Explore the vast range of titles available.

Two studies were conducted on the relationship between ruminal mat consistency (RMC) and (1) calf mortality or (2) immunity. Assessment of RMC was by ten repeated manual compressions of the middle rumen; good-RMC showed no fluid bounce-back (FBB), while poor-RMC showed FBB. The first study examined whether RMC affected calf mortality. Monthly feeding management guidance (FMG) was implemented for 5 years on a commercial farm with Holstein–Friesian × Japanese black calves, directing increased forage consumption for poor-RMC calves aged 50–180 days. Compared to 35 control farms, the FMG period showed significantly lower total mortality (3.8% vs. 0.8%, P  < 0.001, OR = 4.7) and lower respiratory mortality (2.3% vs. 0.1%, P  < 0.001, OR = 18.3). The second study tested the hypothesis that RMC affects calf immunity. Peripheral blood of good-RMC (n = 6) and poor-RMC (n = 6) calves was compared. Good-RMC showed higher phagocytosis in monocytes ( P  = 0.05, r = 0.63) and granulocytes ( P  = 0.02, r = 0.78), and higher numbers of CD4 + ( P  = 0.07, r = 0.58), CD8 + ( P  = 0.07, r = 0.60), and B-cells ( P  = 0.03, r = 0.62). In mRNA expression, good-RMC showed lower TNF-α ( P  = 0.02, r = 0.70), IL-1 ( P  = 0.09, r = 0.49), IL-12 ( P  = 0.04, r = 0.59) and IL-10 ( P  = 0.13, r = 0.44), and higher IL-16 ( P  = 0.07, r = 0.53) compared to poor-RMC. These results suggest that RMC affects calf mortality and immunity, emphasizing the importance of feeding management in improving sustainability.

ABSTRACT We describe the Pan-STARRS Moving Object Processing System (MOPS), a modern software package that produces automatic asteroid discoveries and identifications from catalogs of transient detections from next-generation astronomical survey telescopes. MOPS achieves >99.5% efficiency in producing orbits from a synthetic but realistic population of asteroids whose measurements were simulated for a Pan-STARRS4-class telescope. Additionally, using a nonphysical grid population, we demonstrate that MOPS can detect populations of currently unknown objects such as interstellar asteroids. MOPS has been adapted successfully to the prototype Pan-STARRS1 telescope despite differences in expected false detection rates, fill-factor loss, and relatively sparse observing cadence compared to a hypothetical Pan-STARRS4 telescope and survey. MOPS remains highly efficient at detecting objects but drops to 80% efficiency at producing orbits. This loss is primarily due to configurable MOPS processing limits that are not yet tuned for the Pan-STARRS1 mission. The core MOPS software package is the product of more than 15 person-years of software development and incorporates countless additional years of effort in third-party software to perform lower-level functions such as spatial searching or orbit determination. We describe the high-level design of MOPS and essential subcomponents, the suitability of MOPS for other survey programs, and suggest a road map for future MOPS development.

The JAXA’s Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) mission is planned to reveal the origin of Phobos and Deimos. It will remotely observe both moons and return a sample from Phobos. The nominal instruments include the TElescopic Nadir imager for GeOmOrphology (TENGOO) and Optical RadiOmeter composed of CHromatic Imagers (OROCHI). The scientific objective of TENGOO is to obtain the geomorphological features of Phobos and Deimos. The spatial resolution of TENGOO is 0.3 m at an altitude of 25 km in the quasi-satellite orbit. The scientific objective of OROCHI is to obtain material distribution using spectral mapping. OROCHI possesses seven wide-angle bandpass imagers without a filter wheel and one monochromatic imager dedicated to the observation during the landing phase. Using these two instruments, we plan to select landing sites and obtain information that supports the analysis of return samples.

Japanese asteroid explorer Hayabusa2 arrived at C-type asteroid 162,173 Ryugu in June 2018. The laser altimeter (LIDAR) onboard Hayabusa2 measured its own transmitted laser and returned pulse intensities from a Ryugu surface until November 2019. Because the Ryugu surface is extremely rough, topography dominates over the material properties in the conventional derivation of normal albedo. Thus, we developed a method to retrieve the normal albedo from the rough surface of a C-type asteroid at a LIDAR laser wavelength of 1.064 μm. The albedo map covering an equatorial band between – 40° and + 20° in latitude was created with 3˚-by-3˚ resolution using the intensity data obtained before the conjunction of the spacecraft with the Sun. The average of the normal albedo is 0.0405 ± 0.0027, whereas approximately half of the 3°-by-3° grids are between 0.04 and 0.045. The low and uniform normal albedo feature is common to other remote-sensing observations of Ryugu by visible and near-infrared cameras onboard Hayabusa2.

High-resolution images of the surface of asteroid Itokawa from the Hayabusa mission reveal it to be covered with unconsolidated millimeter-sized and larger gravels. Locations and morphologic characteristics of this gravel indicate that Itokawa has experienced considerable vibrations, which have triggered global-scale granular processes in its dry, vacuum, microgravity environment. These processes likely include granular convection, landslide-like granular migrations, and particle sorting, resulting in the segregation of the fine gravels into areas of potential lows. Granular processes become major resurfacing processes because of Itokawa's small size, implying that they can occur on other small asteroids should those have regolith.

In 2018, the near-Earth object (155140) 2005 UD (hereafter UD) experienced a close fly by of the Earth. We present results from an observational campaign involving photometric, spectroscopic, and polarimetric observations carried out across a wide range of phase angles (0.°7–88°). We also analyze archival NEOWISE observations. We report an absolute magnitude of H V  = 17.51 ± 0.02 mag and an albedo of p V  = 0.10 ± 0.02. UD has been dynamically linked to Phaethon due their similar orbital configurations. Assuming similar surface properties, we derived new estimates for the diameters of Phaethon and UD of D  = 5.4 ± 0.5 km and D  = 1.3 ± 0.1 km, respectively. Thermophysical modeling of NEOWISE data suggests a surface thermal inertia of and regolith grain size in the range of 0.9–10 mm for UD and grain sizes of 3–30 mm for Phaethon. The light curve of UD displays a symmetric shape with a reduced amplitude of Am (0) = 0.29 mag and increasing at a linear rate of 0.017 mag/° between phase angles of 0° and ∼25°. Little variation in light-curve morphology was observed throughout the apparition. Using light-curve inversion techniques, we obtained a sidereal rotation period P  = 5.235 ± 0.005 hr. A search for rotational variation in spectroscopic and polarimetric properties yielded negative results within observational uncertainties of ∼10% μ m −1 and ∼16%, respectively. In this work, we present new evidence that Phaethon and UD are similar in composition and surface properties, strengthening the arguments for a genetic relationship between these two objects.

This paper reports on the recent developments in spectroimagers for sprite campaigns in Taiwan. We first introduce two types of spectroimagers, the slit and slitless types, and discuss their advantages and shortcomings. Next we explore the instrument development and procedures undertaken for this study. In 2006, a slit spectroimager was installed for a sprite campaign and on 15 August of that year, two sprite spectra were recorded using the slit spectroimager along with seven sprites, one halo, one ELVES emission and two jets. By the end of 2015, a slitless spectroimager had been successfully constructed and was ready to conduct additional investigations. On 7 May 2016, a sprite spectrum was recorded using the slitless spectroimager. Following an examination of the calibrations (comprising detection region field of view, wavelength calibration, and response curve), data analysis, and additional calibrations (comprising elevation and azimuthal angles, atmospheric transmittance, and theoretical wavelength calculations) performed in this study, we present the results from our observed sprite spectra using the slit and slitless spectroimagers.

Asteroids under the weather You'd expect the parent bodies of ordinary chondrites, the most common type of meteorite, to be abundant in the Solar System. But the S-type asteroids that dominate the main asteroid belt do not look like parent-body material. A possible explanation is that surfaces of the parent bodies become optically altered by 'space weathering'. This theory gets a boost with the discovery of extensive space weathering on the asteroid Itokawa, based on data from the Hayabusa asteroid-rendezvous spacecraft. A dark region on a small (550-metre) asteroid, 25143 Itokawa, is significantly more space-weathered than a nearby bright region. This shows that space-weathered materials accumulate on small asteroids. Puzzlingly, the parent bodies of ordinary chondrites (the most abundant type of meteorites) do not seem to be abundant among asteroids. One possible explanation is that surfaces of the parent bodies become optically altered, to become the S-type asteroids which are abundant in the main asteroid belt. The process is called ‘space weathering’—it makes the visible and near-infrared reflectance spectrum of a body darker and redder 1 . A recent survey of small, near-Earth asteroids suggests that the surfaces of small S asteroids may have developing stages of space weathering 2 . Here we report that a dark region on a small (550-metre) asteroid—25143 Itokawa—is significantly more space-weathered than a nearby bright region. Spectra of both regions are consistent with those of LL5-6 chondrites after continuum removal 3 . A simple calculation 4 suggests that the dark area has a shorter mean optical path length and about 0.04 per cent by volume more nanophase metallic iron particles than the bright area. This clearly shows that space-weathered materials accumulate on small asteroids, which are likely to be the parent bodies of LL chondrites. We conclude that, because LL meteorites are the least abundant of ordinary (H, L, and LL) chondrites, there must be many asteroids with ordinary-chondrite compositions in near-Earth orbits.

After global observations of asteroid 25143 Itokawa by the Hayabusa spacecraft, we selected the smooth terrain of the Muses Sea for two touchdowns carried out on 19 and 25 November 2005 UTC for the first asteroid sample collection with an impact sampling mechanism. Here, we report initial findings about geological features, surface condition, regolith grain size, compositional variation, and constraints on the physical properties of this site by using both scientific and housekeeping data during the descent sequence of the first touchdown. Close-up images revealed the first touchdown site as a regolith field densely filled with size-sorted, millimeter- to centimeter-sized grains.