Effects of contaminants of emerging concern on Megaselia scalaris (Lowe, Diptera: Phoridae) and its microbial community.

Drought, rising temperatures, and expanding human populations are increasing water demands. Many countries are extending potable water supplies by irrigating crops with wastewater. Unfortunately, wastewater contains biologically active, long-lived pharmaceuticals, even after treatment. Run-off from farms and wastewater treatment plant overflows contribute high concentrations of pharmaceuticals to the environment. This study assessed the effects of common pharmaceuticals on a cosmopolitan saprophagous insect, Megaselia scalaris (Diptera: Phoridae). Larvae were reared on artificial diets spiked with contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) at environmentally relevant concentrations. Female flies showed no oviposition preference for treated or untreated diets. Larvae exposed to caffeine in diets showed increased mortality, and larvae fed antibiotics and hormones showed signs of slowed development, especially in females. The normal sex ratio observed in M. scalaris from control diets was affected by exposure to caffeine and pharmaceutical mixture treatments. There was an overall effect of treatment on the flies' microbial communities; notably, caffeine fed insects displayed higher microbial variability. Eight bacterial families accounted for approximately 95% of the total microbes in diet and insects. Our results suggest that CECs at environmentally relevant concentrations can affect the biology and microbial communities of an insect of ecological and medical importance

Banning Commercial Foresting: What are the Costs?

The Philippines' forest cover has suffered from massive denudation through the years due to uncontrolled and indiscriminate commercial logging. Because of this, calls for a total logging ban had been raised in various fora, including in the legislature where bills that consider the possibility of a ban are being studied. However, the possible economic costs of such ban as espoused in some studies has delayed the passage of these bills. This Policy Notes provides some economic costing based on computations that may help in firming up decisions regarding the proposed ban.forestry sector, environmental issues, environmental management

Redox Regulation, Rather than Stress-Induced Phosphorylation, of a Hog1 Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase Modulates Its Nitrosative-Stress-Specific Outputs

Data availability. The RNA sequencing dataset is available at EBI (www.ebi.ac.uk/arrayexpress/) under accession number E-MTAB-5990. Other data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank Debbie Smith for constructing the strains JC41 and JC310, Arnab Pradhan for help with DHE control experiments, and our colleagues in the Aberdeen Fungal Group and Newcastle Yeast Group for insightful discussions. We are also grateful to Mike Gustin for his advice. We are grateful to the Centre for Genome Enabled Biology and Medicine, Aberdeen Proteomics, the Iain Fraser Cytometry Centre, the Microscopy and Histology Facility, and the qPCR facility at the University of Aberdeen for their help, advice, and support. This work was funded by the UK Biotechnology and Biological Research Council (http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk) (grants BB/K017365/1 and BB/F00513X/1 to A.J.P.B. and grant BB/K016393/1 to J.Q.). This work was also supported by the European Research Council (http://erc.europa.eu/) (STRIFE advanced grant C-2009-AdG-249793 to A.J.P.B.), the UK Medical Research Council (http://www.mrc.ac.uk) (grant MR/M026663/1 to A.J.P.B. and grant MR/M000923/1 to P.S.S.), the Wellcome Trust (https://wellcome.ac.uk) (grant 097377 to A.J.P.B. and J.Q.), the MRC Centre for Medical Mycology and the University of Aberdeen (grant MR/M026663/1 to A.J.P.B.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Adaptive Mesh Refinement Simulations of the Ionization Structure and Kinematics of Damped Lyα\alpha Systems with Self-consistent Radiative Transfer

We use high resolution Eulerian hydrodynamics simulations to study kinematic properties of the low ionization species in damped Ly-alpha systems at redshift z=3. Our adaptive mesh refinement simulations include most key ingredients relevant for modeling neutral gas in high-column density absorbers: hydrodynamics, gravitational collapse, continuum radiative transfer and gas chemistry, but no star formation. We model high-resolution Keck spectra with unsaturated low ion transitions in two Si II lines (1526 and 1808 A), and compare simulated line profiles to the data from the SDSS DLA survey. We find that with increasing grid resolution the models show a trend in convergence towards the observed distribution of HI column densities. While in our highest resolution model we recover the cumulative number of DLAs per unit absorption distance, none of our models predicts DLA velocity widths as high as indicated by the data, suggesting that feedback from star formation might be important. At z=3 a non-negligible fraction of DLAs with column densities below 10^21 cm^-2 is caused by tidal tails due to galaxy-galaxy interactions in more massive halo environments. Lower column density absorbers with N_HI < 10^21.4 cm^-2 are sensitive to changes in the UV background resulting in a 10% reduction of the cumulative number of DLAs for twice the quasar background relative to the fiducial value. We find that the mass cut-off below which a large fraction of dwarf galaxies cannot retain gas after reionization is 7*10^7 msun, lower than the previous estimates. Finally, we show that models with self-shielding commonly used in the literature produce significantly lower DLA velocity widths than the full radiative transfer runs.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, updated version, accepted to Ap

The age of the directly imaged planet host star k Andromedae determined from interferometric observations

κ Andromedae, an early-type star that hosts a directly imaged low-mass companion, is expected to be oblate due to its rapid rotational velocity (v sin i = ~162 km s⁻¹). We observed the star with the CHARA Array's optical beam combiner, PAVO, measuring its size at multiple orientations and determining its oblateness. The interferometric measurements, combined with photometry and this v sin i value are used to constrain an oblate star model that yields the fundamental properties of the star and finds a rotation speed that is ~85% of the critical rate and a low inclination of ~30°. Three modeled properties (the average radius, bolometric luminosity, and equatorial velocity) are compared to MESA evolution models to determine an age and mass for the star. In doing so, we determine an age for the system of 47_₄₀⁺²⁷ Myr. Based on this age and previous measurements of the companion's temperature, the BHAC15 evolution models imply a mass for the companion of 22_₉⁺⁸ MJ.This work is based upon observations obtained with the Georgia State University Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy Array at Mount Wilson Observatory. The CHARA Array is supported by the National Science Foundation under grants AST-1211929 and AST- 1411654. Institutional support has been provided from the GSU College of Arts and Sciences and the GSU Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development. J.J. and R.J.W. acknowledge support from NSF AAG grants 1009643 and 1517762

The Metagalactic Ionizing Radiation Field at Low Redshift

We compute the ionizing radiation field at low redshift, arising from Seyferts, QSOs, and starburst galaxies. This calculation combines recent Seyfert luminosity functions, extrapolated ultraviolet fluxes from our IUE-AGN database, and a new intergalactic opacity model based on Hubble Space Telescope and Keck Ly-alpha absorber surveys. At z = 0 for AGN only, our best estimate for the specific intensity at 1 Ryd is I_0 = 1.3 (+0.8/-0.5) x 10^-23 ergs/cm^2/s/Hz/sr, independent of H_0, Omega_0, and Lambda. The one-sided ionizing photon flux is Phi_ion = 3400 (+2100/-1300) photons/cm^2/s, and the H I photoionization rate is Gamma_HI = 3.2 (+2.0/-1.2) x 10^-14 s^-1 for alpha_s = 1.8. We also derive Gamma_ HI for z = 0 - 4. These error ranges reflect uncertainties in the spectral indexes for the ionizing EUV (alpha_s = 1.8 +/- 0.3) and the optical/UV (alpha_UV = 0.86 +/- 0.05), the IGM opacity model, the range of Seyfert luminosities (0.001 - 100 L*) and the completeness of the luminosity functions. Our estimate is a factor of three lower than the most stringent upper limits on the ionizing background (Phi_ion < 10^4 photons/cm^2/s) obtained from H-alpha observations in external clouds, and it lies within the range implied by other indirect measures. Starburst galaxies with a sufficiently large Lyman continuum escape fraction, f_ esc > 0.05, may provide a comparable background to AGN, I_0 (z=0) = 1.1 (+1.5/-0.7) x 10^{-23). An additional component of the ionizing background of this magnitude would violate neither upper limits from H-alpha observations nor the acceptable range from other measurements.Comment: 30 pages, 9 figures, accepted for Astronomical J. (Oct. 1999