Periods, Organized (PeriodO): A gazetteer of period assertions for linking and visualizing periodized data

The PeriodO project seeks to create an online gazetteer of authoritative assertions about the chronological and geographic extent of historical and archaeological periods. Starting with a trial dataset related to Classical antiquity, this gazetteer will combine period thesauri used by museums and cultural heritage bodies with published assertions about the dates and locations of periods in authoritative print sources. These assertions will be modeled in a Linked Data format (JSON-LD, a serialization of RDF). They will be given Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) and served from a public GitHub repository, where they can act as a shared reference point to describe data in datasets with periodized information. We will also create a search and visualization tool to view the temporal and geographic extent of an assertion and compare it with others. Authoritative users will be able to add their own period assertions

Spatial and temporal diversity in genomic instability processes defines lung cancer evolution.

Spatial and temporal dissection of the genomic changes occurring during the evolution of human non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) may help elucidate the basis for its dismal prognosis. We sequenced 25 spatially distinct regions from seven operable NSCLCs and found evidence of branched evolution, with driver mutations arising before and after subclonal diversification. There was pronounced intratumor heterogeneity in copy number alterations, translocations, and mutations associated with APOBEC cytidine deaminase activity. Despite maintained carcinogen exposure, tumors from smokers showed a relative decrease in smoking-related mutations over time, accompanied by an increase in APOBEC-associated mutations. In tumors from former smokers, genome-doubling occurred within a smoking-signature context before subclonal diversification, which suggested that a long period of tumor latency had preceded clinical detection. The regionally separated driver mutations, coupled with the relentless and heterogeneous nature of the genome instability processes, are likely to confound treatment success in NSCLC

Overview of the instrumentation for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) embarked on an ambitious 5 yr survey in 2021 May to explore the nature of dark energy with spectroscopic measurements of 40 million galaxies and quasars. DESI will determine precise redshifts and employ the baryon acoustic oscillation method to measure distances from the nearby universe to beyond redshift z > 3.5, and employ redshift space distortions to measure the growth of structure and probe potential modifications to general relativity. We describe the significant instrumentation we developed to conduct the DESI survey. This includes: a wide-field, 3.°2 diameter prime-focus corrector; a focal plane system with 5020 fiber positioners on the 0.812 m diameter, aspheric focal surface; 10 continuous, high-efficiency fiber cable bundles that connect the focal plane to the spectrographs; and 10 identical spectrographs. Each spectrograph employs a pair of dichroics to split the light into three channels that together record the light from 360–980 nm with a spectral resolution that ranges from 2000–5000. We describe the science requirements, their connection to the technical requirements, the management of the project, and interfaces between subsystems. DESI was installed at the 4 m Mayall Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory and has achieved all of its performance goals. Some performance highlights include an rms positioner accuracy of better than 0.″1 and a median signal-to-noise ratio of 7 of the [O ii] doublet at 8 × 10−17 erg s−1 cm−2 in 1000 s for galaxies at z = 1.4–1.6. We conclude with additional highlights from the on-sky validation and commissioning, key successes, and lessons learned

Unbounded convex sets for non-convex mixed-integer quadratic programming

This paper introduces a fundamental family of unbounded convex sets that arises in the context of non-convex mixed-integer quadratic programming. It is shown that any mixed-integer quadratic program with linear constraints can be reduced to the minimisation of a linear function over a face of a set in the family. Some fundamental properties of the convex sets are derived, along with connections to some other well-studied convex sets. Several classes of valid and facet-inducing inequalities are also derived

Antibodies to Influenza A(H5N1) Virus in Hunting Dogs Retrieving Wild Fowl, Washington, USA

We detected antibodies to H5 and N1 subtype influenza A viruses in 4/194 (2%) dogs from Washington, USA, that hunted or engaged in hunt tests and training with wild birds. Historical data provided by dog owners showed seropositive dogs had high levels of exposure to waterfowl

Association between plasma GFAP concentrations and MRI abnormalities in patients with CT-negative traumatic brain injury in the TRACK-TBI cohort: a prospective multicentre study

After traumatic brain injury (TBI), plasma concentration of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) correlates with intracranial injury visible on CT scan. Some patients with suspected TBI with normal CT findings show pathology on MRI. We assessed the discriminative ability of GFAP to identify MRI abnormalities in patients with normal CT findings. TRACK-TBI is a prospective cohort study that enrolled patients with TBI who had a clinically indicated head CT scan within 24 h of injury at 18 level 1 trauma centres in the USA. For this analysis, we included patients with normal CT findings (Glasgow Coma Scale score 13-15) who consented to venepuncture within 24 h post injury and who had an MRI scan 7-18 days post injury. We compared MRI findings in these patients with those of orthopaedic trauma controls and healthy controls recruited from the study sites. Plasma GFAP concentrations (pg/mL) were measured using a prototype assay on a point-of-care platform. We used receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis to evaluate the discriminative ability of GFAP for positive MRI scans in patients with negative CT scans over 24 h (time between injury and venepuncture). The primary outcome was the area under the ROC curve (AUC) for GFAP in patients with CT-negative and MRI-positive findings versus patients with CT-negative and MRI-negative findings within 24 h of injury. The Dunn Kruskal-Wallis test was used to compare GFAP concentrations between MRI lesion types with Benjamini-Hochberg correction for multiple comparisons. This study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT02119182. Between Feb 26, 2014, and June 15, 2018, we recruited 450 patients with normal head CT scans (of whom 330 had negative MRI scans and 120 had positive MRI scans), 122 orthopaedic trauma controls, and 209 healthy controls. AUC for GFAP in patients with CT-negative and MRI-positive findings versus patients with CT-negative and MRI-negative findings was 0·777 (95% CI 0·726-0·829) over 24 h. Median plasma GFAP concentration was highest in patients with CT-negative and MRI-positive findings (414·4 pg/mL, 25-75th percentile 139·3-813·4), followed by patients with CT-negative and MRI-negative findings (74·0 pg/mL, 17·5-214·4), orthopaedic trauma controls (13·1 pg/mL, 6·9-20·0), and healthy controls (8·0 pg/mL, 3·0-14·0; all comparisons between patients with CT-negative MRI-positive findings and other groups p<0·0001). Analysis of blood GFAP concentrations using prototype assays on a point-of-care platform within 24 h of injury might improve detection of TBI and identify patients who might need subsequent MRI and follow-up. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and US Department of Defense

Zur Spezifizierung von Risiko und Unsicherheit in räumlichen Modellen

Beiträge zur räumlichen Theorie des Wählens gehen zumeist von idealisierten Bedingungen aus: Wähler sind vollständig informiert und entscheiden sich strikt rational, Parteien beziehen klare und eindeutig identifizierbare Positionen im politischen Wettbewerbsraum, Wählereinstellungen zum Umgang mit Risiko und Unsicherheit sind à priori in theoretischen und statistischen Modellen fixiert. Dieser Beitrag hinterfragt diese Grundannahmen der „Neo-Downsianischen“ Modelltradition. Er bestimmt empirisch, wie Wähler räumliche Distanzen in Nutzenfunktionen übersetzen und wie sie dabei mit Risiko und Unsicherheit umgehen. Ein wesentlicher Aspekt betrifft dabei die Angemessenheit von konkaven oder konvexen Nutzenfunktionen, also die Frage, ob theoretische und/ oder statistische Modelle Verlustfunktionen mit quadratischen oder mit linearen Metriken spezifizieren sollten. Die empirische Analyse verwendet das umfangreiche Datenmaterial des Wahlforschungsprojekts „The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems“ (CSES). Vergleichende Analysen des Wahlverhaltens zeigen dabei eindeutig, dass Wähler über neunzig heterogene Wahlkontexte hinweg wesentlich weniger risikoavers sind als von der großen Mehrheit theoretischer und empirischer Beiträge unterstellt wird. Stattdessen zeigen dieser Beitrag, dass moderne Wähler sich im Wesentlichen risikoneutral verhalten