Supermassive black holes in galaxy centres can grow by the accretion of gas, liberating energy that might regulate star formation on galaxy-wide scales. The nature of the gaseous fuel reservoirs that ...power black hole growth is nevertheless largely unconstrained by observations, and is instead routinely simplified as a smooth, spherical inflow of very hot gas. Recent theory and simulations instead predict that accretion can be dominated by a stochastic, clumpy distribution of very cold molecular clouds--a departure from the 'hot mode' accretion model--although unambiguous observational support for this prediction remains elusive. Here we report observations that reveal a cold, clumpy accretion flow towards a supermassive black hole fuel reservoir in the nucleus of the Abell 2597 Brightest Cluster Galaxy (BCG), a nearby (redshift z = 0.0821) giant elliptical galaxy surrounded by a dense halo of hot plasma. Under the right conditions, thermal instabilities produce a rain of cold clouds that fall towards the galaxy's centre, sustaining star formation amid a kiloparsec-scale molecular nebula that is found at its core. The observations show that these cold clouds also fuel black hole accretion, revealing 'shadows' cast by the molecular clouds as they move inward at about 300 kilometres per second towards the active supermassive black hole, which serves as a bright backlight. Corroborating evidence from prior observations of warmer atomic gas at extremely high spatial resolution, along with simple arguments based on geometry and probability, indicate that these clouds are within the innermost hundred parsecs of the black hole, and falling closer towards it.
While the initial government response has focused on public health strategies to contain the spread of the virus and the creation of sufficient capacity within hospitals to manage patients with acute ...medical complications, it was recognised that the social, economic and mental health consequences of COVID-19 would follow. Many children with AN have comorbid mental health issues, including depression, anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder, which may be exacerbated by the increased focus on hand hygiene and fear of contracting COVID-19.3 Furthermore, COVID-19 has forced us to adapt our service delivery for children with AN,4 with the temporary cessation of face-to-face appointments and temporary closure of our day programme. The authors acknowledge the ongoing support of all the Adolescent Medicine and Eating Disorders team members at Perth Children’s Hospital.
Savannas constitute the most fire-prone biome on Earth and annual emissions from savanna-burning activities are a globally important source of greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions. Here, we describe the ...application of a commercial fire-management program being implemented over 28 000 km
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of savanna on Aboriginal lands in northern Australia. The project combines the reinstatement of Aboriginal traditional approaches to savanna fire management - in particular a strategic, early dry-season burning program - with a recently developed emissions accounting methodology for savanna burning. Over the first 7 years of implementation, the project has reduced emissions of accountable GHGs (methane, nitrous oxide) by 37.7%, relative to the pre-project 10-year emissions baseline. In addition, the project is delivering social, biodiversity, and long-term biomass sequestration benefits. This methodological approach may have considerable potential for application in other fire-prone savanna settings.
Carbon markets afford potentially useful opportunities for supporting socially and environmentally sustainable land management programs but, to date, have been little applied in globally significant ...fire-prone savanna settings. While fire is intrinsic to regulating the composition, structure and dynamics of savanna systems, in north Australian savannas frequent and extensive late dry season wildfires incur significant environmental, production and social impacts. Here we assess the potential of market-based savanna burning greenhouse gas emissions abatement and allied carbon biosequestration projects to deliver compatible environmental and broader socio-economic benefits in a highly biodiverse north Australian setting. Drawing on extensive regional ecological knowledge of fire regime effects on fire-vulnerable taxa and communities, we compare three fire regime metrics (seasonal fire frequency, proportion of long-unburnt vegetation, fire patch-size distribution) over a 15-year period for three national parks with an indigenously (Aboriginal) owned and managed market-based emissions abatement enterprise. Our assessment indicates improved fire management outcomes under the emissions abatement program, and mostly little change or declining outcomes on the parks. We attribute improved outcomes and putative biodiversity benefits under the abatement program to enhanced strategic management made possible by the market-based mitigation arrangement. For these same sites we estimate quanta of carbon credits that could be delivered under realistic enhanced fire management practice, using currently available and developing accredited Australian savanna burning accounting methods. We conclude that, in appropriate situations, market-based savanna burning activities can provide transformative climate change mitigation, ecosystem health, and community benefits in northern Australia, and, despite significant challenges, potentially in other fire-prone savanna settings.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
There is not a clinically available technique for measuring the physiological traits causing obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Therefore, it is often difficult to determine why an individual has OSA or ...to what extent the various traits contribute to the development of OSA. In this study, we present a noninvasive method for measuring four important physiological traits causing OSA: 1) pharyngeal anatomy/collapsibility, 2) ventilatory control system gain (loop gain), 3) the ability of the upper airway to dilate/stiffen in response to an increase in ventilatory drive, and 4) arousal threshold. These variables are measured using a single maneuver in which continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) is dropped from an optimum to various suboptimum pressures for 3- to 5-min intervals during sleep. Each individual's set of traits is entered into a physiological model of OSA that graphically illustrates the relative importance of each trait in that individual. Results from 14 subjects (10 with OSA) are described. Repeatability measurements from separate nights are also presented for four subjects. The measurements and model illustrate the multifactorial nature of OSA pathogenesis and how, in some individuals, small adjustments of one or another trait (which might be achievable with non-CPAP agents) could potentially treat OSA. This technique could conceivably be used clinically to define a patient's physiology and guide therapy based on the traits.
Severe fires in tropical savanna systems are recognised as incurring significant impacts on a variety of ecological attributes, including woody vegetation structure and greenhouse gas emissions. ...However, knowledge of the frequency and extent of severe fires is restricted given challenges associated with the development of reliable remotely sensed mapping procedures. This study takes advantage of three wildfires, 900–5300km2 in extent, containing very severely affected areas, occurring in semi-evergreen, eucalypt-dominated, tropical Australian savanna, which resulted in significant areas of complete canopy scorch, very significant tree stem mortality (24–55%), and associated loss of living above ground biomass (47–69%) at respective sites. Although increased map scale is generally considered to improve the reliability of fire severity mapping, our analysis found >90% agreement between Landsat and MODIS-derived burnt area mapping, and >80% for binary (severe vs. non-severe) fire severity mapping. Mapping of internal fire (unburnt) patchiness was enhanced with finer resolution Landsat imagery, but the much longer orbital return cycle precluded its use at two of the three sites given extended cloudy conditions. Application of an automated MODIS-derived fire severity mapping algorithm (overall reliability in 2015=75%) calibrated for generalised north Australian savanna conditions, suggests that 15% and 12% of Australia's 1.3Mkm2 tropical savannas region were burnt by severe fires in 2015 and 2016, respectively. The study illustrates the potential for MODIS-derived fire severity mapping, the impacts of very severe fires on stand structure, and ongoing challenges associated with deriving reliable fire severity mapping products in Australian savanna systems.
•MODIS (250m) based automated fire severity mapping•North Australia (1.9Mkm2), fire severity map accuracy=75%•‘Very severe’ fire tree stem mortality=9.3–35.3t.ha−1 living tree biomass loss•Severe fires affected 12–15% of region 2015–16, unknown % of ‘very severe’ fires•Essential for conservation management and modelling dynamic carbon stocks
Liquid water has been known to occur beneath the Antarctic ice sheet for more than 40 years, but only recently have these subglacial aqueous environments been recognized as microbial ecosystems that ...may influence biogeochemical transformations on a global scale. Here we present the first geomicrobiological description of water and surficial sediments obtained from direct sampling of a subglacial Antarctic lake. Subglacial Lake Whillans (SLW) lies beneath approximately 800 m of ice on the lower portion of the Whillans Ice Stream (WIS) in West Antarctica and is part of an extensive and evolving subglacial drainage network. The water column of SLW contained metabolically active microorganisms and was derived primarily from glacial ice melt with solute sources from lithogenic weathering and a minor seawater component. Heterotrophic and autotrophic production data together with small subunit ribosomal RNA gene sequencing and biogeochemical data indicate that SLW is a chemosynthetically driven ecosystem inhabited by a diverse assemblage of bacteria and archaea. Our results confirm that aquatic environments beneath the Antarctic ice sheet support viable microbial ecosystems, corroborating previous reports suggesting that they contain globally relevant pools of carbon and microbes that can mobilize elements from the lithosphere and influence Southern Ocean geochemical and biological systems.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Burn severity mapping greatly informs fire management and can be used to predict post-fire vegetation recovery. Satellite remote sensing is a cost-effective method for estimating burn severity, ...providing a comprehensive spatially explicit view of whole landscapes. However, the proportion of tree canopy cover (TCC) affects the reflectance signal, obscuring background char and ash. Consequently, traditional optical satellite remote sensing methods that do not account for variation in TCC misclassify burn severity, especially in areas with extremely low or high TCC. In this study, TCC data served to parameterize and constrain the inversion of the Forest Reflectance and Transmittance (FRT) radiative transfer model (RTM) to alleviate spectral confusion when retrieving burn severity. The methodology was evaluated using field measurements of burn severity for a series of wildfires in the fire-prone tropical savannas of northern Australia and the western United States. Burn severity classes were used for Australia while the Composite Burn Index (CBI) for US. Reflectance data from Sentinel-2A Multi-Spectral Instrument (MSI) and Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper (TM) corresponding to post-fire field survey dates were used to retrieve burn severity using FRT RTM (with and without using TCC information in its parameterization and inversion) and two standard empirical burn indices, dNBR and RdNBR, for comparison. Using FRT RTM without TCC constraint produced an overestimation for low burn severity in regions with low TCC and an underestimation for moderate and high burn severity in regions with high TCC. Burn severity estimation accuracy significantly improved by integrating TCC in the parameterization and inversion of FRT RTM. The overall accuracy in northern Australia increased from 65% to 81%, and the kappa coefficient increased from 0.35 to 0.55. In the western United States, R2 between estimated and observed CBI, increased from 0.33 to 0.54, root mean square error (RMSE) reduced from 0.53 to 0.43, and in all instances, the method performed better than dNBR and RdNBR. The method used in this study achieved more accurate burn severity mapping, thus assisting land managers to better understand post-fire vegetation resilience and forest management.
•Current methods based on optical remote sensing data misclassify burn severity in low and high tree canopy covered areas.•Burn severity was retrieved inverting the Forest Reflectance and Transmittance model.•Tree canopy cover was used to constrain the inversion obtaining more accurate results.•Sentinel-2A Vegetation Red Edge bands do not play an important role in burn severity estimation.
Tropical savannas are characterized by high primary productivity and high fire frequency, such that much of the carbon captured by vegetation is rapidly returned to the atmosphere. Hence, there have ...been suggestions that management‐driven reductions in savanna fire frequency and/or severity could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester carbon in tree biomass. However, a key knowledge gap is the extent to which savanna tree biomass will respond to modest shifts in fire regimes due to plausible, large‐scale management interventions. Here, we: (1) characterize relationships between the frequency and severity of fires and key demographic rates of savanna trees, based on long‐term observations in vegetation monitoring plots across northern Australia; (2) use these relationships to develop a process‐explicit demographic model describing the effects of fire on savanna tree populations; and (3) use the demographic model to address the question: to what extent is it feasible, through the strategic application of prescribed burning, to increase tree biomass in Australian tropical savannas? Our long‐term tree monitoring dataset included observations of 12,344 tagged trees in 236 plots, monitored for between 3 and 24 years. Analysis of this dataset showed that frequent high‐severity fires significantly reduced savanna tree recruitment, survival, and growth. Our demographic model suggested that: (1) despite the negative effects of frequent high‐severity fires on demographic rates, savanna tree biomass appears to be suppressed by only a relatively small amount by contemporary fire regimes, characterized by a mix of low‐ to high‐severity fires; and (2) plausible, management‐driven reductions in the frequency of high‐severity fires are likely to lead to increases in tree biomass of about 11.0 t DM ha−1 (95% CI: −1.2–20.8) over a century. Accounting for this increase in carbon storage could generate significant carbon credits, worth, on average, three times those generated annually by current greenhouse gas (methane and nitrous oxide) abatement projects, and has the potential to significantly increase the economic viability of fire/carbon projects, thereby promoting ecologically sustainable management of tropical savannas in Australia and elsewhere. This growing industry has the potential to bring much‐needed economic activity to savanna landscapes, without compromising important natural and cultural values.
Genome-wide association studies have reported that, amongst other microglial genes, variants in TREM2 can profoundly increase the incidence of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD). We have ...investigated the role of TREM2 in primary microglial cultures from wild type mice by using siRNA to decrease Trem2 expression, and in parallel from knock-in mice heterozygous or homozygous for the Trem2 R47H AD risk variant. The prevailing phenotype of Trem2 R47H knock-in mice was decreased expression levels of Trem2 in microglia, which resulted in decreased density of microglia in the hippocampus. Overall, primary microglia with reduced Trem2 expression, either by siRNA or from the R47H knock-in mice, displayed a similar phenotype. Comparison of the effects of decreased Trem2 expression under conditions of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) pro-inflammatory or IL-4 anti-inflammatory stimulation revealed the importance of Trem2 in driving a number of the genes up-regulated in the anti-inflammatory phenotype. RNA-seq analysis showed that IL-4 induced the expression of a program of genes including Arg1 and Ap1b1 in microglia, which showed an attenuated response to IL-4 when Trem2 expression was decreased. Genes showing a similar expression profile to Arg1 were enriched for STAT6 transcription factor recognition elements in their promoter, and Trem2 knockdown decreased levels of STAT6. LPS-induced pro-inflammatory stimulation suppressed Trem2 expression, thus preventing TREM2's anti-inflammatory drive. Given that anti-inflammatory signaling is associated with tissue repair, understanding the signaling mechanisms downstream of Trem2 in coordinating the pro- and anti-inflammatory balance of microglia, particularly mediating effects of the IL-4-regulated anti-inflammatory pathway, has important implications for fighting neurodegenerative disease.
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