LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products

(Abridged) We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A vast array of science will be enabled by a single wide-deep-fast sky survey, and LSST will have unique survey capability in the faint time domain. The LSST design is driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system sited at Cerro Pach\'{o}n in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg$^2$ field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel camera. The standard observing sequence will consist of pairs of 15-second exposures in a given field, with two such visits in each pointing in a given night. With these repeats, the LSST system is capable of imaging about 10,000 square degrees of sky in a single filter in three nights. The typical 5$\sigma$ point-source depth in a single visit in $r$ will be $\sim 24.5$ (AB). The project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations by 2022. The survey area will be contained within 30,000 deg$^2$ with $\delta<+34.5^\circ$, and will be imaged multiple times in six bands, $ugrizy$, covering the wavelength range 320--1050 nm. About 90\% of the observing time will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will uniformly observe a 18,000 deg$^2$ region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the anticipated 10 years of operations, and yield a coadded map to $r\sim27.5$. The remaining 10\% of the observing time will be allocated to projects such as a Very Deep and Fast time domain survey. The goal is to make LSST data products, including a relational database of about 32 trillion observations of 40 billion objects, available to the public and scientists around the world.Comment: 57 pages, 32 color figures, version with high-resolution figures available from https://www.lsst.org/overvie

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

Synthesis, Characterization, and Structure of Some 1,4-Disubstituted Cyclopenta[d][1,2]oxazines

Oxazine-based chemistry offers an alternative to thiophene and pyrrole semiconductors and has been largely unexplored for electronics applications. Discrete monomers or oxazine polymers could serve as an efficient hole carrier for novel devices. A series of 1,4-disubstituted cyclopenta[d][1,2]oxazines (R = tolyl, p-nitrophenyl, t-buytl, furyl, and 5-methylthienyl) were isolated via ring closure with hydroxylamine from a 1,2-acylcyclopentadiene precursor. The target oxazines were characterized by NMR and IR spectroscopy and direct analysis in real time (DART) MS. Single-crystal x-ray structure determination confirmed the identity of the tolyl oxazine, which shows a face-to-face stacking pattern of the heterocyclic rings

Synthesis, Characterization, and Structure of Some 1,4-Disubstituted Cyclopenta[d][1,2]oxazines

Oxazine-based chemistry offers an alternative to thiophene and pyrrole semiconductors and has been largely unexplored for electronics applications. Discrete monomers or oxazine polymers could serve as an efficient hole carrier for novel devices. A series of 1,4-disubstituted cyclopenta[d][1,2]oxazines (R = tolyl, p-nitrophenyl, t-buytl, furyl, and 5-methylthienyl) were isolated via ring closure with hydroxylamine from a 1,2-acylcyclopentadiene precursor. The target oxazines were characterized by NMR and IR spectroscopy and direct analysis in real time (DART) MS. Single-crystal x-ray structure determination confirmed the identity of the tolyl oxazine, which shows a face-to-face stacking pattern of the heterocyclic rings

Self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source: Willpower is more than a metaphor

The present work suggests that self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source. Laboratory tests of self-control (i.e., the Stroop task, thought suppression, emotion regulation, attention control) and of social behaviors (i.e., helping behavior, coping with thoughts of death, stifling prejudice during an interracial interaction) showed that (a) acts of self-control reduced blood glucose levels, (b) low levels of blood glucose after an initial self-control task predicted poor performance on a subsequent self-control task, and (c) initial acts of self-control impaired performance on subsequent self-control tasks, but consuming a glucose drink eliminated these impairments. Self-control requires a certain amount of glucose to operate unimpaired. A single act of self-control causes glucose to drop below optimal levels, thereby impairing subsequent attempts at self-control