HAT-P-30b: A Transiting Hot Jupiter on a Highly Oblique Orbit

We report the discovery of HAT-P-30b, a transiting exoplanet orbiting the V = 10.419 dwarf star GSC 0208-00722. The planet has a period P = 2.810595 ± 0.000005 days, transit epoch Tc = 2455456.46561 ± 0.00037 (BJD), and transit duration 0.0887 ± 0.0015 days. The host star has a mass of 1.24 ± 0.04 M_⊙, radius of 1.21 ± 0.05 R_⊙, effective temperature of 6304 ± 88 K, and metallicity [Fe/H] = +0.13 ± 0.08. The planetary companion has a mass of 0.711 ± 0.028 M J and radius of 1.340 ± 0.065 R J yielding a mean density of 0.37 ± 0.05 g cm^(–3). We also present radial velocity measurements that were obtained throughout a transit that exhibit the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect. By modeling this effect, we measure an angle of λ = 73.°5 ± 9.°0 between the sky projections of the planet's orbit normal and the star's spin axis. HAT-P-30b represents another example of a close-in planet on a highly tilted orbit, and conforms to the previously noted pattern that tilted orbits are more common around stars with T_(eff*) ≳ 6250 K

A large scale prediction of bacteriocin gene blocks suggests a wide functional spectrum for bacteriocins

Bacteriocins are peptide-derived molecules produced by bacteria, whose recently-discovered functions include virulence factors and signalling molecules as well as their better known roles as antibiotics. To date, close to five hundred bacteriocins have been identified and classified. Recent discoveries have shown that bacteriocins are highly diverse and widely distributed among bacterial species. Given the heterogeneity of bacteriocin compounds, many tools struggle with identifying novel bacteriocins due to their vast sequence and structural diversity. Many bacteriocins undergo post-translational processing or modifications necessary for the biosynthesis of the final mature form. Enzymatic modification of bacteriocins as well as their export is achieved by proteins whose genes are often located in a discrete gene cluster proximal to the bacteriocin precursor gene, referred to as \textit{context genes} in this study. Although bacteriocins themselves are structurally diverse, context genes have been shown to be largely conserved across unrelated species. Using this knowledge, we set out to identify new candidates for context genes which may clarify how bacteriocins are synthesized, and identify new candidates for bacteriocins that bear no sequence similarity to known toxins. To achieve these goals, we have developed a software tool, Bacteriocin Operon and gene block Associator (BOA) that can identify homologous bacteriocin associated gene clusters and predict novel ones. We discover that several phyla have a strong preference for bactericon genes, suggesting distinct functions for this group of molecules. Availability: https://github.com/idoerg/BOAComment: Accepted for publication in BMC Bioinformatic

Climate technology and climate justice: energy transitions in Germany, India and Australia

The Routledge Handbook of Climate Justice will be essential reading for students and scholars, as well as being a vital reference tool for those practically engaged in the field

Kepler Planet Reliability Metrics: Astrophysical Positional Probabilities for Data Release 25

This document is very similar to KSCI-19092-003, Planet Reliability Metrics: Astrophysical Positional Probabilities, which describes the previous release of the astrophysical positional probabilities for Data Release 24. The important changes for Data Release 25 are:1. The computation of the astrophysical positional probabilities uses the Data Release 25 processed pixel data for all Kepler Objects of Interest.2. Computed probabilities now have associated uncertainties, whose computation is described in x4.1.3.3. The scene modeling described in x4.1.2 uses background stars detected via ground-based high-resolution imaging, described in x5.1, that are not in the Kepler Input Catalog or UKIRT catalog. These newly detected stars are presented in Appendix B. Otherwise the text describing the algorithms and examples is largely unchanged from KSCI-19092-003

Aspect sensitivity of VHF echoes from field aligned irregularities in meteor trails and thin ionization layers

International audienceThe aspect sensitivity of VHF echoes from field aligned irregularities (FAI) within meteor trails and thin ionization layers is studied using numerical models. Although the maximum power is obtained when a radar is pointed perpendicular to the field line (B), substantial power can be obtained off the B direction if the ionization trail/layer is thin. When the FAI length along B is 20 m, the power observed 6° off B is about 10 db below that perpendicular to the B direction. Meteoric FAI echoes can potentially be used to determine the diffusion rate in the mesopause region. Based on the aspect sensitivity analysis, we conclude that the range spread trail echoes far off B observed by powerful VHF radars are likely due to overdense meteors. Our simulation also shows that ionospheric FAI echoes can have an altitude smearing effect of about 4 km if the vertical extension of a FAI-layer is around 100 m, which has often been observed at Arecibo. The altitude smearing effect can account for the fact that the Es-layers observed by the Arecibo incoherent scatter radar are typically much narrower than FAI-layers and the occurrence of double spectral peaks around the Es-layer altitude in FAI echoes

Higher Order Terms in the Melvin-Morton Expansion of the Colored Jones Polynomial

We formulate a conjecture about the structure of `upper lines' in the expansion of the colored Jones polynomial of a knot in powers of (q-1). The Melvin-Morton conjecture states that the bottom line in this expansion is equal to the inverse Alexander polynomial of the knot. We conjecture that the upper lines are rational functions whose denominators are powers of the Alexander polynomial. We prove this conjecture for torus knots and give experimental evidence that it is also true for other types of knots.Comment: 21 pages, 1 figure, LaTe

False positive probabilties for all Kepler Objects of Interest: 1284 newly validated planets and 428 likely false positives

We present astrophysical false positive probability calculations for every Kepler Object of Interest (KOI)---the first large-scale demonstration of a fully automated transiting planet validation procedure. Out of 7056 KOIs, we determine that 1935 have probabilities <1% to be astrophysical false positives, and thus may be considered validated planets. 1284 of these have not yet been validated or confirmed by other methods. In addition, we identify 428 KOIs likely to be false positives that have not yet been identified as such, though some of these may be a result of unidentified transit timing variations. A side product of these calculations is full stellar property posterior samplings for every host star, modeled as single, binary, and triple systems. These calculations use 'vespa', a publicly available Python package able to be easily applied to any transiting exoplanet candidate.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures. Published in ApJ. Instructions to reproduce results can be found at https://github.com/timothydmorton/koi-fp