NGC 6309, a Planetary Nebula that Shifted from Round to Multipolar

We present new narrow-band Ha, [N II], and [O III] high-resolution images of the quadrupolar planetary nebula (PN) NGC 6309 that show in great detail its bipolar lobes and reveal new morphological features. New high- and low-dispersion long-slit spectra have been obtained to help in the investigation of the new nebular components. The images and spectra unveil two diffuse blobs, one of them located at 55 arcsec from the central star along the NE direction (PA= +71) and the other at 78 arcsec in the SW direction (PA= -151). Therefore, these structures do not share the symmetry axes of the inner bipolar outflows. Their radial velocities relative to the system are quite low: +3 and -4 km/s, respectively. Spectroscopic data confirm a high [O III] to Ha ratio, indicating that the blobs are being excited by the UV flux from the central star. Our images convincingly show a spherical halo 60 arcsec in diameter encircling the quadrupolar nebula. The expansion velocity of this shell is low, 66 km/s. The software SHAPE has been used to construct a morpho-kinematic model for the ring and the bipolar flows that implies an age of 4,000 yrs, the expansion of the halo sets a lower limit for its age 46,000 yrs, and the very low expansion of the blobs suggests they are part of a large structure corresponding to a mass ejection that took place 150,000 yrs ago. In NGC 6309 we have direct evidence of a change in the geometry of mass-loss, from spherical in the halo to axially-symmetric in the two pairs of bipolar lobes.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRA

Towards “Honest Signals” of Creativity – Identifying Personality Characteristics Through Microscopic Social Network Analysis

AbstractThis paper presents preliminary results on predicting individual creativity based on interpersonal interaction patterns. We combine insights from analyzing communication in an E-mail student network of a distributed course with measurements of interaction by sociometric badges for 23 programmers in Northern Europe. In the first case study we measure communication patterns of 23 software developers in a Nordic country through sociometric badges over a period of 4 weeks, associating it with creativity and productivity collected by a daily questionnaire. At the same time we collected individual trust through another questionnaire. We found that the more central people are in the network, the more trusting they are, and the less they oscillate between low and high states of energy, the more trusting they are. The second case study is based on a sample of 17 students from a German university participating in a multinational course. We show that e-mail behavior is associated with personality type as measured by the FFI personality test. We found that the larger degree and betweenness centrality of students in the e-mail course network is, the more agreeable and less neurotic they are. The faster students respond to e-mail, the more open and agreeable they are. The smaller the contribution index of students is, i.e. the less e-mails they send relative to other team members, the more neurotic they are.We speculate that there might be two different types of creativity, “lonely genius” - feeling most creative when on his/her own with lower trust in others, and “swarm creative” - most creative when in the midst of other people, and with higher trust

Observations of the planetary nebula RWT 152 with OSIRIS/GTC

10 pages, 6 figuresRWT 152 is one of the few known planetary nebulae with an sdO central star. We present subarcsecond red tunable filterHa imaging and intermediate-resolution, long-slit spectroscopy of RWT 152 obtained with OSIRIS/GTC (Optical System for Imaging and low-Intermediate-Resolution Integrated Spectroscopy/Gran Telescopio Canarias) with the goal of analysing its properties. The Ha image reveals a bipolar nebula with a bright equatorial region and multiple bubbles in the main lobes. A faint circular halo surrounds the main nebula. The nebular spectra reveal a very low excitation nebula with weak emission lines from H+, He+ and double-ionized metals, and absence of emission lines from neutral and single-ionized metals, except for an extremely faint [NII] lambda 6584 emission line. These spectra may be explained if RWT 152 is a density-bounded planetary nebula. Low nebular chemical abundances of S, O, Ar, N and Ne are obtained in RWT 152, which, together with the derived high peculiar velocity (similar to 92-131 km s(-1)), indicate that this object is a halo planetary nebula. The available data are consistent with RWT 152 evolving from a low-mass progenitor (similar to 1 M-circle dot) formed in a metal-poor environment.This paper has been partially supported by grant AYA 2011-24052 (AA, ES), AYA 2011-30228-C3-01 (LFM), ESP2014-55996-C2-2-R (AU) and AYA2014-57369-C3-3-P (LFM) of the Spanish MINECO (all them co-funded by FEDER funds). We also acknowledge support from grant IN-CITE09 312191PR (AU, LFM, AA) of Xunta de Galicia, partially funded by FEDER funds, from grant PRX15/00511 (AU) of the Spanish MECD, and from grant 12VI20 (AU, LFM, AA) of the University of Vigo. AA also acknowledges support from FONDECYT through postdoctoral grant 3160364. This research has made use of the SIMBAD data base, operated at the CDS, Strasbourg (France), Aladin, NASA's Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services and the Spanish Virtual Observatory supported from the Spanish MINECO through grant AYA2011-24052.Peer reviewe

ETHNOBOTANICAL STUDY IN TOLEDO-PR DISTRICT: AN APPROACH ABOUT USED SPECIES VARIABILITY WITH THE SAME POPULAR NAME

The ethnopharmacological knowledge acquired throughout human evolution culminated in the development of high therapeutic relevance drugs. In ethnobotanical survey conducted in the city of Toledo in 2007, it was found that 79% of the population often use plants for medicinal purposes, mostly in the tea form, originated from own crops. They claimed that the consumption of these plants improved their health conditions. The plants mainly cited were: balm, chamomile and marcela. This study aimed to verify if the population habits related to medicinal plants have changed, also  proceed a literature review to find out if the most used plants have their biological activity scientifically proven and looking for  reports of homonymous to the most cited medicinal plants. There was small change in the species used by the population. In the literature, it was found out that different species are used with the same popular name, in practice, it was detected the use of two different species, Piper amalago L. (UNOP 7972) and Piper mikanianum (Kunth) (UNOP 7971), for  the medicinal plant commonly known as pariparoba, although none of them is recognized for the Brazilian Pharmacopoeia

Local conditions vs regional context: variation in composition of bird communities along the Middle Paraná River, an extensive river-floodplain system of South America

We studied spatial changes in species composition (i.e., beta diversity) of local assemblages of birds along ∼450 km of the Middle Paraná River, an extensive fluvial system of South America. Point counts were used to survey birds at 60 plots located in shrub swamps and marshes of the floodplain within four sites (15 plots per site). Two sites were surrounded by each of the two upland ecoregions. Beta diversity of bird assemblages was high and was more important than alpha diversity in shaping regional diversity (i.e., gamma diversity) of the fluvial system. Compositional changes were related to species turnover among plots, while nestedness dissimilarity was not important for shaping diversity patterns. Variation-partitioning analysis showed that local conditions (i.e., landscape composition within a radius of 200 m from the center of each plot) accounted for more spatial variation in assemblage composition than did location along the fluvial system. Adjacent upland ecoregions did not account for spatial changes in bird composition within the fluvial system. In conclusion, environmental heterogeneity created by flood pulses is an important factor for sustaining regional diversity of birds within the fluvial system through effects on beta diversity

The Effect of Visual Perceptual Load on Auditory Awareness in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Recent work on visual selective attention has shown that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) demonstrate an increased perceptual capacity. The current study examined whether increasing visual perceptual load also has less of an effect on auditory awareness in children with ASD. Participants performed either a high- or low load version of a line discrimination task. On a critical trial, an unexpected, task-irrelevant auditory stimulus was played concurrently with the visual stimulus. In contrast to typically developing (TD) children, children with ASD demonstrated similar detection rates across perceptual load conditions, and reported greater awareness than TD children in the high perceptual load condition. These findings suggest an increased perceptual capacity in children with ASD that operates across sensory modalities