There is a critical need for improved methane-oxidation catalysts to both reduce emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas, and improve the performance of gas turbines. However, materials that are ...currently available either have low activity below 400°C or are unstable at higher temperatures. Here, we describe a supramolecular approach in which single units composed of a palladium (Pd) core and a ceria (CeO(2)) shell are preorganized in solution and then homogeneously deposited onto a modified hydrophobic alumina. Electron microscopy and other structural methods revealed that the Pd cores remained isolated even after heating the catalyst to 850°C. Enhanced metal-support interactions led to exceptionally high methane oxidation, with complete conversion below 400°C and outstanding thermal stability under demanding conditions.
Protected areas (PAs) are a foundational and essential strategy for reducing biodiversity loss. However, many PAs around the world exist on paper only; thus, while logging and habitat conversion may ...be banned in these areas, illegal activities often continue to cause alarming habitat destruction. In such cases, the presence of armed conflict may ultimately prevent incursions to a greater extent than the absence of conflict. Although there are several reports of habitat destruction following cessation of conflict, there has never been a systematic and quantitative "before-and-after-conflict" analysis of a large sample of PAs and surrounding areas. Here we report the results of such a study in Colombia, using an open-access global forest change dataset. By analysing 39 PAs over three years before and after Colombia's peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), we found a dramatic and highly significant increase in the deforestation rate for the majority of these areas and their buffer zones. We discuss the reasons behind such findings from the Colombian case, and debate some general conservation lessons applicable to other countries undergoing post-conflict transitions.
ABSTRACT
We present a reassessment of the radial abundance gradients of He, C, N, O, Ne, S, Cl, and Ar in the Milky Way using the deep optical spectra of 42 H ii regions presented in Arellano-Córdova ...et al. (2020, 2021) and Méndez-Delgado et al. (2020) exploring the impact of: (1) new distance determinations based on Gaia EDR3 parallaxes and (2) the use of Peimbert’s temperature fluctuations paradigm (t2 > 0) for deriving ionic abundances. We find that distances based on Gaia EDR3 data are more consistent with kinematic ones based on Galactic rotation curves calibrated with radio parallaxes, which give less dispersion and uncertainties than those calibrated with spectrophotometric stellar distances. The distances based on the Gaia parallaxes – DR2 or EDR3 – eliminate the internal flattening observed in previous determinations of the Galactic gradients at smaller distances than ∼7 kpc. Abundances and gradients determined assuming t2 > 0 – not only for O but also for the rest of elements – are not affected by the abundance discrepancy problem and give elemental abundances much consistent with the solar ones for most elements. We find that our radial abundance gradient of He is consistent with the most accurate estimates of the primordial He abundance. We do not find evidence of azimuthal variations in the chemical abundances of our sample. Moreover, the small dispersion in the O gradient – indicator of metallicity in photoionized regions – indicate that the gas of the H ii regions is well mixed in the sampled areas of the Galaxy.
H II regions are ionized nebulae surrounding massive stars. They exhibit a wealth of emission lines that form the basis for estimation of chemical composition. Heavy elements regulate the cooling of ...interstellar gas, and are essential to the understanding of several phenomena such as nucleosynthesis, star formation and chemical evolution
. For over 80 years
, however, a discrepancy exists of a factor of around two between heavy-element abundances derived from collisionally excited lines and those from the weaker recombination lines, which has thrown our absolute abundance determinations into doubt
. Here we report observational evidence that there are temperature inhomogeneities within the gas, quantified by t
(ref.
). These inhomogeneities affect only highly ionized gas and cause the abundance discrepancy problem. Metallicity determinations based on collisionally excited lines must be revised because these may be severely underestimated, especially in regions of lower metallicity such as those recently observed with the James Webb Space Telescope in high-z galaxies
. We present new empirical relations for estimation of temperature and metallicity, critical for a robust interpretation of the chemical composition of the Universe over cosmic time.
ABSTRACT
We present optical spectra of nine Galactic H ii regions observed with the 10.4 m Gran Telescopio Canarias telescope and located at Galactocentric distances (RG) from 4 to 8 kpc. The ...distances of the objects have been revised using Gaia DR2 parallaxes. We determine the electron temperature for all the nebulae, which allows a precise computation of their ionic abundances. We have included published data of an additional sample of Galactic H ii regions, providing a final data set of 42 objects. The shape of the radial gradients of O/H and N/H is linear and constant, discarding any substantial change of the slope, at least for RG between 4 and 17 kpc. The small dispersion of the O/H and N/H values with respect to the computed gradients imply the absence of significant azimuthal variations of the chemical abundances, at least in the quadrant covered by our observations. We find an almost flat N/O versus O/H diagram relation. This result is not observed in other nearby spiral galaxies except M31. Finally, we compare our computed gradients with those obtained using far-infrared (FIR) spectra. We confirm the significant offset in the N/O distribution between the optical and FIR observations. Possible explanations involve ionization correction factors and the strong dependence on density of the abundance determinations based on FIR lines.
We investigate the impact of intercore crosstalk on the achievable transmission distance of three square quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) formats. We show that increasing intercore crosstalk ...across an 18 dB range starting from -43.4 dB/100 km reduces the achievable transmission distance for all formats, with a greater impact on higher order modulation formats. For a crosstalk level arising from equal signal launch power in each core of a homogeneous 7-core fiber, we measure a reduced transmission distance at BER 1/4 1.5 × 10 -2 of 24%, 38% and 54%, for polarization-division-multiplexed-quadrature phase-shift keying (PDM-QPSK), PDM-16QAM, and PDM-64QAM, respectively. Finally, we investigate the potential impact that dynamic crosstalk variation could have in transmission systems based on multicore fiber and estimate the achievable reach for an outage probability of 1 × 10 -5 in the presence of dynamically varying intercore crosstalk.
Flow diverters are increasingly used in the endovascular treatment of intracranial aneurysms. Our aim was to determine neurologic complication rates following Pipeline Embolization Device placement ...for intracranial aneurysm treatment in a real-world setting.
We retrospectively evaluated all patients with intracranial aneurysms treated with the Pipeline Embolization Device between July 2008 and February 2013 in 17 centers worldwide. We defined 4 subgroups: internal carotid artery aneurysms of ≥10 mm, ICA aneurysms of <10 mm, other anterior circulation aneurysms, and posterior circulation aneurysms. Neurologic complications included spontaneous rupture, intracranial hemorrhage, ischemic stroke, permanent cranial neuropathy, and mortality. Comparisons were made with t tests or ANOVAs for continuous variables and the Pearson χ(2) or Fisher exact test for categoric variables.
In total, 793 patients with 906 aneurysms were included. The neurologic morbidity and mortality rate was 8.4% (67/793), highest in the posterior circulation group (16.4%, 9/55) and lowest in the ICA <10-mm group (4.8%, 14/294) (P = .01). The spontaneous rupture rate was 0.6% (5/793). The intracranial hemorrhage rate was 2.4% (19/793). Ischemic stroke rates were 4.7% (37/793), highest in patients with posterior circulation aneurysms (7.3%, 4/55) and lowest in the ICA <10-mm group (2.7%, 8/294) (P = .16). Neurologic mortality was 3.8% (30/793), highest in the posterior circulation group (10.9%, 6/55) and lowest in the anterior circulation ICA <10-mm group (1.4%, 4/294) (P < .01).
Aneurysm treatment with the Pipeline Embolization Device is associated with the lowest complication rates when used to treat small ICA aneurysms. Procedure-related morbidity and mortality are higher in the treatment of posterior circulation and giant aneurysms.
ABSTRACT
We present the analysis of physical conditions, chemical composition, and kinematic properties of two bow shocks – HH 529 II and HH 529 III – of the fully photoionized Herbig–Haro object ...HH 529 in the Orion Nebula. The data were obtained with the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph at the 8.2m Very Large Telescope and 20 yr of Hubble Space Telescope imaging. We separate the emission of the high-velocity components of HH 529 II and III from the nebular one, determining ne and Te in all components through multiple diagnostics, including some based on recombination lines (RLs). We derive ionic abundances of several ions, based on collisionally excited lines and RLs. We find a good agreement between the predictions of the temperature fluctuation paradigm (t2) and the abundance discrepancy factor (ADF) in the main emission of the Orion Nebula. However, t2 cannot account for the higher ADF found in HH 529 II and III. We estimate 6 per cent of Fe in the gas phase of the Orion Nebula, while this value increases to 14 per cent in HH 529 II and between 10 and 25 per cent in HH 529 III. We find that such increase is probably due to the destruction of dust grains in the bow shocks. We find an overabundance of C, O, Ne, S, Cl, and Ar of about 0.1 dex in HH 529 II and III that might be related to the inclusion of H-deficient material from the source of the HH 529 flow. We determine the proper motions of HH 529 finding multiple discrete features. We estimate a flow angle with respect to the sky plane of 58° ± 4° for HH 529.
The regulation of food intake in fish is a complex process carried out through several different mechanisms in the central nervous system (CNS) with hypothalamus being the main regulatory center. As ...in mammals, a complex hypothalamic circuit including two populations of neurons: one co-expressing neuropeptide Y (NPY) and Agouti-related peptide (AgRP) and the second one population co-expressing pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) and cocaine- and amphetamine-regulated transcript (CART) is involved in the integration of information relating to food intake control. The production and release of these peptides control food intake, and the production results from the integration of information of different nature such as levels of nutrients and hormones as well as circadian signals. The present review summarizes the knowledge and recent findings about the presence and functioning of these mechanisms in fish and their differences vs. the known mammalian model.
Abstract
We analyze the physical conditions, chemical composition, and other properties of the photoionized Herbig–Haro (HH) object HH 204 through Very Large Telescope echelle spectroscopy and Hubble ...Space Telescope imaging. We kinematically isolate the high-velocity emission of HH 204 from the emission of the background nebula and study the subarcsecond distribution of physical conditions and ionic abundances across the HH object. We find that low- and intermediate-ionization emission arises exclusively from gas at photoionization equilibrium temperatures, whereas the weak high-ionization emission from HH 204 shows a significant contribution from higher-temperature shock-excited gas. We separately derive the ionic abundances of HH 204, the emission of the Orion Nebula, and the fainter diffuse blue layer. In HH 204, the O
+
abundance determined from collisional excited lines matches the one based on recombination lines, while the O
2+
abundance is very low, so that the oxygen abundance discrepancy is zero. The ionic abundances of Ni and Fe in HH 204 have similar ionization and depletion patterns, with total abundances that are a factor of 3.5 higher than in the rest of the Orion Nebula due to dust destruction in the bow shock. We show that a failure to resolve the kinematic components in our spectra would lead to significant error in the determination of chemical abundances (for instance, a 40% underestimate of O), mainly due to incorrect estimation of the electron density.
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