You Will Miss the Colored Soldiers

Illustration of black soldiers fightinghttps://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/cht-sheet-music/1313/thumbnail.jp

Precision Lunar Laser Ranging For Lunar and Gravitational Science

Laser ranging to retroreflector arrays placed on the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts and the Soviet Lunar missions over the past 39 years have dramatically increased our understanding of gravitational physics along with Earth and Moon geophysics, geodesy, and dynamics. Significant advances in these areas will require placing modern retroreflectors and/or active laser ranging systems at new locations on the lunar surface. Ranging to new locations will enable better measurements of the lunar librations, aiding in our understanding of the interior structure of the moon. More precise range measurements will allow us to study effects that are too small to be observed by the current capabilities as well as enabling more stringent tests of Einstein's theory of General Relativity. Setting up retroreflectors was a key part of the Apollo missions so it is natural to ask if future lunar missions should include them as well. The Apollo retroreflectors are still being used today, and nearly 40 years of ranging data has been invaluable for scientific as well as other studies such as orbital dynamics. However, the available retroreflectors all lie within 26 degrees latitude of the equator, and the most useful ones within 24 degrees longitude of the sub-earth meridian. This clustering weakens their geometrical strength

Prophylactic methylprednisolone to reduce inflammation and improve outcomes from one lung ventilation in children: a randomized clinical trial.

BACKGROUND: One lung ventilation (OLV) results in inflammatory and mechanical injury, leading to intraoperative and postoperative complications in children. No interventions have been studied in children to minimize such injury. OBJECTIVE: We hypothesized that a single 2-mg·kg(-1) dose of methylprednisolone given 45-60 min prior to lung collapse would minimize injury from OLV and improve physiological stability. METHODS: Twenty-eight children scheduled to undergo OLV were randomly assigned to receive 2 mg·kg(-1) methylprednisolone (MP) or normal saline (placebo group) prior to OLV. Anesthetic management was standardized, and data were collected for physiological stability (bronchospasm, respiratory resistance, and compliance). Plasma was assayed for inflammatory markers related to lung injury at timed intervals related to administration of methylprednisolone. RESULTS: Three children in the placebo group experienced clinically significant intraoperative and postoperative respiratory complications. Respiratory resistance was lower (P = 0.04) in the methylprednisolone group. Pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-6 was lower (P = 0.01), and anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10 was higher (P = 0.001) in the methylprednisolone group. Tryptase, measured before and after OLV, was lower (P = 0.03) in the methylprednisolone group while increased levels of tryptase were seen in placebo group after OLV (did not achieve significance). There were no side effects observed that could be attributed to methylprednisolone in this study. CONCLUSIONS: Methylprednisolone at 2 mg·kg(-1) given as a single dose prior to OLV provides physiological stability to children undergoing OLV. In addition, methylprednisolone results in lower pro-inflammatory markers and higher anti-inflammatory markers in the children\u27s plasma

A critical review of the impacts of cover crops on nitrogen leaching, net greenhouse gas balance and crop productivity

This work contributes to the UK-China Virtual Joint Centre N-Circle (grant number BB/N013484/1), SuperG (funded under EU Horizon 2020 programme) and ADVENT (grant number NE/M019691/1). DRC was supported by the UK-China Virtual joint Centre for Agricultural Nitrogen (CINAg, BB/N013468/1) and the UK-Brazil Virtual Joint Centre to deliver enhanced N-use efficiency via an integrated soil-plant systems approach (NUCLEUS), which are jointly supported by Newton fund via UK BBSRC and NERC. Jaak Truu received financing from Estonian Research Council (grant PRG548).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Orbital effects of a monochromatic plane gravitational wave with ultra-low frequency incident on a gravitationally bound two-body system

We analytically compute the long-term orbital variations of a test particle orbiting a central body acted upon by an incident monochromatic plane gravitational wave. We assume that the characteristic size of the perturbed two-body system is much smaller than the wavelength of the wave. Moreover, we also suppose that the wave's frequency is much smaller than the particle's orbital one. We make neither a priori assumptions about the direction of the wavevector nor on the orbital geometry of the planet. We find that, while the semi-major axis is left unaffected, the eccentricity, the inclination, the longitude of the ascending node, the longitude of pericenter and the mean anomaly undergo non-vanishing long-term changes. They are not secular trends because of the slow modulation introduced by the tidal matrix coefficients and by the orbital elements themselves. They could be useful to indepenedently constrain the ultra-low frequency waves which may have been indirectly detected in the BICEP2 experiment. Our calculation holds, in general, for any gravitationally bound two-body system whose characteristic frequency is much larger than the frequency of the external wave. It is also valid for a generic perturbation of tidal type with constant coefficients over timescales of the order of the orbital period of the perturbed particle.Comment: LaTex2e, 24 pages, no figures, no tables. Changes suggested by the referees include

Identifying source populations for the reintroduction of the Eurasian beaver, Castor fiber L. 1758, into Britain: evidence from ancient DNA

The file attached is the Published/publisher’s pdf version of the article

A framework for resolving motivational conflict via attractor dynamics

Motivation modulates behaviour depending upon contextual and internal cues. Like animals, successful artificial agents must implement different behavioural strategies in order to satisfy dynamical needs. Such causal factors emerge from internal homeostatic or allostatic processes, as well as from external stimuli or threats. However, when two or more needs coalesce, a situation of motivational conflict ensues. In this work we present a four-stage dynamical framework for the resolution of motivational conflict based upon principles from dynamical systems and statistical mechanics. As a central mechanism for the resolution of conflict we propose the use of potentials with multiple wells or minima. This model leads to behavioural switching either by means of a bifurcation or by the stochastic escape from one of the wells. We present analytical and simulation results that reproduce known motivational conflict phenomena observed in the study of animal behaviour, in the case of two conflicting motivations

Differential preservation of endogenous human and microbial DNA in dental calculus and dentin

Dental calculus (calcified dental plaque) is prevalent in archaeological skeletal collections and is a rich source of oral microbiome and host-derived ancient biomolecules. Recently, it has been proposed that dental calculus may provide a more robust environment for DNA preservation than other skeletal remains, but this has not been systematically tested. In this study, shotgun-sequenced data from paired dental calculus and dentin samples from 48 globally distributed individuals are compared using a metagenomic approach. Overall, we find DNA from dental calculus is consistently more abundant and less contaminated than DNA from dentin. The majority of DNA in dental calculus is microbial and originates from the oral microbiome; however, a small but consistent proportion of DNA (mean 0.08 ± 0.08%, range 0.007–0.47%) derives from the host genome. Host DNA content within dentin is variable (mean 13.70 ± 18.62%, range 0.003–70.14%), and for a subset of dentin samples (15.21%), oral bacteria contribute \u3e 20% of total DNA. Human DNA in dental calculus is highly fragmented, and is consistently shorter than both microbial DNA in dental calculus and human DNA in paired dentin samples. Finally, we find that microbial DNA fragmentation patterns are associated with guanine-cytosine (GC) content, but not aspects of cellular structure