The central dusty torus in the active nucleus of NGC 1068

Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) display many energetic phenomena--broad emission lines, X-rays, relativistic jets, radio lobes--originating from matter falling onto a supermassive black hole. It is widely accepted that orientation effects play a major role in explaining the observational appearance of AGNs. Seen from certain directions, circum-nuclear dust clouds would block our view of the central powerhouse. Indirect evidence suggests that the dust clouds form a parsec-sized torus-shaped distribution. This explanation, however, remains unproved, as even the largest telescopes have not been able to resolve the dust structures. Here we report interferometric mid-infrared observations that spatially resolve these structures in the galaxy NGC 1068. The observations reveal warm (320 K) dust in a structure 2.1 parsec thick and 3.4 parsec in diameter, surrounding a smaller hot structure. As such a configuration of dust clouds would collapse in a time much shorter than the active phase of the AGN, this observation requires a continual input of kinetic energy to the cloud system from a source coexistent with the AGN.     

Global biodiversity patterns of marine phytoplankton and zooplankton

Although the oceans cover 70% of the Earth's surface, our knowledge of biodiversity patterns in marine phytoplankton and zooplankton is very limited compared to that of the biodiversity of plants and herbivores in the terrestrial world. Here, we present biodiversity data for marine plankton assemblages from different areas of the world ocean. Similar to terrestrial vegetation, marine phytoplankton diversity is a unimodal function of phytoplankton biomass, with maximum diversity at intermediate levels of phytoplankton biomass and minimum diversity during massive blooms. Contrary to expectation, we did not find a relation between phytoplankton diversity and zooplankton diversity. Zooplankton diversity is a unimodal function of zooplankton biomass. Most strikingly, these marine biodiversity patterns show a worldwide consistency, despite obvious differences in environmental conditions of the various oceanographic regions. These findings may serve as a new benchmark in the search for global biodiversity patterns of plants and herbivores.     

High-latitude controls of thermocline nutrients and low latitude biological productivity

The ocean's biological pump strips nutrients out of the surface waters and exports them into the thermocline and deep waters. If there were no return path of nutrients from deep waters, the biological pump would eventually deplete the surface waters and thermocline of nutrients; surface biological productivity would plummet. Here we make use of the combined distributions of silicic acid and nitrate to trace the main nutrient return path from deep waters by upwelling in the Southern Ocean and subsequent entrainment into subantarctic mode water. We show that the subantarctic mode water, which spreads throughout the entire Southern Hemisphere and North Atlantic Ocean, is the main source of nutrients for the thermocline. We also find that an additional return path exists in the northwest corner of the Pacific Ocean, where enhanced vertical mixing, perhaps driven by tides, brings abyssal nutrients to the surface and supplies them to the thermocline of the North Pacific. Our analysis has important implications for our understanding of large-scale controls on the nature and magnitude of low-latitude biological productivity and its sensitivity to climate change.     

面向对象技术在流域洪水预报系统中的应用

通过对现有的洪水预报系统的分析,确定了复用率低以及难于扩展是目前洪水预报应用系统在实现方面存在的普遍问题。利用面向对象的Java语言作为开发工具,进行洪水预报应用系统的开发,使系统具有较强的可扩展性和复用能力,能有效地缩短新系统的开发周期,因而是进行洪水预报系统开发的有效工具。     

CFSBC： Clustering in High-Dimensional Space Based on Closed Frequent Item Set

Clustering in high-dimensional space is an important domain in data mining. It is the process of discovering groups in a high-dimensional dataset, in such way, that the similarity between the elements of the same cluster is maximum and between different clusters is minimal. Many clustering algorithms are not applicable to high dimensional space for its sparseness and decline properties. Dimensionality reduction is an effective method to solve this problem. The paper proposes a novel clustering algorithm CFSBC based onclosed frequent hemsets derived from association rule mining. which can get the clustering attributes with high efficiency. The algorithm has several advantages. First, it deals effectively with the problem of dimensionality reduction. Second, it is applicable to different kinds of attributes, Third, it is suitable for very large data sets. Experiment shows that the proposed algorithm is effective and efficient     

Local metabolic response to physio-pathological demands: The pentose phosphate pathway

Résumé On a constaté dans le métabolisme de glucose une augmentation de l'utilisation de la voie oxydative directe dans la paroi de l'estomac durant la digestion, et dans celle des vaisseaux sanguins pendant inflammation, réparation et reconstruction. Les resultats ont été analysés en fonction de leur intérêt pour les problèmes cliniques.

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Investigation was conducted during tenure of Special Research Fellowship (No. 11091), U.S. Public Health Service.