Combined ultrasonic and X-ray microtomography measurements in situ at high pressure, in conjunction with lattice-Boltzmann simulations, enabled simultaneous investigation several physical parameters including: elastic wave velocities (v(p) and v(s)); apparent Poisson's ratio; pore structure; porosity; and permeability. Experiments were conducted on a simple analog material, porous mold-quality aluminum, in a Paris-Edinburgh cell from 0.14 to 1.36 GPa. Porosity was observed to have a strong inverse dependence on pressure up to similar to 0.9 GPa, while permeability has an anisotropic dependence on pressure. Elastic wave velocity (v(p), v(s)) and apparent Poisson's ratio all increase with pressure, with v(p) agreeing well with the Hashin-Shtrikman upper bound at lower pressures and higher porosities. These results demonstrate a new methodology combining experimental and analytical methods to provide cross-property links between microscopic structure and macroscopic elastic properties. Future investigations on more complex Earth materials may have important implications for our understanding of the composition of the deep Earth.

Where does the carbon released by burning fossil fuels go? Currently, ocean and land systems remove about half of the CO2 emitted by human activities; the remainder stays in the atmosphere. These removal processes are sensitive to feedbacks in the energy, carbon, and water cycles that will change in the future. Observing how much carbon is taken up on land through photosynthesis is complicated because carbon is simultaneously respired by plants, animals, and microbes. Global observations from satellites and air samples suggest that natural ecosystems take up about as much CO2 as they emit. To match the data, our land models generate imaginary Earths where carbon uptake and respiration are roughly balanced, but the absolute quantities of carbon being exchanged vary widely. Getting the magnitude of the flux is essential to make sure our models are capturing the right pattern for the right reasons. Combining two cutting-edge tools, carbonyl sulfide (OCS) and solar-induced fluorescence (SIF), will help develop an independent answer of how much carbon is being taken up by global ecosystems. Photosynthesis requires CO2, light, and water. OCS provides a spatially and temporally integrated picture of the "front door" of photosynthesis, proportional to CO2 uptake and water loss through plant stomata. SIF provides a high-resolution snapshot of the "side door," scaling with the light captured by leaves. These two independent pieces of information help us understand plant water and carbon exchange. A coordinated effort to generate SIF and OCS data through satellite, airborne, and ground observations will improve our process-based models to predict how these cycles will change in the future.

Pair distribution function measurement of SiO2 glass up to 120 GPa reveals changes in the first-, second-, and third-neighbor distances associated with an increase in Si coordination number C-Si to >6 above 95 GPa. Packing fractions of Si and O determined from the first- and second-neighbor distances show marked changes accompanied with the structural evolution from C-Si = 6 to >6. Structural constraints in terms of ionic radius ratio of Si and O, and ratio of nonbonded radius to bonded Si-O distance support the structural evolution of SiO2 glass with C-Si > 6 at high pressures.

In this paper, we report 591 high-velocity star candidates (HiVelSCs) selected from over 10 million spectra of Data Release 7 (DR7) of the Large Sky Area Multi-object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope and the second Gaia data release, with three-dimensional velocities in the Galactic rest frame larger than 445 km s(-1). We show that at least 43 HiVelSCs are unbound to the Galaxy with escape probabilities larger than 50%, and this number decreases to eight if the possible parallax zero-point error is corrected. Most of these HiVelSCs are metal-poor and slightly alpha-enhanced inner halo stars. Only 14% of them have [Fe/H] > -1, which may be the metal-rich "in situ" stars in the halo formed in the initial collapse of the Milky Way or metal-rich stars formed in the disk or bulge but kinematically heated. The low ratio of 14% implies that the bulk of the stellar halo was formed from the accretion and tidal disruption of satellite galaxies. In addition, HiVelSCs on retrograde orbits have slightly lower metallicities on average compared with those on prograde orbits; meanwhile, metal-poor HiVelSCs with [Fe/H] < -1 have an even faster mean retrograde velocity compared with metal-rich HiVelSCs. To investigate the origins of HiVelSCs, we perform orbit integrations and divide them into four types, i.e., hypervelocity stars, hyper-runaway stars, runaway stars and fast halo stars. A catalog for these 591 HiVelSCs, including radial velocities, atmospheric parameters, Gaia astrometric parameters, spatial positions, and velocities, etc., is available in the China-VO PaperData Repository at doi:10.12149/101038.

Osmoregulation is important for plant growth, development and response to environmental changes. SNF1-related protein kinase 2s (SnRK2s) are quickly activated by osmotic stress and are central components in osmotic stress and abscisic acid (ABA) signaling pathways; however, the upstream components required for SnRK2 activation and early osmotic stress signaling are still unknown. Here, we report a critical role for B2, B3 and B4 subfamilies of Raf-like kinases (RAFs) in early osmotic stress as well as ABA signaling in Arabidopsis thaliana. B2, B3 and B4 RAFs are quickly activated by osmotic stress and are required for phosphorylation and activation of SnRK2s. Analyses of high-order mutants of RAFs reveal critical roles of the RAFs in osmotic stress tolerance and ABA responses as well as in growth and development. Our findings uncover a kinase cascade mediating osmoregulation in higher plants. Rapid activation of SnRK2 kinases is central to plant responses to osmotic stress and abscisic acid. Here the authors show that a group of Raf-like kinases are very quickly activated by osmotic stress, and then phosphorylate and activate SnRK2s.

High pressure can drastically alter chemical bonding and produce exotic compounds that defy conventional wisdom. Especially significant are compounds pertaining to oxygen cycles inside Earth, which hold key to understanding major geological events that impact the environment essential to life on Earth. Here we report the discovery of pressure-stabilized divalent ozonide CaO3 crystal that exhibits intriguing bonding and oxidation states with profound geological implications. Our computational study identifies a crystalline phase of CaO3 by reaction of CaO and O-2 at high pressure and high temperature conditions; ensuing experiments synthesize this rare compound under compression in a diamond anvil cell with laser heating. High-pressure x-ray diffraction data show that CaO3 crystal forms at 35 GPa and persists down to 20 GPa on decompression. Analysis of charge states reveals a formal oxidation state of -2 for ozone anions in CaO3. These findings unravel the ozonide chemistry at high pressure and offer insights for elucidating prominent seismic anomalies and oxygen cycles in Earth's interior. We further predict multiple reactions producing CaO3 by geologically abundant mineral precursors at various depths in Earth's mantle.

Rationale: Stroke is a leading causes of human death worldwide. Ischemic damage induces the sterile neuroinflammation, which directly determines the recovery of patients. Lipids, a major component of the brain, significantly altered after stroke. Cholesterol sulfate, a naturally occurring analog of cholesterol, can directly regulate immune cell activation, indicating the possible involvement of cholesterol metabolites in neuroinflammation. Sulfotransferase family 2b member 1 (Sult2b1) is the key enzyme that catalyzes the synthesis of cholesterol sulfate. This study aimed to investigate the function of Sult2b1 and cholesterol sulfate in the neuroinflammation after ischemic stroke.

We present the four-year survey results of monthly submillimeter monitoring of eight nearby (<500 pc) star-forming regions by the JCMT Transient Survey. We apply the Lomb-Scargle Periodogram technique to search for and characterize variability on 295 submillimeter peaks brighter than 0.14 Jy beam(-1), including 22 disk sources (Class II), 83 protostars (Class 0/I), and 190 starless sources. We uncover 18 secular variables, all of them protostars. No single-epoch burst or drop events and no inherently stochastic sources are observed. We classify the secular variables by their timescales into three groups: Periodic, Curved, and Linear. For the Curved and Periodic cases, the detectable fractional amplitude, with respect to mean peak brightness, is similar to 4% for sources brighter than similar to 0.5 Jy beam(-1). Limiting our sample to only these bright sources, the observed variable fraction is 37% (16 out of 43). Considering source evolution, we find a similar fraction of bright variables for both Class 0 and Class I. Using an empirically motivated conversion from submillimeter variability to variation in mass accretion rate, six sources (7% of our full sample) are predicted to have years-long accretion events during which the excess mass accreted reaches more than 40% above the total quiescently accreted mass: two previously known eruptive Class I sources, V1647 Ori and EC 53 (V371 Ser), and four Class 0 sources, HOPS 356, HOPS 373, HOPS 383, and West 40. Considering the full protostellar ensemble, the importance of episodic accretion on few years timescale is negligible-only a few percent of the assembled mass. However, given that this accretion is dominated by events on the order of the observing time window, it remains uncertain as to whether the importance of episodic events will continue to rise with decades-long monitoring.

We present 12 new transit light curves and 16 new out-of-transit radial-velocity measurements for the XO-3 system. By modeling our newly collected measurements together with archival photometric and Doppler velocimetric data, we confirmed the unusual configuration of the XO-3 system, which contains a massive planet (M-P = 11.92(-0.63)(+0.59) M-J) on a relatively eccentric (e = 0.2853(-0.0026)(+0.0027)) and short-period (3.19152 +/- 0.00145 day) orbit around a massive star (M-* = 1.219(-0.095)(+0.090) M-circle dot). Furthermore, we find no strong evidence for a temporal change of either V sin i(*) (and by extension, the stellar spin vector of XO-3), or the transit profile (and thus orbital angular momentum vector of XO-3b). We conclude that the discrepancy in previous Rossiter-McLaughlin measurements (70.0 degrees +/- 15.0 degrees; Hebrard et al. 2008; 37.3 degrees +/- 3.7 degrees; Winn et al. 2009; 37.3 degrees +/- 3.0 degrees; Hirano et al. 2011) may have stemmed from systematic noise sources.

We investigate the possibility that the dwarf galaxies Crater II and Hercules have previously been tidally stripped by the Milky Way. We present Magellan/IMACS spectra of candidate member stars in both objects. We identify 37 members of Crater II, 25 of which have velocity measurements in the literature, and we classify three stars within that subset as possible binaries. We find that including or removing these binary candidates does not change the derived velocity dispersion of Crater II. Excluding the binary candidates, we measure a velocity dispersion of sigma V-los = 2.7(-0.4)(+0.5) km s(-1), corresponding to M/L = 47(-13)(+17) M-circle dot/L-circle dot. We measure a mean metallicity of [Fe/H] = -1.95(-0.05)(+0.06),with a dispersion of sigma([Fe/H]) = 0.18(-0.08)(+0.06). Our velocity dispersion and metallicity measurements agree with previous measurements for Crater II, and confirm that the galaxy resides in a kinematically cold dark-matter halo. We also search for spectroscopic members stripped from Hercules in the possible extratidal stellar overdensities surrounding the dwarf. For both galaxies, we calculate proper motions using Gaia DR2 astrometry, and use their full 6D phase space information to evaluate the probability that their orbits approach sufficiently close to the Milky Way to experience tidal stripping. Given the available kinematic data, we find a probability of similar to 40% that Hercules has suffered tidal stripping. The proper motion of Crater II makes it almost certain to be stripped.