Radio imaging of core-dominated high redshift quasars

VLA imaging at kiloparsec-scale resolution of sixteen core-dominated radio-loud QSOs is presented. Many objects appear to display variable radio emission and their radio morphologies are significantly smaller than those of steep-spectrum quasars, consistent with these objects being observed at sight lines close to their (relativistic, $\gamma \approx$ 4-7) jet axes. The usefulness of the radio source orientation indicator R_V, being defined as ratio of radio core and rest frame optical V-band luminosity, is confirmed.Comment: 11 pages, 11 postscript figures, uses aa.cls 4.03 for LaTeX2e To appear in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Nematode migration and nutrient diffusion between vetch and barley material in soil

This paper deals with migration of nematodes along nutrient gradients in soil. Portions of barley straw and green vetch leaves were mixed with soil and buried at 6, 12, 18, and 50mm distance from each other in soil. During the following 12 weeks respiration activity, microbial (SIR) biomass, nitrogen limitation of respiration activity in soil slurries all indicated that nitrogen was transferred in the soil from the nutrient rich vetch to the nutrient poor barley at least during the first 3 weeks of the experiment. Twelve out of 39 taxonomic groups of nematodes showed different growth in the two plant material-soil mixtures. Only one of these taxonomic groups (long rhabditid larvae) suggested that migration could have contributed to population development; for three other groups (short rhabditid larvae, Aphelenchoides, and Bursilla) nutrient transport through the soil was the likely mechanism for a distance-dependant population development. We suggest that for most microbivorous nematodes, except larvae of fast growing bacterivores, migration over distances exceeding one centimetre does not contribute markedly to population development even when cues such as nutrient gradients to stimulate the activity exis

Can microbes compete with cows for sustainable protein production - A feasibility study on high quality protein

An increasing population and their increased demand for high-protein diets will require dramatic changes in the food industry, as limited resources and environmental issues will make animal derived foods and proteins, gradually more unsustainable to produce. To explore alternatives to animal derived proteins, an economic model was built around the genome-scale metabolic network of E. coli to study the feasibility of recombinant protein production as a food source. Using a novel model, we predicted which microbial production strategies are optimal for economic return, by capturing the tradeoff between the market prices of substrates, product output and the efficiency of microbial production. A case study with the food protein, Bovine Alpha Lactalbumin was made to evaluate the upstream economic feasibilities. Simulations with different substrate profiles at maximum productivity were used to explore the feasibility of recombinant Bovine Alpha Lactalbumin production coupled with market prices of utilized materials. We found that recombinant protein production could be a feasible food source and an alternative to traditional sources

Pipeline for Tracking Neural Progenitor Cells

Automated methods for neural stem cell lineage construction become increasingly important due to the large amount of data produced from time lapse imagery of in vitro cell growth experiments. Segmentation algorithms with the ability to adapt to the problem at hand and robust tracking methods play a key role in constructing these lineages. We present here a tracking pipeline based on learning a dictionary of discriminative image patches for segmentation and a graph formulation of the cell matching problem incorporating topology changes and acknowledging the fact that segmentation errors do occur. A matched filter for detection of mitotic candidates is constructed to ensure that cell division is only allowed in the model when relevant. Potentially the combination of these robust methods can simplify the initiation of cell lineage construction and extraction of statistics

Spectroscopy of Broad Line Blazars from 1LAC

We report on optical spectroscopy of 165 Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars (FSRQs) in the Fermi 1LAC sample, which have helped allow a nearly complete study of this population. Fermi FSRQ show significant evidence for non-thermal emission even in the optical; the degree depends on the gamma-ray hardness. They also have smaller virial estimates of hole mass than the optical quasar sample. This appears to be largely due to a preferred (axial) view of the gamma-ray FSRQ and non-isotropic (H/R ~ 0.4) distribution of broad-line velocities. Even after correction for this bias, the Fermi FSRQ show higher mean Eddington ratios than the optical population. A comparison of optical spectral properties with Owens Valley Radio Observatory radio flare activity shows no strong correlation.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap