A fast analysis for thread-local garbage collection with dynamic class loading

Long-running, heavily multi-threaded, Java server applications make stringent demands of garbage collector (GC) performance. Synchronisation of all application threads before garbage collection is a significant bottleneck for JVMs that use native threads. We present a new static analysis and a novel GC framework designed to address this issue by allowing independent collection of thread-local heaps. In contrast to previous work, our solution safely classifies objects even in the presence of dynamic class loading, requires neither write-barriers that may do unbounded work, nor synchronisation, nor locks during thread-local collections; our analysis is sufficiently fast to permit its integration into a high-performance, production-quality virtual machine

Tumour regression in mice after treatment with extracts of the bone marrow from cattle harbouring tick-borne infections

Complete regression of a transplantable fibrosarcoma of mice was induced in an average of 86% of animals receiving repeated subcutaneous injections of an extract of the bone marrow from cattle harbouring Babesia parasites. Extracts from cattle harbouring Theileria mutans produced regression of tumours in an average of 63% of the recipients. Splenic extracts from the same animals and bone marrow extracts from an anaplasmosis carrier were less effective. Bone marrow extracts from control animals known to be free from these infections did not enhance the survival of tumour-bearing mice.The articles have been scanned in colour with a HP Scanjet 5590; 300dpi. Adobe Acrobat XI Pro was used to OCR the text and also for the merging and conversion to the final presentation PDF-format

A systematic review of physical activity promotion strategies

This article was first published in:British Journal of Sports Medicine:1996:30:84-89We have reviewed randomised controlled trials of physical activity promotion to provide recent and reliable information on the effectiveness of physical activity promotion. Computerised databases and references of references were searched. Experts were contacted and asked for information about existing work. Studies assessed were randomised controlled trials of healthy, free living, adult subjects, where exercise behaviour was the dependent variable. Eleven trials were identified. No United Kingdom based studies were found. Interventions that encourage walking and do not require attendance at a facility are most likely to lead to sustainable increases in overall physical activity. Brisk walking has the greatest potential for increasing overall activity levels of a sedentary population and meeting current public health recommendations. The small number of trials limits the strength of any conclusions and highlights the need for more research

Watershed water balance changes as furrow irrigation is converted to sprinkler irrigation in an arid region

Irrigation is the largest water use in the western U.S. The Upper Snake Rock Conservation Effects Assessment Project in southern Idaho began in 2005 to quantify the impacts of conservation practices in this irrigated watershed. The objective of this study was to determine the changes in the watershed water balances as farmers converted furrow irrigated fields to sprinkler irrigation from 2006 to 2016. More than 75% of annual watershed inflow was irrigation water diverted into the watershed from the Snake River and distributed through canals to 82,000 ha of cropland, while annual precipitation was only 10 to 23% of the annual inflow. Approximately 30% of the annual watershed inflow flowed back to the Snake River as irrigation return flow. Water balances indicate that irrigation exceeded evapotranspiration in the spring and fall. Irrigation scheduling based on daily ET or soil moisture measurement would help irrigation application match crop water needs. Annual irrigation project efficiency, defined as evapotranspiration divided by the amount of diverted irrigation water, varied from 61 to 73%, but project efficiency did not increase as the amount of sprinkler irrigation increased from 46% in 2006 to 59% in 2016. The only significant trends indicating that increasing sprinkler irrigation impacted the water balances were increasing irrigation project efficiency in July and increasing irrigation return flow during the irrigation season. Farmers may be applying less Irrigation water with sprinkler irrigation compared to furrow irrigation, which could have caused return flow to increase since irrigation diversion did not change. The irrigation project was designed with a supply-based allocation scheme to uniformly distribute the natural flow water right from the Snake River to farms. Therefore, irrigation diversion depended more on the available water supply than crop irrigation requirements. This study demonstrated that water rights and water policy can have a bigger impact on irrigation project efficiency than practices implemented on farms

Measuring Black Hole Spin using X-ray Reflection Spectroscopy

I review the current status of X-ray reflection (a.k.a. broad iron line) based black hole spin measurements. This is a powerful technique that allows us to measure robust black hole spins across the mass range, from the stellar-mass black holes in X-ray binaries to the supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei. After describing the basic assumptions of this approach, I lay out the detailed methodology focusing on "best practices" that have been found necessary to obtain robust results. Reflecting my own biases, this review is slanted towards a discussion of supermassive black hole (SMBH) spin in active galactic nuclei (AGN). Pulling together all of the available XMM-Newton and Suzaku results from the literature that satisfy objective quality control criteria, it is clear that a large fraction of SMBHs are rapidly-spinning, although there are tentative hints of a more slowly spinning population at high (M>5*10^7Msun) and low (M<2*10^6Msun) mass. I also engage in a brief review of the spins of stellar-mass black holes in X-ray binaries. In general, reflection-based and continuum-fitting based spin measures are in agreement, although there remain two objects (GROJ1655-40 and 4U1543-475) for which that is not true. I end this review by discussing the exciting frontier of relativistic reverberation, particularly the discovery of broad iron line reverberation in XMM-Newton data for the Seyfert galaxies NGC4151, NGC7314 and MCG-5-23-16. As well as confirming the basic paradigm of relativistic disk reflection, this detection of reverberation demonstrates that future large-area X-ray observatories such as LOFT will make tremendous progress in studies of strong gravity using relativistic reverberation in AGN.Comment: 19 pages. To appear in proceedings of the ISSI-Bern workshop on "The Physics of Accretion onto Black Holes" (8-12 Oct 2012). Revised version adds a missing source to Table 1 and Fig.6 (IRAS13224-3809) and corrects the referencing of the discovery of soft lags in 1H0707-495 (which were in fact first reported in Fabian et al. 2009

Moving toward sustainable irrigation in a southern Idaho irrigation project

Private and public irrigation development projects were a fundamental part of bringing irrigation arid regions of the western U.S. The Twin Falls Canal Company in southern Idaho provides a case study of private and public irrigation development because the project was developed by private investors under the Carey Act and receives a portion of its irrigation water from Bureau of Reclamation reservoirs. The project survived initial financial struggles and waterlogged soil to focus on sustaining the production by reducing chronic furrow irrigation erosion and nutrient losses in irrigation return flow. Average sediment loss from the project was 460 kg/ha in 1970. A cooperative effort by the canal company, state and federal agencies, and farmers improved water quality by installing sediment ponds on fields, applying polyacrylamide with furrow irrigation, converting from furrow to sprinkler irrigation, and constructing water quality ponds on irrigation return flow streams. From 2006-2018, the project retained on average 165 kg/ha of sediment and 0.4 kg/ha of total phosphorus annually, which removed 13,000 Mg of sediment and 33 Mg of total phosphorus from the Snake River each year. Nitrate-N from subsurface drainage, however, was lost at 10 kg/ha each year, which is equivalent to 380 Mg of urea fertilizer from the entire project. While sediment and phosphorus concentrations in irrigation return flow have decreased, they were still greater than the irrigation water concentrations, indicating that more can be done to reduce the project’s influence on water quality in the Snake River

CCD BV and 2MASS photometric study of the open cluster NGC 1513

We present CCD BV and JHK$_{s}$ 2MASS photometric data for the open cluster NGC 1513. We observed 609 stars in the direction of the cluster up to a limiting magnitude of $V\sim19$ mag. The star count method shows that the centre of the cluster lies at $\alpha_{2000}=04^{h}09^{m}36^{s}$, $\delta_{2000}=49^{\circ}28^{'}43^{''}$ and its angular size is $r=10$ arcmin. The optical and near-infrared two-colour diagrams reveal the colour excesses in the direction of the cluster as $E(B-V)=0.68\pm0.06$, $E(J-H)=0.21\pm0.02$ and $E(J-K_{s})=0.33\pm0.04$ mag. These results are consistent with normal interstellar extinction values. Optical and near-infrared Zero Age Main-Sequences (ZAMS) provided an average distance modulus of $(m-M)_{0}=10.80\pm0.13$ mag, which can be translated into a distance of $1440\pm80$ pc. Finally, using Padova isochrones we determined the metallicity and age of the cluster as $Z=0.015\pm 0.004$ ($[M/H]=-0.10 \pm 0.10$ dex) and $\log (t/yr) = 8.40\pm0.04$, respectively.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures and 4 tables, accepted for publication in Astrophysics & Space Scienc

Come to the dark side! The role of functional traits in shaping dark diversity patterns of south-eastern European hoverflies

1. Dark diversity represents the set of species that can potentially inhabit a given area under particular ecological conditions, but are currently 'missing' from a site. This concept allows characterisation of the mechanisms determining why species are sometimes absent from an area that seems ecologically suitable for them. 2. The aim of this study was to determine the dark diversity of hoverflies in south-eastern Europe and to discuss the role of different functional traits that might increase the likelihood of species contributing to dark diversity. Based on expert opinion, the Syrph the Net database and known occurrences of species, the study estimated species pools, and observed and dark diversities within each of 11 defined vegetation types for 564 hoverfly species registered in south-eastern Europe. To detect the most important functional traits contributing to species being in dark diversity across different vegetation types, a random forest algorithm and respective statistics for variable importance were used. 3. The highest dark diversity was found for southwest Balkan sub-Mediterranean mixed oak forest type, whereas the lowest was in Mediterranean mixed forest type. Three larval feeding modes (saproxylic, and phytophagous on bulbs or roots) were found to be most important for determining the probability of a species contributing to hoverfly dark diversity, based on univariate correlations and random forest analysis. 4. This study shows that studying dark diversity might provide important insights into what drives community assembly in south-eastern European hoverflies, especially its missing components, and contributes to more precise conservation prioritisation of both hoverfly species and their habitats.Peer reviewe

Aggregate tensile strength and friability characteristics of furrow and sprinkler irrigated fields in Southern Idaho

Agricultural crops grown in southern Idaho are furrow or sprinkler irrigated. Therefore, the soil experiences several wetting and drying cycles each growing season that can contribute to changes in aggregate tensile strength and friability. The objective of the research was to evaluate the influence of irrigation on soil structural properties. Four furrow irrigated fields were sampled at the top and bottom of the field, in the furrow and on the bed location of the furrow. Five sprinkler irrigated fields were sampled at 0-5 and 5-15 cm depth and at the top and bottom of the field. Results from this study indicate that differences in tensile strength in furrow irrigated fields were only evident soon after irrigation; otherwise, there were few differences in tensile strength and friability. In sprinkler irrigated fields tensile strength increased with depth in 3 of the 5 fields measured.Friability was less affected by depth