We present an analysis of stellar mass estimates for a sample of 25000 galaxies from the COMBO-17 survey over the interval 0.2 < z < 1.0. We have developed, implemented, and tested a new method of estimating stellar mass-to-light ratios, which relies on redshift and spectral energy distribution (SED) classification from 5 broadband and 12 medium band filters. We find that the majority (>60%) of massive galaxies with M * > 10 11 M at all z < 1 are non-star-forming; blue star-forming galaxies dominate at lower masses. We have used these mass estimates to explore the evolution of the stellar mass function since z = 1. We find that the total stellar mass density of the universe has roughly doubled since z ∼ 1. Our measurements are consistent with other measurements of the growth of stellar mass with cosmic time and with estimates of the time evolution of the cosmic star formation rate. Intriguingly, the integrated stellar mass of blue galaxies with young stars has not significantly changed since z ∼ 1, even though these galaxies host the majority of the star formation: instead, the growth of the total stellar mass density is dominated by the growth of the total mass in the largely passive galaxies on the red sequence.

Aquaphotomics is a novel scientific discipline involving the study of water and aqueous systems. Using light-water interaction, it aims to extract information about the structure of water, composed of many different water molecular conformations using their absorbance bands. In aquaphotomics analysis, specific water structures (presented as water absorbance patterns) are related to their resulting functions in the aqueous systems studied, thereby building an aquaphotome—a database of water absorbance bands and patterns correlating specific water structures to their specific functions. Light-water interaction spectroscopic methods produce complex multidimensional spectral data, which require data processing and analysis to extract hidden information about the structure of water presented by its absorbance bands. The process of extracting information from water spectra in aquaphotomics requires a field–specific approach. It starts with an appropriate experimental design and execution to ensure high-quality spectral signals, followed by a multitude of spectral analysis, preprocessing and chemometrics methods to remove unwanted influences and extract water absorbance spectral pattern related to the perturbation of interest through the identification of activated water absorbance bands found among the common, consistently repeating and highly influential variables in all analytical models. The objective of this paper is to introduce the field of aquaphotomics and describe aquaphotomics multivariate analysis methodology developed during the last decade. Through a worked-out example of analysis of potassium chloride solutions supported by similar approaches from the existing aquaphotomics literature, the provided instruction should give enough information about aquaphotomics analysis i.e. to design and perform the experiment and data analysis as well as to represent water absorbance spectral pattern using various forms of aquagrams—specifically designed aquaphotomics graphs. The explained methodology is derived from analysis of near infrared spectral data of aqueous systems and will offer a useful and new tool for extracting data from informationally rich water spectra in any region. It is the hope of the authors that with this new tool at the disposal of scientists and chemometricians, pharmaceutical and biomedical spectroscopy will substantially progress beyond its state-of-the-art applications.

We present a three‐dimensional (3D) lensing analysis of the z= 0.16 supercluster A901/2, resulting in a 3D map of the dark matter distribution within a 3 × 105 [h−1  Mpc]3 volume. This map is generated from a combined catalogue of 3D galaxy coordinates together with shear estimates, using R‐band imaging and photometric redshifts from the COMBO‐17 survey. We perform a χ2 fit of isothermal spheres to the tangential shear pattern around each cluster as a function of redshift to estimate the 3D positions and masses of the main clusters in the supercluster from lensing alone. Motivated by the appearance of a second cluster behind A902 in galaxy number density, we also fit a two‐cluster model to A902. We then present the first 3D map of the dark‐matter gravitational potential field, Φ, from weak lensing using the Kaiser–Squires and Taylor inversion methods. These maps clearly show the potential wells of the main supercluster components, including the new cluster behind A902, and demonstrate the applicability of 3D dark‐matter mapping and projection‐free, mass‐selected cluster finding to current data. Finally, we develop the halo model of dark matter and galaxy clustering and compare this with the auto‐ and cross‐correlation functions of the 3D gravitational potential, galaxy number densities and galaxy luminosity densities measured in the A901/2 field. We find significant anticorrelations between the gravitational potential field and the galaxy number density and luminosities, as expected due to baryonic infall into dark‐matter concentrations. We find good agreement with the halo model for the number densities and luminosity correlation functions, but some disagreement with the shape of the gravitational potential correlation function, which we attribute to finite‐field effects.

We present mass estimates for dark matter halos around galaxies from the COMBO-17 survey using weak gravitational lensing. COMBO-17, with photometry in 17 optical filters, provides precise photometric redshifts and spectral classification for objects with R < 24. This permits to select and sort lens and source galaxies by their redshifts and lens luminosity or color, which bypasses many uncertainties in other weak lensing analyses arising from broadly estimated source and lens redshifts. We study the shear created by dark matter halos around 12 000 galaxy lenses at redshifts z d = 0.2−0.7 by fitting the mass normalization of either singular isothermal spheres (SIS) or Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) profiles to background source orientations around the whole lens sample. We also consider halos around blue and red subsamples separately and constrain the scaling of halo mass with light. For the NFW model, we find virial masses M * vir = 3.9 × 10 11 h −1 M for blue and M * vir = 7.1 × 10 11 h −1 M for red galaxies of L = 10 10 h −2 L , respectively. The 1-σ uncertainty on log M * vir for the whole lens sample is about 0.2. We compare our results to those obtained from the Red-Sequence Cluster Survey (RCS) and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Taking differences in the actual modelling into account, we find very good agreement with these surveys.

Development of efficient screening method coupled with cell functionality evaluation is highly needed in contemporary microbiology. The presented novel concept and fast non-destructive method brings in to play the water spectral pattern of the solution as a molecular fingerprint of the cell culture system. To elucidate the concept, NIR spectroscopy with Aquaphotomics were applied to monitor the growth of sixteen Lactobacillus bulgaricus one Lactobacillus pentosus and one Lactobacillus gasseri bacteria strains. Their growth rate, maximal optical density, low pH and bile tolerances were measured and further used as a reference data for analysis of the simultaneously acquired spectral data. The acquired spectral data in the region of 1100-1850nm was subjected to various multivariate data analyses – PCA, OPLS-DA, PLSR. The results showed high accuracy of bacteria strains classification according to their probiotic strength. Most informative spectral fingerprints covered the first overtone of water, emphasizing the relation of water molecular system to cell functionality.