Plant Growth Optimization by Vegetable Production System in HI-SEAS Analog Habitat

The Vegetable Production System (Veggie) is a scientific payload designed to support plant growth for food production under microgravity conditions. The configuration of Veggie consists of an LED lighting system with modular rooting pillows designed to contain substrate media and time-release fertilizer. The pillows were designed to be watered passively using capillary principles but have typically been watered manually by the astronauts in low-Earth orbit (LEO). The design of Veggie allows cabin air to be drawn through the plant enclosure for thermal and humidity control and for supplying CO2 to the plants. Since its delivery to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2014, Veggie has undergone several experimental trials by various crews. Ground unit testing of Veggie was conducted during an 8-month Mars analog study in a semi-contained environment of a simulated habitat located at approximately 8,200 feet (2,500 m) elevation on the Mauna Loa volcano on the Island of Hawaii. The Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) offered conditions (habitat, mission, communications, etc.) intended to simulate a planetary exploration mission. This paper provides data and analyses to show the prospect for optimized use of the current Veggie design for human habitats. Lessons learned during the study may provide opportunities for updating the system design and operational parameters for current Veggie experiments being conducted onboard the ISS and for payloads on future deep space missions

Two-dimensional Quantum-Corrected Eternal Black Hole

The one-loop quantum corrections to geometry and thermodynamics of black hole are studied for the two-dimensional RST model. We chose boundary conditions corresponding to the eternal black hole being in the thermal equilibrium with the Hawking radiation. The equations of motion are exactly integrated. The one of the solutions obtained is the constant curvature space-time with dilaton being a constant function. Such a solution is absent in the classical theory. On the other hand, we derive the quantum-corrected metric (\ref{solution}) written in the Schwarzschild like form which is a deformation of the classical black hole solution \cite{5d}. The space-time singularity occurs to be milder than in classics and the solution admits two asymptotically flat black hole space-times lying at "different sides" of the singularity. The thermodynamics of the classical black hole and its quantum counterpart is formulated. The thermodynamical quantities (energy, temperature, entropy) are calculated and occur to be the same for both the classical and quantum-corrected black holes. So, no quantum corrections to thermodynamics are observed. The possible relevance of the results obtained to the four-dimensional case is discussed.Comment: Latex, 28 pges; minor corrections in text and abstract made and new references adde

Palaeoproterozoic magnesite: lithological and isotopic evidence for playa/sabkha environments

Magnesite forms a series of 1- to 15-m-thick beds within the approximate to2.0 Ga (Palaeoproterozoic) Tulomozerskaya Formation, NW Fennoscandian Shield, Russia. Drillcore material together with natural exposures reveal that the 680-m-thick formation is composed of a stromatolite-dolomite-'red bed' sequence formed in a complex combination of shallow-marine and non-marine, evaporitic environments. Dolomite-collapse breccia, stromatolitic and micritic dolostones and sparry allochemical dolostones are the principal rocks hosting the magnesite beds. All dolomite lithologies are marked by delta C-13 values from +7.1 parts per thousand to +11.6 parts per thousand (V-PDB) and delta O-18 ranging from 17.4 parts per thousand to 26.3 parts per thousand (V-SMOW). Magnesite occurs in different forms: finely laminated micritic; stromatolitic magnesite; and structureless micritic, crystalline and coarsely crystalline magnesite. All varieties exhibit anomalously high delta C-13 values ranging from +9.0 parts per thousand to +11.6 parts per thousand and delta O-18 values of 20.0-25.7 parts per thousand. Laminated and structureless micritic magnesite forms as a secondary phase replacing dolomite during early diagenesis, and replaced dolomite before the major phase of burial. Crystalline and coarsely crystalline magnesite replacing micritic magnesite formed late in the diagenetic/metamorphic history. Magnesite apparently precipitated from sea water-derived brine, diluted by meteoric fluids. Magnesitization was accomplished under evaporitic conditions (sabkha to playa lake environment) proposed to be similar to the Coorong or Lake Walyungup coastal playa magnesite. Magnesite and host dolostones formed in evaporative and partly restricted environments; consequently, extremely high delta C-13 values reflect a combined contribution from both global and local carbon reservoirs. A C- 13-rich global carbon reservoir (delta C-13 at around +5 parts per thousand) is related to the perturbation of the carbon cycle at 2.0 Ga, whereas the local enhancement in C-13 (up to +12 parts per thousand) is associated with evaporative and restricted environments with high bioproductivity

An action for the exact string black hole

A local action is constructed describing the exact string black hole discovered by Dijkgraaf, Verlinde and Verlinde in 1992. It turns out to be a special 2D Maxwell-dilaton gravity theory, linear in curvature and field strength. Two constants of motion exist: mass M>1, determined by the level k, and U(1)-charge Q>0, determined by the value of the dilaton at the origin. ADM mass, Hawking temperature T_H \propto \sqrt{1-1/M} and Bekenstein-Hawking entropy are derived and studied in detail. Winding/momentum mode duality implies the existence of a similar action, arising from a branch ambiguity, which describes the exact string naked singularity. In the strong coupling limit the solution dual to AdS_2 is found to be the 5D Schwarzschild black hole. Some applications to black hole thermodynamics and 2D string theory are discussed and generalizations - supersymmetric extension, coupling to matter and critical collapse, quantization - are pointed out.Comment: 41 pages, 2 eps figures, dedicated to Wolfgang Kummer on occasion of his Emeritierung; v2: added ref; v3: extended discussion in sections 3.2, 3.3 and at the end of 5.3 by adding 2 pages of clarifying text; updated refs; corrected typo

Can forest management based on natural disturbances maintain ecological resilience?

Given the increasingly global stresses on forests, many ecologists argue that managers must maintain ecological resilience: the capacity of ecosystems to absorb disturbances without undergoing fundamental change. In this review we ask: Can the emerging paradigm of natural-disturbance-based management (NDBM) maintain ecological resilience in managed forests? Applying resilience theory requires careful articulation of the ecosystem state under consideration, the disturbances and stresses that affect the persistence of possible alternative states, and the spatial and temporal scales of management relevance. Implementing NDBM while maintaining resilience means recognizing that (i) biodiversity is important for long-term ecosystem persistence, (ii) natural disturbances play a critical role as a generator of structural and compositional heterogeneity at multiple scales, and (iii) traditional management tends to produce forests more homogeneous than those disturbed naturally and increases the likelihood of unexpected catastrophic change by constraining variation of key environmental processes. NDBM may maintain resilience if silvicultural strategies retain the structures and processes that perpetuate desired states while reducing those that enhance resilience of undesirable states. Such strategies require an understanding of harvesting impacts on slow ecosystem processes, such as seed-bank or nutrient dynamics, which in the long term can lead to ecological surprises by altering the forest's capacity to reorganize after disturbance

Effects of dietary energy on reproductive function and production in suckled beef cows

Twenty-eight Hereford x Angus cows were utilized to determine the effects of dietary energy level before and after calving on reproductive function and production in suckled beef cows. Low levels of dietary energy before calving resulted in losses of body composition prior to calving, reduced calf birth weight, lengthened intervals from calving to ovulation, and decreased milk production and calf weight at 70 d of age (P\u3c.05). Low levels of dietary energy after calving decreased measures of body composition after calving, reduced the percentage of cows that ovulated following calving, and decreased cow milk production and calf weight at 70 d of age (P\u3c .05). We conclude that dietary energy before and after calving impacts the reproductive function and production of suckled beef cows

Donor states in modulation-doped Si/SiGe heterostructures

We present a unified approach for calculating the properties of shallow donors inside or outside heterostructure quantum wells. The method allows us to obtain not only the binding energies of all localized states of any symmetry, but also the energy width of the resonant states which may appear when a localized state becomes degenerate with the continuous quantum well subbands. The approach is non-variational, and we are therefore also able to evaluate the wave functions. This is used to calculate the optical absorption spectrum, which is strongly non-isotropic due to the selection rules. The results obtained from calculations for Si/Si$_{1-x}$Ge$_x$ quantum wells allow us to present the general behavior of the impurity states, as the donor position is varied from the center of the well to deep inside the barrier. The influence on the donor ground state from both the central-cell effect and the strain arising from the lattice mismatch is carefully considered.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figure

Mid-Holocene sea surface conditions and riverine influence on the inshore Great Barrier Reef.

We present measurements of Sr/Ca, d18O, and spectral luminescence ratios (G/B) from a mid-Holocene Porites sp. microatoll recovered from the nearshore Great Barrier Reef (GBR). These records were used as proxies to reconstruct sea surface temperature (SST), the d18O of surrounding seawater (d18Osw), and riverine influence, respectively, and compared with records from a modern Porites sp. microatoll growing in the same environment. Strong riverine influence in the mid-Holocene record is indicated by (1) an increased annual d18Osw range in the mid-Holocene record, (2) negative peaks in d18O characteristic of flood events, and (3) a higher G/B luminescence ratio. Seasonal cycles in G/B suggest that humic acid inputs were elevated for a longer portion of the year during the mid-Holocene. The seasonal cycle of d18Osw peaked earlier in the year in the mid-Holocene record relative to the modern, while mean d18Osw values from the mid-Holocene record were similar to modern values. These records provide an insight into the oceanographic conditions the nearshore GBR experienced during mid-Holocene climatic shifts and are consistent with a strong Australian–Indonesian Summer Monsoon (AISM) system at ~ 4700 cal. yr BP

Measurement of the Bottom-Strange Meson Mixing Phase in the Full CDF Data Set

We report a measurement of the bottom-strange meson mixing phase \beta_s using the time evolution of B0_s -> J/\psi (->\mu+\mu-) \phi (-> K+ K-) decays in which the quark-flavor content of the bottom-strange meson is identified at production. This measurement uses the full data set of proton-antiproton collisions at sqrt(s)= 1.96 TeV collected by the Collider Detector experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron, corresponding to 9.6 fb-1 of integrated luminosity. We report confidence regions in the two-dimensional space of \beta_s and the B0_s decay-width difference \Delta\Gamma_s, and measure \beta_s in [-\pi/2, -1.51] U [-0.06, 0.30] U [1.26, \pi/2] at the 68% confidence level, in agreement with the standard model expectation. Assuming the standard model value of \beta_s, we also determine \Delta\Gamma_s = 0.068 +- 0.026 (stat) +- 0.009 (syst) ps-1 and the mean B0_s lifetime, \tau_s = 1.528 +- 0.019 (stat) +- 0.009 (syst) ps, which are consistent and competitive with determinations by other experiments.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, Phys. Rev. Lett 109, 171802 (2012

Neutron-induced prompt gamma activation analysis (PGAA) of metalsand non-metals in ocean floor geothermal vent-generated samples

Neutron-induced prompt gamma activation analysis (PGAA) hasbeen used to analyze ocean floor geothermal vent-generated samples thatare composed of mixed metal sulfides, silicates, and aluminosilicates.The modern application of the PGAA technique is discussed, and elementalanalytical results are given for 25 elements observed in the samples. Theelemental analysis of the samples is consistent with the expectedmineralogical compositions, and very consistent results are obtained forcomparable samples. Special sensitivity to trace quantities of hydrogen,boron, cadmium, dysprosium, gadolinium, and samarium isdiscussed