We use the BISICLES adaptive mesh ice sheet model to carry out one, two, and three century simulations of the fast-flowing ice streams of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, deploying sub-kilometer ...resolution around the grounding line since coarser resolution results in substantial underestimation of the response. Each of the simulations begins with a geometry and velocity close to present-day observations, and evolves according to variation in meteoric ice accumulation rates and oceanic ice shelf melt rates. Future changes in accumulation and melt rates range from no change, through anomalies computed by atmosphere and ocean models driven by the E1 and A1B emissions scenarios, to spatially uniform melt rate anomalies that remove most of the ice shelves over a few centuries. We find that variation in the resulting ice dynamics is dominated by the choice of initial conditions and ice shelf melt rate and mesh resolution, although ice accumulation affects the net change in volume above flotation to a similar degree. Given sufficient melt rates, we compute grounding line retreat over hundreds of kilometers in every major ice stream, but the ocean models do not predict such melt rates outside of the Amundsen Sea Embayment until after 2100. Within the Amundsen Sea Embayment the largest single source of variability is the onset of sustained retreat in Thwaites Glacier, which can triple the rate of eustatic sea level rise.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Despite considerable efforts over the past decade, only 34 fast radio bursts-intense bursts of radio emission from beyond our Galaxy-have been reported
. Attempts to understand the population as a ...whole have been hindered by the highly heterogeneous nature of the searches, which have been conducted with telescopes of different sensitivities, at a range of radio frequencies, and in environments corrupted by different levels of radio-frequency interference from human activity. Searches have been further complicated by uncertain burst positions and brightnesses-a consequence of the transient nature of the sources and the poor angular resolution of the detecting instruments. The discovery of repeating bursts from one source
, and its subsequent localization
to a dwarf galaxy at a distance of 3.7 billion light years, confirmed that the population of fast radio bursts is located at cosmological distances. However, the nature of the emission remains elusive. Here we report a well controlled, wide-field radio survey for these bursts. We found 20, none of which repeated during follow-up observations between 185-1,097 hours after the initial detections. The sample includes both the nearest and the most energetic bursts detected so far. The survey demonstrates that there is a relationship between burst dispersion and brightness and that the high-fluence bursts are the nearby analogues of the more distant events found in higher-sensitivity, narrower-field surveys
.
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We present timing models for 20 millisecond pulsars in the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array. The precision of the parameter measurements in these models has been improved over earlier results by using ...longer data sets and modelling the non-stationary noise. We describe a new noise modelling procedure and demonstrate its effectiveness using simulated data. Our methodology includes the addition of annual dispersion measure (DM) variations to the timing models of some pulsars. We present the first significant parallax measurements for PSRs J1024−0719, J1045−4509, J1600−3053, J1603−7202, and J1730−2304, as well as the first significant measurements of some post-Keplerian orbital parameters in six binary pulsars, caused by kinematic effects. Improved Shapiro delay measurements have resulted in much improved pulsar mass measurements, particularly for PSRs J0437−4715 and J1909−3744 with M
p = 1.44 ± 0.07 and 1.47 ± 0.03 M⊙, respectively. The improved orbital period-derivative measurement for PSR J0437−4715 results in a derived distance measurement at the 0.16 per cent level of precision, D = 156.79 ± 0.25 pc, one of the most fractionally precise distance measurements of any star to date.
KEY MESSAGE : QTLs controlling the concentrations elements in rice grain were identified in two mapping populations. The QTLs were clustered such that most genomic regions were associated with more ...than one element. In this study, quantitative trait loci (QTLs) affecting the concentrations of 16 elements in whole, unmilled rice (Oryza sativa L.) grain were identified. Two rice mapping populations, the ‘Lemont’ × ‘TeQing’ recombinant inbred lines (LT-RILs), and the TeQing-into-Lemont backcross introgression lines (TILs) were used. To increase opportunity to detect and characterize QTLs, the TILs were grown under two contrasting field conditions, flooded and irrigated-but-unflooded. Correlations between the individual elements and between each element with grain shape, plant height, and time of heading were also studied. Transgressive segregation was observed among the LT-RILs for all elements. The 134 QTLs identified as associated with the grain concentrations of individual elements were found clustered into 39 genomic regions, 34 of which were found associated with grain element concentration in more than one population and/or flooding treatment. More QTLs were found significant among flooded TILs (92) than among unflooded TILs (47) or among flooded LT-RILs (40). Twenty-seven of the 40 QTLs identified among the LT-RILs were associated with the same element among the TILs. At least one QTL per element was validated in two or more population/environments. Nearly all of the grain element loci were linked to QTLs affecting additional elements, supporting the concept of element networks within plants. Several of the grain element QTLs co-located with QTLs for grain shape, plant height, and days to heading; but did not always differ for grain elemental concentration as predicted by those traits alone. A number of interesting patterns were found, including a strong Mg–P–K complex.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OBVAL, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
More than three-quarters of the baryonic content of the Universe resides in a highly diffuse state that is difficult to detect, with only a small fraction directly observed in galaxies and galaxy ...clusters
. Censuses of the nearby Universe have used absorption line spectroscopy
to observe the 'invisible' baryons, but these measurements rely on large and uncertain corrections and are insensitive to most of the Universe's volume and probably most of its mass. In particular, quasar spectroscopy is sensitive either to the very small amounts of hydrogen that exist in the atomic state, or to highly ionized and enriched gas
in denser regions near galaxies
. Other techniques to observe these invisible baryons also have limitations; Sunyaev-Zel'dovich analyses
can provide evidence from gas within filamentary structures, and studies of X-ray emission are most sensitive to gas near galaxy clusters
. Here we report a measurement of the baryon content of the Universe using the dispersion of a sample of localized fast radio bursts; this technique determines the electron column density along each line of sight and accounts for every ionized baryon
. We augment the sample of reported arcsecond-localized
fast radio bursts with four new localizations in host galaxies that have measured redshifts of 0.291, 0.118, 0.378 and 0.522. This completes a sample sufficiently large to account for dispersion variations along the lines of sight and in the host-galaxy environments
, and we derive a cosmic baryon density of Formula: see text (95 per cent confidence; h
= H
/(70 km s
Mpc
) and H
is Hubble's constant). This independent measurement is consistent with values derived from the cosmic microwave background and from Big Bang nucleosynthesis
.
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ABSTRACT The dispersion measure (DM), the column density of free electrons to a pulsar, is shown to be frequency dependent because of multipath scattering from small-scale electron-density ...fluctuations. DMs vary between propagation paths whose transverse extent varies strongly with frequency, yielding arrival times that deviate from the high-frequency scaling expected for a cold, uniform, unmagnetized plasma (1/frequency2). Scaling laws for thin phase screens are verified with simulations; extended media are also analyzed. The rms DM difference across an octave band near 1.5 GHz is ∼ 4 × 10−5 pc cm−3 for pulsars at ∼1 kpc distance. The corresponding arrival-time variations are a few to hundreds of nanoseconds for DM 30 pc cm−3 but increase rapidly to microseconds or more for larger DMs and wider frequency ranges. Chromatic DMs introduce correlated noise into timing residuals with a power spectrum of "low pass" form. The correlation time is roughly the geometric mean of the refraction times for the highest and lowest radio frequencies used, ranging from days to years, depending on the pulsar. We discuss implications for methodologies that use large frequency separations or wide bandwidth receivers for timing measurements. Chromatic DMs are partially mitigable by including an additional chromatic term in arrival time models. Without mitigation, an additional term in the noise model for pulsar timing is implied. In combination with measurement errors from radiometer noise, an arbitrarily large increase in total frequency range (or bandwidth) will yield diminishing benefits and may be detrimental to overall timing precision.
Signals from radio pulsars show a wavelength-dependent delay due to dispersion in the interstellar plasma. At a typical observing wavelength, this delay can vary by tens of microseconds on 5-yr ...time-scales, far in excess of signals of interest to pulsar timing arrays, such as that induced by a gravitational wave background. Measurement of these delay variations is not only crucial for the detection of such signals, but also provides an unparalleled measurement of the turbulent interstellar plasma at astronomical unit (au) scales.
In this paper we demonstrate that without consideration of wavelength-independent red noise, 'simple' algorithms to correct for interstellar dispersion can attenuate signals of interest to pulsar timing arrays. We present a robust method for this correction, which we validate through simulations, and apply it to observations from the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array. Correction for dispersion variations comes at a cost of increased band-limited white noise. We discuss scheduling to minimize this additional noise, and factors, such as scintillation, that can exacerbate the problem.
Comparison with scintillation measurements confirms previous results that the spectral exponent of electron density variations in the interstellar medium often appears steeper than expected. We also find a discrete change in dispersion measure of PSR J1603−7202 of ∼2 × 10−3 cm−3 pc for about 250 d. We speculate that this has a similar origin to the 'extreme scattering events' seen in other sources. In addition, we find that four pulsars show a wavelength-dependent annual variation, indicating a persistent gradient of electron density on an au spatial scale, which has not been reported previously.
The mineral concentrations in cereals are important for human health, especially for individuals who consume a cereal subsistence diet. A number of elements, such as zinc, are required within the ...diet, while some elements are toxic to humans, for example arsenic. In this study we carry out genome-wide association (GWA) mapping of grain concentrations of arsenic, copper, molybdenum and zinc in brown rice using an established rice diversity panel of ~300 accessions and 36.9 k single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The study was performed across five environments: one field site in Bangladesh, one in China and two in the US, with one of the US sites repeated over two years. GWA mapping on the whole dataset and on separate subpopulations of rice revealed a large number of loci significantly associated with variation in grain arsenic, copper, molybdenum and zinc. Seventeen of these loci were detected in data obtained from grain cultivated in more than one field location, and six co-localise with previously identified quantitative trait loci. Additionally, a number of candidate genes for the uptake or transport of these elements were located near significantly associated SNPs (within 200 kb, the estimated global linkage disequilibrium previously employed in this rice panel). This analysis highlights a number of genomic regions and candidate genes for further analysis as well as the challenges faced when mapping environmentally-variable traits in a highly genetically structured diversity panel.
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We present results of an all-sky search in the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array (PPTA) Data Release 1 data set for continuous gravitational waves (GWs) in the frequency range from 5 × 10−9 to 2 × 10−7 Hz. ...Such signals could be produced by individual supermassive binary black hole systems in the early stage of coalescence. We phase up the pulsar timing array data set to form, for each position on the sky, two data streams that correspond to the two GW polarizations and then carry out an optimal search for GW signals on these data streams. Since no statistically significant GWs were detected, we place upper limits on the intrinsic GW strain amplitude h
0 for a range of GW frequencies. For example, at 10−8 Hz our analysis has excluded with 95 per cent confidence the presence of signals with h
0 ≥ 1.7 × 10−14. Our new limits are about a factor of 4 more stringent than those of Yardley et al. based on an earlier PPTA data set and a factor of 2 better than those reported in the recent Arzoumanian et al. paper. We also present PPTA directional sensitivity curves and find that for the most sensitive region on the sky, the current data set is sensitive to GWs from circular supermassive binary black holes with chirp masses of 109 M⊙ out to a luminosity distance of about 100 Mpc. Finally, we set an upper limit of 4 × 10−3 Mpc−3 Gyr−1 at 95 per cent confidence on the coalescence rate of nearby (z ≲ 0.1) supermassive binary black holes in circular orbits with chirp masses of 1010 M⊙.
Pulsar timing array experiments search for phenomena that produce angular correlations in the arrival times of signals from millisecond pulsars. The primary goal is to detect an isotropic and ...stochastic gravitational wave background. We use simulated data to show that this search can be affected by the presence of other spatially correlated noise, such as errors in the reference time standard, errors in the planetary ephemeris, the solar wind and instrumentation issues. All these effects can induce significant false detections of gravitational waves. We test mitigation routines to account for clock errors, ephemeris errors and the solar wind. We demonstrate that it is non-trivial to find an effective mitigation routine for the planetary ephemeris and emphasize that other spatially correlated signals may be present in the data.
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