Photodissociation and photoionisation of atoms and molecules of astrophysical interest

A new collection of photodissociation and photoionisation cross sections for 102 atoms and molecules of astrochemical interest has been assembled, along with a brief review of the basic processes involved. These have been used to calculate dissociation and ionisation rates, with uncertainties, in a standard ultraviolet interstellar radiation field (ISRF) and wavelength-dependent radiation fields. The new ISRF rates generally agree within 30% with our previous compilations, with a few notable exceptions. The reduction of rates in shielded regions was calculated as a function of dust, molecular and atomic hydrogen, atomic C, and self-shielding column densities. The relative importance of shielding types depends on the species in question and the dust optical properties. The new data are publicly available from the Leiden photodissociation and ionisation database. Sensitivity of rates to variation of temperature and isotope, and cross section uncertainties, are tested. Tests were conducted with an interstellar-cloud chemical model, and find general agreement (within a factor of two) with the previous iteration of the Leiden database for the ISRF, and order-of-magnitude variations assuming various kinds of stellar radiation. The newly parameterised dust-shielding factors makes a factor-of-two difference to many atomic and molecular abundances relative to parameters currently in the UDfA and KIDA astrochemical reaction databases. The newly-calculated cosmic-ray induced photodissociation and ionisation rates differ from current standard values up to a factor of 5. Under high temperature and cosmic-ray-flux conditions the new rates alter the equilibrium abundances of abundant dark cloud abundances by up to a factor of two. The partial cross sections for H2O and NH3 photodissociation forming OH, O, NH2 and NH are also evaluated and lead to radiation-field-dependent branching ratios.Comment: Corrected some inconsistent table/figure data. Significant change: Zn photoionisation rate corrected. Accepted for publication by A&

Deliverable 2 (SustainAQ)

The European Project SustainAQ (Framework 6) aims to identify the limiting factors for the sustainable production of aquatic origin food in Eastern Europe. It focuses on the possible use of Recirculation Aquaculture Systems (RAS) as sustainable method for the production of aquatic animals as mentioned in the communication of the European Commission on Aquaculture in 2009. RASs already exist mainly in western countries and proved economically feasible. RASs allow controlling the production process including effluents, biosecurity and escapes. Eastern European countries are facing challenges related to their excessive water use waste emission, and others. Therefore, these countries are potential beneficiaries of improved sustainability through RAS use. This project intends to assess the benefits of introducing and applying RAS for Eastern European aquaculture. This project involves three Western European countries (Norway, the Netherlands and France) and six East European countries (Croatia, Turkey, Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic and Poland). Ten research institutions collaborate in different tasks (coordination, data collection, data analysis, etc.), and nine small-medium enterprises (SME) participate in data mining (Table 1). The present data is therefore based on the situation in those countries during 2006 till 2008 before the report got finally compiled in 2008/2009

Business Success and Businesses' Beauty Capital

We examine whether a difference in pay for beauty is supported by different productivity of people according to looks. Using a sample of advertising firms, we find that those firms with better-looking executives have higher revenues and faster growth than do otherwise identical firms whose executives are not so good-looking. The impact on revenue far exceeds the likely effect of beauty on the executives' wages. This suggests that their beauty creates firm-specific investments, in the form of improved relationships within work groups, the returns to which are shared by the firm and the executive.

New Constraints on Quasar Evolution: Broad Line Velocity Shifts over 1.5≲z≲7.51.5\lesssim z\lesssim 7.5

We present the results of a model-independent investigation of the rest-frame UV spectra from a comprehensive sample of $394$ quasars in the redshift range $1.5\leq z \leq 7.5$. We fit the main Broad Emission Lines (BELs) in the rest-frame range $1280 \text{\AA} \leq \lambda \leq 3000 \text{\AA}$ (O I, C II, Si IV, C III, C IV and Mg II) with a lightly-supervised spline fitting technique. Redshifts are derived from the peaks of each fitted BEL and used to compute relative velocity shifts. We show that our method gives unbiased velocity shifts and is insensitive to spectral resolution and instrumental parameters. It is found that the average blueshift of the \cfour\, line with respect to several low-ionisation lines in luminosity-matched samples does not significantly evolve over $1.5\gtrsim z\gtrsim6$. However, the average blueshift increases significantly by a factor $\sim 2.5$ at $z\gtrsim 6$. We propose that this redshift evolution can be explained by \cfour\, winds launched perpendicularly to an accretion disk with increased torus opacity at high-redshift, coupled with a potential orientation-driven selection bias. Our results open new exciting avenues of investigation into young quasars in the reionisation epoch.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS. 14 pages, 14 Figures, 2 Tables. Revised version to match the accepted one - results unchanged. Supplementary material for appendix A available at : www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucapram/QSOBEL_shifts_supp_material.tar.g

Reionization history constraints from neural network based predictions of high-redshift quasar continua

Observations of the early Universe suggest that reionization was complete by $z\sim6$, however, the exact history of this process is still unknown. One method for measuring the evolution of the neutral fraction throughout this epoch is via observing the Ly$\alpha$ damping wings of high-redshift quasars. In order to constrain the neutral fraction from quasar observations, one needs an accurate model of the quasar spectrum around Ly$\alpha$, after the spectrum has been processed by its host galaxy but before it is altered by absorption and damping in the intervening IGM. In this paper, we present a novel machine learning approach, using artificial neural networks, to reconstruct quasar continua around Ly$\alpha$. Our QSANNdRA algorithm improves the error in this reconstruction compared to the state-of-the-art PCA-based model in the literature by 14.2% on average, and provides an improvement of 6.1% on average when compared to an extension thereof. In comparison with the extended PCA model, QSANNdRA further achieves an improvement of 22.1% and 16.8% when evaluated on low-redshift quasars most similar to the two high-redshift quasars under consideration, ULAS J1120+0641 at $z=7.0851$ and ULAS J1342+0928 at $z=7.5413$, respectively. Using our more accurate reconstructions of these two $z>7$ quasars, we estimate the neutral fraction of the IGM using a homogeneous reionization model and find $\bar{x}_\mathrm{HI} = 0.25^{+0.05}_{-0.05}$ at $z=7.0851$ and $\bar{x}_\mathrm{HI} = 0.60^{+0.11}_{-0.11}$ at $z=7.5413$. Our results are consistent with the literature and favour a rapid end to reionization

Fluorescent C II* 1335A emission spectroscopically resolved in a galaxy at z = 5.754

We report the discovery of the first spectroscopically resolved C II /C II* 1334, 1335A doublet in the Lyman-break galaxy J0215-0555 at z = 5.754. The separation of the resonant and fluorescent emission channels was possible thanks to the large redshift of the source and long integration time, as well as the small velocity width of the feature, 0.6 +- 0.2A. We model this emission and find that at least two components are required to reproduce the combination of morphologies of C II* emission, C II absorption and emission, and Lyman-alpha emission from the object. We suggest that the close alignment between the fluorescence and Lyman-alpha emission could indicate an ionisation escape channel within the object. While the faintness of such a C II /C II* doublet makes it prohibitively difficult to pursue for similar systems with current facilities, we suggest it can become a valuable porosity diagnostic in the era of JWST and the upcoming generations of ELTs.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures; accepted for publication in MNRAS Letter

A teratocarcinoma-like human embryonic stem cell (hESC) line and four hESC lines reveal potentially oncogenic genomic changes

The first Swiss human embryonic stem cell (hESC) line, CH-ES1, has shown features of a malignant cell line. It originated from the only single blastomere that survived cryopreservation of an embryo, and it more closely resembles teratocarcinoma lines than other hESC lines with respect to its abnormal karyotype and its formation of invasive tumors when injected into SCID mice. The aim of this study was to characterize the molecular basis of the oncogenicity of CH-ES1 cells, we looked for abnormal chromosomal copy number (by array Comparative Genomic Hybridization, aCGH) and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). To see how unique these changes were, we compared these results to data collected from the 2102Ep teratocarcinoma line and four hESC lines (H1, HS293, HS401 and SIVF-02) which displayed normal G-banding result. We identified genomic gains and losses in CH-ES1, including gains in areas containing several oncogenes. These features are similar to those observed in teratocarcinomas, and this explains the high malignancy. The CH-ES1 line was trisomic for chromosomes 1, 9, 12, 17, 19, 20 and X. Also the karyotypically (based on G-banding) normal hESC lines were also found to have several genomic changes that involved genes with known roles in cancer. The largest changes were found in the H1 line at passage number 56, when large 5 Mb duplications in chromosomes 1q32.2 and 22q12.2 were detected, but the losses and gains were seen already at passage 22. These changes found in the other lines highlight the importance of assessing the acquisition of genetic changes by hESCs before their use in regenerative medicine applications. They also point to the possibility that the acquisition of genetic changes by ESCs in culture may be used to explore certain aspects of the mechanisms regulating oncogenesis