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- 2019
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)
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- Zamora, Juan Carlos, et al.
(författare)
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Considerations and consequences of allowing DNA sequence data as types of fungal taxa
- 2018
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Ingår i: IMA Fungus. - : INT MYCOLOGICAL ASSOC. - 2210-6340 .- 2210-6359. ; 9:1, s. 167-185
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Nomenclatural type definitions are one of the most important concepts in biological nomenclature. Being physical objects that can be re-studied by other researchers, types permanently link taxonomy (an artificial agreement to classify biological diversity) with nomenclature (an artificial agreement to name biological diversity). Two proposals to amend the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN), allowing DNA sequences alone (of any region and extent) to serve as types of taxon names for voucherless fungi (mainly putative taxa from environmental DNA sequences), have been submitted to be voted on at the 11th International Mycological Congress (Puerto Rico, July 2018). We consider various genetic processes affecting the distribution of alleles among taxa and find that alleles may not consistently and uniquely represent the species within which they are contained. Should the proposals be accepted, the meaning of nomenclatural types would change in a fundamental way from physical objects as sources of data to the data themselves. Such changes are conducive to irreproducible science, the potential typification on artefactual data, and massive creation of names with low information content, ultimately causing nomenclatural instability and unnecessary work for future researchers that would stall future explorations of fungal diversity. We conclude that the acceptance of DNA sequences alone as types of names of taxa, under the terms used in the current proposals, is unnecessary and would not solve the problem of naming putative taxa known only from DNA sequences in a scientifically defensible way. As an alternative, we highlight the use of formulas for naming putative taxa (candidate taxa) that do not require any modification of the ICN.
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- Tinetti, Giovanna, et al.
(författare)
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The EChO science case
- 2015
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Ingår i: Experimental astronomy. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0922-6435 .- 1572-9508. ; 40:2-3, s. 329-391
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The discovery of almost two thousand exoplanets has revealed an unexpectedly diverse planet population. We see gas giants in few-day orbits, whole multi-planet systems within the orbit of Mercury, and new populations of planets with masses between that of the Earth and Neptune-all unknown in the Solar System. Observations to date have shown that our Solar System is certainly not representative of the general population of planets in our Milky Way. The key science questions that urgently need addressing are therefore: What are exoplanets made of? Why are planets as they are? How do planetary systems work and what causes the exceptional diversity observed as compared to the Solar System? The EChO (Exoplanet Characterisation Observatory) space mission was conceived to take up the challenge to explain this diversity in terms of formation, evolution, internal structure and planet and atmospheric composition. This requires in-depth spectroscopic knowledge of the atmospheres of a large and well-defined planet sample for which precise physical, chemical and dynamical information can be obtained. In order to fulfil this ambitious scientific program, EChO was designed as a dedicated survey mission for transit and eclipse spectroscopy capable of observing a large, diverse and well-defined planet sample within its 4-year mission lifetime. The transit and eclipse spectroscopy method, whereby the signal from the star and planet are differentiated using knowledge of the planetary ephemerides, allows us to measure atmospheric signals from the planet at levels of at least 10(-4) relative to the star. This can only be achieved in conjunction with a carefully designed stable payload and satellite platform. It is also necessary to provide broad instantaneous wavelength coverage to detect as many molecular species as possible, to probe the thermal structure of the planetary atmospheres and to correct for the contaminating effects of the stellar photosphere. This requires wavelength coverage of at least 0.55 to 11 mu m with a goal of covering from 0.4 to 16 mu m. Only modest spectral resolving power is needed, with R similar to 300 for wavelengths less than 5 mu m and R similar to 30 for wavelengths greater than this. The transit spectroscopy technique means that no spatial resolution is required. A telescope collecting area of about 1 m(2) is sufficiently large to achieve the necessary spectro-photometric precision: for the Phase A study a 1.13 m(2) telescope, diffraction limited at 3 mu m has been adopted. Placing the satellite at L2 provides a cold and stable thermal environment as well as a large field of regard to allow efficient time-critical observation of targets randomly distributed over the sky. EChO has been conceived to achieve a single goal: exoplanet spectroscopy. The spectral coverage and signal-to-noise to be achieved by EChO, thanks to its high stability and dedicated design, would be a game changer by allowing atmospheric composition to be measured with unparalleled exactness: at least a factor 10 more precise and a factor 10 to 1000 more accurate than current observations. This would enable the detection of molecular abundances three orders of magnitude lower than currently possible and a fourfold increase from the handful of molecules detected to date. Combining these data with estimates of planetary bulk compositions from accurate measurements of their radii and masses would allow degeneracies associated with planetary interior modelling to be broken, giving unique insight into the interior structure and elemental abundances of these alien worlds. EChO would allow scientists to study exoplanets both as a population and as individuals. The mission can target super-Earths, Neptune-like, and Jupiter-like planets, in the very hot to temperate zones (planet temperatures of 300-3000 K) of F to M-type host stars. The EChO core science would be delivered by a three-tier survey. The EChO Chemical Census: This is a broad survey of a few-hundred exoplanets, which allows us to explore the spectroscopic and chemical diversity of the exoplanet population as a whole. The EChO Origin: This is a deep survey of a subsample of tens of exoplanets for which significantly higher signal to noise and spectral resolution spectra can be obtained to explain the origin of the exoplanet diversity (such as formation mechanisms, chemical processes, atmospheric escape). The EChO Rosetta Stones: This is an ultra-high accuracy survey targeting a subsample of select exoplanets. These will be the bright "benchmark" cases for which a large number of measurements would be taken to explore temporal variations, and to obtain two and three dimensional spatial information on the atmospheric conditions through eclipse-mapping techniques. If EChO were launched today, the exoplanets currently observed are sufficient to provide a large and diverse sample. The Chemical Census survey would consist of > 160 exoplanets with a range of planetary sizes, temperatures, orbital parameters and stellar host properties. Additionally, over the next 10 years, several new ground- and space-based transit photometric surveys and missions will come on-line (e.g. NGTS, CHEOPS, TESS, PLATO), which will specifically focus on finding bright, nearby systems. The current rapid rate of discovery would allow the target list to be further optimised in the years prior to EChO's launch and enable the atmospheric characterisation of hundreds of planets.
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- Jin, Shoko, et al.
(författare)
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The wide-field, multiplexed, spectroscopic facility WEAVE : Survey design, overview, and simulated implementation
- 2024
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Ingår i: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press. - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 530:3, s. 2688-2730
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- WEAVE, the new wide-field, massively multiplexed spectroscopic survey facility for the William Herschel Telescope, saw first light in late 2022. WEAVE comprises a new 2-deg field-of-view prime-focus corrector system, a nearly 1000-multiplex fibre positioner, 20 individually deployable 'mini' integral field units (IFUs), and a single large IFU. These fibre systems feed a dual-beam spectrograph covering the wavelength range 366-959nm at R similar to 5000, or two shorter ranges at . After summarizing the design and implementation of WEAVE and its data systems, we present the organization, science drivers, and design of a five- to seven-year programme of eight individual surveys to: (i) study our Galaxy's origins by completing Gaia's phase-space information, providing metallicities to its limiting magnitude for similar to 3 million stars and detailed abundances for similar to 1.5 million brighter field and open-cluster stars; (ii) survey similar to 0.4 million Galactic-plane OBA stars, young stellar objects, and nearby gas to understand the evolution of young stars and their environments; (iii) perform an extensive spectral survey of white dwarfs; (iv) survey similar to 400 neutral-hydrogen-selected galaxies with the IFUs; (v) study properties and kinematics of stellar populations and ionized gas in z < 0.5 cluster galaxies; (vi) survey stellar populations and kinematics in field galaxies at 0.3 less than or similar to z less than or similar to 0.7; (vii) study the cosmic evolution of accretion and star formation using >1 million spectra of LOFAR-selected radio sources; and (viii) trace structures using intergalactic/circumgalactic gas at z > 2. Finally, we describe the WEAVE Operational Rehearsals using the WEAVE Simulator.
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- Aasi, J., et al.
(författare)
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Einstein@Home all-sky search for periodic gravitational waves in LIGO S5 data
- 2013
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Ingår i: Physical Review D (Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology). - 1550-2368. ; 87:4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper presents results of an all-sky search for periodic gravitational waves in the frequency range [50, 1190] Hz and with frequency derivative range of similar to[-20, 1.1] x 10(-10) Hz s(-1) for the fifth LIGO science run (S5). The search uses a noncoherent Hough-transform method to combine the information from coherent searches on time scales of about one day. Because these searches are very computationally intensive, they have been carried out with the Einstein@Home volunteer distributed computing project. Postprocessing identifies eight candidate signals; deeper follow-up studies rule them out. Hence, since no gravitational wave signals have been found, we report upper limits on the intrinsic gravitational wave strain amplitude h(0). For example, in the 0.5 Hz-wide band at 152.5 Hz, we can exclude the presence of signals with h(0) greater than 7.6 x 10(-25) at a 90% confidence level. This search is about a factor 3 more sensitive than the previous Einstein@Home search of early S5 LIGO data.
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- Aasi, J., et al.
(författare)
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Parameter estimation for compact binary coalescence signals with the first generation gravitational-wave detector network
- 2013
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Ingår i: Physical Review D (Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology). - 1550-2368. ; 88:6
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Compact binary systems with neutron stars or black holes are one of the most promising sources for ground-based gravitational-wave detectors. Gravitational radiation encodes rich information about source physics; thus parameter estimation and model selection are crucial analysis steps for any detection candidate events. Detailed models of the anticipated waveforms enable inference on several parameters, such as component masses, spins, sky location and distance, that are essential for new astrophysical studies of these sources. However, accurate measurements of these parameters and discrimination of models describing the underlying physics are complicated by artifacts in the data, uncertainties in the waveform models and in the calibration of the detectors. Here we report such measurements on a selection of simulated signals added either in hardware or software to the data collected by the two LIGO instruments and the Virgo detector during their most recent joint science run, including a "blind injection'' where the signal was not initially revealed to the collaboration. We exemplify the ability to extract information about the source physics on signals that cover the neutron-star and black-hole binary parameter space over the component mass range 1M(circle dot)-25M(circle dot) and the full range of spin parameters. The cases reported in this study provide a snapshot of the status of parameter estimation in preparation for the operation of advanced detectors.
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