A systematic review of arthropod community diversity in association with invasive plants

Invasive plants represent a significant financial burden for land managers and also have the potential to severely degrade ecosystems. Arthropods interact strongly with plants, relying on them for food, shelter, and as nurseries for their young. For these reasons, the impacts of plant invasions are likely strongly reflected by arthropod community dynamics including diversity and abundances. A systematic review was conducted to ascertain the state of the literature with respect to plant invaders and their associated arthropod communities. We found that the majority of studies did not biogeographically contrast arthropod community dynamics from both the home and away ranges and that studies were typically narrow in scope, focusing only on the herbivore feeding guild, rather than assessing two or more trophic levels. Importantly, relative arthropod richness was significantly reduced on invasive plant species. Phylogenetic differences between the invasive and local plant community as well as the plant functional group impact arthropod diversity patterns. A framework highlighting some interaction mechanisms between multiple arthropod trophic levels and native and invasive plants is discussed and future research directions relating to these interactions and the findings herein are proposed

Aerodynamics for the ADEPT SR-1 Flight Experiment

Adaptable, Deployable, Entry, and Placement Technology (ADEPT) is a combination of a heatshield and an aerodynamic decelerator for atmospheric entry applications. The ADEPT Sounding Rocket (SR)-1 mission was a suborbital flight experiment of an 0.7 m-diameter ADEPT to verify system-level performance and to characterize dynamic stability behavior. The aerodynamic database for ADEPT SR-1 was constructed from non-continuum and continuum flowfield computations, along with data from recent ADEPT ground testing and the IRVE-3 flight test vehicle. High-altitude (free-molecular and transitional regimes) data were generated using DSMC methods. Pre-flight predictions of continuum static aerodynamics coefficients were derived from Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes solutions at conditions along a design trajectory, with comparisons to available ground test data of the nano-ADEPT geometry. Dynamic pitch damping characteristics were taken from functional forms developed for the IRVE-3 flight test vehicle through ballistic range testing. Comparison of pre-flight predictions to post-flight reconstruction of aerodynamic force and moment coefficients is presented

An Infrasonic Missing Fundamental Rises at 18.5Hz

The Missing Fundamental (MF) phenomenon is an auditory processing artifact which arises from the perception of a harmonically-structured complex sound in the absence of the complex sound’s fundamental frequency (f0). Constructive interference occurring between constituent waveforms of the harmonic series may elicit a perceptible tone at the f0’s pitch. A related illusion, known as binaural auditory beats (BAB), may also generate nonexistent perceptible pitches through a shared mechanism. A harmonic series suggesting to an infrasonic f0 (1/f) noise and broken MF conditions. This data suggests that an infrasonic MF tone is generated, despite the normally imperceptible nature of the sound. The computational phenomenon reported here may also occur throughout the cortex, where it could influence or induce different conscious states. The practical implications of altering cortical activity is relevant in understanding processing disorders such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Schizophrenia

A Tale of Two Narrow-Line Regions: Ionization, Kinematics, and Spectral Energy Distributions for a Local Pair of Merging Obscured Active Galaxies

We explore the gas ionization and kinematics, as well as the optical--IR spectral energy distributions for UGC 11185, a nearby pair of merging galaxies hosting obscured active galactic nuclei (AGNs), also known as SDSS J181611.72+423941.6 and J181609.37+423923.0 (J1816NE and J1816SW, $z \approx 0.04$). Due to the wide separation between these interacting galaxies ($\sim 23$ kpc), observations of these objects provide a rare glimpse of the concurrent growth of supermassive black holes at an early merger stage. We use BPT line diagnostics to show that the full extent of the narrow line emission in both galaxies is photoionized by an AGN and confirm the existence of a 10-kpc-scale ionization cone in J1816NE, while in J1816SW the AGN narrow-line region is much more compact (1--2 kpc) and relatively undisturbed. Our observations also reveal the presence of ionized gas that nearly spans the entire distance between the galaxies which is likely in a merger-induced tidal stream. In addition, we carry out a spectral analysis of the X-ray emission using data from {\em XMM-Newton}. These galaxies represent a useful pair to explore how the [\ion{O}{3}] luminosity of an AGN is dependent on the size of the region used to explore the extended emission. Given the growing evidence for AGN "flickering" over short timescales, we speculate that the appearances and impact of these AGNs may change multiple times over the course of the galaxy merger, which is especially important given that these objects are likely the progenitors of the types of systems commonly classified as "dual AGNs."Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, accepted by the Astrophysical Journa

A Spectroscopic Survey of Wise -Selected Obscured Quasars with the Southern African Large Telescope

We present the results of an optical spectroscopic survey of a sample of 40 candidate obscured quasars identified on the basis of their mid-infrared emission detected by the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). Optical spectra for this survey were obtained using the Robert Stobie Spectrograph on the Southern African Large Telescope. Our sample was selected with WISE colors characteristic of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), as well as red optical to mid-IR colors indicating that the optical/UV AGN continuum is obscured by dust. We obtain secure redshifts for the majority of the objects that comprise our sample (35/40), and find that sources that are bright in the WISE W4 (22 μm) band are typically at moderate redshift (z = 0.35) while sources fainter in W4 are at higher redshifts (z = 0.73). The majority of the sources have narrow emission lines with optical colors and emission line ratios of our WISE-selected sources that are consistent with the locus of AGN on the rest-frame g – z color versus [Ne III] λ3869/[O II] λλ3726+3729 line ratio diagnostic diagram. We also use empirical AGN and galaxy templates to model the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) for the objects in our sample, and find that while there is significant variation in the observed SEDs for these objects, the majority require a strong AGN component. Finally, we use the results from our analysis of the optical spectra and the SEDs to compare our selection criteria to alternate criteria presented in the literature. These results verify the efficacy of selecting luminous obscured AGNs based on their WISE colors

FIREBALL: Instrument pointing and aspect reconstruction

The Faint Intergalactic Redshifted Emission Balloon (FIREBALL) had its first scientific flight in June 2009. The instrument is a 1 meter class balloon-borne telescope equipped with a vacuum-ultraviolet integral field spectrograph intended to detect emission from the inter-galactic medium at redshifts 0.3 < z < 1.0. The scientific goals and the challenging environment place strict constraints on the pointing and tracking systems of the gondola. In this manuscript we briefly review our pointing requirements, discuss the methods and solutions used to meet those requirements, and present the aspect reconstruction results from the first successful scientific flight

The kinematics of ionized gas in lyman-break analogs at z ~ 0.2

We present results for 19 “Lyman-break analogs” observed with Keck/OSIRIS with an adaptive-optics-assisted spatial resolution of less than 200 pc. We detect satellites/companions, diffuse emission, and velocity shear, all with high signal-to-noise ratios. These galaxies present remarkably high velocity dispersion along the line of sight (~70 km s^(−1)), much higher than standard star-forming spirals in the low-redshift universe. We artificially redshift our data to z ~ 2.2 to allow for a direct comparison with observations of high-z Lyman-break galaxies and find striking similarities between both samples. This suggests that either similar physical processes are responsible for their observed properties, or, alternatively, that it is very difficult to distinguish between different mechanisms operating in the low- versus high-redshift starburst galaxies based on the available data. The comparison between morphologies in the UV/optical continuum and our kinemetry analysis often shows that neither is by itself sufficient to confirm or completely rule out the contribution from recent merger events. We find a correlation between the kinematic properties and stellar mass, in that more massive galaxies show stronger evidence for a disk-like structure. This suggests a co-evolutionary process between the stellar mass buildup and the formation of morphological and dynamical substructure within the galaxy