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Supermassive black holes underwent periods of exponential growth during which we seem them as quasars in the distant Universe. The summed emission from these quasars generates the cosmic X-ray background, the spectrum of which has been used to argue that most black-hole growth is obscured. There are clear examples of obscured black-hole growth in the form of `type-2' quasars, but their numbers are fewer than expected from modelling of the X-ray background. Here we report on the direct detection of a population of distant type-2 quasars which is at least comparable in size to the well-known unobscured type-1 population. We selected objects that have mid-infrared and radio emissions characteristic of quasars, but which are faint at near-infrared and optical wavelengths. This population is responsible for most of the black hole growth in the young Universe and, throughout cosmic history, black-hole growth occurs in the dusty, gas-rich centres of active galaxies. Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, to appear in Nature on 4th August. Title and opening paragraph modified to Nature house style. Minor rearrangement and correction to table 1. Supplementary Information can be found at http://www-astro.physics.ox.ac.uk/~ams/

Drought stress threatens vegetation dynamics across diverse ecosystems. Monitoring how vegetation responds to water stress is vital for ecological conservation. The response of vegetation photosynthesis to water availability variations in Southwest China from 2008 to 2018 is investigated in this study. The solar-induced fluorescence (SIF) derived from GOME-2 is used to characterize photosynthetic changes. We examined the sensitivity of SIF anomaly to standardized precipitation-evapotranspiration index (SPEI) at multiple time scales to evaluate the drought impacts on different ecosystems (i.e. forests, croplands, grasslands, and shrublands). We find that (1) SIF has significant yet weak correlations to SPEI across major ecosystems in Southwest China; (2) Forests are more sensitive to short-term droughts in comparison with other ecosystems. (3) Cropland, grassland, and shrubland are more subjected to long-term droughts compared to forests. Our findings indicate that, in Southwest China, satellite SIF may not be effective in monitoring the impact of drought on vegetation due to its weak response to SPEI. The robustness of using satellite-observed SIF to assess drought's effects still needs to be further tested with high-resolution SIF data.

Condensate clouds fundamentally impact the atmospheric structure and spectra of exoplanets and brown dwarfs but the connections between surface gravity, cloud structure, dust in the upper atmosphere, and the red colors of some brown dwarfs remain poorly understood. Rotational modulations enable the study of different clouds in the same atmosphere, thereby providing a method to isolate the effects of clouds. Here we present the discovery of high peak-to-peak amplitude (8%) rotational modulations in a low-gravity, extremely red (J-Ks=2.55) L6 dwarf WISEP J004701.06+680352.1 (W0047). Using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) time-resolved grism spectroscopy we find a best-fit rotational period (13.20$\pm$0.14 hours) with a larger amplitude at 1.1 micron than at 1.7 micron. This is the third largest near-infrared variability amplitude measured in a brown dwarf, demonstrating that large-amplitude variations are not limited to the L/T transition but are present in some extremely red L-type dwarfs. We report a tentative trend between the wavelength dependence of relative amplitude, possibly proxy for small dust grains lofted in the upper atmosphere, and the likelihood of large-amplitude variability. By assuming forsterite as haze particle, we successfully explain the wavelength dependent amplitude with submicron-sized haze particles sizes of around 0.4 {\mu}m. W0047 links the earlier spectral and later spectral type brown dwarfs in which rotational modulations have been observed, the large amplitude variations in this object make this a benchmark brown dwarf for the study of cloud properties close to the L/T transition. Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, Accepted for publication in ApJL on September 15th

We study stellar-halo formation using six Milky Way-mass galaxies in FIRE-2 cosmological zoom simulations. We find that $5-40\%$ of the outer ($50-300$ kpc) stellar halo in each system consists of $\textit{in-situ}$ stars that were born in outflows from the main galaxy. Outflow stars originate from gas accelerated by super-bubble winds, which can be compressed, cool, and form co-moving stars. The majority of these stars remain bound to the halo and fall back with orbital properties similar to the rest of the stellar halo at $z=0$.In the outer halo, outflow stars are more spatially homogeneous, metal rich, and alpha-element-enhanced than the accreted stellar halo. At the solar location, up to $\sim 10 \%$ of our kinematically-identified halo stars were born in outflows; the fraction rises to as high as $\sim 40\%$ for the most metal-rich local halo stars ([Fe/H] $> -0.5$). We conclude that the Milky Way stellar halo could contain local counterparts to stars that are observed to form in molecular outflows in distant galaxies. Searches for such a population may provide a new, near-field approach to constraining feedback and outflow physics. A stellar halo contribution from outflows is a phase-reversal of the classic halo formation scenario of Eggen, Lynden-Bell $\&$ Sandange, who suggested that halo stars formed in rapidly $\textit{infalling}$ gas clouds. Stellar outflows may be observable in direct imaging of external galaxies and could provide a source for metal-rich, extreme velocity stars in the Milky Way. 19 pages, 20 figures, submitted to MNRAS

We calculate the impact of quantum gravity-motivated ultraviolet cutoffs on inflationary predictions for the cosmic microwave background spectrum. We model the ultraviolet cutoffs fully covariantly to avoid possible artifacts of covariance breaking. Imposing these covariant cutoffs results in the production of small, characteristically $k-$dependent oscillations in the spectrum. The size of the effect scales linearly with the ratio of the Planck to Hubble lengths during inflation. Consequently, the relative size of the effect could be as large as one part in $10^5$; i.e., eventual observability may not be ruled out. Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures - v2: minor corrections, added references -v3: harmonize with published version

Current constraints on spatial curvature show that it is dynamically negligible: $|\Omega_{\rm K}| \lesssim 5 \times 10^{-3}$ (95% CL). Neglecting it as a cosmological parameter would be premature however, as more stringent constraints on $\Omega_{\rm K}$ at around the $10^{-4}$ level would offer valuable tests of eternal inflation models and probe novel large-scale structure phenomena. This precision also represents the "curvature floor", beyond which constraints cannot be meaningfully improved due to the cosmic variance of horizon-scale perturbations. In this paper, we discuss what future experiments will need to do in order to measure spatial curvature to this maximum accuracy. Our conservative forecasts show that the curvature floor is unreachable - by an order of magnitude - even with Stage IV experiments, unless strong assumptions are made about dark energy evolution and the $\Lambda$CDM parameter values. We also discuss some of the novel problems that arise when attempting to constrain a global cosmological parameter like $\Omega_{\rm K}$ with such high precision. Measuring curvature down to this level would be an important validation of systematics characterisation in high-precision cosmological analyses. Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure. Updated to match version published in Phys. Rev. D

WormBase ( www.wormbase.org ) provides the nematode research community with a centralized database for information pertaining to nematode genes and genomes. As more nematode genome sequences are becoming available and as richer data sets are published, WormBase strives to maintain updated information, displays, and services to facilitate efficient access to and understanding of the knowledge generated by the published nematode genetics literature. This chapter aims to provide an explanation of how to use basic features of WormBase, new features, and some commonly used tools and data queries. Explanations of the curated data and step-by-step instructions of how to access the data via the WormBase website and available data mining tools are provided.