5,271 research outputs found
Physiology of the visual control system
Neurophysiological aspects of eye movement in visual control system with differentiation of version and vergenc
Visual and control aspects of saccadic eye movements
Physiological, behavioral, and control investigation of rapid saccadic jump eye movement in human
Contrasting responses to catchment modification among a range of functional and structural indicators of river ecosystem health
1. The value of measuring ecosystem functions in regular monitoring programs is increasingly being recognised as a potent tool for assessing river health. We measured the response of ecosystem metabolism, organic matter decomposition and strength loss, and invertebrate community composition across a gradient of catchment impairment defined by upstream landuse stress in two New Zealand streams. This was performed to determine if there were consistent responses among contrasting functional and structural indicators.
2. Rates of gross primary production (GPP) and ecosystem respiration (ER) ranged from 0.1 to 7.0 gO2 m−2 day−1 and from 0.34 to 16.5 gO2 m−2 day−1 respectively. Rates of GPP were variable across the landuse stress gradient, whereas ER increased linearly with the highest rates at the most impacted sites. Production/respiration (P/R) and net ecosystem metabolism (NEM) indicated that sites at the low and high ends of the stress gradient were heterotrophic with respiration rates presumably relying on organic matter from upstream sources, adjacent land or point sources. Sites with moderate impairment were predominantly autotrophic.
3. Declines in the tensile strength of the cotton strips showed no response across part of the gradient, but a strong response among the most impaired sites. The rate of mass loss of wooden sticks (Betula platyphylla Sukaczev) changed from a linear response to a U-shaped response across the impairment gradient after water temperature compensation, whereas leaf breakdown at a subset of sites suggested a linear loss in mass per degree-day. Three macroinvertebrate metrics describing the composition of the invertebrate community and its sensitivity to pollution showed similar linear inverse responses to the landuse stress gradient.
4. The first axis of a redundancy analysis indicated an association between landuse stress and various measures of water quality, and wooden stick mass loss, the invertebrate metric % EPT [percentage of macroinvertebrate taxa belonging to the Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Trichoptera (excluding Hydroptilidae] taxa, P/R and NEM, supporting the utility of these structural and functional metrics for assessing degree of landuse stress. The second axis was more strongly associated with catchment size, ER and GPP which suggests that these indicators were responding to differences in stream size.
5. Our results suggest that nonlinear responses to catchment impairment need to be considered when interpreting measurements of ecosystem function. Functional indicators could be useful for detecting relatively subtle changes where the slope of the response curve is maximised and measurements at the low and high ends of the impairment gradient are roughly equivalent. Such responses may be particularly valuable for detecting early signs of degradation at high quality sites, allowing management responses to be initiated before the degradation becomes too advanced, or for detecting initial moves away from degraded states during the early stages of restoration. Close links between structural and functional indices of river health across an impairment gradient are not necessarily expected or desirable if the aim is to minimise redundancy among ecological indicators
Discovery of carbon monoxide in the upper atmosphere of Pluto
Pluto's icy surface has changed colour and its atmosphere has swelled since
its last closest approach to the Sun in 1989. The thin atmosphere is produced
by evaporating ices, and so can also change rapidly, and in particular carbon
monoxide should be present as an active thermostat. Here we report the
discovery of gaseous CO via the 1.3mm wavelength J=2-1 rotational transition,
and find that the line-centre signal is more than twice as bright as a
tentative result obtained by Bockelee-Morvan et al. in 2000. Greater
surface-ice evaporation over the last decade could explain this, or increased
pressure could have caused the atmosphere to expand. The gas must be cold, with
a narrow line-width consistent with temperatures around 50 K, as predicted for
the very high atmosphere, and the line brightness implies that CO molecules
extend up to approximately 3 Pluto radii above the surface. The upper
atmosphere must have changed markedly over only a decade since the prior
search, and more alterations could occur by the arrival of the New Horizons
mission in 2015.Comment: 5 pages; accepted for publication in MNRAS Letter
Strange nonchaotic attractors in noise driven systems
Strange nonchaotic attractors (SNAs) in noise driven systems are
investigated. Before the transition to chaos, due to the effect of noise, a
typical trajectory will wander between the periodic attractor and its nearby
chaotic saddle in an intermittent way, forms a strange attractor gradually. The
existence of SNAs is confirmed by simulation results of various critera both in
map and continuous systems. Dimension transition is found and intermittent
behavior is studied by peoperties of local Lyapunov exponent. The universality
and generalization of this kind of SNAs are discussed and common features are
concluded
The Initial Conditions of Clustered Star Formation III. The Deuterium Fractionation of the Ophiuchus B2 Core
We present N2D+ 3-2 (IRAM) and H2D+ 1_11 - 1_10 and N2H+ 4-3 (JCMT) maps of
the small cluster-forming Ophiuchus B2 core in the nearby Ophiuchus molecular
cloud. In conjunction with previously published N2H+ 1-0 observations, the N2D+
data reveal the deuterium fractionation in the high density gas across Oph B2.
The average deuterium fractionation R_D = N(N2D+)/N(N2H+) ~ 0.03 over Oph B2,
with several small scale R_D peaks and a maximum R_D = 0.1. The mean R_D is
consistent with previous results in isolated starless and protostellar cores.
The column density distributions of both H2D+ and N2D+ show no correlation with
total H2 column density. We find, however, an anticorrelation in deuterium
fractionation with proximity to the embedded protostars in Oph B2 to distances
>= 0.04 pc. Destruction mechanisms for deuterated molecules require gas
temperatures greater than those previously determined through NH3 observations
of Oph B2 to proceed. We present temperatures calculated for the dense core gas
through the equating of non-thermal line widths for molecules (i.e., N2D+ and
H2D+) expected to trace the same core regions, but the observed complex line
structures in B2 preclude finding a reasonable result in many locations. This
method may, however, work well in isolated cores with less complicated velocity
structures. Finally, we use R_D and the H2D+ column density across Oph B2 to
set a lower limit on the ionization fraction across the core, finding a mean
x_e, lim >= few x 10^{-8}. Our results show that care must be taken when using
deuterated species as a probe of the physical conditions of dense gas in
star-forming regions.Comment: ApJ accepte
Enantioselective isothiourea-catalysed trans-dihydropyridinone synthesis using saccharin-derived ketimines : scope and limitations
The authors thank Syngenta and the EPSRC (grant code EP/K503162/1) (DGS) for funding. The European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) ERC Grant Agreement No. 279850 is also acknowledged (CMY). ADS thanks the Royal Society for a Wolfson Research Merit Award. We also thank the EPSRC UK National Mass Spectrometry Facility at Swansea University.The catalytic enantioselective synthesis of a range of trans-dihydropyridinones from aryl-, heteroaryl- and alkenylacetic acids and saccharin-derived ketimines with good to excellent stereocontrol (15 examples, up to >95:5 dr, up to >99:1 er) is reported. After extensive optimisation, HyperBTM proved the optimal isothiourea catalyst for this transformation at −78 °C, giving trans-dihydropyridones with generally excellent levels of diastereo- and enantioselectivity.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe
Probing ISM Structure in Trumpler 14 & Carina I Using The Stratospheric Terahertz Observatory 2
We present observations of the Trumpler 14/Carina I region carried out using
the Stratospheric Terahertz Observatory 2 (STO2). The Trumpler 14/Carina I
region is in the west part of the Carina Nebula Complex, which is one of the
most extreme star-forming regions in the Milky Way. We observed Trumpler
14/Carina I in the 158 m transition of [C\,{\sc ii}] with a spatial
resolution of 48 and a velocity resolution of 0.17 km s. The
observations cover a 0.25 by 0.28 area with central position
{\it l} = 297.34, {\it b} = -0.60. The kinematics show that
bright [C\,{\sc ii}] structures are spatially and spectrally correlated with
the surfaces of CO clouds, tracing the photodissociation region and ionization
front of each molecular cloud. Along 7 lines of sight that traverse Tr 14 into
the dark ridge to the southwest, we find that the [C\,{\sc ii}] luminosity from
the HII region is 3.7 times that from the PDR. In same los we find in the PDRs
an average ratio of 1:4.1:5.6 for the mass in atomic gas:dark-CO gas: molecular
gas traced by CO. Comparing multiple gas tracers including HI 21cm, [C\,{\sc
ii}], CO, and radio recombination lines, we find that the HII regions of the
Carina Nebula Complex are well-described as HII regions with one-side freely
expanding towards us, consistent with the champagne model of ionized gas
evolution. The dispersal of the GMC in this region is dominated by EUV
photoevaporation; the dispersal timescale is 20-30 Myr.Comment: ApJ accepte
Molecular gas in NGC6946
We present imaging of molecular gas emission in the star-forming spiral
galaxy NGC6946. Our CO(1-0) and CO(3-2) images, made at 22" resolution with the
IRAM 30-m and the Heinrich Hertz 10-m radio telescopes, are the most extensive
CO observations of this galaxy and are among the most extensive observations of
molecular gas in any spiral galaxy. The molecular component in NGC6946 is
unusually massive, with a ratio of molecular to atomic Hydrogen of 0.57. A star
formation efficiency image for NGC6946 ranges by over two orders of magnitude
with highest values found in the northeastern spiral arm, and anticorrelates
with the 6cm polarized emission image, which traces the regular part of the
magnetic field. We analyse the ISM in NGC6946's disk by making 1-D and 2-D
comparisons of images made in several wavebands. A point-by-point correlation
technique finds that the molecular gas is closely associated with the
7micron-emitting dust. The high correlation found between the MIR emission and
the radio continuum at 6cm cannot be due to dust heating and gas ionization in
star-forming regions because the thermal radio emission is less correlated with
the MIR than the nonthermal emission. A coupling of magnetic fields to gas
clouds is proposed as a possible scenario.Comment: A&A accepted, 23 pages, 11 figures. Version with high resolution
figures available at: http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~wwalsh/sp.htm
12CO(J=2->1) and CO(J=3->2) observations of Virgo Cluster spiral galaxies with the KOSMA telescope: global properties
We present 12CO(J=2->1) and CO(J=3->2) observations of quiescent Virgo
Cluster spiral galaxies with the KOSMA 3m submm telescope. The beam sizes of
80" at 345 GHz and 120" at 230 GHz are well suited for the investigation of
global properties of Virgo Cluster galaxies. The observed sample was selected
based on previous 12CO(J=1->0) detections by Stark et al. (1986), performed
with the AT&T Bell Laboratory 7m telescope (beam size 100"). We were able to
detect 18 spiral galaxies in 12CO(2->1) and 16 in 12CO(3->2). Beam matched
observations of the lowest three 12CO transitions allow us to compare our
results with previous high spatial resolution studies of (moderate) starburst
galaxies and galactic core regions. We discuss the global excitation conditions
of the ISM in these quiescent spiral galaxies. The resulting CO (3--2)/(1--0)
integrated line ratios vary over a relatively narrow range of values from 0.35
to 0.14 (on a K km/s-scale) with increasing CO (2--1)/(1--0) ratio (from 0.5 to
1.1). The line ratios between the three lowest rotational transitions of CO
cannot be fitted by any radiative transfer model with a single source
component. A two-component model, assuming a warm, dense nuclear and a cold,
less dense disc component allows us to fit the observed line ratios for most of
the galaxies individually by selecting suitable parameters. The two-component
model, however, fails to explain the observed correlation of the line ratios.
This is due to a variation of the relative filling factor of the warm gas
alone, assuming a typical set of parameters for the two components common for
all galaxies.Comment: accepted for publication in A&A, 9 pages, 8 figure
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