Very Large Telescope deep echelle spectroscopy of Galactic planetary nebulae NGC6153, M1-42 and Hf2-2

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Variations in Alaska tidewater glacier frontal ablation, 1985–2013

Our incomplete knowledge of the proportion of mass loss due to frontal ablation (the sum of ice loss through calving and submarine melt) from tidewater glaciers outside of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has been cited as a major hindrance to accurate predictions of global sea level rise. We present a 28 year record (1985–2013) of frontal ablation for 27 Alaska tidewater glaciers (representing 96% of the total tidewater glacier area in the region), calculated from satellite-derived ice velocities and modeled estimates of glacier ice thickness. We account for cross-sectional ice thickness variation, long-term thickness changes, mass lost between an upstream fluxgate and the terminus, and mass change due to changes in terminus position. The total mean rate of frontal ablation for these 27 glaciers over the period 1985–2013 is 15.11 ± 3.63Gta⁻¹. Two glaciers, Hubbard and Columbia, account for approximately 50% of these losses. The regional total ablation has decreased at a rate of 0.14Gta⁻¹ over this time period, likely due to the slowing and thinning of many of the glaciers in the study area. Frontal ablation constitutes only ∼4% of the total annual regional ablation, but roughly 20% of net mass loss. Comparing several commonly used approximations in the calculation of frontal ablation, we find that neglecting cross-sectional thickness variations severely underestimates frontal ablation

Plant Secondary Compounds; Their Impact on Forage Nutritive Value and upon Animal Production

Both the anti-nutritional and beneficial effects of secondary compounds in a range of temperate and tropical forages have been reviewed. Major secondary compounds in temperate and tropical forage plants occur in the phenolic fraction and include condensed and hydrolysable tannins, phenolic monomers and lignin. Condensed tannins (CT) bind to plant protein by pH-reversible hydrogen bonding. In temperate legume forages this reduces rumen protein degradation and can increase the absorption of essential amino acids (EAA) from the small intestine, with reactivity depending on CT concentration, molecular weight and chemical structure. Low concentrations of CT in Lotus corniculatus (20-40g/kg DM) increased EAA absorption by 62% and increased wool growth (15%) and ovulation rate (25%) in grazing sheep and increased milk production in ewes and dairy cows, all without changing voluntary feed intake (VFI). High concentrations of CT in Lotus pedunculatus (80- 100 g/kg DM) depressed VFI and depressed rates of body and wool growth in grazing sheep. Sulla, containing 80-120 g CT/kg DM, was particularly effective for counteracting the effects of parasitism and for promoting high rates of body growth in parasitised lambs. CT is present in tropical species such as Leucaena and Acacia at higher concentrations (60-200 g/kg DM) than in temperate species. Action of CT reduced rumen protein degradation in sheep fed tropical forages, but as yet there is no convincing evidence that this leads to increases in EAA absorption from the small intestine or that CT increases animal production. Further research is needed in these areas with tropical forages, particularly on the relationship between CT structure and its reactivity with proteins. Increasing CT concentration did not depress rumen microbial protein synthesis in sheep fed either temperate or tropical forages, until CT concentration exceeded 130 g/kg DM. Effect of CT upon undegraded, dietary protein release in the small intestine and upon endogenous protein secretion is defined as a future research area. Flavonoids have been detected in tropical legume forages in the same concentrations as CT. They have anti-nutritional effects in terms of causing amino acid loss during their excretion as conjugates in the urine and by disturbing blood acid/base balance, leading to reduced VFI. Research currently in progress with other secondary compounds in both temperate and tropical forages is reviewed. This includes sesquiterpene lactones in chicory, acubin in plantain, isoflavones in red clover and coumarin and dihydro-coumarin in glyricidia. The nutritional and anti-nutritional effects of these compounds for both ruminants and non-ruminants is discussed

Spitzer observations of extragalactic H II regions - III. NGC 6822 and the hot star, H II region connection

Using the short-high module of the Infrared Spectrograph on the Spitzer Space Telescope, we have measured the [S IV] 10.51, [Ne II] 12.81, [Ne III] 15.56, and [S III] 18.71-micron emission lines in nine H II regions in the dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 6822. These lines arise from the dominant ionization states of the elements neon (Ne$^{++}$, Ne$^+$) and sulphur (S$^{3+}$, S$^{++}$), thereby allowing an analysis of the neon to sulphur abundance ratio as well as the ionic abundance ratios Ne$^+$/Ne$^{++}$ and S$^{3+}$/S$^{++}$. By extending our studies of H II regions in M83 and M33 to the lower metallicity NGC 6822, we increase the reliability of the estimated Ne/S ratio. We find that the Ne/S ratio appears to be fairly universal, with not much variation about the ratio found for NGC 6822: the median (average) Ne/S ratio equals 11.6 (12.2$\pm$0.8). This value is in contrast to Asplund et al.'s currently best estimated value for the Sun: Ne/S = 6.5. In addition, we continue to test the predicted ionizing spectral energy distributions (SEDs) from various stellar atmosphere models by comparing model nebulae computed with these SEDs as inputs to our observational data, changing just the stellar atmosphere model abundances. Here we employ a new grid of SEDs computed with different metallicities: Solar, 0.4 Solar, and 0.1 Solar. As expected, these changes to the SED show similar trends to those seen upon changing just the nebular gas metallicities in our plasma simulations: lower metallicity results in higher ionization. This trend agrees with the observations.Comment: 22 pages, 13 figures. To be published in MNRAS. reference added and typos fixed. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:0804.0828, which is paper II by Rubin et al. (2008

A First Comparison of SLOPE and Other LIGO Burst Event Trigger Generators

A number of different methods have been proposed to identify unanticipated burst sources of gravitational waves in data arising from LIGO and other gravitational wave detectors. When confronted with such a wide variety of methods one is moved to ask if they are all necessary, i.e. given detector data that is assumed to have no gravitational wave signals present, do they generally identify the same events with the same efficiency, or do they each 'see' different things in the detector? Here we consider three different methods, which have been used within the LIGO Scientific Collaboration as part of its search for unanticipated gravitational wave bursts. We find that each of these three different methods developed for identifying candidate gravitational wave burst sources are, in fact, attuned to significantly different features in detector data, suggesting that they may provide largely independent lists of candidate gravitational wave burst events.Comment: 10 Pages, 5 Figures, Presented at the 10th Gravitational Wave Data Analysis Workshop (GWDAW-10), 14-17 December 2005 at the University of Texas, Brownsvill

Acute evening consumption of green kiwifruit in young men enhances walking alertness, mood and increases 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid in urine

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Optical extinction due to intrinsic structural variations of photonic crystals

Unavoidable variations in size and position of the building blocks of photonic crystals cause light scattering and extinction of coherent beams. We present a new model for both 2 and 3-dimensional photonic crystals that relates the extinction length to the magnitude of the variations. The predicted lengths agree well with our new experiments on high-quality opals and inverse opals, and with literature data analyzed by us. As a result, control over photons is limited to distances up to 50 lattice parameters ($\sim 15 \mu$m) in state-of-the-art structures, thereby impeding large-scale applications such as integrated circuits. Conversely, scattering in photonic crystals may lead to novel physics such as Anderson localization and non-classical diffusion.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures. Changes include: added Lagendijk as author; simplified and generalized the tex

Overview of the BlockNormal Event Trigger Generator

In the search for unmodeled gravitational wave bursts, there are a variety of methods that have been proposed to generate candidate events from time series data. Block Normal is a method of identifying candidate events by searching for places in the data stream where the characteristic statistics of the data change. These change-points divide the data into blocks in which the characteristics of the block are stationary. Blocks in which these characteristics are inconsistent with the long term characteristic statistics are marked as Event-Triggers which can then be investigated by a more computationally demanding multi-detector analysis.Comment: GWDAW-8 proceedings, 6 pages, 2 figure