333 research outputs found
Cobalt complexes as artificial hydrogenases for the reductive side of water splitting
The generation of H-2 from protons and electrons by complexes of cobalt has an extensive history. During the past decade, interest in this subject has increased as a result of developments in hydrogen generation that are driven electrochemically or photochemically. This article reviews the subject of hydrogen generation using Co complexes as catalysts and discusses the mechanistic implications of the systems studied for making H-2. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Metals in Bioenergetics and Biomimetics Systems. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
Temperature but not nutrient addition affects abundance and assemblage structure of colonizing aquatic insects
Abiotic conditions are important considerations in the species sorting process, which ultimately determines the distribution and abundance of species. Freshwater ecosystems will be impacted by ongoing temperature rise and other anthropogenically induced changes, such as nutrient enrichment and eutrophication. Changing characteristics of freshwater habitats will likely impact organisms in numerous ways, including through effects on colonization dynamics. Species are expected to colonize habitat patches where fitness will be the highest for themselves and their offspring, and how habitat selection interacts with changing environments remains an important question. We conducted a warming experiment to test the habitat selection preferences of aquatic beetles and hemipterans between habitat patches (mesocosms) of varying temperatures (via heaters), nutrient addition, and their interaction. Overall, insect abundance and richness were higher in unheated patches, with taxon-specific variation in response to heating. Although nutrients had limited effects on environmental conditions in mesocosms, their addition had no significant effects on insects. Insect assemblages had unique structures across heating treatments, with lower beta diversity and higher effective numbers of species in the warmest mesocosms. Our data support the importance of spatial variation in abiotic factors during the habitat selection process, and in determining species distributions and abundances as shallow lentic ecosystems are impacted by rising global temperatures
Two Clusters with Radio-quiet Cooling Cores
Radio lobes inflated by active galactic nuclei at the centers of clusters are
a promising candidate for halting condensation in clusters with short central
cooling times because they are common in such clusters. In order to test the
AGN-heating hypothesis, we obtained Chandra observations of two clusters with
short central cooling times yet no evidence for AGN activity: Abell 1650 and
Abell 2244. The cores of these clusters indeed appear systematically different
from cores with more prominent radio emission. They do not have significant
central temperature gradients, and their central entropy levels are markedly
higher than in clusters with stronger radio emission, corresponding to central
cooling times ~ 1 Gigayear. Also, there is no evidence for fossil X-ray
cavities produced by an earlier episode of AGN heating. We suggest that either
(1) the central gas has not yet cooled to the point at which feedback is
necessary to prevent it from condensing, possibly because it is conductively
stabilized, or (2) the gas experienced a major heating event Gyr in
the past and has not required feedback since then. The fact that these clusters
with no evident feedback have higher central entropy and therefore longer
central cooling times than clusters with obvious AGN feedback strongly suggests
that AGNs supply the feedback necessary to suppress condensation in clusters
with short central cooling times.Comment: ApJ Letter, in pres
TrkB signaling is required for behavioral sensitization and conditioned place preference induced by a single injection of cocaine
AbstractExogenous brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) can regulate behavioral sensitization and conditioned place preference (CPP) when animals are exposed to repeated cocaine administration. However, it is unclear whether BDNF signaling through the TrkB receptor can mediate these behavioral responses when animals are given a single cocaine exposure. Because TrkB knockout mice die as neonates, we engineered a transgenic mouse that expressed a dominant negative form of TrkB (dnTrkB) in a conditional and reversible manner. We assessed also activation of endogenous TrkB by quantifying levels of phosphorylated TrkB (p-TrkB) in the nucleus accumbens (NAc). We found that a single exposure to cocaine was sufficient to increase p-TrkB within the NAc 9–12h after administration. Expression of the dnTrkB transgene not only prevented the acute cocaine-induced increase in p-TrkB, but it also prevented behavioral sensitization and CPP following a single cocaine injection. These findings demonstrate that TrkB activation is required both for behavioral sensitization and CPP to a single cocaine exposure. The fact that enhanced TrkB activation is induced within 9h of a single injection of cocaine suggests that inhibition of TrkB signaling commencing hours after cocaine exposure may prevent at least the initial antecedents to the sensitizing and reinforcing effects of this psychostimulant
Hyporheic Exchange and Water Chemistry of Two Arctic Tundra Streams of Contrasting Geomorphology
The North Slope of Alaska’s Brooks Range is underlain by continuous permafrost, but an active layer of thawed sediments develops at the tundra surface and beneath streambeds during the summer, facilitating hyporheic exchange. Our goal was to understand how active layer extent and stream geomorphology influence hyporheic exchange and nutrient chemistry. We studied two arctic tundra streams of contrasting geomorphology: a high-gradient, alluvial stream with riffle-pool sequences and a low-gradient, peat-bottomed stream with large deep pools connected by deep runs. Hyporheic exchange occurred to ~50 cm beneath the alluvial streambed and to only ~15 cm beneath the peat streambed. The thaw bulb was deeper than the hyporheic exchange zone in both stream types. The hyporheic zone was a net source of ammonium and soluble reactive phosphorus in both stream types. The hyporheic zone was a net source of nitrate in the alluvial stream, but a net nitrate sink in the peat stream. The mass flux of nutrients regenerated from the hyporheic zones in these two streams was a small portion of the surface water mass flux. Although small, hyporheic sources of regenerated nutrients help maintain the in-stream nutrient balance. If future warming in the arctic increases the depth of the thaw bulb, it may not increase the vertical extent of hyporheic exchange. The greater impacts on annual contributions of hyporheic regeneration are likely to be due to longer thawed seasons, increased sediment temperatures or changes in geomorphology
The Chandra XBootes Survey - III: Optical and Near-IR Counterparts
The XBootes Survey is a 5-ks Chandra survey of the Bootes Field of the NOAO
Deep Wide-Field Survey (NDWFS). This survey is unique in that it is the largest
(9.3 deg^2), contiguous region imaged in X-ray with complementary deep optical
and near-IR observations. We present a catalog of the optical counterparts to
the 3,213 X-ray point sources detected in the XBootes survey. Using a Bayesian
identification scheme, we successfully identified optical counterparts for 98%
of the X-ray point sources. The optical colors suggest that the optically
detected galaxies are a combination of z<1 massive early-type galaxies and
bluer star-forming galaxies whose optical AGN emission is faint or obscured,
whereas the majority of the optically detected point sources are likely quasars
over a large redshift range. Our large area, X-ray bright, optically deep
survey enables us to select a large sub-sample of sources (773) with high X-ray
to optical flux ratios (f_x/f_o>10). These objects are likely high redshift
and/or dust obscured AGN. These sources have generally harder X-ray spectra
than sources with 0.1<f_x/f_o<10. Of the 73 X-ray sources with no optical
counterpart in the NDWFS catalog, 47 are truly optically blank down to R~25.5
(the average 50% completeness limit of the NDWFS R-band catalogs). These
sources are also likely to be high redshift and/or dust obscured AGN.Comment: 19 pages, 13 figures, ApJ accepted. Catalog can be found at:
http://www.noao.edu/noao/noaodeep or
ftp://archive.noao.edu/pub/catalogs/xbootes
Renormalization of the charged scalar field in curved space
The DeWitt-Schwinger proper time point-splitting procedure is applied to a
massive complex scalar field with arbitrary curvature coupling interacting with
a classical electromagnetic field in a general curved spacetime. The scalar
field current is found to have a linear divergence. The presence of the
external background gauge field is found to modify the stress-energy tensor
results of Christensen for the neutral scalar field by adding terms of the form
to the logarithmic counterterms. These results are shown to be
expected from an analysis of the degree of divergence of scalar quantum
electrodynamics.Comment: 24 pages REVTe
XBootes: An X-Ray Survey of the NDWFS Bootes Field - Paper I Overview and Initial Results
We obtained a 5 ksec deep Chandra X-ray Observatory ACIS-I map of the 9.3
square degree Bootes field of the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey. Here we describe
the data acquisition and analysis strategies leading to a catalog of 4642
(3293) point sources with 2 or more (4 or more) counts, corresponding to a
limiting flux of roughly 4(8)x10^{-15} erg cm^{-2}s^{-1} in the 0.5-7 keV band.
These Chandra XBootes data are unique in that they consitute the widest
contiguous X-ray field yet observed to such a faint flux limit. Because of the
extraordinarily low background of the ACIS, we expect only 14% (0.7%) of the
sources to be spurious. We also detected 43 extended sources in this survey.
The distribution of the point sources among the 126 pointings (ACIS-I has a 16
x 16 arcminute field of view) is consistent with Poisson fluctuations about the
mean of 36.8 sources per pointing. While a smoothed image of the point source
distribution is clumpy, there is no statistically significant evidence of large
scale filamentary structure. We do find however, that for theta>1 arcminute,
the angular correlation function of these sources is consistent with previous
measurements, following a power law in angle with slope -0.7. In a 1.4 deg^{2}
sample of the survey, approximately 87% of the sources with 4 or more counts
have an optical counterpart to R ~26 mag. As part of a larger program of
optical spectroscopy of the NDWFS Bootes area, spectra have been obtained for
\~900 of the X-ray sources, most of which are QSOs or AGN.Comment: 18 Pages, 10 figures (AASTex Preprint format
- …