Impactos en las propiedades del suelo de los bosques de pinabete en terrenos agrícolas abandonados

Forest floor is considered a major feature distinguishing forest from agricultural soils. Forest floor develops as forest stands grow and is composed of more or less altered plant-tissue biomass accumulated on the soil surface. Our study’s aim was to find whether properties of both the organic layers and mineral soil differ according to the land-use history of the sites compared. Each site included an afforested area of immature 50-year-old spruce forest (AFF) on formerly agricultural land plus an adjacent area of old-growth 100-year-old spruce stand (FOR). The localities are situated at altitudes ranging between 600 and 850 metres above sea level. From the results of our study it can be concluded that both forest floor and mineral soil had higher pH and Ca concentration at formerly agricultural sites. C/N ratio is significantly lower in afforested soil. First-generation humus was significantly higher in phosphorus.El piso forestal es considerado una de las principales características distintivas de los suelos forestales frente a los agrícolas. El piso forestal se desarrolla según crecen las masas forestales y se compone de tejidos de vegetales de la biomasa más o menos alterados acumulados en la superficie del suelo. El objetivo de nuestro estudio fue determinar si las propiedades de las capas orgánicas y minerales del suelo difieren de acuerdo a la historia del uso del suelo de los sitios. Cada sitio incluye un área reforestada de bosque de pinabete inmaduro de 50 años de edad (AFF) en antiguo terreno agrícola, más un área adyacente madura de pinabete de 100 años de edad. Las localidades se encuentran en altitudes que oscilan entre 600 y 850 metros sobre el nivel del mar. De los resultados de nuestro estudio se puede concluir que tanto el suelo del bosque como el suelo mineral tenían un pH más alto y mayor concentración de Ca en los sitios agrícolas abandonados. La relación C/N es significativamente menor en los suelos reforestados. La primera generación de humus presentó un significativamente mayor contenido en fósforo

Disk Detective: Discovery of New Circumstellar Disk Candidates through Citizen Science

The Disk Detective citizen science project aims to find new stars with 22 micron excess emission from circumstellar dust using data from NASA's WISE mission. Initial cuts on the AllWISE catalog provide an input catalog of 277,686 sources. Volunteers then view images of each source online in 10 different bands to identify false-positives (galaxies, background stars, interstellar matter, image artifacts, etc.). Sources that survive this online vetting are followed up with spectroscopy on the FLWO Tillinghast telescope. This approach should allow us to unleash the full potential of WISE for finding new debris disks and protoplanetary disks. We announce a first list of 37 new disk candidates discovered by the project, and we describe our vetting and follow-up process. One of these systems appears to contain the first debris disk discovered around a star with a white dwarf companion: HD 74389. We also report four newly discovered classical Be stars (HD 6612, HD 7406, HD 164137, and HD 218546) and a new detection of 22 micron excess around a previously known debris disk host star, HD 22128.Comment: 50 pages, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Follow-up Imaging of Disk Candidates from the Disk Detective Citizen Science Project: New Discoveries and False Positives in WISE Circumstellar Disk Surveys

The Disk Detective citizen science project aims to find new stars with excess 22 m emission from circumstellar dust in the All WISE data release from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. We evaluated 261 Disk Detective objects of interest with imaging with the Robo-AO adaptive optics instrument on the 1.5 m telescope at Palomar Observatory and with RetroCam on the 2.5 m du Pont Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory to search for background objects at 0 1512 separations from each target. Our analysis of these data leads us to reject 7% of targets. Combining this result with statistics from our online image classification efforts implies that at most7.9%0.2% of All WISE-selected infrared excesses are good disk candidates. Applying our false-positive rates to other surveys, we find that the infrared excess searches of McDonald et al. and Marton et al. all have false-positiverates >70%. Moreover, we find that all 13 disk candidates in Theissen & West with W4 signal-to-noise ratio >3are false positives. We present 244 disk candidates that have survived vetting by follow-up imaging. Of these,213 are newly identified disk systems. Twelve of these are candidate members of comoving pairs based on Gaia astrometry, supporting the hypothesis that warm dust is associated with binary systems. We also note the discovery of 22 m excess around two known members of the ScorpiusCentaurus association, and we identifyknown disk host WISEA J164540.79-310226.6 as a likely Sco-Cen member. Thirty of these disk candidates arecloser than 125 pc (including 26 debris disks), making them good targets for both direct-imaging exoplanetsearches

Follow-up Imaging of Disk Candidates from the Disk Detective Citizen Science Project: New Discoveries and False Positives in WISE Circumstellar Disk Surveys

The Disk Detective citizen science project aims to find new stars with excess 22 μm emission from circumstellar dust in the AllWISE data release from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. We evaluated 261 Disk Detective objects of interest with imaging with the Robo-AO adaptive optics instrument on the 1.5 m telescope at Palomar Observatory and with RetroCam on the 2.5 m du Pont Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory to search for background objects at 0.″15-12″ separations from each target. Our analysis of these data leads us to reject 7% of targets. Combining this result with statistics from our online image classification efforts implies that at most 7.9% ± 0.2% of AllWISE-selected infrared excesses are good disk candidates. Applying our false-positive rates to other surveys, we find that the infrared excess searches of McDonald et al. and Marton et al. all have false-positive rates >70%. Moreover, we find that all 13 disk candidates in Theissen & West with W4 signal-to-noise ratio >3 are false positives. We present 244 disk candidates that have survived vetting by follow-up imaging. Of these, 213 are newly identified disk systems. Twelve of these are candidate members of comoving pairs based on Gaia astrometry, supporting the hypothesis that warm dust is associated with binary systems. We also note the discovery of 22 μm excess around two known members of the Scorpius-Centaurus association, and we identify known disk host WISEA J164540.79-310226.6 as a likely Sco-Cen member. Thirty of these disk candidates are closer than ∼125 pc (including 26 debris disks), making them good targets for both direct-imaging exoplanet searches

Follow-up Imaging of Disk Candidates from the Disk Detective Citizen Science Project: New Discoveries and False Positives in WISE Circumstellar Disk Surveys

The Disk Detective citizen science project aims to find new stars with excess 22 μm emission from circumstellar dust in the AllWISE data release from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. We evaluated 261 Disk Detective objects of interest with imaging with the Robo-AO adaptive optics instrument on the 1.5 m telescope at Palomar Observatory and with RetroCam on the 2.5 m du Pont Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory to search for background objects at 0.”15–12'' separations from each target. Our analysis of these data leads us to reject 7% of targets. Combining this result with statistics from our online image classification efforts implies that at most 7.9% ± 0.2% of AllWISE-selected infrared excesses are good disk candidates. Applying our false-positive rates to other surveys, we find that the infrared excess searches of McDonald et al. and Marton et al. all have false-positive rates >70%. Moreover, we find that all 13 disk candidates in Theissen & West with W4 signal-to-noise ratio >3 are false positives. We present 244 disk candidates that have survived vetting by follow-up imaging. Of these, 213 are newly identified disk systems. Twelve of these are candidate members of comoving pairs based on Gaia astrometry, supporting the hypothesis that warm dust is associated with binary systems. We also note the discovery of 22 μm excess around two known members of the Scorpius–Centaurus association, and we identify known disk host WISEA J164540.79-310226.6 as a likely Sco-Cen member. Thirty of these disk candidates are closer than ~125 pc (including 26 debris disks), making them good targets for both direct-imaging exoplanet searches

Comparison of pixantrone-based regimen (CPOP-R) with doxorubicin-based therapy (CHOP-R) for treatment of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma

Pixantrone is an aza-anthracenedione with enhanced, preclinical antitumor activity and reduced cardiotoxicity compared with doxorubicin. We compared the efficacy and toxic effect of CPOP-R (substituting pixantrone for doxorubicin) against CHOP-R in untreated, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) patients. The primary objective was to demonstrate non-inferiority of CPOP-R by complete response/complete response unconfirmed (CR/CRu) rate. The CR/CRu rate for CPOP-R was 75% versus 84% for CHOP-R. Three-year overall survival was lower for CPOP-R (69% versus 85%) (P = 0.029). Median progression-free survival (PFS) was not reached for CPOP-R and was 40 months for CHOP-R [HR 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.02 (0.60, 1.76), P = 0.934]. Fewer CPOP-R patients developed congestive heart failure (CHF) (0% versus 6%, P = 0.120), >= 20% declines in ejection fraction (2% versus 17%, P = 0.004), or elevations in troponin-T (P = 0.003). CPOP-R is an active regimen with modestly lower response rates than CHOP-R but similar PFS and event-free survival. This study demonstrates a substantially lower cardiotoxicity of pixantrone compared with doxorubicin when used as first-line therapy in DLBCL

Calcium and strontium isotope dynamics in three polluted forest ecosystems of the Czech Republic, Central Europe

Calcium and strontium isotope ratios were used to identify Ca sources for bulk soil, soil solutions and runoff in the stressed forest ecosystems of Central Europe. All three study sites are underlain by Ca-poor crystalline bedrock (orthogneiss, leucogranite and serpentinite, respectively), but differ in historical rates of acid deposition. UDL, the spruce die-back affected site at the Czech–Polish border underlain by orthogneiss, received six times more acidifying compounds from the atmosphere than LYS and PLB, two paired catchments near the Czech–German border. The paired catchments near the Czech–German border, whose forests were only mildly damaged by industrial pollution, differ in their acid buffering capacity (extremely low for LYS leucogranite, extremely high for PLB serpentinite). At the spruce die-back affected catchment UDL, 19 years of monthly hydrochemical monitoring revealed six times higher atmospheric deposition and runoff fluxes of Ca, compared to the paired catchments LYS and PLB. Across the three sites, the mean δ⁴⁴Ca values increased in the order: spruce bark (−0.84‰) < spruce xylem (−0.31‰) < spruce fine roots (0.0‰) < bedrock (0.08‰) < soil (0.11‰) < spruce needles (0.31‰) < open-area precipitation (0.68‰) < spruce throughfall (0.71‰) < runoff (0.74‰) < soil water (1.11‰). At all three sites, Ca from atmospheric deposition was isotopically similar to Ca in runoff, indicating export of recent atmospheric Ca. All three catchments had isotopically lighter Ca in silicate bedrock and exported isotopically heavier Ca via runoff. Trees mostly represented the isotopically lightest Ca pool, whereas soil water collected by lysimeters contained isotopically heavy Ca. The ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr isotope ratios were nearly uniform at the serpentinite site PLB (0.710). The ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratios across the two felsic sites (UDL and LYS) increased in the order: open-area precipitation (0.710) < spruce canopy throughfall (0.715) < spruce xylem (0.723) < spruce needles (0.725) < soil water (0.734) < runoff (0.740) < soil (0.862) < bedrock (0.881). Collectively, the δ⁴⁴Ca and ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr isotope systematics indicated that organic Ca cycling, along with atmospheric input of isotopically heavy Ca, largely contributed to the high-δ⁴⁴Ca values of runoff. The studied silicate bedrock had significantly lower δ⁴⁴Ca values than the reported world-wide average. While bulk soil Ca was likely affected by bedrock Ca even after the period of acid rain, the δ⁴⁴Ca difference between soil and soil water indicated a major role of recycled organic Ca in supplying nutrition to the trees. Future Ca-Sr isotope research in headwater catchments should include isotope analysis of sequentially leached Ca fractions from weathered minerals in soil to better assess the geogenic Ca inputs to runoff. In catchments currently recovering from pollution, Ca-Sr isotope fingerprinting of dust emitted from coal-fired power plants will be needed. Isotope analysis of local coal can indicate to what extent Ca-Sr isotope composition of past deposition contributes to the isotope signatures of present-day runoff.Martin Novak, Chris Holmden, Juraj Farkaš, Pavel Kram, Jakub Hruska, Jan Curik, Frantisek Veselovsky, Marketa Stepanova, Yulia V. Kochergina, Vojtech Erban, Daniela Fottova, Martin Simecek, Leona Bohdalkova, Eva Prechova, Petra Voldrichova, Vladimir Cernohou