The Lives of Stars: Insights From the TGAS-RAVE-LAMOST Dataset

In this paper we investigate how the chemical and kinematic properties of stars vary as a function of age. Using data from a variety of photometric, astrometric and spectroscopic surveys, we calculate the ages, phase space information and orbits for $\sim$125,000 stars covering a wide range of stellar parameters. We find indications that the inner regions of the disk reached high levels of enrichment early, while the outer regions were more substantially enriched in intermediate and recent epochs. We consider these enrichment histories through comparison of the ages of stars, their metallicities, and kinematic properties, such as their angular momentum in the solar neighborhood (which is a proxy for orbital radius). We calculate rates at which the velocity dispersions evolve, investigate the Oort constants for different aged populations (finding a slightly negative $\partial V_{C} / \partial R$ and $\partial V_{R} / \partial R$ for all ages, being most negative for the oldest stars), as well as examine the behavior of the velocity vertex deviation angle as a function of age (which we find to fall from $\sim$15 degrees for the 2 Gyr aged population to $\sim$6 degrees at around 6.5 Gyr of age, after which it remains unchanged). We find evidence for stellar churning, and find that the churned stars have a slightly younger age distribution than the rest of the data.Comment: 18 Pages, 14 Figures, Accepted Ap

Red Runaways: Hypervelocity Stars, Hills Ejecta and Other Outliers in the F-M Star Regime

In this paper we analyze a sample of metal-rich (>-0.8 dex) main sequence stars in the extended solar neighborhood, investigating kinematic outliers from the background population. The data, which are taken from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, are kinematically profiled as a function of distance from the Galactic plane using full six dimensional phase space information. Each star is examined in the context of these kinematic profiles and likelihoods are assigned to quantify whether a star matches the underlying profile. Since some of these stars are likely to have been ejected from the disc, we trace back their orbits in order to determine potential ejection radii. We find that objects with low probability (i.e. `outliers') are typically more metal poor, faster and, most importantly, have a tendency to originate from the inner Galaxy compared to the underlying population. We also compose a sample of stars with velocities exceeding the local escape velocity. Although we do not discount that our sample could be contaminated by objects with spurious proper motions, a number of stars appear to have been ejected from the disc with exceptionally high velocities. Some of these are consistent with being ejected from the spiral arms and hence are a rich resource for further study. Finally we look at objects whose orbits are consistent with them being ejected at high speeds from the Galactic center. Of these objects we find that one, J135855.65+552538.19, is inconsistent with halo, bulge and disk kinematics and could plausibly have been ejected from the Galactic nucleus via a Hills mechanism.Comment: 17 Pages, 12 Figures, Accepted to A

Rectangular Hierarchical Cartograms for Socio-Economic Data

We present rectangular hierarchical cartograms for mapping socio-economic data. These density-normalising cartograms size spatial units by population, increasing the ease with which data for densely populated areas can be visually resolved compared to more conventional cartographic projections. Their hierarchical nature enables the study of spatial granularity in spatial hierarchies, hierarchical categorical data and multivariate data through false hierarchies. They are space-filling representations that make efficient use of space and their rectangular nature (which aims to be as square as possible) improves the ability to compare the sizes (therefore population) of geographical units. We demonstrate these cartograms by mapping the Office for National Statistics Output Area Classification (OAC) by unit postcode (1.52 million in Great Britain) through the postcode hierarchy, using these to explore spatial variation. We provide rich and detailed spatial summaries of socio-economic characteristics of population as types of treemap, exploring the effects of reconfiguring them to study spatial and non-spatial aspects of the OAC classification

LAMOST 1: A Disrupted Satellite in the Constellation Draco

Using LAMOST spectroscopic data, we find a strong signal of a comoving group of stars in the constellation of Draco. The group, observed near the apocenter of its orbit, is 2.6 kpc from the Sun with a metallicity of -0.64 dex. The system is observed as a streaming population of unknown provenance with mass of about 2.1E4 solar masses and an absolute V band magnitude of about -3.6. Its high metallicity, diffuse physical structure, and eccentric orbit may indicate that the progenitor satellite was a globular cluster rather than a dwarf galaxy or an open cluster.Comment: 6 pages, 4 Figures, 1 Table, Accepted to ApJ

FIRST REPORT OF NECTAR ROBBING BY SWORD-BILLED HUMMINGBIRDS ENSIFERA ENSIFERA

A growing number of hummingbird species are known to practice nectar robbing. Hummingbirds that rob nectar tend to have short bills and to rob flowers with long, tubular corollas that prevent the birds from accessing nectar through its openings. We document that Sword-billed Hummingbirds Ensifera ensifera, which have the longest bills of any hummingbird species, are secondary nectar robbers on flowers of the red angel’s trumpet Brugmansia sanguinea, which have long tubular corollas and are regularly pollinated by Sword-billed Hummingbirds. When obtaining nectar through the floral opening of B. sanguinea, Sword-billed Hummingbirds' heads may be completely enveloped by the flower, severely limiting their vision. Sword-billed Hummingbirds might be at a lower risk of predation when they rob nectar than when they insert their heads into the floral opening. Thus, nectar robbing in this species might function to reduce predation risk, although we have no data to support this speculation

Pharmacy Staff Perspectives on Alcohol and Medication Interaction Prevention Among Older Rural Adults

Older adults are at high risk for alcohol and medication interactions (AMI). Pharmacies have the potential to act as ideal locations for AMI education, as pharmacy staff play an important role in the community. This study examined the perspectives of pharmacy staff on AMI prevention programming messaging, potential barriers to and facilitators of older adult participation in such programming, and dissemination methods for AMI prevention information. Flyers, telephone calls, and site visits were used to recruit 31 pharmacy staff members who participated in semistructured interviews. A content analysis of interview transcriptions was conducted to identify major themes, categories, and subcategories. The main categories identified for AMI prevention messaging were Informational, Health Significance, and Recommendations. Within barriers to participation, the main categories identified were Health Illiteracy, Personal Attitudes, and Feasibility. The main categories identified for program facilitators were Understanding, Beneficial Consequences, and Practicality. Multimethod dissemination strategies were commonly suggested. This study found positive pharmacy staff perspectives for the planning and implementation of AMI prevention programming, and future development and feasibility testing of such programming in the pharmacy setting is warranted

Are e-portfolios an asset to learning and placement?

We asked the question “what is the added value for the student learning experience, of electronic portfolios (e-portfolios) as an innovative means of portfolio assessment?” We answered the question using an holistic approach aimed at giving a panoramic perspective on the role of e-portfolios in placement from the point of view of users as well as academics and policy makers. Within the constraints of time and resources, we believe we have made a worthwhile contribution to our primary objective of supporting placement unit users’ capacity to make informed choices about implementation of e-portfolios. A literature review of both published and “grey” material informed us of the issues and therefore questions to ask. These were put into a survey that was sent to forums that placement academics and administrative staff would be likely to access, such as ASET and PlaceNet mailing lists. Additional views were obtained in interviews with key staff in institutions that were engaged in e-portfolio development and/or innovative assessment in placement. We reviewed commonly used packages used to deliver personal development planning (PDP) in institutions. We gave access to one of the more common e-portfolio packages to a group of students and allowed them to develop their own e-portfolios, and conducted a focus group to explore their views on the utility of an e-portfolio product to them.ASEThttp://www.asetonline.org/documents/AreE-PortfoliosAnAssetToLearningandPlacement-ASETandDMUReport-March2008_001.pd

MetaPred2CS:A sequence-based meta-predictor for protein-protein interactions of prokaryotic two-component system proteins

Abstract Motivation: Two-component systems (TCS) are the main signalling pathways of prokaryotes, and control a wide range of biological phenomena. Their functioning depends on interactions between TCS proteins, the specificity of which is poorly understood. Results: The MetaPred2CS web-server interfaces a sequence-based meta-predictor specifically designed to predict pairing of the histidine kinase and response-regulator proteins forming TCSs. MetaPred2CS integrates six sequence-based methods using a support vector machine classifier and has been intensively tested under different benchmarking conditions: (i) species specific gene sets; (ii) neighbouring versus orphan pairs; and (iii) k-fold cross validation on experimentally validated datasets. Availability and Implementation: Web server at: http://metapred2cs.ibers.aber.ac.uk/ , Source code: https://github.com/martinjvickers/MetaPred2CS or implemented as Virtual Machine at: http://metapred2cs.ibers.aber.ac.uk/download Contact:  [email protected] Supplementary information:  Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.</jats:p

Genome-wide prediction of prokaryotic two-component system networks using a sequence-based meta-predictor

BACKGROUND: Two component systems (TCS) are signalling complexes manifested by a histidine kinase (receptor) and a response regulator (effector). They are the most abundant signalling pathways in prokaryotes and control a wide range of biological processes. The pairing of these two components is highly specific, often requiring costly and time-consuming experimental characterisation. Therefore, there is considerable interest in developing accurate prediction tools to lessen the burden of experimental work and cope with the ever-increasing amount of genomic information. RESULTS: We present a novel meta-predictor, MetaPred2CS, which is based on a support vector machine. MetaPred2CS integrates six sequence-based prediction methods: in-silico two-hybrid, mirror-tree, gene fusion, phylogenetic profiling, gene neighbourhood, and gene operon. To benchmark MetaPred2CS, we also compiled a novel high-quality training dataset of experimentally deduced TCS protein pairs for k-fold cross validation, to act as a gold standard for TCS partnership predictions. Combining individual predictions using MetaPred2CS improved performance when compared to the individual methods and in comparison with a current state-of-the-art meta-predictor. CONCLUSION: We have developed MetaPred2CS, a support vector machine-based metapredictor for prokaryotic TCS protein pairings. Central to the success of MetaPred2CS is a strategy of integrating individual predictors that improves the overall prediction accuracy, with the in-silico two-hybrid method contributing most to performance. MetaPred2CS outperformed other available systems in our benchmark tests, and is available online at http://metapred2cs.ibers.aber.ac.uk, along with our gold standard dataset of TCS interaction pairs. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12859-015-0741-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users