Recently published precise stellar photometry of 72 Sun-like stars obtained at the Fairborn Observatory between 1993 and 2017 is used to set limits on the solar forcing of Earth's atmosphere of 4.5 W ...m−2 since 1750. This compares with the +2.2 1.1 W m−2 IPCC estimate for anthropogenic forcing. Three critical assumptions are made. In decreasing order of importance they are: (a) most of the brightness variations occur within the average time series length of 17 yr; (b) the Sun seen from the ecliptic behaves as an ensemble of middle-aged solar-like stars; and (c) narrowband photometry in the Strömgren b and y bands are linearly proportional to the total solar irradiance. Assumption (a) can best be relaxed and tested by obtaining more photometric data of Sun-like stars, especially those already observed. Eight stars with near-solar parameters have been observed from 1999, and two since 1993. Our work reveals the importance of continuing and expanding ground-based photometry, to complement expensive solar irradiance measurements from space.
We identify a set of 18 solar analogs among the seismic sample of solar-like stars observed by the Kepler satellite rotating between 10 and 40 days. This set is constructed using the asteroseismic ...stellar properties derived using either the global oscillation properties or the individual acoustic frequencies. We measure the magnetic activity properties of these stars using observations collected by the photometric Kepler satellite and by the ground-based, high-resolution Hermes spectrograph mounted on the Mercator telescope. The photospheric (S sub(ph)) and chromospheric (S index) magnetic activity levels of these seismic solar analogs are estimated and compared in relation to the solar activity. We show that the activity of the Sun is comparable to the activity of the seismic solar analogs, within the maximum-to-minimum temporal variations of the 11-yr solar activity cycle 23. In agreement with previous studies, the youngest stars and fastest rotators in our sample are actually the most active. The activity of stars older than the Sun seems to not evolve much with age. Furthermore, the comparison of the photospheric, S sub(ph), with the well-established chromospheric, S index, indicates that the S sub(ph) index can be used to provide a suitable magnetic activity proxy which can be easily estimated for a large number of stars from space photometric observations.
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Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a prevalent psychiatric condition associated with significant disability, mortality and economic burden. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and psychodynamic ...psychotherapy (PDT) are found to be equally effective for patients with depression. However, many patients do not respond sufficiently to either treatment. To offer individualized treatment, we need to know if some patients benefit more from one of the two therapies. At present little is known about what patient characteristics (moderators) may be associated with differential outcomes of CBT and PDT, and through what therapeutic processes and mechanisms (mediators) improvements occur in each therapy mode. Presently only theoretical assumptions, sparsely supported by research findings, describe what potentially moderates and mediates the treatment effects of CBT and PDT. The overall aim of this study is to examine theoretically derived putative moderators and mediators in CBT and PDT and strengthen the evidence base about for whom and how these treatments works in a representative sample of patients with MDD.
One hundred patients with a diagnosis of MDD will be randomized to either CBT or PDT. Patients will be treated over 28 weeks with either CBT (one weekly session over 16 weeks and three monthly booster sessions) or PDT (one weekly session over 28 weeks). The patients will be evaluated at baseline, during the course of therapy, at the end of therapy, and at follow-up investigations 1 and 3 years post treatment. A large range of patient and observer rated questionnaires (specific preselected putative moderators and mediators) are included.
The clinical outcome of this study may better guide clinicians when deciding what kind of treatment any individual patient should be offered. Moreover, the study aims to further our knowledge of what mechanisms lead to symptom improvement and increased psychosocial functioning.
ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03022071.
Context. Lithium abundance A(Li) and surface rotation are good diagnostic tools to probe the internal mixing and angular momentum transfer in stars. Aims. We explore the relation between surface ...rotation, A(Li), and age in a sample of seismic solar-analogue stars, and we study their possible binary nature. Methods. We selected a sample of 18 solar-analogue stars observed by the NASA Kepler satellite for an in-depth analysis. Their seismic properties and surface rotation rates are well constrained from previous studies. About 53 h of high-resolution spectroscopy were obtained to derive fundamental parameters from spectroscopy and A(Li). These values were combined and compared with seismic masses, radii, and ages, as well as with surface rotation periods measured from Kepler photometry. Results. Based on radial velocities, we identify and confirm a total of six binary star systems. For each star, a signal-to-noise ratio of 80 ≲ S/N ≲ 210 was typically achieved in the final spectrum around the lithium line. We report fundamental parameters and A(Li). Using the surface rotation period derived from Kepler photometry, we obtained a well-defined relation between A(Li) and rotation. The seismic radius translates the surface rotation period into surface velocity. With models constrained by the characterisation of the individual mode frequencies for single stars, we identify a sequence of three solar analogues with similar mass (~1.1 M⊙) and stellar ages ranging between 1 to 9 Gyr. Within the realistic estimate of ~7% for the mass uncertainty, we find a good agreement between the measured A(Li) and the predicted A(Li) evolution from a grid of models calculated with the Toulouse-Geneva stellar evolution code, which includes rotational internal mixing, calibrated to reproduce solar chemical properties. We found a scatter in ages inferred from the global seismic parameters that is too large when compared with A(Li). Conclusions. We present the Li-abundance for a consistent spectroscopic survey of solar-analogue stars with a mass of 1.00 ± 0.15 M⊙ that are characterised through asteroseismology and surface rotation rates based on Kepler observations. The correlation between A(Li) and Prot supports the gyrochronological concept for stars younger than the Sun and becomes clearer when the confirmed binaries are excluded. The consensus between measured A(Li) for solar analogues with model grids, calibrated on the Sun’s chemical properties, suggests that these targets share the same internal physics. In this light, the solar Li and rotation rate appear to be normal for a star like the Sun.
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Abstract Objectives This investigation examined developmental pathways between childhood emotional maltreatment and adaptational outcomes in early adolescence. This study utilized a developmental ...psychopathology perspective in adopting a multidimensional approach to the assessment of different forms of emotional maltreatment and later adjustment outcomes. Specifically, emotional abuse (i.e., verbal criticism, hostility) and emotional neglect (i.e., psychological unavailability) were compared using a process-level analytic approach to examine if and how different forms of emotional maltreatment would contribute to adolescent adjustment via aggression and social withdrawal in middle childhood. Methods The current study sample is drawn from a longitudinal, prospective study of a high-risk community sample ( N = 196), incorporating a multi-method and multi-informant design. Multiple mediator models were tested via bootstrapping regression techniques. Results Bivariate correlations revealed that both emotional neglect and emotional abuse were associated with increased aggression and social withdrawal in middle childhood, and lower ratings of socioemotional competence in early adolescence. However, the mediational model, which controlled for child gender and concurrent physical and sexual maltreatment, was only significant for the contribution of emotional abuse to lower adolescent competence via social withdrawal in middle childhood. Post hoc analyses revealed that this association was only significant for boys. Conclusions While social withdrawal in middle childhood significantly explained the observed relation between emotional abuse and decreased competence in adolescence, this process did not emerge as salient in understanding the relation between emotional neglect and adolescent adaptation. Furthermore, these developmental processes appeared to vary by gender. The results are in need of replication and extension to other outcome domains, but represent an important contribution to the empirical study of specific forms of emotional maltreatment. Practice implications Emotional maltreatment is generally overlooked and unrecognized as compared to physical or sexual forms of maltreatment. This study adds to the accumulating empirical evidence that the effects of emotional maltreatment are disabling, enduring, and should be carefully assessed by clinicians. Furthermore, this assessment should specify the particular form of emotional maltreatment that has occurred, as the results of the study indicate that developmental processes and adjustment outcomes may vary according the type of emotional maltreatment (i.e., emotional abuse, emotional neglect) that is experienced. Finally, clinicians must recognize that a single maltreatment type may vary in its impact on subsequent adjustment, as significant gender differences emerged in the current study that point to the role of individual differences that warrant further investigation.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
We demonstrate a new method for making oligonucleotide microarrays by synthesis in situ. The method uses conventional DNA synthesis chemistry with an electrochemical deblocking step. Acid is ...delivered to specific regions on a glass slide, thus allowing nucleotide addition only at chosen sites. The acid is produced by electrochemical oxidation controlled by an array of independent microelectrodes. Deblocking is complete in a few seconds, when competing side-product reactions are minimal. We demonstrate the successful synthesis of 17mers and discrimination of single base pair mismatched hybrids. Features generated in this study are 40 μm wide, with sharply defined edges. The synthetic technique may be applicable to fabrication of other molecular arrays.
PhEDEx is the data-movement solution for CMS at the LHC. Created in 2004, it is now one of the longest-lived components of the CMS dataflow/workflow world. As such, it has undergone significant ...evolution over time, and continues to evolve today, despite being a fully mature system. Originally a toolkit of agents and utilities dedicated to specific tasks, it is becoming a more open framework that can be used in several ways, both within and beyond its original problem domain. In this talk we describe how a combination of refactoring and adoption of new technologies that have become available over the years have made PhEDEx more flexible, maintainable, and scaleable.
The PhEDEx next-gen website Egeland, R; Huang, C-H; Rossman, P ...
Journal of physics. Conference series,
01/2012, Volume:
396, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
PhEDEx is the data-transfer management solution written by CMS. It consists of agents running at each site, a website for presentation of information, and a web-based data-service for scripted access ...to information. The website allows users to monitor the progress of data-transfers, the status of site agents and links between sites, and the overall status and behaviour of everything about PhEDEx. It also allows users to make and approve requests for data-transfers and for deletion of data. It is the main point-of-entry for all users wishing to interact with PhEDEx. For several years, the website has consisted of a single perl program with about 10K SLOC. This program has limited capabilities for exploring the data, with only coarse filtering capabilities and no context-sensitive awareness. Graphical information is presented as static images, generated on the server, with no interactivity. It is also not well connected to the rest of the PhEDEx codebase, since much of it was written before the data-service was developed. All this makes it hard to maintain and extend. We are re-implementing the website to address these issues. The UI is being rewritten in Javascript, replacing most of the server-side code. We are using the YUI toolkit to provide advanced features and context-sensitive interaction, and will adopt a Javascript charting library for generating graphical representations client-side. This relieves the server of much of its load, and automatically improves server-side security. The Javascript components can be re-used in many ways, allowing custom pages to be developed for specific uses. In particular, standalone test-cases using small numbers of components make it easier to debug the Javascript than it is to debug a large server program. Information about PhEDEx is accessed through the PhEDEx data-service, since direct SQL is not available from the clients’ browser. This provides consistent semantics with other, externally written monitoring tools, which already use the data-service. It also reduces redundancy in the code, yielding a simpler, consolidated codebase. In this talk we describe our experience of re-factoring this monolithic server-side program into a lighter client-side framework. We describe some of the techniques that worked well for us, and some of the mistakes we made along the way. We present the current state of the project, and its future direction.
The CMS experiment will need to sustain uninterrupted high reliability, high throughput and very diverse data transfer activities as the LHC operations start. PhEDEx, the CMS data transfer system, ...will be responsible for the full range of the transfer needs of the experiment. Covering the entire spectrum is a demanding task: from the critical high-throughput transfers between CERN and the Tier-1 centres, to high-scale production transfers among the Tier-1 and Tier-2 centres, to managing the 24/7 transfers among all the 170 institutions in CMS and to providing straightforward access to handful of files to individual physicists. In order to produce the system with confirmed capability to meet the objectives, the PhEDEx data transfer system has undergone rigourous development and numerous demanding scale tests. We have sustained production transfers exceeding 1 PB/month for several months and have demonstrated core system capacity several orders of magnitude above expected LHC levels. We describe the level of scalability reached, and how we got there, with focus on the main insights into developing a robust, lock-free and scalable distributed database application, the validation stress test methods we have used, and the development and testing tools we found practically useful.
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