Furans represent one of the most important classes of intermediates in the conversion of non-edible lignocellulosic biomass into bio-based chemicals and fuels. At present, bio-furan derivatives are ...generally obtained from cellulose and hemicellulose fractions of biomass via the acid-catalyzed dehydration of their relative C6-C5 sugars and then converted into a wide range of products. Furfural (FUR) and 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) are surely the most used furan-based feedstocks since their chemical structure allows the preparation of various high-value-added chemicals. Among several well-established catalytic approaches, hydrogenation and oxygenation processes have been efficiently adopted for upgrading furans; however, harsh reaction conditions are generally required. In this review, we aim to discuss the conversion of biomass derived FUR and HMF through unconventional (transfer hydrogenation, photocatalytic and electrocatalytic) catalytic processes promoted by heterogeneous catalytic systems. The reaction conditions adopted, the chemical nature and the physico-chemical properties of the most employed heterogeneous systems in enhancing the catalytic activity and in driving the selectivity to desired products are presented and compared. At the same time, the latest results in the production of FUR and HMF through novel environmental friendly processes starting from lignocellulose as well as from wastes and by-products obtained in the processing of biomass are also overviewed.
The profitability of photovoltaic (PV) systems for irrigating Mediterranean greenhouse crops is analyzed. A standalone direct pumping PV system is proposed. A simulation model of the system was ...developed in order to obtain the economically optimal design of this system and evaluate its feasibility. The model is composed of several submodels: the photovoltaic power generation capacity submodel, the direct pumping management submodel and the submodel that evaluates the irrigation water requirements for a representative greenhouse and the overall economic performance of the system.
The effect of the total number of irrigation sectors per hectare on the performance of the system has been analyzed. Two management strategies have been considered: to irrigate with only one irrigation sector simultaneously or to irrigate with a variable number of irrigation sectors as a function of the incoming power provided by the PV array. The optimal operation strategy provided by the model was the first one as the second was penalized by the higher cost of the pumps. The system becomes profitable for at least 4 sectors per hectare. The profitability and energy use efficiency of this type of systems are relatively low, although these values could be improved if the excess of energy were used for other purposes, such as ventilating or cooling the greenhouse.
Scheme of the proposed PV direct irrigation system. Display omitted
•A standalone direct pumping photovoltaic irrigation system is proposed for the irrigation of Mediterranean greenhouses.•A simulation model was developed to analyze the feasibility of the system and obtain its optimal design.•The feasibility depends on the number of irrigation sectors. The optimal design was achieved for 6 sectors per hectare.•The profitability and the energy efficiency of the system are limited.
AU Mic b is a Neptune-sized planet on an 8.47-day orbit around the nearest pre-main sequence (~20 Myr) star to the Sun, the bright (
V
= 8.81) M dwarf AU Mic. The planet was preliminary detected in ...Doppler radial velocity time series and recently confirmed to be transiting with data from the TESS mission. AU Mic b is likely to be cooling and contracting and might be accompanied by a second, more massive planet, in an outer orbit. Here, we present the observations of the transit of AU Mic b using ESPRESSO on the Very Large Telescope. We obtained a high-resolution time series of spectra to measure the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect, to constrain the spin-orbit alignment of the star and planet, and to simultaneously attempt to retrieve the planet’s atmospheric transmission spectrum. These observations allowed us to study, for the first time, the early phases of the dynamical evolution of young systems. We applied different methodologies to derive the spin-orbit angle of AU Mic b, and all of them retrieve values consistent with the planet being aligned with the rotation plane of the star. We determined a conservative spin-orbit angle
λ
value of −2.96
−10.30
+10.44
degrees, indicative that the formation and migration of the planets of the AU Mic system occurred within the disc. Unfortunately, and despite the large signal-to-noise ratio of our measurements, the degree of stellar activity prevented us from detecting any features from the planetary atmosphere. In fact, our results suggest that transmission spectroscopy for recently formed planets around active young stars is going to remain very challenging, if at all possible, for the near future.
The cerebellum is involved in a large number of different neural processes, especially in associative learning and in fine motor control. To develop a comprehensive theory of sensorimotor learning ...and control, it is crucial to determine the neural basis of coding and plasticity embedded into the cerebellar neural circuit and how they are translated into behavioral outcomes in learning paradigms. Learning has to be inferred from the interaction of an embodied system with its real environment, and the same cerebellar principles derived from cell physiology have to be able to drive a variety of tasks of different nature, calling for complex timing and movement patterns. We have coupled a realistic cerebellar spiking neural network (SNN) with a real robot and challenged it in multiple diverse sensorimotor tasks. Encoding and decoding strategies based on neuronal firing rates were applied. Adaptive motor control protocols with acquisition and extinction phases have been designed and tested, including an associative Pavlovian task (Eye blinking classical conditioning), a vestibulo-ocular task and a perturbed arm reaching task operating in closed-loop. The SNN processed in real-time mossy fiber inputs as arbitrary contextual signals, irrespective of whether they conveyed a tone, a vestibular stimulus or the position of a limb. A bidirectional long-term plasticity rule implemented at parallel fibers-Purkinje cell synapses modulated the output activity in the deep cerebellar nuclei. In all tasks, the neurorobot learned to adjust timing and gain of the motor responses by tuning its output discharge. It succeeded in reproducing how human biological systems acquire, extinguish and express knowledge of a noisy and changing world. By varying stimuli and perturbations patterns, real-time control robustness and generalizability were validated. The implicit spiking dynamics of the cerebellar model fulfill timing, prediction and learning functions.
Context. The TESS and PLATO missions are expected to find vast numbers of new transiting planet candidates. However, only a fraction of these candidates will be legitimate planets, and the candidate ...validation will require a significant amount of follow-up resources. Radial velocity (RV) follow-up study can be carried out only for the most promising candidates around bright, slowly rotating, stars. Thus, before devoting RV resources to candidates, they need to be vetted using cheaper methods, and, in the cases for which an RV confirmation is not feasible, the candidate’s true nature needs to be determined based on these alternative methods alone. Aims. We study the applicability of multicolour transit photometry in the validation of transiting planet candidates when the candidate signal arises from a real astrophysical source (transiting planet, eclipsing binary, etc.), and not from an instrumental artefact. Particularly, we aim to answer how securely we can estimate the true uncontaminated star-planet radius ratio when the light curve may contain contamination from unresolved light sources inside the photometry aperture when combining multicolour transit observations with a physics-based contamination model in a Bayesian parameter estimation setting. More generally, we study how the contamination level, colour differences between the planet host and contaminant stars, transit signal-to-noise ratio, and available prior information affect the contamination and true radius ratio estimates. Methods. The study is based on simulations and ground-based multicolour transit observations. The contamination analyses were carried out with a contamination model integrated into the PYTRANSIT v2 transit modelling package, and the observations were carried out with the MuSCAT2 multicolour imager installed in the 1.5 m Telescopio Carlos Sanchez in the Teide Observatory, in Tenerife. Results. We show that multicolour transit photometry can be used to estimate the amount of flux contamination and the true radius ratio. Combining the true radius ratio with an estimate for the stellar radius yields the true absolute radius of the transiting object, which is a valuable quantity in statistical candidate validation, and enough in itself to validate a candidate whose radius falls below the theoretical lower limit for a brown dwarf.
The He
I
λ
10833 Å triplet is a powerful tool for characterising the upper atmosphere of exoplanets and tracing possible mass loss. Here, we analysed one transit of GJ 1214 b observed with the ...CARMENES high-resolution spectrograph to study its atmosphere via transmission spectroscopy around the He
I
triplet. Although previous studies using lower resolution instruments have reported non-detections of He
I
in the atmosphere of GJ 1214 b, we report here the first potential detection. We reconcile the conflicting results arguing that previous transit observations did not present good opportunities for the detection of He
I
, due to telluric H
2
O absorption and OH emission contamination. We simulated those earlier observations, and show evidence that the planetary signal was contaminated. From our single non-telluric-contaminated transit, we determined an excess absorption of 2.10
−0.50
+0.45
% (4.6
σ
) with a full width at half maximum (FWHM) of 1.30
−0.25
+0.30
Å. The detection of He
I
is statistically significant at the 4.6
σ
level, but repeatability of the detection could not be confirmed due to the availability of only one transit. By applying a hydrodynamical model and assuming an H/He composition of 98/2, we found that GJ 1214 b would undergo hydrodynamic escape in the photon-limited regime, losing its primary atmosphere with a mass-loss rate of (1.5–18) × 10
10
g s
−1
and an outflow temperature in the range of 2900–4400 K. Further high-resolution follow-up observations of GJ 1214 b are needed to confirm and fully characterise the detection of an extended atmosphere surrounding GJ 1214 b. If confirmed, this would be strong evidence that this planet has a primordial atmosphere accreted from the original planetary nebula. Despite previous intensive observations from space- and ground-based observatories, our He
I
excess absorption is the first tentative detection of a chemical species in the atmosphere of this benchmark sub-Neptune planet.
ABSTRACT
We present a detailed analysis of HARPS-N radial velocity observations of K2-100, a young and active star in the Praesepe cluster, which hosts a transiting planet with a period of 1.7 d. We ...model the activity-induced radial velocity variations of the host star with a multidimensional Gaussian Process framework and detect a planetary signal of 10.6 ± 3.0 ${\rm m\, s^{-1}}$, which matches the transit ephemeris, and translates to a planet mass of 21.8 ± 6.2 M⊕. We perform a suite of validation tests to confirm that our detected signal is genuine. This is the first mass measurement for a transiting planet in a young open cluster. The relatively low density of the planet, $2.04 _{ - 0.61 } ^ { + 0.66 }$ ${\rm g\, cm^{-3}}$, implies that K2-100b retains a significant volatile envelope. We estimate that the planet is losing its atmosphere at a rate of $10^{11}\!-\!10^{12}\, {\rm g\, s^{-1}}$ due to the high level of radiation it receives from its host star.
Abstract
Low-luminosity active galactic nuclei, i.e.
$L_{\rm b{\rm ol}}$
/L
edd ∼ 10−6–10−3, constitute the bulk population of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Powerful jets, common in these objects, ...are a crucial source of feedback energy-driving mass outflows into the host galaxy and the intergalactic medium. This paper reports the first direct measurement of powerful mass outflows traced by the forbidden high-ionization gas in the low-luminosity AGN NGC 1386 at scales of a few parsecs from the central engine. The high-angular resolution of the data allows us to directly measure the location, morphology and kinematic of the outflow. This has the form of two symmetrical expanding hot gas shells moving in opposite directions along the line of sight. The co-spatiality of the gas shells with radio emission seen at the same parsec scales and with X-rays indicates that this is a shock-driven outflow presumably induced by an incipient core jet. With a minimum number of assumptions, we derive a mass outflow rate of 11 M⊙ yr−1, comparable to those of powerful AGN. The result has strong implications in the global accounting of feedback mass and energy driven by a low-luminosity AGN into the medium and the corresponding galaxy evolution.
Optical transmission spectroscopy provides crucial constraints on the reference pressure levels and scattering properties for the atmospheres of hot Jupiters. For certain planets, where alkali atoms ...are detected in the atmosphere, their line profiles could serve as a good probe to link upper and lower atmospheric layers. The planet WASP-21b is a Saturn-mass hot Jupiter orbiting a thick-disk star, with a low density and an equilibrium temperature of 1333 K, which makes it a good target for transmission spectroscopy. Here, we present a low-resolution transmission spectrum for WASP-21b based on one transit observed by the OSIRIS spectrograph at the 10.4 m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), and a high-resolution transmission spectrum based on three transits observed by HARPS-N at Telescopio Nazinale
Galileo
(TNG) and HARPS at the ESO 3.6 m telescope. We performed spectral retrieval analysis on GTC’s low-resolution transmission spectrum and report the detection of Na at a confidence level of >3.5-
σ
. The Na line exhibits a broad line profile that can be attributed to pressure broadening, indicating a mostly clear planetary atmosphere. The spectrum shows a tentative excess absorption at the K D
1
line. Using HARPS-N and HARPS, we spectrally resolved the Na doublet transmission spectrum. An excess absorption at the Na doublet is detected during the transit, and shows a radial velocity shift consistent with the planet orbital motion. We proposed a metric to quantitatively distinguish hot Jupiters with relatively clear atmospheres from others, and WASP-21b has the largest metric value among all the characterized hot Jupiters. The detection of Na both in the lower and upper atmospheres of WASP-21b reveals that it is an ideal target for future follow-up observations, providing the opportunity to understand the nature of its atmosphere across a wide range of pressure levels.
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