Optimum transportation systems to serve the mineral industry north of the Yukon basin in Alaska

In 1972 the U. S . Bureau of Mines awarded a grant (No. G 01 22096) to the Mineral Industry Research Laboratory, University of Alaska, for a research project to determine optimum transportation systems to serve the mineral industry north of the Yukon River basin in Alaska. The study was conducted during the period May 1 - November 1, 1972. The study assesses the mineral potential of the region and selects two copper deposits: a known one at Bornite, and a potential one on the upper Koyukuk River. Two possible mining sites within the extensive coal bearing region north of the Brooks Range are also selected. A computer model was developed to perform an economic analysis of technically feasible transportation modes and routes from these four sites to Alaskan ports from which minerals could be shipped to markets. Transport modes considered are highway, rail, cargo aircraft, river barge, winter haul road and air cushion vehicles (A.C.V.). The computer program calculates the present worth of tax benefits from mining and transportation and revenues based on the value of minerals at the port, as well as the auxillary benefits derived from the anticipated use of the routes by the tourist industry. Annual and fixed costs of mining and transportation of minerals are calculated, and benefit-cost ratios determined for each combination of routes and modes serving the four mineral sites. The study concludes that the best systems in terms of a high benefit-cost ratio are those utilizing a minimum of new construction of conventional highways or railroads. The optimum system as derived from this study is one linking together existing transportation systems with aircraft or A.C.V. These modes are feasible only for the shipment of a high value product, namely blister copper produced by a smelter at the mining site, Of the several alternatives considered for the shipment of coal, only a slurry pipeline to an as yet undeveloped port on the Arctic coast showed significant promise. The study recommends that: 1. More government support should be given to mineral exploration in Alaska. 2. Potential mineral industry development should be considered in transportation planning at state and federal levels. 3. Additional research pertinent to mining and processing of minerals in the North should be conducted, and the feasibility of smelting minerals within Alaska explored. 4. Alternatives for providing power to Northwestern Alaska should be investigated

Severely Photosensitive Psoriasis: A Phenotypically Defined Patient Subset

A subset of patients with chronic plaque psoriasis exhibits severely photosensitive psoriasis (PP) with a pronounced seasonal pattern, but the pathomechanism is not understood. We performed two related studies; first, a detailed clinical characterization of PP, and second, a controlled investigation exploring the underlying pathomechanisms through the assessment of disease onset after photoprovocation. Patients with PP (n=20) showed striking female predominance (19F:1M), very low mean age of psoriasis onset (11 years, range 2–24), family history of psoriasis (13/20), a strong HLA–Cw*0602 association (16/17), and a rapid abnormal clinical response to broadband UVA, comprising erythema±scaling plaques (17/20). Subsequently, patients with PP (n=10), non-PP (n=9), and healthy volunteers (n=11) were challenged with low-dose broadband UVA on 3 consecutive days, and serial biopsies were taken after 6hours to 7 days and from unchallenged skin. Histological changes consistent with early psoriasis occurred in 4 of 10 PP patients, but in neither of the control groups, with significant dermal infiltration by neutrophils, CD4+, CD8+, and CD45RO+ cells at 24h, accompanied by acanthosis. Thus, a phenotypically distinct subset of psoriasis has been characterized. In contrast with earlier assumptions, UV can provoke psoriasiform features rapidly de novo; a role for memory effector T cells is supported in the early phase

How to prioritize species recovery after a megafire

Due to climate change, megafires are increasingly common and have sudden, extensive impacts on many species over vast areas, leaving decision makers uncertain about how best to prioritize recovery. We devised a decision-support framework to prioritize conservation actions to improve species outcomes immediately after a megafire. Complementary locations are selected to extend recovery actions across all fire-affected species' habitats. We applied our method to areas burned in the 2019-2020 Australian megafires and assessed its conservation advantages by comparing our results with outcomes of a site-richness approach (i.e., identifying areas that cost-effectively recover the most species in any one location). We found that 290 threatened species were likely severely affected and will require immediate conservation action to prevent population declines and possible extirpation. We identified 179 subregions, mostly in southeastern Australia, that are key locations to extend actions that benefit multiple species. Cost savings were over AU$300 million to reduce 95% of threats across all species. Our complementarity-based prioritization also spread postfire management actions across a wider proportion of the study area compared with the site-richness method (43% vs. 37% of the landscape managed, respectively) and put more of each species' range under management (average 90% vs. 79% of every species' habitat managed). In addition to wildfire response, our framework can be used to prioritize conservation actions that will best mitigate threats affecting species following other extreme environmental events (e.g., floods and drought)

Scale-free memory model for multiagent reinforcement learning. Mean field approximation and rock-paper-scissors dynamics

A continuous time model for multiagent systems governed by reinforcement learning with scale-free memory is developed. The agents are assumed to act independently of one another in optimizing their choice of possible actions via trial-and-error search. To gain awareness about the action value the agents accumulate in their memory the rewards obtained from taking a specific action at each moment of time. The contribution of the rewards in the past to the agent current perception of action value is described by an integral operator with a power-law kernel. Finally a fractional differential equation governing the system dynamics is obtained. The agents are considered to interact with one another implicitly via the reward of one agent depending on the choice of the other agents. The pairwise interaction model is adopted to describe this effect. As a specific example of systems with non-transitive interactions, a two agent and three agent systems of the rock-paper-scissors type are analyzed in detail, including the stability analysis and numerical simulation. Scale-free memory is demonstrated to cause complex dynamics of the systems at hand. In particular, it is shown that there can be simultaneously two modes of the system instability undergoing subcritical and supercritical bifurcation, with the latter one exhibiting anomalous oscillations with the amplitude and period growing with time. Besides, the instability onset via this supercritical mode may be regarded as "altruism self-organization". For the three agent system the instability dynamics is found to be rather irregular and can be composed of alternate fragments of oscillations different in their properties.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figur

Solar Influence on Nuclear Decay Rates: Constraints from the MESSENGER Mission

We have analyzed Cs-137 decay data, obtained from a small sample onboard the MESSENGER spacecraft en route to Mercury, with the aim of setting limits on a possible correlation between nuclear decay rates and solar activity. Such a correlation has been suggested recently on the basis of data from Mn-54 decay during the solar flare of 13 December 2006, and by indications of an annual and other periodic variations in the decay rates of Si-32, Cl-36, and Ra-226. Data from five measurements of the Cs-137 count rate over a period of approximately 5.4 years have been fit to a formula which accounts for the usual exponential decrease in count rate over time, along with the addition of a theoretical solar contribution varying with MESSENGER-Sun separation. The indication of solar influence is then characterized by a non-zero value of the calculated parameter \xi, and we find \xi=(2.8+/-8.1)x10^{-3} for Cs-137. A simulation of the increased data that can hypothetically be expected following Mercury orbit insertion on 18 March 2011 suggests that the anticipated improvement in the determination of \xi could reveal a non-zero value of \xi if present at a level consistent with other data.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astrophysics and Space Science, 2011. 7 pages, 5 figures. Version 2 has corrected Figure 1, since Fig. 1 did not appear correctly in Version

Blood DNA methylation profiling identifies cathepsin Z dysregulation in pulmonary arterial hypertension

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is characterised by pulmonary vascular remodelling causing premature death from right heart failure. Established DNA variants influence PAH risk, but susceptibility from epigenetic changes is unknown. We addressed this through epigenome-wide association study (EWAS), testing 865,848 CpG sites for association with PAH in 429 individuals with PAH and 1226 controls. Three loci, at Cathepsin Z (CTSZ, cg04917472), Conserved oligomeric Golgi complex 6 (COG6, cg27396197), and Zinc Finger Protein 678 (ZNF678, cg03144189), reached epigenome-wide significance (p < 10−7) and are hypermethylated in PAH, including in individuals with PAH at 1-year follow-up. Of 16 established PAH genes, only cg10976975 in BMP10 shows hypermethylation in PAH. Hypermethylation at CTSZ is associated with decreased blood cathepsin Z mRNA levels. Knockdown of CTSZ expression in human pulmonary artery endothelial cells increases caspase-3/7 activity (p < 10−4). DNA methylation profiles are altered in PAH, exemplified by the pulmonary endothelial function modifier CTSZ, encoding protease cathepsin Z

Recent Developments in Helioseismic Analysis Methods and Solar Data Assimilation

MR and AS have received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program (FP/2007-2013)/ERC Grant Agreement no. 307117

Robust diffraction-limited near-infrared-to-near-ultraviolet wide-field imaging from stratospheric balloon-borne platforms — super-pressure balloon-borne imaging telescope performance

At a fraction of the total cost of an equivalent orbital mission, scientific balloon-borne platforms, operating above 99.7% of the Earth’s atmosphere, offer attractive, competitive, and effective observational capabilities—namely, space-like seeing, transmission, and backgrounds—which are well suited for modern astronomy and cosmology. The Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope (SUPERBIT) is a diffraction-limited, wide-field, 0.5 m telescope capable of exploiting these observing conditions in order to provide exquisite imaging throughout the near-infrared to near-ultraviolet. It utilizes a robust active stabilization system that has consistently demonstrated a 48 mas 1σ sky-fixed pointing stability over multiple 1 h observations at float. This is achieved by actively tracking compound pendulations via a three-axis gimballed platform, which provides sky-fixed telescope stability at < 500 mas and corrects for field rotation, while employing high-bandwidth tip/tilt optics to remove residual disturbances across the science imaging focal plane. SUPERBIT’s performance during the 2019 commissioning flight benefited from a customized high-fidelity science-capable telescope designed with an exceptional thermo- and opto-mechanical stability as well as a tightly constrained static and dynamic coupling between high-rate sensors and telescope optics. At the currently demonstrated level of flight performance, SUPERBIT capabilities now surpass the science requirements for a wide variety of experiments in cosmology, astrophysics, and stellar dynamics

Traffic exposures, air pollution and outcomes in pulmonary arterial hypertension: A United Kingdom cohort study analysis

While traffic and air pollution exposure is associated with increased mortality in numerous diseases, its association with disease severity and outcomes in pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) remains unknown.Exposure to particulate matter ≤2.5 μm3 (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and indirect measures of traffic-related air pollution (distance to main road and length of roads within buffer zones surrounding residential addresses) were estimated for 301 patients with idiopathic/heritable PAH recruited in the UK PAH national Cohort study. Associations with transplant-free survival and pulmonary hemodynamic severity at baseline were assessed, adjusting for confounding variables defined a priori.Higher estimated exposure to PM2.5 was associated with higher risk of death or lung transplant (Unadjusted hazard ratio (HR) 2.68; 95% CI 1.11-6.47 per 3 μg·m-3, p=0.028). This association remained similar when adjusted for potential confounding variables (HR 4.38; 95% CI 1.44-13.36 per 3 μg·m-3, p=0.009). No associations were found between NO2 exposure or other traffic pollution indicators and transplant-free survival Conversely, indirect measures of exposure to traffic-related air pollution within the 500-1000 m buffer zones correlated with the ERS/ESC risk categories as well as pulmonary hemodynamics at baseline. This association was strongest for pulmonary vascular resistance.In idiopathic/heritable PAH, indirect measures of exposure to traffic-related air pollution were associated with disease severity at baseline, whereas higher PM2.5 exposure may independently predict shorter transplant-free survival