For nearly 60 years, the Framingham Heart Study has examined the natural history, risk factors, and prognosis of cardiovascular, lung, and other diseases. Recruitment of the Original Cohort began in ...1948. Twenty-three years later, 3,548 children of the Original Cohort, along with 1,576 of their spouses, enrolled in the Offspring Cohort. Beginning in 2002, 4,095 adults having at least one parent in the Offspring Cohort enrolled in the Third Generation Cohort, along with 103 parents of Third Generation Cohort participants who were not previously enrolled in the Offspring Cohort. The objective of new recruitment was to complement phenotypic and genotypic information obtained from prior generations, with priority assigned to larger families. From a pool of 6,553 eligible individuals, 1,912 men and 2,183 women consented and attended the first examination (mean age: 40 (standard deviation: 9) years; range: 19–72 years). The examination included clinical and laboratory assessments of vascular risk factors and imaging for subclinical atherosclerosis, as well as assessment of cardiac structure and function. The comparison of Third Generation Cohort data with measures previously collected from the first two generations will facilitate investigations of genetic and environmental risk factors for subclinical and overt diseases, with a focus on cardiovascular and lung disorders.
A search for neutrinoless double-β decay (0νββ) in Xe136 is performed with the full EXO-200 dataset using a deep neural network to discriminate between 0νββ and background events. Relative to ...previous analyses, the signal detection efficiency has been raised from 80.8% to 96.4±3.0%, and the energy resolution of the detector at the Q value of Xe136 0νββ has been improved from σ/E=1.23% to 1.15±0.02% with the upgraded detector. Accounting for the new data, the median 90% confidence level 0νββ half-life sensitivity for this analysis is 5.0×1025 yr with a total Xe136 exposure of 234.1 kg yr. No statistically significant evidence for 0νββ is observed, leading to a lower limit on the 0νββ half-life of 3.5×1025 yr at the 90% confidence level.
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has established the existence of a high-energy all-sky neutrino flux of astrophysical origin. This discovery was made using events interacting within a fiducial ...region of the detector surrounded by an active veto and with reconstructed energy above 60 TeV, commonly known as the high-energy starting event sample (HESE). We revisit the analysis of the HESE sample with an additional 4.5 years of data, newer glacial ice models, and improved systematics treatment. This paper describes the sample in detail, reports on the latest astrophysical neutrino flux measurements, and presents a source search for astrophysical neutrinos. We give the compatibility of these observations with specific isotropic flux models proposed in the literature as well as generic power-law-like scenarios. Assuming νe: νμ: ντ= 1 : 1 : 1 , and an equal flux of neutrinos and antineutrinos, we find that the astrophysical neutrino spectrum is compatible with an unbroken power law, with a preferred spectral index of 2.87−0.19+0.20 for the 68% confidence interval.
Acropora cervicornis, a threatened, keystone reef-building coral has undergone severe declines (>90 %) throughout the Caribbean. These declines could reduce genetic variation and thus hamper the ...species' ability to adapt. Active restoration strategies are a common conservation approach to mitigate species' declines and require genetic data on surviving populations to efficiently respond to declines while maintaining the genetic diversity needed to adapt to changing conditions. To evaluate active restoration strategies for the staghorn coral, the genetic diversity of A. cervicornis within and among populations was assessed in 77 individuals collected from 68 locations along the Florida Reef Tract (FRT) and in the Dominican Republic.
Genotyping by Sequencing (GBS) identified 4,764 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Pairwise nucleotide differences (π) within a population are large (~37 %) and similar to π across all individuals. This high level of genetic diversity along the FRT is similar to the diversity within a small, isolated reef. Much of the genetic diversity (>90 %) exists within a population, yet GBS analysis shows significant variation along the FRT, including 300 SNPs with significant FST values and significant divergence relative to distance. There are also significant differences in SNP allele frequencies over small spatial scales, exemplified by the large FST values among corals collected within Miami-Dade county.
Large standing diversity was found within each population even after recent declines in abundance, including significant, potentially adaptive divergence over short distances. The data here inform conservation and management actions by uncovering population structure and high levels of diversity maintained within coral collections among sites previously shown to have little genetic divergence. More broadly, this approach demonstrates the power of GBS to resolve differences among individuals and identify subtle genetic structure, informing conservation goals with evolutionary implications.
The results of a 3 + 1 sterile neutrino search using eight years of data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory are presented. A total of 305 735 muon neutrino events are analyzed in reconstructed ...energy-zenith space to test for signatures of a matter-enhanced oscillation that would occur given a sterile neutrino state with a mass-squared differences between 0.01 and 100 eV2. The best-fit point is found to be at sin2(2θ24) = 0.10 and Δm412 = 4.5 eV2, which is consistent with the no sterile neutrino hypothesis with a p value of 8.0%.
The sources of the majority of the high-energy astrophysical neutrinos observed with the IceCube neutrino telescope at the South Pole are unknown. So far, only a flaring gamma-ray blazar was ...compellingly associated with the emission of high-energy neutrinos. However, several studies suggest that the neutrino emission from the gamma-ray blazar population only accounts for a small fraction of the total astrophysical neutrino flux. In this work we probe the production of high-energy neutrinos in the cores of active galactic nuclei (AGN), induced by accelerated cosmic rays in the accretion disk region. We present a likelihood analysis based on eight years of IceCube data, searching for a cumulative neutrino signal from three AGN samples created for this work. The neutrino emission is assumed to be proportional to the accretion disk luminosity estimated from the soft x-ray flux. Next to the observed soft x-ray flux, the objects for the three samples have been selected based on their radio emission and infrared color properties. For the largest sample in this search, an excess of high-energy neutrino events with respect to an isotropic background of atmospheric and astrophysical neutrinos is found, corresponding to a post-trial significance of 2.60σ. If interpreted as a genuine signal with the assumptions of a proportionality of x-ray and neutrino fluxes and a model for the subthreshold flux distribution, then this observation implies that at 100 TeV, 27%–100% of the observed neutrinos arise from particle acceleration in the core of AGN at 1σ confidence interval.
We present analysis of 12,227 type-ab RR Lyraes (RRLs) found among the 200 million public light curves in Catalina Surveys Data Release 1. These stars span the largest volume of the Milky Way ever ...surveyed with RRLs, covering ~20,000 deg super(2) of the sky (0degrees < alpha < 360degrees, -22degrees < delta < 65degrees) to heliocentric distances of up to 60 kpc. Each of the RRLs is observed between 60 and 419 times over a six-year period. Using period finding and Fourier fitting techniques we determine periods and apparent magnitudes for each source. We find that the periods are generally accurate to sigma = 0.002% in comparison to 2842 previously known RRLs and 100 RRLs observed in overlapping survey fields. We photometrically calibrate the light curves using 445 Landolt standard stars and show that the resulting magnitudes are accurate to ~0.05 mag using Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data for ~1000 blue horizontal branch stars and 7788 RRLs. By combining Catalina photometry with SDSS spectroscopy, we analyze the radial velocity and metallicity distributions for >1500 of the RRLs. Using the accurate distances derived for the RRLs, we show the paths of the Sagittarius tidal streams crossing the sky at heliocentric distances from 20 to 60 kpc. By selecting samples of Galactic halo RRLs, we compare their velocity, metallicity, and distance with predictions from a recent detailed N-body model of the Sagittarius system. We find that there are some significant differences between the distances and structures predicted and our observations.
Abstract
We present a spectroscopically complete sample of 147 infrared-color-selected active galactic nuclei (AGNs) down to a 22
μ
m flux limit of 20 mJy over the ∼270 deg
2
of the Sloan Digital Sky ...Survey Stripe 82 region. Most of these sources are in the QSO luminosity regime (
L
bol
≳ 10
12
L
⊙
) and are found out to
z
≃ 3. We classify the AGNs into three types, finding 57 blue, unobscured Type-1 (broad-lined) sources; 69 obscured, Type-2 (narrow-lined) sources; and 21 moderately reddened Type-1 sources (broad-lined and
E
(
B
−
V
) > 0.25). We study a subset of this sample in X-rays and analyze their obscuration to find that our spectroscopic classifications are in broad agreement with low, moderate, and large amounts of absorption for Type-1, red Type-1, and Type-2 AGNs, respectively. We also investigate how their X-ray luminosities correlate with other known bolometric luminosity indicators such as O
iii
line luminosity (
L
O
iii
) and infrared luminosity (
L
6
μ
m
). While the X-ray correlation with
L
O
iii
is consistent with previous findings, the most infrared-luminous sources appear to deviate from established relations such that they are either underluminous in X-rays or overluminous in the infrared. Finally, we examine the luminosity function evolution of our sample, and by AGN type, in combination with the complementary, infrared-selected, AGN sample of Lacy et al. (2013), spanning over two orders of magnitude in luminosity. We find that the two obscured populations evolve differently, with reddened Type-1 AGNs dominating the obscured AGN fraction (∼30%) for
L
5
μ
m
> 10
45
erg s
−1
, while the fraction of Type-2 AGNs with
L
5
μ
m
< 10
45
erg s
−1
rises sharply from 40% to 80% of the overall AGN population.
We report observations of reconnection exhausts in the Heliospheric Current Sheet (HCS) during Parker Solar Probe Encounters 08 and 07, at 16 Rs and 20 Rs, respectively. Heliospheric current sheet ...(HCS) reconnection accelerated protons to almost twice the solar wind speed and increased the proton core energy by a factor of ∼3, due to the Alfvén speed being comparable to the solar wind flow speed at these near‐Sun distances. Furthermore, protons were energized to super‐thermal energies. During E08, energized protons were found to have leaked out of the exhaust along separatrix field lines, appearing as field‐aligned energetic proton beams in a broad region outside the HCS. Concurrent dropouts of strahl electrons, indicating disconnection from the Sun, provide further evidence for the HCS being the source of the beams. Around the HCS in E07, there were also proton beams but without electron strahl dropouts, indicating that their origin was not the local HCS reconnection exhaust.
Plain Language Summary
Magnetic reconnection in current sheets is a universal plasma process that converts magnetic energy into particle energy. The process is important in many laboratory, solar, and astrophysical plasmas. The heliospheric current sheet (HCS), which originates from the Sun and extends throughout the heliosphere, is the largest current sheet in the solar system. One of the surprises of the Parker Solar Probe mission is the finding that magnetic reconnection is almost always active in the near‐Sun HCS, despite its enormous scales. In this paper, we report direct evidence showing that reconnection in the HCS close to the Sun can be a source of energetic protons observed in the solar wind. The reason protons can be accelerated to high energies (to tens of kilo‐electronvolts) is because the available magnetic energy per particle is high close to the Sun. This finding is important because the source of energetic protons in the heliosphere is unknown.
Key Points
Large available magnetic energy per particle led to significant proton acceleration by reconnection in the near‐Sun heliospheric current sheet (HCS) at 16 and 20 Rs
Proton beams and strahl electron dropouts in separatrices are evidence for HCS being a source of energetic protons seen outside the HCS
Energetic protons beams outside the HCS also exist without strahl electron dropouts. Their origin is unlikely to be the local HCS exhaust
In a primate model of Parkinson disease (PD), intrastriatal infusion of an adeno-associated viral (AAV) vector containing the human aromatic l-amino acid decarboxylase (hAADC) gene results in robust ...gene expression. After gene transfer, low doses of systemically administered l-dopa are converted to dopamine in the transduced striatal neurons, resulting in behavioral improvement without the side effects typically associated with higher doses of l-dopa. These studies led to the initiation of a phase I safety trial. Here we report the findings for the first cohort of five patients.
Patients with moderate to advanced PD received bilateral infusion of a low dose of the AAV-hAADC vector into the putamen. PET scans using the AADC tracer, 6-18Ffluoro-l-m-tyrosine (FMT), were performed at baseline and at 1 and 6 months after infusion as an in vivo measure of gene expression.
PET results showed an average 30% increase in FMT uptake (K(i)(c)) in the putamen after gene transfer. Preliminary analysis of clinical data indicates a modest improvement, but absence of a control and the nonblinded analyses make interpretation difficult.
Thus far, this gene therapy approach has been well tolerated and shows PET evidence of sustained gene expression. These initial findings demonstrate the safety of the therapy; higher doses of adeno-associated viral vector containing the human aromatic l-amino acid decarboxylase gene in the next cohort of patients may further increase dopamine production in the putamen and provide more profound clinical benefit.
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