414 research outputs found
Citizen surveil-labour: Analysing Crime Stoppers and its alliance of police, media, and publics
Impact of Salmonid alphavirus infection in diploid and triploid Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.) fry
With increasing interest in the use of triploid salmon in commercial aquaculture, gaining an understanding of how economically important pathogens affect triploid stocks is important. To compare the susceptibility of diploid and triploid Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.) to viral pathogens, fry were experimentally infected with Salmonid alphavirus sub-type 1 (SAV1), the aetiological agent of pancreas disease (PD) affecting Atlantic salmon aquaculture in Europe. Three groups of fry were exposed to the virus via different routes of infection: intraperitoneal injection (IP), bath immersion, or cohabitation (co-hab) and untreated fry were used as a control group. Mortalities commenced in the co-hab challenged diploid and triploid fish from 11 days post infection (dpi), and the experiment was terminated at 17 dpi. Both diploid and triploid IP challenged groups had similar levels of cumulative mortality at the end of the experimental period (41.1 % and 38.9 % respectively), and these were significantly higher (p < 0.01) than for the other challenge routes. A TaqMan-based quantitative PCR was used to assess SAV load in the heart, a main target organ of the virus, and also liver, which does not normally display any pathological changes during clinical infections, but exhibited severe degenerative lesions in the present study. The median viral RNA copy number was higher in diploid fish compared to triploid fish in both the heart and the liver of all three challenged groups. However, a significant statistical difference (p < 0.05) was only apparent in the liver of the co-hab groups. Diploid fry also displayed significantly higher levels of pancreatic and myocardial degeneration than triploids. This study showed that both diploid and triploid fry are susceptible to experimental SAV1 infection. The lower virus load seen in the triploids compared to the diploids may possibly be related to differences in cell metabolism between the two groups, however, further investigation is necessary to confirm this and also to assess the outcome of PD outbreaks in other developmental stages of the fish when maintained in commercial production systems
Fitting the integrated Spectral Energy Distributions of Galaxies
Fitting the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of galaxies is an almost
universally used technique that has matured significantly in the last decade.
Model predictions and fitting procedures have improved significantly over this
time, attempting to keep up with the vastly increased volume and quality of
available data. We review here the field of SED fitting, describing the
modelling of ultraviolet to infrared galaxy SEDs, the creation of
multiwavelength data sets, and the methods used to fit model SEDs to observed
galaxy data sets. We touch upon the achievements and challenges in the major
ingredients of SED fitting, with a special emphasis on describing the interplay
between the quality of the available data, the quality of the available models,
and the best fitting technique to use in order to obtain a realistic
measurement as well as realistic uncertainties. We conclude that SED fitting
can be used effectively to derive a range of physical properties of galaxies,
such as redshift, stellar masses, star formation rates, dust masses, and
metallicities, with care taken not to over-interpret the available data. Yet
there still exist many issues such as estimating the age of the oldest stars in
a galaxy, finer details ofdust properties and dust-star geometry, and the
influences of poorly understood, luminous stellar types and phases. The
challenge for the coming years will be to improve both the models and the
observational data sets to resolve these uncertainties. The present review will
be made available on an interactive, moderated web page (sedfitting.org), where
the community can access and change the text. The intention is to expand the
text and keep it up to date over the coming years.Comment: 54 pages, 26 figures, Accepted for publication in Astrophysics &
Space Scienc
Characterization of soil structure and porosity under long-term conventional tillage and no-tillage systems
Cross-ancestry genome-wide association analysis of corneal thickness strengthens link between complex and Mendelian eye diseases
Central corneal thickness (CCT) is a highly heritable trait associated with complex eye diseases such as keratoconus and glaucoma. We perform a genome-wide association meta-analysis of CCT and identify 19 novel regions. In addition to adding support for known connective tissue-related pathways, pathway analyses uncover previously unreported gene sets. Remarkably, >20% of the CCT-loci are near or within Mendelian disorder genes. These included FBN1, ADAMTS2 and TGFB2 which associate with connective tissue disorders (Marfan, Ehlers-Danlos and Loeys-Dietz syndromes), and the LUM-DCN-KERA gene complex involved in myopia, corneal dystrophies and cornea plana. Using index CCT-increasing variants, we find a significant inverse correlation in effect sizes between CCT and keratoconus (r =-0.62, P = 5.30 × 10-5) but not between CCT and primary open-angle glaucoma (r =-0.17, P = 0.2). Our findings provide evidence for shared genetic influences between CCT and keratoconus, and implicate candidate genes acting in collagen and extracellular matrix regulation
Search for astrophysical electron antineutrinos in Super-Kamiokande with 0.01wt% gadolinium-loaded water
We report the first search result for the flux of astrophysical electron
antineutrinos for energies O(10) MeV in the gadolinium-loaded Super-Kamiokande
(SK) detector. In June 2020, gadolinium was introduced to the ultra-pure water
of the SK detector in order to detect neutrons more efficiently. In this new
experimental phase, SK-Gd, we can search for electron antineutrinos via inverse
beta decay with efficient background rejection and higher signal efficiency
thanks to the high efficiency of the neutron tagging technique. In this paper,
we report the result for the initial stage of SK-Gd with a exposure at 0.01% Gd mass concentration. No significant excess
over the expected background in the observed events is found for the neutrino
energies below 31.3 MeV. Thus, the flux upper limits are placed at the 90%
confidence level. The limits and sensitivities are already comparable with the
previous SK result with pure-water () owing
to the enhanced neutron tagging
Velocity-space sensitivity of the time-of-flight neutron spectrometer at JET
The velocity-space sensitivities of fast-ion diagnostics are often described by so-called weight functions. Recently, we formulated weight functions showing the velocity-space sensitivity of the often dominant beam-target part of neutron energy spectra. These weight functions for neutron emission spectrometry (NES) are independent of the particular NES diagnostic. Here we apply these NES weight functions to the time-of-flight spectrometer TOFOR at JET. By taking the instrumental response function of TOFOR into account, we calculate time-of-flight NES weight functions that enable us to directly determine the velocity-space sensitivity of a given part of a measured time-of-flight spectrum from TOFOR
Relationship of edge localized mode burst times with divertor flux loop signal phase in JET
A phase relationship is identified between sequential edge localized modes (ELMs) occurrence times in a set of H-mode tokamak plasmas to the voltage measured in full flux azimuthal loops in the divertor region. We focus on plasmas in the Joint European Torus where a steady H-mode is sustained over several seconds, during which ELMs are observed in the Be II emission at the divertor. The ELMs analysed arise from intrinsic ELMing, in that there is no deliberate intent to control the ELMing process by external means. We use ELM timings derived from the Be II signal to perform direct time domain analysis of the full flux loop VLD2 and VLD3 signals, which provide a high cadence global measurement proportional to the voltage induced by changes in poloidal magnetic flux. Specifically, we examine how the time interval between pairs of successive ELMs is linked to the time-evolving phase of the full flux loop signals. Each ELM produces a clear early pulse in the full flux loop signals, whose peak time is used to condition our analysis. The arrival time of the following ELM, relative to this pulse, is found to fall into one of two categories: (i) prompt ELMs, which are directly paced by the initial response seen in the flux loop signals; and (ii) all other ELMs, which occur after the initial response of the full flux loop signals has decayed in amplitude. The times at which ELMs in category (ii) occur, relative to the first ELM of the pair, are clustered at times when the instantaneous phase of the full flux loop signal is close to its value at the time of the first ELM
Search for neutral resonances decaying into a Z boson and a pair of b jets or τ leptons
A search is performed for a new resonance decaying into a lighter resonance and a Z boson. Two channels are studied, targeting the decay of the lighter resonance into either a pair of oppositely charged τ leptons or a bb‾ pair. The Z boson is identified via its decays to electrons or muons. The search exploits data collected by the CMS experiment at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.8 fb −1 . No significant deviations are observed from the standard model expectation and limits are set on production cross sections and parameters of two-Higgs-doublet models
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