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WEAVE, the new wide-field, massively multiplexed spectroscopic survey facility for the William Herschel Telescope, will see first light in late 2022. WEAVE comprises a new 2-degree 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$-$959\,nm at $R\sim5000$, or two shorter ranges at $R\sim20\,000$. After summarising the design and implementation of WEAVE and its data systems, we present the organisation, 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 $\sim$3 million stars and detailed abundances for $\sim1.5$ million brighter field and open-cluster stars; (ii) survey $\sim0.4$ 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 $\sim400$ neutral-hydrogen-selected galaxies with the IFUs; (v) study properties and kinematics of stellar populations and ionised gas in $z1$ million spectra of LOFAR-selected radio sources; (viii) trace structures using intergalactic/circumgalactic gas at $z>2$. Finally, we describe the WEAVE Operational Rehearsals using the WEAVE Simulator., 41 pages, 27 figures, accepted for publication by MNRAS

Delrez, L., et al., Exoplanets transiting bright nearby stars are key objects for advancing our knowledge of planetary formation and evolution. The wealth of photons from the host star gives detailed access to the atmospheric, interior and orbital properties of the planetary companions. ν Lupi (HD 136352) is a naked-eye (V = 5.78) Sun-like star that was discovered to host three low-mass planets with orbital periods of 11.6, 27.6 and 107.6 d via radial-velocity monitoring. The two inner planets (b and c) were recently found to transit, prompting a photometric follow-up by the brand new Characterising Exoplanets Satellite (CHEOPS). Here, we report that the outer planet d is also transiting, and measure its radius and mass to be 2.56 ± 0.09 R and 8.82 ± 0.94 M, respectively. With its bright Sun-like star, long period and mild irradiation (~5.7 times the irradiation of Earth), ν Lupi d unlocks a completely new region in the parameter space of exoplanets amenable to detailed characterization. We refine the properties of all three planets: planet b probably has a rocky mostly dry composition, while planets c and d seem to have retained small hydrogen–helium envelopes and a possibly large water fraction. This diversity of planetary compositions makes the ν Lupi system an excellent laboratory for testing formation and evolution models of low-mass planets., The MOC activities have been supported by ESA contract 4000124370. S.C. acknowledges financial support by LabEx UnivEarthS (ANR-10-LABX-0023 and ANR-18-IDEX-0001). This work was supported by FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia) through national funds and by FEDER (Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional) through COMPETE2020—Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização with these grants: UID/FIS/04434/2019; UIDB/04434/2020; UIDP/04434/2020; PTDC/FIS-AST/32113/2017 and POCI-01-0145-FEDER-032113; PTDC/FIS-AST/28953/2017 and POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028953; PTDC/FIS-AST/28987/2017 and POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028987. S.C.C.B., S.G.S. and V.A. acknowledge support from FCT through contracts IF/01312/2014/CP1215/CT0004, CEECIND/00826/2018, POPH/FSE (EC) and IF/00650/2015/CP1273/CT0001. O.D.S.D. is supported in the form of a work contract (DL 57/2016/CP1364/CT0004) with national funds through FCT. M.J.H. acknowledges the support of the Swiss National Fund under grant 200020_172746. A.D. and D.E. acknowledge support from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (project Four Aces; grant agreement 724427). S.H. acknowledges CNES funding through grant 837319. The Spanish scientific participation in CHEOPS has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the European Regional Development Fund through grants ESP2016-80435-C2-1-R, ESP2016-80435-C2-2-R, ESP2017-87676-C5-1-R, PGC2018-098153-B-C31, PGC2018-098153-B-C33 and MDM-2017-0737 Unidad de Excelencia María de Maeztu–Centro de Astrobiología (INTA-CSIC), as well as by the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA programme. The Belgian participation in CHEOPS has been supported by the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office in the framework of the PRODEX Programme of the ESA under contract PEA 4000131343, and by the University of Liège through an ARC grant for Concerted Research Actions financed by the Wallonia–Brussels Federation. L.D. is an FRS-FNRS Postdoctoral Researcher. M. Gillon is an FRS–FNRS Senior Research Associate. V.V.G. is an FRS–FNRS Research Associate. M.L. acknowledges support from the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) under project 859724 ‘GRAPPA’. B.-O.D. acknowledges support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (PP00P2-190080). S. Salmon has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement 833925, project STAREX). G.M.S. acknowledges funding from the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NKFIH) grant GINOP-2.3.2-15-2016-00003 and K-119517. For Italy, CHEOPS activities have been supported by the Italian Space Agency, under the programmes ASI-INAF 2013-016-R.0 and ASI-INAF 2019-29-HH.0. L.B., G.P., I.P., G.S. and V.N. acknowledge funding support from the Italian Space Agency (ASI) regulated by ‘Accordo ASI-INAF 2013-016-R.0 del 9 luglio 2013 e integrazione del 9 luglio 2015’. A.C.C. and T.G.W. acknowledge support from STFC consolidated grant ST/M001296/1. D.G., X.B., S.C., M.F. and J.L. acknowledge their roles as ESA-appointed CHEOPS science team members. We thank S. R. Kane for sharing some RV data before their publication and L. D. Nielsen for helping to plan the CHEOPS observations on the basis of her analysis of the TESS data. We also thank M. Cretignier for his independent analysis of the HARPS RV data.

Hobbs, David, et al., The era of all-sky space astrometry began with the Hipparcos mission in 1989 and provided the first very accurate catalogue of apparent magnitudes, positions, parallaxes and proper motions of 120 000 bright stars at the milliarcsec (or milliarcsec per year) accuracy level. Hipparcos has now been superseded by the results of the Gaia mission. The second Gaia data release contained astrometric data for almost 1.7 billion sources with tens of microarcsec (or microarcsec per year) accuracy in a vast volume of the Milky Way and future data releases will further improve on this. Gaia has just completed its nominal 5-year mission (July 2019), but is expected to continue in operations for an extended period of an additional 5 years through to mid 2024. Its final catalogue to be released ∼ 2027, will provide astrometry for ∼ 2 billion sources, with astrometric precisions reaching 10 microarcsec. Why is accurate astrometry so important? The answer is that it provides fundamental data which underpin much of modern observational astronomy as will be detailed in this White Paper. All-sky visible and Near-InfraRed (NIR) astrometry with a wavelength cutoff in the K-band is not just focused on a single or small number of key science cases. Instead, it is extremely broad, answering key science questions in nearly every branch of astronomy while also providing a dense and accurate visible-NIR reference frame needed for future astronomy facilities., Open access funding provided by Lund University.

With the aim of producing a 3D representation of tumours, IMAXT uses a large variety of modalities in order to acquire tumour samples and produce a map of every cell in the tumour and its host environment. With the large volume and variety of data produced in the project we develop automatic data workflows and analysis pipelines and introduce a research methodology where scientists connect to a cloud environment to perform analysis close to where data are located instead of bringing data to their local computers. Here we present the data and analysis infrastructure, discuss the unique computational challenges and describe the analysis chains developed and deployed to generate molecularly annotated tumour models. Registration is achieved by use of a novel technique involving spherical fiducial marks that are visible in all imaging modalities used within IMAXT.

Recent studies have shown the importance of accounting for burn severity when assessing the effects of forest fires on avian communities. We add to this growing literature with one of the first studies to assess these effects in boreal and hemiboreal regions of North America. We conducted point counts in control and treatment areas for 2–3 years before (2009–2011) and 4–5 years after (2012–2016) the Pagami Creek Fire in northern Minnesota, USA. Our primary objectives were to (1) assess the effects of burn status, burn severity and burn heterogeneity on avian communities and patterns of abundance in individual bird species and (2) compare these results when counts were either restricted to 100 m count radii or corrected for potential detection heterogeneity. Species richness and total abundance of birds were best described by a burn severity by year interaction, with lower-severity burns having similar patterns to control areas and higher-severity burns showing reduced abundance and richness following the fire. Nevertheless, values associated with higher-severity burns returned to near-control levels after five years. Of 43 species analyzed, 27 showed detectable responses to the fire through shifts in abundance. Nearly equal proportions of these species had generally positive versus negative effects of the fire. Sixteen (59%) of these fire responses were mediated by burn severity, while four (15%) and seven (26%) were best predicted by burn heterogeneity or burn status, respectively. Of the species whose response to the fire was mediated by burn severity, the majority (81%) had decreased abundance as burn severity increased. However, all species responding to burn heterogeneity or burn status showed positive relationships to these metrics. Results were similar between analytical methods that adjusted for species detectability vs those that did not, with 78% of species having the same interpretation of fire effects. Burn severity and heterogeneity, in addition to the sole distinction of whether an area was burned, dictate the response of birds to forest fire in hemiboreal forests. Mixed-severity fires, which include a range of burn severities and associated vegetation change, will likely benefit the most bird species in this region. When possible, management should focus on retaining this spectrum of post-fire conditions, though of primary importance is the inclusion of wildfire in forest planning and conservation efforts.

Leleu, A., et al., Determining the architecture of multi-planetary systems is one of the cornerstones of understanding planet formation and evolution. Resonant systems are especially important as the fragility of their orbital configuration ensures that no significant scattering or collisional event has taken place since the earliest formation phase when the parent protoplanetary disc was still present. In this context, TOI-178 has been the subject of particular attention since the first TESS observations hinted at the possible presence of a near 2:3:3 resonant chain. Here we report the results of observations from CHEOPS, ESPRESSO, NGTS, and SPECULOOS with the aim of deciphering the peculiar orbital architecture of the system. We show that TOI-178 harbours at least six planets in the super-Earth to mini-Neptune regimes, with radii ranging from 1.152to 2.87Earth radii and periods of 1.91, 3.24, 6.56, 9.96, 15.23, and 20.71 days. All planets but the innermost one form a 2:4:6:9:12 chain of Laplace resonances, and the planetary densities show important variations from planet to planet, jumping from 1.02to 0.177times the Earth's density between planets c and d. Using Bayesian interior structure retrieval models, we show that the amount of gas in the planets does not vary in a monotonous way, contrary to what one would expect from simple formation and evolution models and unlike other known systems in a chain of Laplace resonances. The brightness of TOI-178 (H = 8.76 mag, J = 9.37 mag, V = 11.95 mag) allows for a precise characterisation of its orbital architecture as well as of the physical nature of the six presently known transiting planets it harbours. The peculiar orbital configuration and the diversity in average density among the planets in the system will enable the study of interior planetary structures and atmospheric evolution, providing important clues on the formation of super-Earths and mini-Neptunes., The authors acknowledge support from the Swiss NCCR PlanetS and the Swiss National Science Foundation. Y.A. and M.J.H. acknowledge the support of the Swiss National Fund under grant 200020_172746. A.C.C. and T.W. acknowledge support from STFC consolidated grant number ST/M001296/1. This work was granted access to the HPC resources of MesoPSL financed by the Region Ile de France and the project Equip@Meso (reference ANR-10-EQPX-29-01) of the programme Investissements d’Avenir supervised by the Agence Nationale pour la Recherche. SH acknowledges CNES funding through the grant 837319. Based on data collected under the NGTS project at the ESO La Silla Paranal Observatory. The NGTS facility is operated by the consortium institutes with support from the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) project ST/M001962/1. The Belgian participation to CHEOPS has been supported by the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO) in the framework of the PRODEX Program, and by the University of Liège through an ARC grant for Concerted Research Actions financed by the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. V.A. acknowledges the support from FCT through Investigador FCT contract nr. IF/00650/2015/CP1273/CT0001. We acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the European Regional Development Fund through grants ESP2016-80435-C2-1-R, ESP2016-80435-C2-2-R, PGC2018-098153-B-C33, PGC2018-098153-B-C31, ESP2017-87676-C5-1-R, MDM-2017-0737 Unidad de Excelencia “María de Maeztu”- Centro de Astrobiología (INTA-CSIC), as well as the support of the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA programme. The MOC activities have been supported by the ESA contract No. 4000124370. S.C.C.B. acknowledges support from FCT through FCT contracts nr. IF/01312/2014/CP1215/CT0004. X.B., S.C., D.G., M.F. and J.L. acknowledge their role as ESA-appointed CHEOPS science team members. ABr was supported by the SNSA. A.C. acknowledges support by CFisUC projects (UIDB/04564/2020 and UIDP/04564/2020), GRAVITY (PTDC/FIS-AST/7002/2020), ENGAGE SKA (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-022217), and PHOBOS (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029932), funded by COMPETE 2020 and FCT, Portugal. This work was supported by FCT - Fundaçãopara a Ciência e a Tecnologia through national funds and by FEDER through COMPETE2020 - Programa OperacionalCompetitividade e Internacionalização by these grants: UID/FIS/04434/2019; UIDB/04434/2020; UIDP/04434/2020; PTDC/FIS-AST/32113/2017 and POCI-01-0145-FEDER- 032113; PTDC/FIS-AST/28953/2017 and POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028953; PTDC/FIS-AST/28987/2017 and POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028987. O.D.S.D. is supported in the form of work contract (DL 57/2016/CP1364/CT0004) funded by national funds through FCT. B.-O.D. acknowledges support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (PP00P2-190080). M.F. and C.M.P. gratefully acknowledgethe support of the Swedish National Space Agency (DNR 65/19, 174/18). D.G. gratefully acknowledges financial support from the CRT foundation under Grant No. 2018.2323 “Gaseousor rocky? Unveiling the nature of small worlds”. E.G. gratefully acknowledges support from the David and Claudia Harding Foundation in the form of a WintonExoplanet Fellowship. M.G. is an F.R.S.-FNRS Senior Research Associate. J.I.G.H. acknowledges financial support from Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN) under the 2013 Ramón y Cajal programme RYC-2013-14875. J.I.G.H., A.S.M., R.R., and C.A.P. acknowledge financial support from the Spanish MICINN AYA2017-86389-P. A.S.M. acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN) under the 2019 Juan de la Cierva Programme. MNG ackowledges support from the MIT Kavli Institute as a Juan Carlos Torres Fellow. J.H. acknowledges the support of the Swiss National Fund under grant 200020_172746. KGI is the ESA CHEOPS Project Scientist and is responsible for the ESA CHEOPS Guest Observers Programme.She does not participate in, or contribute to, the definition of the Guaranteed Time Programme of the CHEOPS mission through which observations described in this paper have been taken, nor to any aspect of target selection forthe programme. J.S.J. acknowledges support by FONDECYT grant 1201371, and partial support from CONICYT project Basal AFB-170002. A.J. acknowledges support from ANID - Millennium Science Initiative - ICN12_009 and from FONDECYT project 1171208. P.M. acknowledges support from STFC research grant number ST/M001040/1. N.J.N is supported by the contract and exploratory project IF/00852/2015, and projects UID/FIS/04434/2019, PTDC/FIS-OUT/29048/2017, COMPETE2020: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028987 & FCT: PTDC/FIS-AST/28987/2017. N.J.N is supported by the contract and exploratory project IF/00852/2015, and project PTDC/FIS-OUT/29048/2017. This work was also partially supported by a grant from the Simons Foundation (PI Queloz, grant number 327127). Acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the European Regional Development Fund through grant PGC2018-098153-B- C33, as well as the support of the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA programme. S.G.S. acknowledges support from FCT through FCT contract nr. CEECIND/00826/2018 and POPH/FSE (EC). This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia (https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia), processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC, https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/consortium). Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement. This project has been supported by the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NKFIH) grants GINOP-2.3.2-15-2016-00003, K-119517, K-125015, and the City of Szombathely under Agreement No. 67.177-21/2016. This research received funding from the MERAC foundation, from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no 803193/ BEBOP, and from the Science and Technology Facilites Council (STFC, grant no ST/S00193X/1). V.V.G. is an F.R.S-FNRS Research Associate. J.I.V. acknowledges support of CONICYT-PFCHA/Doctorado Nacional-21191829. M. R. Z. O. acknowledges financial support from projects AYA2016-79425-C3-2-P and PID2019-109522GB-C51 from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.

International audience; We present an update on the overall integration progress of the WEAVE next-generation spectroscopy facility for the William Herschel Telescope (WHT), now scheduled for first light in early-2021, with almost all components now arrived at the observatory. We also present a summary of the current planning behind the 5-year initial phase of survey operations, and some detailed end-to-end science simulations that have been implemented to evaluate the final on-sky performance after data processing. WEAVE will provide optical ground-based follow up of ground-based (LOFAR) and space-based (Gaia) surveys. WEAVE is a multi-object and multi-IFU facility utilizing a new 2-degree prime focus field of view at the WHT, with a buffered pick-and-place positioner system hosting 1000 multi-object (MOS) fibres, 20 mini integral field units, or a single large IFU for each observation. The fibres are fed to a single (dual-beam) spectrograph, with total of 16k spectral pixels, located within the WHT GHRIL enclosure on the telescope Nasmyth platform, supporting observations at R~5000 over the full 370-1000nm wavelength range in a single exposure, or a high resolution mode with limited coverage in each arm at R~20000.

Context: Many if not most planetary nebulae (PNe) are now thought to be the outcome of binary evolutionary scenarios. However only a few percent of PNe in the Milky Way are known to host binary systems. The high precision repeated observing and long time baseline of Gaia make it well suited to detect new close binaries through photometric variability. Aims: We aim to find new close binary central stars of PNe (CSPNe) using data from the Gaia mission, building towards a statistically significant sample of post common envelope, close binary CSPNe. Methods: As the vast majority of Gaia sources do not have published epoch photometry, we use the uncertainty in the mean photometry as a proxy for determining the variability of our CSPN sample in the second Gaia data release. We derive a quantity that expresses the significance of the variability, and consider what is necessary to build a clean sample of genuine variable sources. Results: Our selection recovers a large fraction of the known close binary CSPN population, while other CSPNe lying in the same region of the parameter space likely represent low-hanging fruit for ground-based confirmatory followup observations. Gaia epoch photometry for four of the newly identified variable sources confirms that the variability is genuine and consistent with binarity, Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A. Main text: 8 pages, 7 figures. One appendix

The authors would like to thank the researchers and engineers who are not coauthors of this paper but who have taken part and have brought their contribution to the proposed missions to ESA successive calls: NEAT (M3), micro-NEAT (S1), and Theia (M4 and M5). An extensive list of supporters for the science objectives is given in [17]. We thank also Arianna Gallo for her contribution in our investigation of the shape of the MilkyWay dark matter halo and Krzysztof A. Rybicki who generated the plots from Fig. 14. We are grateful to the anonymous referee who helped to improve the quality of the paper with his/her remarks. Concerning the funding of our work, we would like to acknowledge the support of many agencies or programs. R.B. acknowledges support from NASA’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory lead team under cooperative agreements NNA13AA93A. A.C.M.C. acknowledges support from CFisUC strategic project (UID/FIS/04564/2019). F.C. acknowledges support by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (COSMICLENS: grant agreement No. 787886). M.F. received support from Polish National Science Centre (NCN) under Grant No. 2017/26/D/ST9/00591. M.F. gratefully acknowledge the support of the Swedish National Space Agency (DNR 65/19, 174/18). D.H. thanks the Swedish National Space Agency (SNSA/Rymdstyrelsen) for their support. A.M. thanks the Portugese Fundac¸ ˜ao para a Ciˆencia e a Tecnologia (FCT) through the Strategic Programme UID/FIS/00099/2019 for CENTRA. P.S. acknowledges support from the Australian Research Council under grant FT190100814. L.W. acknowledges support from the Polish NCN grants: Harmonia No. 2018/06M/ST9/00311 and Daina No. 2017/27/L/ST9/03221. The OATo team acknowledges partial funding by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) under contracts 2014-025-R.1.2015 and 2018-24-HH.0, and by a grant from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (ASTRA). A.C. and F.M. acknowledge support by the LabEx FOCUS ANR-11-LABX-0013. The work of C.J., X.L. and J.P. was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and University (MICIU/FEDER, UE) through grants RTI2018-095076-B-C21, ESP2016-80079-C2-1-R, and the Institute of Cosmos Sciences University of Barcelona (ICCUB, Unidad de Excelencia ’Mar´ıa de Maeztu’) through grants MDM-2014-0369 and CEX2019-000918-M. A.K.-M., A.A., V.C., P.G., P.G., A.M.A., A.M., M.S. were supported by Fundac¸ ˜ao para a Ciˆencia e a Tecnologia, with grants reference UIDB/00099/ 2020 and SFRH/BSAB/142940/2018 (P.G. only). A.D. and L.O. also acknowledge partial support from the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) under the Departments of Excellence grant L.232/2016, and from the INFN grant InDark. G.J.W. gratefully acknowledges support of an Emeritus Fellowship from The Leverhulme Trust. EV is supported by Spanish grant PGC2018-101950-B-100. This research has made use of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services. Open access funding provided by Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica within the CRUI-CARE Agreement., Sky survey telescopes and powerful targeted telescopes play complementary roles in astronomy. In order to investigate the nature and characteristics of the motions of very faint objects, a flexibly-pointed instrument capable of high astrometric accuracy is an ideal complement to current astrometric surveys and a unique tool for precision astrophysics. Such a space-based mission will push the frontier of precision astrometry from evidence of Earth-mass habitable worlds around the nearest stars, to distant Milky Way objects, and out to the Local Group of galaxies. As we enter the era of the JamesWebb Space Telescope and the new ground-based, adaptive-optics-enabled giant telescopes, by obtaining these high precision measurements on key objects that Gaia could not reach, a mission that focuses on high precision astrometry science can consolidate our theoretical understanding of the local Universe, enable extrapolation of physical processes to remote redshifts, and derive a much more consistent picture of cosmological evolution and the likely fate of our cosmos. Already several missions have been proposed to address the science case of faint objects in motion using high precision astrometry missions: NEAT proposed for the ESA M3 opportunity, micro-NEAT for the S1 opportunity, and Theia for the M4 and M5 opportunities. Additional new mission configurations adapted with technological innovations could be envisioned to pursue accurate measurements of these extremely small motions. The goal of this White Paper is to address the fundamental science questions that are at stake when we focus on the motions of faint sky objects and to briefly review instrumentation and mission profiles., NASA’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory NNA13AA93A, CFisUC strategic project (UID/FIS/04564/2019), Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (COSMICLENS: grant agreement No. 787886), Polish National Science Centre (NCN) under Grant No. 2017/26/D/ST9/00591, Swedish National Space Agency (DNR 65/19, 174/18), Swedish National Space Agency (SNSA/Rymdstyrelsen), Portugese Fundacão para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) through the Strategic Programme UID/FIS/00099/2019 for CENTRA, Australian Research Council under grant FT190100814, Polish NCN grants: Harmonia No. 2018/06M/ST9/00311 and Daina No. 2017/27/L/ST9/03221, Italian Space Agency (ASI) under contracts 2014-025-R.1.2015 and 2018-24-HH.0, Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (ASTRA), LabEx FOCUS ANR-11-LABX-0013, Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and University (MICIU/FEDER, UE) through grants RTI2018-095076-B-C21, ESP2016-80079-C2-1-R, Institute of Cosmos Sciences University of Barcelona (ICCUB, Unidad de Excelencia ’Mar´ıa de Maeztu’) through grants MDM-2014-0369 and CEX2019-000918-M, Fundacão para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, with grants reference UIDB/00099/ 2020 and SFRH/BSAB/142940/2018 (P.G. only), Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) under the Departments of Excellence grant L.232/2016, and from the INFN grant InDark, Emeritus Fellowship from The Leverhulme Trust, Spanish grant PGC2018-101950-B-100, Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica within the CRUI-CARE Agreement

M. J. Hooton et al., [Context] The light curves of tidally locked hot Jupiters transiting fast-rotating, early-type stars are a rich source of information about both the planet and star, with full-phase coverage enabling a detailed atmospheric characterisation of the planet. Although it is possible to determine the true spin–orbit angle Ψ – a notoriously difficult parameter to measure – from any transit asymmetry resulting from gravity darkening induced by the stellar rotation, the correlations that exist between the transit parameters have led to large disagreements in published values of Ψ for some systems., [Aims] We aimed to study these phenomena in the light curves of the ultra-hot Jupiter MASCARA-1 b, which is characteristically similar to well-studied contemporaries such as KELT-9 b and WASP-33 b., [Methods] We obtained optical CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite (CHEOPS) transit and occultation light curves of MASCARA-1 b, and analysed them jointly with a Spitzer/IRAC 4.5 μm full-phase curve to model the asymmetric transits, occultations, and phase-dependent flux modulation. For the latter, we employed a novel physics-driven approach to jointly fit the phase modulation by generating a single 2D temperature map and integrating it over the two bandpasses as a function of phase to account for the differing planet–star flux contrasts. The reflected light component was modelled using the general ab initio solution for a semi-infinite atmosphere., [Results] When fitting the CHEOPS and Spitzer transits together, the degeneracies are greatly diminished and return results consistent with previously published Doppler tomography. Placing priors informed by the tomography achieves even better precision, allowing a determination of Ψ = 72.1−2.4+2.5 deg. From the occultations and phase variations, we derived dayside and nightside temperatures of 3062−68+66 K and 1720 ± 330 K, respectively.Our retrieval suggests that the dayside emission spectrum closely follows that of a blackbody. As the CHEOPS occultation is too deep to be attributed to blackbody flux alone, we could separately derive geometric albedo Ag = 0.171−0.068+0.066 and spherical albedo As = 0.266−0.100+0.097 from the CHEOPS data, and Bond albedoAB = 0.057−0.101+0.083 from the Spitzer phase curve.Although small, the Ag and As indicate that MASCARA-1 b is more reflective than most other ultra-hot Jupiters, where H− absorption is expected to dominate., [Conclusions] Where possible, priors informed by Doppler tomography should be used when fitting transits of fast-rotating stars, though multi-colour photometry may also unlock an accurate measurement of Ψ. Our approach to modelling the phase variations at different wavelengths provides a template for how to separate thermal emission from reflected light in spectrally resolved James Webb Space Telescope phase curve data., Y.A. acknowledge the support of the Swiss National Fund under grant 200020_172746. S.H. gratefully acknowledges CNES funding through the grant 837319. D.K. acknowledges partial financial support from the Center for Space and Habitability (CSH), the PlanetS National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR), and the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Swiss-based MERAC Foundation. A.C.C. and T.G.W. acknowledge support from STFC consolidated grant number ST/M001296/1. P.M. acknowledges support from STFC research grant number ST/M001040/1. This work was also partially supported by a grant from the Simons Foundation (PI Queloz, grant number 327127). B.-O.D. acknowledges support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (PP00P2-190080). S.S. has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 833925, project STAREX). A.Br. was supported by the SNSA. This work was supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia through national funds and by FEDER through COMPETE2020 – Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalizacão by these grants: UID/FIS/04434/2019, UIDB/04434/2020, UIDP/04434/2020, PTDC/FIS-AST/32113/2017 and POCI-01-0145-FEDER- 032113, PTDC/FIS-AST/28953/2017 and POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028953, PTDC/FIS-AST/28987/2017 and POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028987, O.D.S.D. is supported in the form of work contract (DL 57/2016/CP1364/CT0004) funded by national funds through FCT. We acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the European Regional Development Fund through grants ESP2016-80435-C2-1-R, ESP2016-80435-C2-2-R, PGC2018-098153-B-C33, PGC2018-098153-B-C31, ESP2017-87676-C5-1-R, MDM-2017-0737 Unidad de Excelencia Maria de Maeztu-Centro de Astrobiologí a (INTA-CSIC), as well as the support of the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA programme. The MOC activities have been supported by the ESA contract No. 4000124370. S.C.C.B. acknowledges support from FCT through FCT contracts nr. IF/01312/2014/CP1215/CT0004. X.B., S.C., D.G., M.F., and J.L. acknowledge their roles as ESA-appointed CHEOPS science team members. This project was supported by the CNES. The Belgian participation to CHEOPS has been supported by the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO) in the framework of the PRODEX Program, and by the University of Liège through an ARC grant for Concerted Research Actions financed by the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (project FOUR ACES. grant agreement no. 724427). D.E. acknowledges financial support from the Swiss National Science Foundation for project 200021_200726. C.M.P. and M.F. gratefully acknowledge the support of the Swedish National Space Agency (DNR 65/19, 174/18). D.G. gratefully acknowledges financial support from the CRT foundation under Grant No. 2018.2323 ‘Gaseousor rocky? Unveiling the nature of small worlds’. M.G. is an F.R.S.-FNRS Senior Research Associate. KGI is the ESA CHEOPS Project Scientist and is responsible for the ESA CHEOPS Guest Observers Programme. She does not participate in, or contribute to, the definition of the Guaranteed Time Programme of the CHEOPS mission through which observations described in this paper have been taken, nor to any aspect of target selection for the programme. This work was granted access to the HPC resources of MesoPSL financed by the Region Ile de France and the project Equip@Meso (reference ANR-10-EQPX-29-01) of the programme Investissements d’Avenir supervised by the Agence Nationale pour la Recherche. Acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the European Regional Development Fund through grant PGC2018-098153-B-C33, as well as the support of the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA programme. S.G.S. acknowledges support from FCT through FCT contract nr. CEECIND/00826/2018 and POPH/FSE (EC). This project has been supported by the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NKFIH) grants GINOP-2.3.2-15-2016-00003, K-119517, K-125015, and the City of Szombathely under Agreement No. 67.177-21/2016., , , ,

A status overview of 4MOST is presented, a new high-multiplex, wide-field spectroscopic survey facility under construction for ESO's VISTA telescope at Paranal. Its key specifications are: a large field of view of 4.4 deg2 and a high multiplex capability, with 1624 fibres feeding two low-resolution spectrographs (R = λ/Δλ ~ 6500), and 812 fibres transferring light to the high-resolution spectrograph (R ~ 20 000). The 4MOST system integration has commenced and the selection process for ESO community survey programmes has been started. This overview presents the expected performance of the instrument, the science the consortium expects to carry out, and the unique operational scheme of 4MOST.

This paper presents an overview of the current status of the Virtual Atomic and Molecular Data Centre (VAMDC) e-infrastructure, including the current status of the VAMDC-connected (or to be connected) databases, updates on the latest technological development within the infrastructure and a presentation of some application tools that make use of the VAMDC e-infrastructure. We analyse the past 10 years of VAMDC development and operation, and assess their impact both on the field of atomic and molecular (A&amp, M) physics itself and on heterogeneous data management in international cooperation. The highly sophisticated VAMDC infrastructure and the related databases developed over this long term make them a perfect resource of sustainable data for future applications in many fields of research. However, we also discuss the current limitations that prevent VAMDC from becoming the main publishing platform and the main source of A&amp, M data for user communities, and present possible solutions under investigation by the consortium. Several user application examples are presented, illustrating the benefits of VAMDC in current research applications, which often need the A&amp, M data from more than one database. Finally, we present our vision for the future of VAMDC.

Riello, M., et al., [Context] Gaia Early Data Release 3 (Gaia EDR3) contains astrometry and photometry results for about 1.8 billion sources based on observations collected by the European Space Agency Gaia satellite during the first 34 months of its operational phase. [Aims] In this paper, we focus on the photometric content, describing the input data, the algorithms, the processing, and the validation of the results. Particular attention is given to the quality of the data and to a number of features that users may need to take into account to make the best use of the Gaia EDR3 catalogue. [Methods] The processing broadly followed the same procedure as for Gaia DR2, but with significant improvements in several aspects of the blue and red photometer (BP and RP) preprocessing and in the photometric calibration process. In particular, the treatment of the BP and RP background has been updated to include a better estimation of the local background, and the detection of crowding effects has been used to exclude affected data from the calibrations. The photometric calibration models have also been updated to account for flux loss over the whole magnitude range. Significant improvements in the modelling and calibration of the Gaia point and line spread functions have also helped to reduce a number of instrumental effects that were still present in DR2. Results. Gaia EDR3 contains 1.806 billion sources with G-band photometry and 1.540 billion sources with GBP and GRP photometry. The median uncertainty in the G-band photometry, as measured from the standard deviation of the internally calibrated mean photometry for a given source, is 0.2 mmag at magnitude G = 10-14, 0.8 mmag at G ≈ 17, and 2.6 mmag at G ≈ 19. The significant magnitude term found in the Gaia DR2 photometry is no longer visible, and overall there are no trends larger than 1 mmag mag-1. Using one passband over the whole colour and magnitude range leaves no systematics above the 1% level in magnitude in any of the bands, and a larger systematic is present for a very small sample of bright and blue sources. A detailed description of the residual systematic effects is provided. Overall the quality of the calibrated mean photometry in Gaia EDR3 is superior with respect to DR2 for all bands., The Gaia photometric data processing has been financially supported by (in alphabetical order by country): the Tenure Track Pilot Programme of the Croatian Science Foundation and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and the Project TTP-2018-07-1171 Mining the Variable Sky, with funds of the Croatian-Swiss Research Programme; the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI) through contracts I/037/08/0, I/058/10/0, 2014-025-R.0, 2014-025-R.1.2015 and 2018-24-HH.0 to the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), and INAF; the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and University (MICIU/FEDER, UE) through grants RTI2018-095076-B-C21, ESP2016-80079-C2-1-R, and the Institute of Cosmos Sciences University of Barcelona (ICCUB, Unidad de Excelencia “María de Maeztu”) through grants MDM-2014-0369 and CEX2019-000918-M; the United Kingdom Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), the United Kingdom Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), and the United Kingdom Space Agency (UKSA) through the following grants to the University of Bristol, the University of Cambridge, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Leicester, the Mullard Space Sciences Laboratory of University College London, and the United Kingdom Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL): PP/D006511/1, PP/D006546/1, PP/D006570/1, ST/I000852/1, ST/J005045/1, ST/K00056X/1, ST/K000209/1, ST/K000756/1, ST/L006561/1, ST/N000595/1, ST/N000641/1, ST/N000978/1, ST/N001117/1, ST/S000089/1, ST/S000976/1, ST/S001123/1, ST/S001948/1, ST/S002103/1, and ST/V000969/1.

This paper comments on the use Gaia in studying the internal dynamics and morphologies of Planetary Nebulae (PN). It is noted that the second and subsequent releases of Gaia data, will have significant potential in unravelling PN morphologies.

Context: Accurate distance measurements are fundamental to the study of Planetary Nebulae (PNe) but have long been elusive. The most accurate and model-independent distance measurements for galactic PNe come from the trigonometric parallaxes of their central stars, which were only available for a few tens of objects prior to the Gaia mission. Aims: Accurate identification of PN central stars in the Gaia source catalogues is a critical prerequisite for leveraging the unprecedented scope and precision of the trigonometric parallaxes measured by Gaia. Our aim is to build a complete sample of PN central star detections with minimal contamination. Methods: We develop and apply an automated technique based on the likelihood ratio method to match candidate central stars in Gaia Data Release 2 (DR2) to known PNe in the Hong Kong/AAO/Strasbourg H$\alpha$ (HASH) PN catalogue, taking into account the BP--RP colours of the \emph{Gaia} sources as well as their positional offsets from the nebula centres. These parameter distributions for both true central stars and background sources are inferred directly from the data. Results: We present a catalogue of over 1000 Gaia sources that our method has automatically identified as likely PN central stars. We demonstrate how the best matches enable us to trace nebula and central star evolution and to validate existing statistical distance scales, and discuss the prospects for further refinement of the matching based on additional data. We also compare the accuracy of our catalogue to that of previous works., Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics

International audience; We present an update on the overall construction progress of the WEAVE next-generation spectroscopy facility for the William Herschel Telescope (WHT), now that all the major fabrication contracts are in place. We also present a summary of the current planning behind the 5-year initial phase of survey operations, and some detailed end-to-end science simulations that have been effected to evaluate the final on-sky performance after data processing. WEAVE will provide optical ground-based follow up of ground-based (LOFAR) and space-based (Gaia) surveys. WEAVE is a multi-object and multi-IFU facility utilizing a new 2-degree prime focus field of view at the WHT, with a buffered pick-and-place positioner system hosting 1000 multi-object (MOS) fibres, 20 integral field units, or a single large IFU for each observation. The fibres are fed to a single (dual-beam) spectrograph, with total of 16k spectral pixels, located within the WHT GHRIL enclosure on the telescope Nasmyth platform, supporting observations at R 5000 over the full 370-1000nm wavelength range in a single exposure, or a high resolution mode with limited coverage in each arm at R 20000. The project has experienced some delays in procurement and now has first light expected for the middle of 2019.

We compared different methods for generating indices of biotic integrity (IBIs) for Great Lakes coastal wetlands using bird community data collected by participants in Bird Studies Canada's Great Lakes Marsh Monitoring Program (GLMMP) including: rank sum and multivariate approaches for defining landscape disturbance gradients; and generalist-specialist (IBI-1), multimetric (IBI-2), and probabilistic (IBI-3) approaches for calculating IBIs. Scores from the multivariate disturbance gradient, IBI-1, and IBI-3 increased rapidly at the impaired and unimpaired ends of the impaired-to-unimpaired spectrum, whereas scores from the rank sum disturbance gradient and IBI-2 increased rapidly only at the unimpaired end. IBIs with metrics that both increased and decreased along the landscape disturbance gradient were more sensitive for identifying especially impaired and unimpaired sites (i.e., IBI-1 and IBI-3) compared to IBIs with metrics that only increased (i.e., IBI-2). Scores from all but one of the IBIs were significantly correlated with scores of at least one of the landscape disturbance gradients and scores from all three of the IBIs were significantly moderately correlated with each other ( r s = 0.3–0.7). Site ranks arranged from impaired to unimpaired differed by 25–50 positions out of 142 possible positions depending on the pair of IBIs chosen. Much of the variation that we observed could be explained by differences among IBIs in the metrics that contributed most to impaired and unimpaired sites. Thus, we recommend the following not only for IBI users assessing the integrity of Great Lakes coastal wetlands, but also any other ecosystem where multiple landscape disturbance gradients and IBIs are available for use: (1) use multivariate instead of rank sum approaches for defining landscape disturbance gradients; (2) use IBIs with metrics that both increase and decrease along the landscape disturbance gradient instead of IBIs with metrics that only increase or only decrease; and (3) ensure that site-level species lists are reasonably complete, particularly for species that disproportionately contribute to especially impaired and unimpaired scores. Following these guidelines will increase the sensitivity and accuracy of IBIs for identifying especially impaired and unimpaired sites and ultimately result in better conservation.

Gravitational waves were discovered with the detection of binary black hole mergers and they should also be detectable from lower mass neutron star mergers. These are predicted to eject material rich in heavy radioactive isotopes that can power an electromagnetic signal called a kilonova. The gravitational wave source GW170817 arose from a binary neutron star merger in the nearby Universe with a relatively well confined sky position and distance estimate. Here we report observations and physical modelling of a rapidly fading electromagnetic transient in the galaxy NGC4993, which is spatially coincident with GW170817 and a weak short gamma-ray burst. The transient has physical parameters broadly matching the theoretical predictions of blue kilonovae from neutron star mergers. The emitted electromagnetic radiation can be explained with an ejected mass of 0.04 +/- 0.01 Msol, with an opacity of kappa, Nature, in press, DOI 10.1038/nature24303. Data files will be made available at http://www.pessto.org

Before the publication of the Gaia Catalogue, the contents of the first data release have undergone multiple dedicated validation tests. These tests aim at analysing in-depth the Catalogue content to detect anomalies, individual problems in specific objects or in overall statistical properties, either to filter them before the public release, or to describe the different caveats of the release for an optimal exploitation of the data. Dedicated methods using either Gaia internal data, external catalogues or models have been developed for the validation processes. They are testing normal stars as well as various populations like open or globular clusters, double stars, variable stars, quasars. Properties of coverage, accuracy and precision of the data are provided by the numerous tests presented here and jointly analysed to assess the data release content. This independent validation confirms the quality of the published data, Gaia DR1 being the most precise all-sky astrometric and photometric catalogue to-date. However, several limitations in terms of completeness, astrometric and photometric quality are identified and described. Figures describing the relevant properties of the release are shown and the testing activities carried out validating the user interfaces are also described. A particular emphasis is made on the statistical use of the data in scientific exploitation., Comment: 34 pages, 52 figures, 3 tables. Submitted to A&A on Oct. 14 as part of the Gaia DR1 special issue, accepted with minor revisions on Dec. 19

Background: High-throughput evaluation of tissue biomarkers in oncology has been greatly accelerated by the widespread use of tissue microarrays (TMAs) and immunohistochemistry. Although TMAs have the potential to facilitate protein expression profiling on a scale to rival experiments of tumour transcriptomes, the bottleneck and imprecision of manually scoring TMAs has impeded progress. Methods: We report image analysis algorithms adapted from astronomy for the precise automated analysis of IHC in all subcellular compartments. The power of this technique is demonstrated using over 2000 breast tumours and comparing quantitative automated scores against manual assessment by pathologists. Results: All continuous automated scores showed good correlation with their corresponding ordinal manual scores. For oestrogen receptor (ER), the correlation was 0.82, P

The direct (unmediated) electrochemistry of several redox proteins at pyrolytic graphite electrodes has been studied by square-wave voltammetry. For rubredoxin and the 2 left bracket 4Fe-4S right bracket ferrodoxin from Clostridium pasteurianum and flavodoxin from Megasphaera elsdenii rapid heterogeneous electron transfer is promoted by multivalent cations such as Mg**2** plus and Cr(NH//3)//6**3** plus . These proteins carry an excess of negatively charged residues, and it is suggested that their approach to the electrode surface is assisted by the high positive charge density in or near the outer Helmholtz plane that may be generated by multivalent cations. In addition, specific protein-cation association may be important. For azurin from Pseudomonas aerguginosa, direct electrochemistry is observable without the requirement of cation promoters.

The 4MOST instrument is a multi-object spectrograph to be mounted to the VISTA telescope at ESOs La- Silla-Paranal observatory. 4MOST will deliver several 10s of millions of spectra from surveys typically lasting 5 years. 4MOST will address Galactic and extra-galactic science cases simultaneously, i.e. by observing targets from a large number of different surveys within one science exposure. This parallel mode of operations as well as the survey nature of 4MOST require some 4MOST-specific operations features within the overall operations model of ESO. These features are necessary to minimize any changes to the ESO operations model at the La- Silla-Paranal observatory on the one hand, and to enable parallel science observing and thus the most efficient use of the instrument on the other hand. The main feature is that the 4MOST consortium will not only deliver the instrument, but also contractual services to the user community, which is why 4MOST is also described as a 'facility'. We describe the operations model for 4MOST as seen by the consortium building the instrument. Among others this encompasses: 1) A joint science team for all participating surveys (i.e. including community surveys as well as those from the instrument-building consortium). 2) Common centralized tasks in observing preparation and data management provided as service by the consortium. 3) Transparency of all decisions to all stakeholders. 4) Close interaction between science and facility operations. Here we describe our efforts to make parallel observing mode efficient, flexible, and manageable.

This chapter examines the evidence that the ability of neuroendocrine hormones, notably norepinephrine and epinephrine, to stimulate bacterial growth in iron-restricted media is not limited to molecules with a catecholamine structure but is also possessed by a variety of other catechols, many of which are of plant origin and are common in the diet. Catechols derived from the diet, such as the tea flavanols, can be present in the plasma at submicromolar and micromolar concentrations, comparable with the concentrations of catecholamines that have been shown to be effective in promoting bacterial growth under conditions of iron restriction, although many dietary catechols, notably quercetin derivatives, are present in the plasma and tissues largely as conjugates, from which the catechol function has been lost. Finally, although bacterial growth promotion through relief of iron restriction appears to be exhibited by a wide range of catechols, the gene-activation effects of catecholamines demonstrated to occur in some bacteria may be much more specific, although the definitive experiments to establish structure-function relationships have yet to be reported.

Breeding bird communities in forests of the western Great Lakes region are among the most diverse in North America, but the forest environment in this region has changed dramatically during the past 150 years. To address concerns about loss of biodiversity due to ongoing forest harvesting and to better inform forest planning, researchers have systematically monitored forest birds in the region for more than two decades. This report summarizes forest bird data collected from 1995 through 2011 in four national forests of the western Great Lakes region (the Chequamegon and Nicolet in Wisconsin and the Chippewa and Superior in Minnesota). Of 187 bird species detected, 127 nest in forest or woodland habitats. Population trends were evaluated by national forest for 98 of the forest bird species, and across all 4 national forests for 49 species. Numbers of most species were stable or increased within and across the national forests during these 17 years. Habitat analyses are presented for 123 forest bird species and are discussed in the context of concurrent trends in climate, land cover, disturbance, and forest structure. Results suggest that different migratory guilds showed different responses to the regional warming during this period. Eight species that were in decline or otherwise of special concern were selected to demonstrate how knowledge gained from analysis of their populations, habitat, and life history could supplement current literature to inform regional conservation management. Ways to improve or optimize the bird monitoring methods are suggested. This report is the most comprehensive compilation to date of quantitative information on the population trends, habitat use, and community assemblages of forest breeding birds of this region.

The effectiveness of the ESA Gaia mission in obtaining a meaninful sample of supernovae (SNe) is based on three key points: detection rates, characterization capability and an extended validation phase. Focussing on the second, we present our investigations into the use of a range of classification techniques, whereby we demonstrate the ability to discriminate between various SN subtypes, based on the Gaia data (photometry and spectrophotometry) alone. In particular, we comment on the potential ability of Gaia to rapidly estimate SN redshifts and epochs. The methods presented here indicate that ground-based follow-up observations can then be more effectively targeted to the highest-priority SNe.

We present u-, g-, r-, i- and z-band optical images and associated catalogues taken primarily with the Isaac Newton Telescope Wide Field Camera on the European Large Area ISO Survey (ELAIS) N1 and N2, First Look Survey and Lockman Hole fields comprising a total of 1000 h of integration time over 80 deg^2 and approximately 4.3 million objects. In this paper we outline the observations and data processing and characterize the completeness, reliability, photometric and astrometric accuracy of this data set. All images have been photometrically calibrated using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and a uniform and homogeneous data set is composed over all the observed fields. Magnitude limits are u, g, r, i, z of 23.9, 24.5, 24.0, 23.3, 22.0 (AB, 5σ). These data have been used for optical identification of past and ongoing projects including the surveys ELAIS, Spitzer Wide-Area Infrared Extragalactic Survey, Spitzer Extragalactic Representative Volume Survey and Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey.

The Virtual Atomic and Molecular Data Centre (VAMDC, http://www.vamdc.eu) is a European Union funded collaboration between groups involved in the generation, evaluation, and use of atomic and molecular data. VAMDC aims to build a secure, documented, flexible and interoperable e-science environment-based interface to existing atomic and molecular data. The project will cover establishing the core consortium, the development and deployment of the infrastructure and the development of interfaces to the existing atomic and molecular databases. It will also provide a forum for training potential users and dissemination of expertise worldwide. This review describes the scope of the VAMDC project; it provides a survey of the atomic and molecular data sets that will be included plus a discussion of how they will be integrated. Some applications of these data are also discussed.

The UV-Excess Survey of the Northern Galactic Plane images a 10x185 degree wide band, centered on the Galactic Equator using the 2.5m Isaac Newton Telescope in four bands (U,g,r,HeI5875) down to ~21st-22nd magnitude (~20th in HeI5875). The setup and data reduction procedures are described. Simulations of the colours of main-sequence stars, giant, supergiants, DA and DB white dwarfs and AM CVn stars are made, including the effects of reddening. A first look at the data of the survey (currently 30% complete) is given., Comment: accepted for publication in MNRAS, 22 pages, 16 figures

We present an algorithm ({\scshape mead}, for `Mapping Extinction Against Distance') which will determine intrinsic ($r' - i'$) colour, extinction, and distance for early-A to K4 stars extracted from the IPHAS $r'/i'/\Halpha$ photometric database. These data can be binned up to map extinction in three dimensions across the northern Galactic Plane. The large size of the IPHAS database ($\sim 200$ million unique objects), the accuracy of the digital photometry it contains and its faint limiting magnitude ($r' \sim 20$) allow extinction to be mapped with fine angular ($ \sim 10 $ arcmin) and distance ($\sim 0.1$ ~kpc) resolution to distances of up to 10 kpc, outside the Solar Circle. High reddening within the Solar Circle on occasion brings this range down to $\sim 2$ kpc. The resolution achieved, both in angle and depth, greatly exceeds that of previous empirical 3D extinction maps, enabling the structure of the Galactic Plane to be studied in increased detail. {\scshape mead} accounts for the effect of the survey magnitude limits, photometric errors, unresolved ISM substructure, and binarity. The impact of metallicity variations, within the range typical of the Galactic disc is small. The accuracy and reliability of {\scshape mead} are tested through the use of simulated photometry created with Monte-Carlo sampling techniques. The success of this algorithm is demonstrated on a selection of fields and the results are compared to the literature., Comment: 18 pages, 25 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRAS, A version with high-resolution images is available at http://astro.ic.ac.uk/~ssale/extnmap.pdf

The dietary constituents that may act, in the broadest sense, as co-factors to enable bacterial enteropathogens to replicate in gastrointestinal environments are still largely unknown. Recent work has demonstrated that certain non-nutritional components of food, such as the catecholamines, can contribute to the ability of Gram-negative pathogens to replicate in iron-restrictive media that may be reflective of gastrointestinal environments. The present report examines whether other, non-catecholamine, dietary catechols, which occur widely in plant foods, can also influence enteropathogen growth in an iron-restrictive environment such as might be found in the gastrointestinal tract. In the present study, we have examined the ability of a range of catechol-rich foodstuffs, ranging from beverages (tea and coffee) to fruit and vegetable extracts, as well as purified preparations of commonly consumed dietary catechols (catechins, chlorogenic acid, caffeic acid and tannic acid), to modulate the growth of the Gram-negative enteric pathogens Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Salmonella enterica SV Enteriditis. Time-dependent growth in response to dietary catechols (0.05-5.0% v/v of beverage or fruit/vegetable extracts; 10-200 microM of purified catechols) was examined in an iron-replete, rich medium as well as in an iron-limited, basal medium designed to reflect the iron-restricted environment that is more characteristic of human and animal tissues. Results obtained in iron-replete, rich medium demonstrated dose-dependent bacteriostatic effects for certain catechols, consistent with previous studies. However, in iron-restricted medium, all of the dietary catechols produced marked growth stimulation of up to 4 logs greater than non-supplemented controls. Mechanistic studies measuring the uptake of radiolabelled (55)Fe from (55)Fe-labelled lactoferrin and transferrin in bacteria grown in the presence or absence of dietary catechols demonstrated that the ability of catechols to stimulate bacterial growth was dependent on the provision of iron from iron-sequestering glycoproteins. Urea gel analysis of transferrin incubated in the presence of the dietary catechols confirmed that these compounds were directly chelating and removing transferrin-complexed iron. Analysis using E. coli O157:H7 entA and tonB mutants further showed that a functional siderophore synthesis and uptake system was required for the growth-stimulatory response. In contrast to previous studies, which have reported the anti-microbial activity of dietary catechols, the present study demonstrates that these non-nutritional components of foods can, under iron-restrictive conditions, provide iron and enable the growth of enteric bacterial pathogens.

Aims: We investigate whether sunspot regions that emerge near existing ones are more flare productive than those that emerge isolated.\ud \ud Methods: We analyse a sample of 2115 new regions obtained from the USAF/Mount Wilson catalogue of sunspot regions. For our analysis we use AstroGrid, a Virtual Observatory developed in the UK, to build a series of workflows that perform queries to catalogues of solar regions and flares, and operations on the results of the queries. If a new region emerged through the solar surface within 12 of a pre-existing one, we classify it as paired, otherwise as isolated.\ud \ud Results: We find that paired regions are more flare productive than isolated ones, although this is a small effect. Here only soft X-ray flares of magnitude greater than C1.0 are considered, and flare productivity is characterised by the percentage of regions that produced at least one flare over 4 days since emergence, and by the average number of flares over the same period. For paired regions, we also consider the flare productivity of the nearby companion region and find that if a flare does happen within the pair, it will more likely take place in the companion region than in the newly-emerged one. Our results show that although emergence in proximity to another region can slightly increase the probability of a flare taking place, presumably by increasing the likelihood of magnetic reconnection and significant change in magnetic topology, this is not a large effect. It appears that intrinsic properties of the region are the key factor in determining whether or not it will produce flares, as opposed to interaction with pre-existing regions.

This chapter examines the evidence that the ability of neuroendocrine hormones, notably norepinephrine and epinephrine, to stimulate bacterial growth in iron-restricted media is not limited to molecules with a catecholamine structure but is also possessed by a variety of other catechols, many of which are of plant origin and are common in the diet. Catechols derived from the diet, such as the tea flavanols, can be present in the plasma at submicromolar and micromolar concentrations, comparable with the concentrations of catecholamines that have been shown to be effective in promoting bacterial growth under conditions of iron restriction, although many dietary catechols, notably quercetin derivatives, are present in the plasma and tissues largely as conjugates, from which the catechol function has been lost. Finally, although bacterial growth promotion through relief of iron restriction appears to be exhibited by a wide range of catechols, the gene-activation effects of catecholamines demonstrated to occur in some bacteria may be much more specific, although the definitive experiments to establish structure-function relationships have yet to be reported.

The Gaia-ESO Survey (GES) is a large public spectroscopic survey at the European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope. A key aim is to provide precise radial velocities (RVs) and projected equatorial velocities (v sin i) for representative samples of Galactic stars, that will complement information obtained by the Gaia astrometry satellite. We present an analysis to empirically quantify the size and distribution of uncertainties in RV and v sin i using spectra from repeated exposures of the same stars. We show that the uncertainties vary as simple scaling functions of signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) and v sin i, that the uncertainties become larger with increasing photospheric temperature, but that the dependence on stellar gravity, metallicity and age is weak. The underlying uncertainty distributions have extended tails that are better represented by Student's t-distributions than by normal distributions. Parametrised results are provided, that enable estimates of the RV precision for almost all GES measurements, and estimates of the v sin i precision for stars in young clusters, as a function of S/N, v sin i and stellar temperature. The precision of individual high S/N GES RV measurements is 0.22-0.26 km/s, dependent on instrumental configuration., 13 pages, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics

The light curves of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are powered by the radioactive decay of $^{56}$Ni to $^{56}$Co at early times, and the decay of $^{56}$Co to $^{56}$Fe from ~60 days after explosion. We examine the evolution of the [Co III] 5892 A emission complex during the nebular phase for SNe Ia with multiple nebular spectra and show that the line flux follows the square of the mass of $^{56}$Co as a function of time. This result indicates both efficient local energy deposition from positrons produced in $^{56}$Co decay, and long-term stability of the ionization state of the nebula. We compile 77 nebular spectra of 25 SN Ia from the literature and present 17 new nebular spectra of 7 SNe Ia, including SN2014J. From these we measure the flux in the [Co III] 5892 A line and remove its well-behaved time dependence to infer the initial mass of $^{56}$Ni ($M_{Ni}$) produced in the explosion. We then examine $^{56}$Ni yields for different SN Ia ejected masses ($M_{ej}$ - calculated using the relation between light curve width and ejected mass) and find the $^{56}$Ni masses of SNe Ia fall into two regimes: for narrow light curves (low stretch s~0.7-0.9), $M_{Ni}$ is clustered near $M_{Ni}$ ~ 0.4$M_\odot$ and shows a shallow increase as $M_{ej}$ increases from ~1-1.4$M_\odot$; at high stretch, $M_{ej}$ clusters at the Chandrasekhar mass (1.4$M_\odot$) while $M_{Ni}$ spans a broad range from 0.6-1.2$M_\odot$. This could constitute evidence for two distinct SN Ia explosion mechanisms., Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures (main text), plus data tables in appendix. Spectra released on WISeREP. Submitted to MNRAS, comments welcome

We report the discovery and characterisation of a deeply eclipsing AM CVn-system, Gaia14aae (= ASSASN-14cn). Gaia14aae was identified independently by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN; Shappee et al. 2014) and by the Gaia Science Alerts project, during two separate outbursts. A third outburst is seen in archival Pan-STARRS-1 (PS1; Schlafly et al. 2012; Tonry et al. 2012; Magnier et al. 2013) and ASAS-SN data. Spectroscopy reveals a hot, hydrogen-deficient spectrum with clear double-peaked emission lines, consistent with an accreting double degenerate classification. We use follow-up photometry to constrain the orbital parameters of the system. We find an orbital period of 49.71 min, which places Gaia14aae at the long period extremum of the outbursting AM CVn period distribution. Gaia14aae is dominated by the light from its accreting white dwarf. Assuming an orbital inclination of 90 degrees for the binary system, the contact phases of the white dwarf lead to lower limits of 0.78 M solar and 0.015 M solar on the masses of the accretor and donor respectively and a lower limit on the mass ratio of 0.019. Gaia14aae is only the third eclipsing AM CVn star known, and the first in which the WD is totally eclipsed. Using a helium WD model, we estimate the accretor's effective temperature to be 12900+-200 K. The three out-burst events occurred within 4 months of each other, while no other outburst activity is seen in the previous 8 years of Catalina Real-time Transient Survey (CRTS; Drake et al. 2009), Pan-STARRS-1 and ASAS-SN data. This suggests that these events might be rebrightenings of the first outburst rather than individual events., Comment: 9

The crystal structure of hydroxycinnamoyl-CoA hydratase-lyase (HCHL) from Pseudomonas fluorescens AN103 has been solved to 1.8 A resolution. HCHL is a member of the crotonase superfamily and catalyses the hydration of the acyl-CoA thioester of ferulic acid [3-(4-hydroxy-3-methoxy-phenyl)prop-2-enoic acid] and the subsequent retro-aldol cleavage of the hydrated intermediate to yield vanillin (4-­hydroxy-3-­methoxy-benzaldehyde). The structure contains 12 molecules in the asymmetric unit, in which HCHL assumes a hexameric structure of two stacked trimers. The substrate, feruloyl-CoA, was modelled into the active site based on the structure of enoyl-CoA hydratase bound to the feruloyl-CoA-like substrate 4-(N,N-dimethylamino)-cinnamoyl-CoA (PDB code 1ey3). Feruloyl-CoA was bound in this model between helix 3 of the A subunit and helix 9 of the B subunit. A highly ordered structural water in the HCHL structure coincided with the thioester carbonyl of feruloyl-CoA in the model, suggesting that the oxyanion hole for stabilization of a thioester-derived enolate, characteristic of coenzyme-A dependent members of the crotonase superfamily, is conserved. The model also suggested that a strong hydrogen bond between the phenolic hydroxyl groups of feruloyl-CoA and BTyr239 may be an important determinant of the enzyme's ability to discriminate between the natural substrate and cinnamoyl-CoA, which is not a substrate.

We use Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 5 (DR5) u,g,r,i,z photometry to study Milky Way halo substructure in the area around the North Galactic Cap. A simple color cut (g-r < 0.4) reveals the tidal stream of the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal, as well as a number of other stellar structures in the field. Two branches (A and B) of the Sagittarius stream are clearly visible in an RGB-composite image created from 3 magnitude slices, and there is also evidence for a still more distant wrap behind the A branch. A comparison of these data with numerical models suggests that the shape of the Galactic dark halo is close to spherical., ApJ (Letters), in press

We present distance measurements to 71 high redshift type Ia supernovae discovered during the first year of the 5-year Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS). These events were detected and their multi-color light-curves measured using the MegaPrime/MegaCam instrument at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), by repeatedly imaging four one-square degree fields in four bands. Follow-up spectroscopy was performed at the VLT, Gemini and Keck telescopes to confirm the nature of the supernovae and to measure their redshift. With this data set, we have built a Hubble diagram extending to z=1, with all distance measurements involving at least two bands. Systematic uncertainties are evaluated making use of the multi-band photometry obtained at CFHT. Cosmological fits to this first year SNLS Hubble diagram give the following results : Omega_M = 0.263 +/- 0.042(stat) +/- 0.032(sys) for a flat LambdaCDM model; and w = -1.023 +/- 0.090(stat) +/- 0.054(sys) for a flat cosmology with constant equation of state w when combined with the constraint from the recent Sloan Digital Sky Survey measurement of baryon acoustic oscillations.

In the framework of the Local Group Census (LGC), a survey of the Local Group (LG) galaxies above Dec=$-30^\circ$, which is aimed at surveying their populations with strong emission lines, we have searched for planetary nebulae (PNe) in the low-metallicity dwarf irregular galaxies IC1613, WLM, GR8. Two new candidate PNe have been found in IC1613, one in WLM and none in GR8. The observations presented in this paper, together with the previous results from the LGC, represent the first step in the study of the PN population in low-metallicity, dwarf irregular galaxies of the Local Group. They will be followed by deep spectroscopy to confirm their nature and to study their physical-chemical properties. We used the observed number of PNe in each LG galaxy to estimate a lower limit to the mass of the intermediate-age population which was compared to the Star Formation Rate (SFR) of LG dwarf galaxies. These results are in agreement with those from accurate star formation history (SFH) analysis for these small galaxy systems.

In the framework of our narrow-band survey of Local Group galaxies, we present the results of the search for planetary nebulae (PNe) in three spheroidal companions to the Andromeda galaxy. We find 9 candidate PNe in NGC 147, 5 in NGC 185, and 75 in the ∼0.4 square degree area searched around NGC 205, increasing the number of PNe known in these galaxies. It is shown that in the crowded regions of these galaxies continuum-subtracted images are more effective in detecting PNe than colour-colour diagrams obtained via automatic photometry. For NGC 205, the degree of contamination of PNe belonging to the halo of M 31 is estimated; taking it into account, 35 PNe within 1.5 tidal radii from the centre of NGC 205 have been used to build its PN luminosity function. Candidate PNe in NGC 185 are systematically brighter than those in NGC 147. Considering that star formation is thought to have been much stronger in NGC 185 than in NGC 147 in the last 3 Gyr, this might suggest that the bright end of the PN luminosity function is populated by relatively massive stars, as predicted by some recent theoretical models. This result, however, has to be taken with some caution, given the small PN population size of these galaxies and a rather incomplete knowledge of their star formation history.

Sugarcane (Saccharum hybrids) was evaluated as a production platform for p-hydroxybenzoic acid using two different bacterial proteins (a chloroplast-targeted version of Escherichia coli chorismate pyruvate-lyase and 4-hydroxycinnamoyl-CoA hydratase/lyase from Pseudomonas fluorescens) that both provide a one-enzyme pathway from a naturally occurring plant intermediate. The substrates for these enzymes are chorismate (a shikimate pathway intermediate that is synthesized in plastids) and 4-hydroxycinnamoyl-CoA (a cytosolic phenylpropanoid intermediate). Although both proteins have previously been shown to elevate p-hydroxybenzoic acid levels in plants, they have never been evaluated concurrently in the same laboratory. Nor are there any reports on their efficacy in stem tissue. After surveying two large populations of transgenic plants, it was concluded that the hydratase/lyase is the superior catalyst for leaf and stem tissue, and further studies focused on this pathway. p-Hydroxybenzoic acid was quantitatively converted to glucose conjugates by endogenous uridine diphosphate (UDP)-glucosyltransferases and presumably stored in the vacuole. The largest amounts detected in leaf and stem tissue were 7.3% and 1.5% dry weight (DW), respectively, yet there were no discernible phenotypic abnormalities. However, as a result of diverting carbon away from the phenylpropanoid pathway, there was a severe reduction in leaf chlorogenic acid, subtle changes in lignin composition, as revealed by phloroglucinol staining, and an apparent compensatory up-regulation of phenylalanine ammonia-lyase. Although product accumulation in the leaves at the highest level of gene expression obtained in the present study was clearly substrate-limited, additional experiments are necessary before this conclusion can be extended to the stalk.

We identified new pre-main sequence stars in the region of high-latitude molecular clouds associated with the reflection nebula IC2118, around l = 208 degr and b = -27 degr. The stars were selected as T Tauri candidates in objective prism plates obtained with the Schmidt telescope of Konkoly Observatory. Results of spectroscopic follow-up observations, carried out with the FLAIR spectrograph installed on the UK Schmidt and with ALFOSC on Nordic Optical Telescope, are presented in this paper. Based on spectral types, presence of emission lines and lithium absorption line, we identified five classical T Tauri stars and a candidate weak-line T Tauri star projected on the molecular clouds, as well as two candidate pre-main sequence stars outside the nebulous region. Using the near infrared magnitudes obtained from the 2MASS All Sky Catalog. we determined the masses and ages of these stars. We found that the five classical T Tauri stars projected on the clouds are physically related to them, whereas the other stars are probably background objects. Adopting a distance of 210 pc for IC2118 (Kun et al. 2001) and using Palla & Stahler's (1999) evolutionary tracks we derived an average age of 2.5 million yrs and a mass interval of 0.4--1.0 M_sun for the members of the IC2118 association., 11 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication by Astronomy and Astrophysics

We present an abundance analysis of a sample of Galactic bulge planetary nebulae (GBPNe). The observational data set consists of spectra of 88 nebulae obtained with the FLAIR II multiobject spectrograph on the UK Schmidt Telescope, together with spectra of 42 nebulae obtained with the RGO Spectrograph on the Anglo-Australian Telescope. After selecting those for which reliable nebular electron temperatures could be derived, collisionally excited line abundances were derived for 45 GBPNe. These were then compared with similarly derived abundances for 54 Galactic disc PNe (GDPNe), taken from the work of Kingsburgh & Barlow. We find that within the errors the abundances have the same average values, essentially the same distributions – including that for the mass-sensitive N/O ratio – and show the same relationships. The width of the nitrogen distribution exceeds that arising from errors, which could be a consequence of the range of precursor masses. The ratio of Type-I to non-Type-I PNe in the bulge and disc samples is similar, 18 and 25 per cent respectively. For the GDPNe, we find larger N/H and N/O ratios for the small number of those with He/H > 0.14, compared with those with He/H < 0.14. For neither disc nor bulge sample is there any strong evidence for a depletion of oxygen for the higher-mass precursor stars (Type I PNe). We find no correlation between O/H and N/O or He/H. On the N/O to He/H plane, the bulge and disc PNe show a distribution whereby the low N/O values only occur for low He/H values, but at N/O > 0.25 the whole range of He/H values were sampled. The theoretical tracks to which we compare our data do not explain the PNe with low He/H abundance and high N/O ratio. Realistic uncertainties in collisionally excited lines (CEL) abundances for individual PNe are quite large, of the order of 40 per cent for oxygen. Large samples are therefore required to get good statistical accuracy. This is usually achieved by combining many studies, and so we have compared the results of a number of published studies with our own, to search for any systematic differences. The average abundances are found to be the same within the errors except for cases where the abundance derivation methods are dissimilar, where systematic differences can occur. The N/O ratio is especially sensitive to the details of the abundance derivations. Our bulge PN sample shows no evidence for either very-low-metallicity objects or for super-metal-rich objects – the implied mass and age distributions of the bulge PN precursor stars are indistinguishable within the observational errors from those in the local Galactic disc.

Investigation of spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey reveals the presence of a region of ionized gas of >2 degrees diameter centered approximately at alpha = 10^h 37^m delta = -00^o 18' (J2000) (Galactic coordinates l=248, b=+48). [OIII] 4959,5007 emission is particularly strong and emission from H-alpha and [NII] 6548,6583 is also detectable over a substantial area on the sky. The combination of emission line ratios, the close to zero heliocentric radial velocity and the morphology of the structure are consistent with an identification as a very nearby planetary nebula. The proximity of the hot, DO white dwarf PG1034+001 further strengthens this interpretation. The object is: i) the largest planetary nebula on the sky, ii) certainly closer than any planetary nebula other than Sh 2--216, iii) the first to be unambiguously associated with a DO white dwarf. A parallax distance for PG1034+001 would establish whether the structure is in fact the closest, and one of the physically largest, planetary nebula known.

Vanillin (4-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde) is an important flavour and aroma molecule, but is also of interest because of its biogenetic relationship to the phenylpropanoid pathway and to other molecules of physiological significance, notably salicylate. Recent progress towards characterisation of the biosynthesis of vanillin is reviewed. In Vanilla, there is some evidence that the route to vanillin-beta-D-glucoside may proceed from 4-coumaric acid via 4-hydroxybenzaldehyde, with glucoside formation occurring not necessarily as the final step, and possibly with the involvement of 4-hydroxybenzyl alcohol beta-D-glucoside tartrate bis-esters as "shunt" metabolites. This appears to be given tentative support by the recent partial characterisation of a 4-hydroxybenzaldehyde synthase from Vanilla. On the other hand, a well-characterised, CoA-dependent, non-oxidative chain-shortening mechanism to produce vanillin from ferulic acid, occurring as part of a pathway of hydroxycinnamate degradation in Pseudomonas, may not be representative of hydroxycinnamate chain-shortening mechanism(s) occurring in Vanilla and other plants. Nevertheless, by expression of the Pseudomonas enzyme 4-hydroxycinnamoyl-CoA hydratase/lyase (HCHL), attempts have been made to introduce a direct capacity for vanillin formation into model plants by diversion of the phenylpropanoid pathway. The results obtained have emphasised the obstacles to achieving the desired oxidation level (aldehyde) and ring substitution (4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenyl), even when a substantial metabolic diversion is successfully achieved. Finally, the significance of the latest biosynthetic and biotechnological developments is reviewed briefly in relation to authentication of vanillin.

The cDNAs from Hyoscyamus niger , encoding two enzymes of tropane-alkaloid biosynthesis, tropinone reductase I (TR-I) and hyoscyamine-6b-hydroxylase (H6H), have been simultaneously introduced into Nicotiana tabacum using particle bombardment and expressed under the control of the CaMV 35S promoter. Southern and Northern analyses confirmed integration and transcript accumulation for both tr1 and h6h . Fertile tobacco plants expressing both transgenes were regenerated and detached leaves of these plants were fed with tropinone and hyoscyamine, the substrates, respectively, of TR-I and H6H. Besides the expected TR-I and H6H reaction products, acetylated forms of tropine were also generated in these experiments, indicating that the expression of alkaloidpathway enzymes in a transgenic background can produce unexpected substances. In addition, leaves of the transgenic plants showed in most cases higher nicotine content than leaves of control plants. Nicotine levels were approximately 3- to 13-fold higher in both the parental transgenic lines and in T1 progeny expressing functional TR-I and H6H, compared to levels in wild-type plants and in transgenic plants carrying the nptII transgene alone. In addition, nicotine related compounds such as anatabine, nornicotine, bipyridine, anabasine, and myosmine were identified in transgenic tobacco lines and below detection limit in wild-type plants, suggesting changes in the activity of the enzymes in the nicotine biosynthetic pathway in the transgenic background. # 2002 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.