals have larger infraorbital foramen (IOF) areas, which indicates larger infraorbital nerves and an increase in sensory acuity. While this relationship is quite variable and IOF area cannot be used to solely predict the presence of whisking, whisking mammals all have large IOF areas. Generally, this pattern holds true regardless of an animal's substrate preferences or activity patterns. Data from fossil mammals and ancestral character state reconstruction and tracing techniques for extant mammals suggest that whisking is not the ancestral state for therian mammals. Instead, whisking appears to have evolved independently as many as seven times across the clades Marsupialia, Afrosoricida, Eulipotyphla and Rodentia, with Xenarthra the only placental superordinal clade lacking whisking species. However, the term whisking only captures symmetrical and rhythmic movements of the whiskers, rather than all possible whisker movements, and early mammals may still have had moveable whiskers. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe

Expected coalescence rates of NS-NS binaries for laser beam interferometers

The coalescence rate of two neutron stars (NS) is revisited. For estimation of the number of bound NS-NS and the probability of their coalescence in a timescale $\tau$, the galactic star formation history, directly derived from observations, and the evolution of massive stars are considered. The newly established galactic merging rate is $(1.7\pm 1.0) \times 10^{-5} yr^{-1}$, while the local merging rate, including the contribution of elliptical galaxies, is about a factor of two higher, $3.4 \times 10^{-5} yr^{-1}$. Using the present data basis on galaxy distribution in the local universe and the expected sensitivity of the first generation of laser beam interferometers, we estimate that one event should occur every 125 years for LIGO and one event each 148 years for VIRGO. The situation is considerably improved for advanced-LIGO since we predict that 6 events per year should be detected whereas for a recently proposed VIRGO new configuration, the event rate might increase up to 3 events every two years.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures accepted for publication in IJMP

Gravitational Waves From Known Pulsars: Results From The Initial Detector Era

We present the results of searches for gravitational waves from a large selection of pulsars using data from the most recent science runs (S6, VSR2 and VSR4) of the initial generation of interferometric gravitational wave detectors LIGO (Laser Interferometric Gravitational-wave Observatory) and Virgo. We do not see evidence for gravitational wave emission from any of the targeted sources but produce upper limits on the emission amplitude. We highlight the results from seven young pulsars with large spin-down luminosities. We reach within a factor of five of the canonical spin-down limit for all seven of these, whilst for the Crab and Vela pulsars we further surpass their spin-down limits. We present new or updated limits for 172 other pulsars (including both young and millisecond pulsars). Now that the detectors are undergoing major upgrades, and, for completeness, we bring together all of the most up-to-date results from all pulsars searched for during the operations of the first-generation LIGO, Virgo and GEO600 detectors. This gives a total of 195 pulsars including the most recent results described in this paper.United States National Science FoundationScience and Technology Facilities Council of the United KingdomMax-Planck-SocietyState of Niedersachsen/GermanyAustralian Research CouncilInternational Science Linkages program of the Commonwealth of AustraliaCouncil of Scientific and Industrial Research of IndiaIstituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare of ItalySpanish Ministerio de Economia y CompetitividadConselleria d'Economia Hisenda i Innovacio of the Govern de les Illes BalearsNetherlands Organisation for Scientific ResearchPolish Ministry of Science and Higher EducationFOCUS Programme of Foundation for Polish ScienceRoyal SocietyScottish Funding CouncilScottish Universities Physics AllianceNational Aeronautics and Space AdministrationOTKA of HungaryLyon Institute of Origins (LIO)National Research Foundation of KoreaIndustry CanadaProvince of Ontario through the Ministry of Economic Development and InnovationNational Science and Engineering Research Council CanadaCarnegie TrustLeverhulme TrustDavid and Lucile Packard FoundationResearch CorporationAlfred P. Sloan FoundationAstronom

An acetylated form of histone H2A.Z regulates chromosome architecture in Schizosaccharomyces pombe

Histone variant H2A.Z has a conserved role in genome stability, although it remains unclear how this is mediated. Here we demonstrate that the fission yeast Swr1 ATPase inserts H2A.Z (Pht1) into chromatin and Kat5 acetyltransferase (Mst1) acetylates it. Deletion or an unacetylatable mutation of Pht1 leads to genome instability, primarily caused by chromosome entanglement and breakage at anaphase. This leads to the loss of telomere-proximal markers, though telomere protection and repeat length are unaffected by the absence of Pht1. Strikingly, the chromosome entanglement in pht1Delta anaphase cells can be rescued by forcing chromosome condensation before anaphase onset. We show that the condensin complex, required for the maintenance of anaphase chromosome condensation, prematurely dissociates from chromatin in the absence of Pht1. This and other findings suggest an important role for H2A.Z in the architecture of anaphase chromosomes

A compilation and description of hydrographic transects of the Mid-Atlantic Bight shelf-break front

Historical hydrographic transects of the Mid-Atlantic Bight shelf-break front are compiled by month and described in this report. Interannual variability of the meteorological forcing and slope water mass properties are presented as an aid in interpreting the variability of the frontal structure. Descriptions of the significant features of the front, shelf and slope water masses precede the compiled transects. The sections are limited to the upper 350 m of the water column and a cross-shore extent of 280m.Funding was provided by the Department of Energy under contract DE-AC02-79EV1000

The dynamics of Galactic centre pulsars: constraining pulsar distances and intrinsic spin-down

Through high-precision radio timing observations, we show that five recycled pulsars in the direction of the Galactic Centre (GC) have anomalous spin period time derivative (\dot{P}) measurements - PSRs J1748 - 3009, J1753 - 2819, J1757 - 2745, and J1804 - 2858 show negative values of \dot{P} and PSR J1801 - 3210 is found to have an exceptionally small value of \dot{P}. We attribute these observed \dot{P} measurements to acceleration of these pulsars along their lines of sight (LOSs) due to the Galactic gravitational field. Using models of the Galactic mass distribution and pulsar velocities, we constrain the distances to these pulsars, placing them on the far side of the Galaxy, providing the first accurate distance measurements to pulsars located in this region and allowing us to consider the electron density along these LOSs. We find the new electron density model YMW16 to be more consistent with these observations than the previous model NE2001. The LOS dynamics further constrain the model-dependent intrinsic \dot{P} values for these pulsars and they are consistent with measurements for other known pulsars. In the future, the independent distance measurements to these and other pulsars near the GC would allow us to constrain the Galactic gravitational potential more accurately

Search for a correlation between very-high-energy gamma rays and giant radio pulses in the Crab pulsar

We present the results of a joint observational campaign between the Green Bank radio telescope and the VERITAS gamma-ray telescope, which searched for a correlation between the emission of very-high-energy (VHE) gamma rays (E-gamma > 150 GeV) and giant radio pulses (GRPs) from the Crab pulsar at 8.9 GHz. A total of 15,366 GRPs were recorded during 11.6 hr of simultaneous observations, which were made across four nights in 2008 December and in 2009 November and December. We searched for an enhancement of the pulsed gamma-ray emission within time windows placed around the arrival time of the GRP events. In total, eight different time windows with durations ranging from 0.033 ms to 72 s were positioned at three different locations relative to the GRP to search for enhanced gamma-ray emission which lagged, led, or was concurrent with, the GRP event. Furthermore, we performed separate searches on main pulse GRPs and interpulse GRPs and on the most energetic GRPs in our data sample. No significant enhancement of pulsed VHE emission was found in any of the preformed searches. We set upper limits of 5-10 times the average VHE flux of the Crab pulsar on the flux simultaneous with interpulse GRPs on single-rotation-period timescales. On similar to 8 s timescales around interpulse GRPs, we set an upper limit of 2-3 times the average VHE flux. Within the framework of recent models for pulsed VHE emission from the Crab pulsar, the expected VHE-GRP emission correlations are below the derived limits