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Aquaculture is one of the fastest‐growing food production sectors. As the global human population continues to increase and further pressure is added to the prospects of achieving global food security, aquaculture is expected to play an integral role in meeting future nutrition demands. With advances in genetic technologies over recent years, much progress has been made within the realm of selective breeding. Despite success, selective breeding programs have limitations to the rate of genetic gain they can achieve. The incorporation of targeted genetic technologies, such as gene editing, into research related to selective breeding programs will help identify specific genes related to commercially desirable traits, as well as expedite genetic improvement. This review summarises research encompassing the most commonly targeted traits using gene editing within aquaculture, namely reproduction and development, pigmentation, growth and disease resistance. In addition, this review illustrates how the incorporation of gene editing can expedite genetic improvement through the rapid fixation of desirable alleles, as well as suggests strategies to accelerate genetic improvement for aquaculture production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The steady rise in atmospheric long-lived greenhouse gas concentrations is the main driver of contemporary climate change. The Mauna Loa CO2 time series (1, 2), started by C. D. Keeling in 1958 and maintained today by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) of NOAA, is iconic evidence of the effect of human-caused fossil fuel and land-use change emissions on the atmospheric increase of CO2. The continuity of such records depends critically on having stable funding, which is challenging to maintain in the context of 3- to 4-year research grant funding cycles (3), and is currently threatened by the financial crisis.The ESRL Global Monitoring Division maintains a network of about 100 surface and aircraft sites worldwide at which whole air samples are collected approximately every week for analysis of CO2, CH4, CO, halocarbons, and many other chemical species (4). This is complemented by high-frequency measurements at the Mauna Loa, Barrow, American Samoa, and South Pole observatories, and about 10 North American tall towers. The success of the NOAA program has inspired similar efforts in Europe (5), China (6), India (7), and Brazil (8), with the United Nations World Meteorological Organization providing guidance and precision requirements through the Global Atmosphere Watch program (9), but no funding.The data collected by NOAA and its worldwide partners have been used not only to demonstrate the unassailable rise of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, but also to infer the magnitudes, locations, and times of surface-atmosphere exchange of those gases based on small concentration gradients between sites (10). Important findings from analysis of these records include the detection of a significant terrestrial carbon sink at northern mid-latitudes (11) and subsequent research aimed at identifying the mechanisms by which that sink must operate. Long-term, high-quality, atmospheric measurements are crucial for quantifying trends in greenhouse gas fluxes and attributing them to fossil fuel emissions, changes in land-use and management, or the response of natural land and ocean ecosystems to climate change and elevated CO2 concentrations.Greenhouse gas measurements along tall towers in the interior continents allow quantification of regional sources and sinks, which has a very high relevance for measuring the effectiveness of climate policy. NOAA ESRL provides measurements that are critical for the U.S. national security in that they provide independent verification and early warning of changing greenhouse gas emissions from countries involved in efforts to mitigate greenhouse gases.Dedicated carbon-observing satellites such as GOSAT and OCO-2 are needed to fill in the missing geographical information required for verification of carbon flux mitigation efforts. However, satellite retrievals do not yet provide sufficient information to deliver new constraints on surface fluxes, although quick progress is being made in this direction. In situ observations are crucial for anchoring space-borne measurements, for detecting potential biases of remote sensing techniques, and for providing continuity given the finite lifetime of satellites.Despite the growing importance of greenhouse gas observations to humanity, substantial budget cuts at NOAA have resulted in curtailment of our ability to observe and understand changes to the global carbon cycle. Already, a dozen surface flask-sampling sites have been removed from NOAA's operational network and aircraft profiling sites have been eliminated and reduced in frequency at the remaining NOAA sites. The planned growth in the tall tower program has stopped, and plans for closing some towers are being developed. The U.S. budget process in this election year, with the added risk of mandatory across-the-board cuts due to the 2011 Budget Control Act, foretells more bleak news for greenhouse gas monitoring at NOAA and could cause further retreat from the goal of recording ongoing changes in atmospheric composition. As scientists, we believe that preserving the continuity of these vital time series must remain a priority for U.S. carbon cycle research.

Precision requirements are determined for space-based column-averaged CO2 dry air mole fraction data. These requirements result from an assessment of spatial and temporal gradients in the relationship between precision and surface CO2 flux uncertainties inferred from inversions of the data, and the effects of biases on the fidelity of CO2 flux inversions. Observational system simulation experiments and synthesis inversion modeling demonstrate that the Orbiting Carbon Observatory mission design and sampling strategy provide the means to achieve these data precision requirements.

A global climatological distribution of tropospheric OH is computed using observed distributions of O3, H2O, NOt (NO2 +NO + 2N2O5 + NO3 + HNO2 +HNO4), CO, hydrocarbons, temperature, and cloud optical depth. Global annual mean OH is 1.16×106 molecules cm−3(integrated with respect to mass of air up to 100 hPa within ±32° latitude and up to 200 hPa outside that region). Mean hemispheric concentrations of OH are nearly equal. While global mean OH increased by 33% compared to that from Spivakovsky et al. [1990], mean loss frequencies of CH3CCl3 and CH4 increased by only 23% because a lower fraction of total OH resides in the lower troposphere in the present distribution. The value for temperature used for determining lifetimes of hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) by scaling rate constants [Prather and Spivakovsky, 1990] is revised from 277 K to 272 K. The present distribution of OH is consistent within a few percent with the current budgets of CH3CCl3 and HCFC-22. For CH3CCl3, it results in a lifetime of 4.6 years, including stratospheric and ocean sinks with atmospheric lifetimes of 43 and 80 years, respectively. For HCFC-22, the lifetime is 11.4 years, allowing for the stratospheric sink with an atmospheric lifetime of 229 years. Corrections suggested by observed levels of CH2Cl2 (annual means) depend strongly on the rate of interhemispheric mixing in the model. An increase in OH in the Northern Hemisphere by 20% combined with a decrease in the southern tropics by 25% is suggested if this rate is at its upper limit consistent with observations of CFCs and 85Kr. For the lower limit, observations of CH2Cl2 imply an increase in OH in the Northern Hemisphere by 35% combined with a decrease in OH in the southern tropics by 60%. However, such large corrections are inconsistent with observations for 14CO in the tropics and for the interhemispheric gradient of CH3CCl3. Industrial sources of CH2Cl2 are sufficient for balancing its budget. The available tests do not establish significant errors in OH except for a possible underestimate in winter in the northern and southern tropics by 15–20% and 10–15%, respectively, and an overestimate in southern extratropics by ∼25%. Observations of seasonal variations of CH3CCl3, CH2Cl2,14CO, and C2H6 offer no evidence for higher levels of OH in the southern than in the northern extratropics. It is expected that in the next few years the latitudinal distribution and annual cycle of CH3CCl3 will be determined primarily by its loss frequency, allowing for additional constraints for OH on scales smaller than global.

Extreme enhancements in the total columns of carbon monoxide (CO), peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN), ethylene (C2H4), methanol (CH3OH), and formic acid (HCOOH) were observed over the Canadian high Arctic during the period of 17–22 August 2017 by a ground‐based Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometer at Eureka, Nunavut (80.05°N, 86.42°W), and by the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) satellite instruments. These enhancements have been attributed to wildfires in British Columbia (BC) and the Northwest Territories (NWT) of Canada, and represent the largest short‐term perturbations of PAN, C2H4, and HCOOH above ambient concentrations over the 14‐year (2006–2020) Eureka time‐series. Enhancement ratios, emission ratios, and emission factors relative to CO were calculated for all species for both FTIR and IASI observations. The C2H4 and HCOOH emission factors are significantly larger than previous studies, suggesting unusually high emissions from these fires. The wildfire plumes were also simulated using the GEOS‐Chem model. Initial GEOS‐Chem simulations displayed a severe under‐estimation relative to observations for these fire plumes resulting from the injection height scheme of the model. Sensitivity tests highlighted that injection heights of 12.5 km for BC (based on previous studies) and 10 km for the NWT fires yielded the strongest correlations with ground‐based measurements. Applying these injection heights to the model significantly improves the simulated plume transport and agreement with ground‐ and space‐based observations. GEOS‐Chem was also used to estimate the magnitude of secondary in‐plume production of CH3OH and HCOOH; it was found to be an important component (∼18%) of the enhanced HCOOH columns at Eureka. Plain Language Summary: Wildfires are a significant natural source of pollution to the atmosphere. During mid‐August 2017, two extremely large wildfires occurred simultaneously in British Columbia (BC) and the Northwest Territories (NWT) of Canada. These fires produced an exceptional amount of smoke, which was subsequently transported to the Canadian high Arctic region. The atmospheric concentrations of carbon monoxide (CO), peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN), ethylene (C2H4), methanol (CH3OH), and formic acid (HCOOH) contained within these transported smoke plumes were measured using both a ground‐based infrared spectrometer located at Eureka, Nunavut (80.05°N, 86.42°W) and satellite instruments. The largest concentrations of CO, PAN, C2H4, and HCOOH observed over the 14‐year measurement record (2006–2020) of the ground‐based spectrometer were due to these wildfires. The emissions of these fires were estimated from both the ground‐ and space‐based measurements and were found to be unusually high in comparison to previous studies. The wildfire smoke plumes were also simulated using a chemical transport model, but the model was found to inject the smoke too low into the atmosphere above the fires; after adjustments to the injection scheme were made, the agreement of the model with the measurements was significantly improved. Key Points: The 2017 Canadian wildfires produced the largest PAN, C2H4, and HCOOH column enhancements observed in the high Arctic from 2006 to 2020GEOS‐Chem effectively simulates the observed plume transport, but required modifications to the injection heights of the fire emissionsMid‐latitude wildfires may become an increasingly significant source of reactive VOC species to the high Arctic during the summer months [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report an experimental and theoretical investigation into the dynamics of electron-impact ionization of R-carvone. Experimental triple differential cross sections are obtained in asymmetric coplanar kinematic conditions for the ionization of the unresolved combination of the three outermost molecular orbitals (41a-39a) of R-carvone. These cross sections are compared with theoretical cross sections calculated within a molecular 3-body distorted wave (M3DW) framework employing either a proper orientation average or orbital average to account for the random orientation of the molecule probed in the experiment. Here, we observe that the overall scattering behavior observed in the experiment is fairly well reproduced within the M3DW framework when implementing the proper average over orientations. The character of the ionized orbitals also provides some qualitative explanation for the observed scattering behavior. This represents substantial progress when trying to describe the scattering dynamics observed for larger molecules under intermediate-impact energy and asymmetric energy sharing scattering conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pulsed Townsend technique has been used to measure transport coefficients in mixtures of tetrahydrofuran (THF) with N2 and argon. These measurements are the first investigations of swarm transport in gas mixtures with THF, with the drift velocity and effective Townsend ionization coefficient reported for a range of reduced electric fields between 0.23 and 800 Td (1 Td = 10−21 V m2). These transport coefficients are compared with those calculated using a multiterm kinetic theory, using the cross section set developed in our previous studies [N. A. Garland et al., Phys. Rev. A 88, 062712 (2013) and M. J. E. Casey et al., J. Chem. Phys. 147, 195103 (2017)]. The swarm technique of iteratively adjusting cross sections to reproduce experimental transport measurements is subsequently utilized in this study to address the deficiencies in the earlier cross section sets, exposed by the gas mixture measurements. Refinement of the low-energy extrapolation of the quasielastic database cross section and the low-energy extrapolation and magnitude of the dissociative electron attachment cross section are detailed, as well as the adjustments to the two previously proposed neutral dissociation cross sections. These refinements were necessary in order to minimize differences between our measured and calculated transport coefficients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report experimental measurements of the absolute total cross sections (TCSs) for electron scattering from 1-butanol at impact energies in the range 80–400 eV. Those measurements were conducted by considering the attenuation of a collimated electron beam, at a given energy, through a gas cell containing 1-butanol, at a given pressure, and through application of the Beer-Lambert law to derive the required TCS. We also report theoretical results using the Independent-Atom Model with Screening Corrected Additivity Rule and Interference approach. Those results include the TCS, the elastic integral cross section (ICS), the ionization total ICS, and the sum over all excitation process ICSs with agreement at the TCS level between our measured and calculated results being encouraging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The absolute photoabsorption cross sections for thiophene in the 5.0–10.7 eV range were measured using synchrotron radiation. New theoretical calculations performed at the time-dependent density functional theory level were used to qualitatively interpret the recorded photoabsorption spectrum. The calculations facilitated a re-analysis of the observed vibronic and Rydberg structures in the photoabsorption spectrum. Here a number of features have been re-assigned, while a number of other features have been assigned for the first time. This represents the most comprehensive and self-consistent assignment of the thiophene high-resolution photoabsorption spectrum to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to assess how bone substitute materials determine bone formation in vivo it is useful to understand the mechanisms of the material surface/tissue interaction on a cellular level. Artificial materials are used in two applications, as biomaterials alone or as a scaffold for osteoblasts in a tissue engineering approach. Recently, many efforts have been undertaken to improve bone regeneration by the use of structured material surfaces. In vitro studies of bone cell responses to artificial materials are the basic tool to determine these interactions. Surface properties of materials surfaces as well as biophysical constraints at the biomaterial surface are of major importance since these features will direct the cell responses. Studies on osteoblastlike cell reactivity towards materials will have to focus on the different steps of protein and cell reactions towards defined surface properties. The introduction of new techniques allows nowadays the fabrication of materials with ordered surface structures. This paper gives a review of present knowledge on the various stages of osteoblast reactions on material surfaces, focused on basic cell events under in vitro conditions. Special emphasis is given to cellular reactions towards ordered nano-sized topographies.

We report the results of ab initio calculations for elastic scattering and also for excitation of individual electronic states of para-benzoquinone (pBQ) by the impact of low-energy electrons. The calculations for elastic scattering were performed with the Schwinger multichannel method implemented with pseudopotentials (SMCPP) in the static-exchange (SE) plus polarization (SEP) approximation for energies up to 50 eV. The assignments for the resonance spectrum obtained in this study are, in general, in good agreement with previous results available in the literature. For electronic excitation by electron impact, the SMCPP method with N energetically open electronic states (Nopen), at either the static-exchange (Nopench-SE) or the static-exchange-plus-polarisation (Nopench-SEP) approximation, was employed to calculate the scattering amplitudes using a channel coupling scheme that ranges from the 1ch-SEP up to the 89ch-SE level of approximation, depending on the energy of interest. Integral cross sections (ICSs) and differential cross sections (DCSs) were obtained for incident electron energies lying between 15 eV and 50 eV. The study focuses on the influence of multichannel coupling effects for electronically inelastic processes, more specifically, on how the number of excited states included in the open-channel space impacts upon the convergence of the cross sections at intermediate and higher energies. In particular, we found that the magnitude of DCS and ICS results for electronic excitation decreases as more channels are included in the calculations. To the best of our knowledge, there are no other experimental or theoretical ICS or DCS results for excitation into individual electronic states of pBQ available in the literature between 15 and 50 eV against which we might compare the present calculations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report absolute experimental integral cross sections (ICSs) for the electron impact excitation of 6 bands (Bands 0-V) of unresolved electronic-states in para-benzoquinone, for incident electron energies between 20 and 40 eV. Absolute vibrational-excitation ICSs, for 3 composite vibrational bands (Bands I-III), are also reported in that same energy range. In addition, ICSs calculated within our independent atom model (IAM) with screening corrected additivity rule (SCAR) formalism, extended to account for interference (I) terms that arise due to the multi-centre nature of the scattering problem, are also reported. The sum of those ICSs gives the IAM-SCAR+I total cross section (TCS) for electron–para-benzoquinone scattering. Where possible, those calculated IAM-SCAR+I ICSs are compared against corresponding results from the present measurements with an acceptable level of accord being obtained. Similarly, we also present results from our Schwinger multichannel method with pseudopotential (SMCPP) calculations. Here elastic ICSs and ICSs corresponding to the Bands 0–III of unresolved electronic-states are presented, with agreement between the SMCPP electronic-state ICSs and those from our measurements being in good qualitative accord. The energy range of our SMCPP computations is 16–50 eV. Using the binary-encounter-Bethe (BEB) approach, total ionization cross sections for this collision system were computed. Those total ionization cross sections were then added to our SMCPP ICS results, to derive SMCPP/BEB TCSs that are typically in very good accord with those from our IAM-SCAR+I approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]