Tidal Disruption Event Host Galaxies in the Context of the Local Galaxy Population

We study the properties of tidal disruption event (TDE) host galaxies in the context of a catalog of ~500,000 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We explore whether selection effects can account for the overrepresentation of TDEs in E+A/post-starburst galaxies by creating matched galaxy samples. Accounting for possible selection effects due to black hole (BH) mass, redshift completeness, strong AGN presence, bulge colors, and surface brightness can reduce the apparent overrepresentation of TDEs in E+A host galaxies by a factor of ~4 (from ~$\times$100-190 to ~$\times$25-48), but cannot fully explain the preference. We find that TDE host galaxies have atypical photometric properties compared to similar, "typical" galaxies. In particular, TDE host galaxies tend to live in or near the "green valley" between star-forming and passive galaxies, and have bluer bulge colors ($\Delta (g-r) \approx 0.3$ mag), lower half-light surface brightnesses (by ~1 mag/arcsec$^2$), higher Sersic indices ($\Delta n_{\rm g} \approx 3$), and higher bulge-to-total-light ratios ($\Delta B/T \approx 0.5$) than galaxies with matched BH masses. We find that TDE host galaxies appear more centrally concentrated and that all have high galaxy Sersic indices and $B/T$ fractions---on average in the top 10% of galaxies of the same BH mass---suggesting a higher nuclear stellar density. We identify a region in Sersic index and BH mass parameter space that contains ~2% of our reference catalog galaxies but $\ge\!60\%$ of TDE host galaxies. The unique photometric properties of TDE host galaxies may be useful for selecting candidate TDEs for spectroscopic follow-up observations in large transient surveys.Comment: 26 pages, 11 figures, 5 tables. Published in Ap

Development of explosive welding techniques for fabrication of regeneratively cooled thrust chambers for large rocket engine requirements Final report, 28 Jun. 1967 - 15 Sep. 1970

Explosive welding techniques in fabricating regeneratively cooled thrust chambers for large rocket engine requirements including ultrasonic inspection, metallography, and burst testin

Component Microenvironments and System Biogeography Structure Microorganism Distributions in Recirculating Aquaculture and Aquaponic Systems

ABSTRACT Flowthrough and pond aquaculture system microbiome management practices aim to mitigate fish disease and stress. However, the operational success of recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) depends directly on system microbial community activities. In RAS, each component environment is engineered for a specific microbial niche for waste management, as the water continuously flowing through the system must be processed before returning to the rearing tank. In this study, we compared waste management component microbiomes (rearing tank water, pH correction tank, solid-waste clarifier, biofilter, and degassing tower) within a commercial-scale freshwater RAS by high-throughput 16S rRNA gene sequencing. To assess consistency among freshwater RAS microbiomes, we also compared the microbial community compositions of six aquaculture and aquaponic farms. Community assemblages reflected site and source water relationships, and the presence of a hydroponic subsystem was a major community determinant. In contrast to the facility-specific community composition, some sequence variants, mainly classified into Flavobacterium, Cetobacterium, the family Sphingomonadaceae, and nitrifying guilds of ammonia-oxidizing archaea and Nitrospira, were common across all facilities. The findings of this study suggest that, independently of system design, core taxa exist across RAS rearing similar fish species but that system design informs the individual aquatic microbiome assemblages. Future RAS design would benefit from understanding the roles of these core taxa and then capitalizing on their activities to further reduce system waste/added operational controls. IMPORTANCE Recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) are agroecosystems for intensive on-land cultivation of products of fisheries. Practitioners that incorporate edible plant production into RAS refer to these facilities as aquaponic systems (AP). RAS have the potential to offset declining production levels of wild global fisheries while reducing waste and product distance to market, but system optimization is needed to reduce costs. Both RAS and AP rely on microbial consortia for maintaining water quality and promoting fish/plant health, but little is known about the microorganisms actually present. This lack of knowledge prevents optimization of designs and operational controls to target the growth of beneficial microbial species or consortia. The significance of our research is in identifying the common microorganisms that inhabit production RAS and AP and the operational factors that influence which microorganisms colonize and become abundant. Identifying these organisms is a first step toward advanced control of microbial activities that improve reproducibility and reduce costs

Testing Assumptions in Deliberative Democratic Design: A Preliminary Assessment of the Efficacy of the Participedia Data Archive as an Analytic Tool

At smaller social scales, deliberative democratic theory can be restated as an input-process-output model. We advance such a model to formulate hypotheses about how the context and design of a civic engagement process shape the deliberation that takes place therein, as well as the impact of the deliberation on participants and subsequent policymaking. To test those claims, we extract and code case studies from Participedia.net, a research platform that has adopted a self-directed crowd-sourcing strategy to collect data on participatory institutions and deliberative interventions around the world. We explain and confront the challenges faced in coding and analyzing the Participedia cases, which involves managing reliability issues and missing data. In spite of those difficulties, regression analysis of the coded cases shows compelling results, which provide considerable support for our general theoretical model. We conclude with reflections on the implications of our findings for deliberative theory, the design of democratic innovations, and the utility of Participedia as a data archive

Spectral Evolution of the Extraordinary Type IIn Supernova 2006gy

We present a detailed analysis of the extremely luminous Type IIn supernova SN2006gy using spectra obtained between days 36 and 237 after explosion. We derive the temporal evolution of the effective temperature, radius, expansion speeds, and bolometric luminosity, as well as the progenitor wind density and total swept-up mass overtaken by the shock. SN2006gy can be interpreted in the context of shock interaction with a dense CSM, but with quite extreme values for the CSM mass of 20 Msun and an explosion kinetic energy of at least 5e51 erg. A key difference between SN2006gy and other SNeIIn is that, owing to its large CSM mass, the interaction region remained opaque much longer. At early times, H-alpha widths suggest that the photosphere is ahead of the shock, and photons diffuse out through the opaque CSM. The pivotal transition to optically thin emission begins around day 110, when we start to see a decrease in the blackbody radius and strengthening tracers of the post-shock shell. From the evolution of pre-shock velocities, we deduce that the CSM was ejected by the progenitor in a 1e49 erg precursor event 8yr before explosion. The large CSM mass rules out models involving stars with initial masses around 10Msun. With the full mass budget, even massive M_ZAMS=30-40 Msun progenitor stars are inadequate. At roughly solar metallicity, substantial mass loss probably occurred during the star's life, so SN 2006gy's progenitor is more consistent with LBV eruptions or pulsational pair-instability ejections in stars with initial masses above 100 Msun. This requires significant revision to current paradigms of massive-star evolution. (abridged)Comment: Really long. 30 pages, 26 figs, appendix. Submitted to ApJ - v2 corrected one referenc

A de novo reference transcriptome for Bolitoglossa vallecula, an Andean mountain salamander in Colombia

© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Arenas Gomez, C. M., Woodcock, M. R., Smith, J. J., Voss, S. R., & Delgado, J. P. A de novo reference transcriptome for Bolitoglossa vallecula, an Andean mountain salamander in Colombia. Data in Brief, 29, (2020): 105256, doi:10.1016/j.dib.2020.105256.The amphibian order Caudata, contains several important model species for biological research. However, there is need to generate transcriptome data from representative species of the primary salamander families. Here we describe a de novo reference transcriptome for a terrestrial salamander, Bolitoglossa vallecula (Caudata: Plethodontidae). We employed paired-end (PE) illumina RNA sequencing to assemble a de novo reference transcriptome for B. vallecula. Assembled transcripts were compared against sequences from other vertebrate taxa to identify orthologous genes, and compared to the transcriptome of a close plethodontid relative (Bolitoglossa ramosi) to identify commonly expressed genes in the skin. This dataset should be useful to future comparative studies aimed at understanding important biological process, such as immunity, wound healing, and the production of antimicrobial compounds.This work was funded by a research grant from COLCIENCIAS 569 (GRANT 027-2103) and CODI (Programa Sostenibilidad) 2013–2014 of the University of Antioquia. A PhD fellowship to the first author, Claudia Arenas was funded by the COLCIENCIAS 567 Grant. We thank the lab of Juan Fernando Alzate from the University of Antioquia for their help in developing our bioinformatic methodological approach. We thank Andrea Gómez and Melisa Hincapie for their help in animal collection and husbandry

The development of a measure of social care outcome for older people. Funded/commissioned by: Department of Health

An essential element of identifying Best Value and monitoring cost-effective care is to be able to identify the outcomes of care. In the field of health services, use of utility-based health related quality of life measures has become widespread, indeed even required. If, in the new era of partnerships, social care outcomes are to be valued and included we need to develop measures that reflect utility or welfare gain from social care interventions. This paper reports on a study, commissioned as part of the Department of Health’s Outcomes of Social Care for Adults Initiative, that developed an instrument and associated utility indexes that provide a tool for evaluating social care interventions in both a research and service setting. Discrete choice conjoint analysis used to derive utility weights provided us with new insights into the relative importance of the core domains of social care to older people. Whilst discrete choice conjoint analysis is being increasingly used in health economics, this is the first study that has attempted to use it to derive a measure of outcome

A pilot study of the S-MAP (Solutions for Medications Adherence Problems) intervention for older adults prescribed polypharmacy in primary care: Study protocol

Background: Adhering to multiple medications as prescribed is challenging for older patients (aged ≥ 65 years) and a difficult behaviour to improve. Previous interventions designed to address this have been largely complex in nature but have shown limited effectiveness and have rarely used theory in their design. It has been recognised that theory ('a systematic way of understanding events or situations') can guide intervention development and help researchers better understand how complex adherence interventions work. This pilot study aims to test a novel community pharmacy-based intervention that has been systematically developed using the Theoretical Domains Framework (12-domain version) of behaviour change. Methods: As part of a non-randomised pilot study, pharmacists in 12 community pharmacies across Northern Ireland (n = 6) and London, England (n = 6), will be trained to deliver the intervention to older patients who are prescribed ≥ 4 regular medicines and are non-adherent (self-reported). Ten patients will be recruited per pharmacy (n = 120) and offered up to four tailored one-to-one sessions, in the pharmacy or via telephone depending on their adherence, over a 3-4-month period. Guided by an electronic application (app) on iPads, the intervention content will be tailored to each patient's underlying reasons for non-adherence and mapped to the most appropriate solutions using established behaviour change techniques. This study will assess the feasibility of collecting data on the primary outcome of medication adherence (self-report and dispensing data) and secondary outcomes (health-related quality of life and unplanned hospitalisations). An embedded process evaluation will assess training fidelity for pharmacy staff, intervention fidelity, acceptability to patients and pharmacists and the intervention's mechanism of action. Process evaluation data will include audio-recordings of training workshops, intervention sessions, feedback interviews and patient surveys. Analysis will be largely descriptive. Discussion: Using pre-defined progression criteria, the findings from this pilot study will guide the decision whether to proceed to a cluster randomised controlled trial to test the effectiveness of the S-MAP intervention in comparison to usual care in community pharmacies. The study will also explore how the intervention components may work to bring about change in older patients' adherence behaviour and guide further refinement of the intervention and study procedures. Trial registration: This study is registered at ISRCTN: https://doi.org/10.1186/ISRCTN7383153