Feasibility of objective color systems Final report

Objective color sensors for manned spacecraft investigations of unknown earth and planetary terrain

Energy dependence of the freeze out eccentricity from the azimuthal dependence of HBT at STAR

Non-central heavy ion collisions create an out-of-plane-extended participant zone that expands toward a more round state as the system evolves. The recent RHIC Beam Energy Scan at sqrt{s_{NN}} of 7.7, 11.5, and 39 GeV provide an opportunity to explore the energy dependence of the freeze out eccentricity. The new low energy data from STAR complements high statistics data sets at sqrt{s_{NN}} of 62.4 and 200 GeV. Hanbury-Brown-Twiss (HBT) interferometry allows to determine the size of pion emitting source regions. The dependence of the HBT radius parameters on azimuthal angle relative to the reaction plane have been extracted. These dependencies can be related to the freeze out eccentricity. The new results from STAR are consistent with a monotonically decreasing freeze out eccentricity and constrain any minimum, suggested by previously available data, to lie in the range between 11.5 and 39 GeV. Of several models UrQMD appears to best predict the STAR and AGS data.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, Proceedings for the XXII International Conference on Ultra-relativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (Quark Matter 2011), 22-28 May 2011, Annecy, Franc

DEIMOS Observations of WISE-Selected, Optically Obscured AGNs

While there are numerous criteria for photometrically identifying active galactic nuclei (AGNs), searches in the optical and UV tend to exclude galaxies that are highly dust obscured. This is problematic for constraining models of AGN evolution and estimating the AGN contribution to the cosmic X-ray and IR backgrounds, as highly obscured objects tend to be underrepresented in large-scale surveys. To address this, we identify potentially obscured AGNs using mid-IR color colors from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) catalog. This paper presents the results of optical spectroscopy of obscured AGN candidates using Keck DEIMOS, and their physical properties derived from these spectra. We find that a $W1-W2>0.8$ color criterion effectively selects AGNs with a higher median level of $E(B-V)$ extinction compared to the AGNs found in the SDSS DR7 survey. This optical extinction can be measured using SED modeling or by using $r-W1$ as a measure of optical to IR flux. We find that specific, targeted observations are necessary to find the most highly optically obscured AGNs, and that additional far-IR photometry is necessary to further constrain the dust properties of these AGNs.Comment: 20 pages, 25 figures, accepted by MNRA

Consequences of Fine-Tuning for Fifth Force Searches

Light bosonic fields mediate long range forces between objects. If these fields have self-interactions, i.e., non-quadratic terms in the potential, the experimental constraints on such forces can be drastically altered due to a screening (chameleon) or enhancement effect. We explore how technically natural values for such self-interaction coupling constants modify the existing constraints. We point out that assuming the existence of these natural interactions leads to new constraints, contrary to the usual expectation that screening leads to gaps in coverage. We discuss how screening can turn fundamentally equivalence principle (EP)-preserving forces into EP-violating ones. This means that when natural screening is present, searches for EP violation can be used to constrain EP-preserving forces. We show how this effect enables the recently discovered stellar triple system \textit{PSR J0337$+$1715} to place a powerful constraint on EP-preserving fifth forces. Finally, we demonstrate that technically natural cubic self-interactions modify the vacuum structure of the scalar potential, leading to new constraints from spontaneous and induced vacuum decay.Comment: 36 pages, 9 figures -- v3 reflects version published in JHE

Bovine Ocular Squamous Cell Carcinoma : In Vitro Investigations of a Viral Etiology

Bovine ocular squamous cell carcinoma, commonly known as cancer eye, is a common and economically important problem to the U.S. cattle industry. This neoplasm is particularly significant in aged breeding stock. The tumor usually originates from the squamous epithelial cells of the corneal-scleral junction and the nicitating membrane of the eye. Eye cancer lesions progress from small pin point plaques to large tumors involving the eye and surrounding tissue. This disease causes parital or total loss of vision in the affected eye and the cancer may metastasize. The objectives of this research were to: investigate the properties of tumor cell cultures derived from bovine ocular squamous cell carcinoma and its precursor lesions, determine if viral agents are present in or can be induced in tumor cell cultures, and attempt to demonstrate viral antigens in the tumor cell cultures

Social networks for collaborative water management: a methodological approach to addressing wicked environmental problems

2017 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.Lake pollution caused by human activity on nearby land is currently seen as one of the most pressing issues facing fresh bodies of water worldwide and particularly in the Midwestern United States. In Menomonie, a small lake-shore town in Wisconsin, lake pollution from phosphorus eutrophication has become an unhealthy nuisance for the residents that reside there. Eutrophication is the build-up of algae in waterways when there are too many nutrients, such as phosphorus, concentrated in the water. Attempts have been made by government officials, practitioners, researchers, and community members to clean up the lake or tackle the root of its cause with limited success. This research argues that this "wicked" pollution problem, while environmental and scientific in nature, cannot be resolved without a much more thorough analysis of the social aspects involved in decision-making and collaborative knowledge acquisition. I conducted a mixed methods study using interviews, digital surveys, and Social Network Analysis (SNA) of the community in question to reveal how network structure, network interactions, and actor characteristics play a role in this community's collaborative effort to address lake pollution. The following research shows that SNA, alongside qualitative field study, can reveal significant findings about the network and the environmental problem

The potential for liquid biopsies in the precision medical treatment of breast cancer.

Currently the clinical management of breast cancer relies on relatively few prognostic/predictive clinical markers (estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, HER2), based on primary tumor biology. Circulating biomarkers, such as circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) or circulating tumor cells (CTCs) may enhance our treatment options by focusing on the very cells that are the direct precursors of distant metastatic disease, and probably inherently different than the primary tumor's biology. To shift the current clinical paradigm, assessing tumor biology in real time by molecularly profiling CTCs or ctDNA may serve to discover therapeutic targets, detect minimal residual disease and predict response to treatment. This review serves to elucidate the detection, characterization, and clinical application of CTCs and ctDNA with the goal of precision treatment of breast cancer

The halo mass function through the cosmic ages

In this paper we investigate how the halo mass function evolves with redshift, based on a suite of very large (with N_p = 3072^3 - 6000^3 particles) cosmological N-body simulations. Our halo catalogue data spans a redshift range of z = 0-30, allowing us to probe the mass function from the dark ages to the present. We utilise both the Friends-of-Friends (FOF) and Spherical Overdensity (SO) halofinding methods to directly compare the mass function derived using these commonly used halo definitions. The mass function from SO haloes exhibits a clear evolution with redshift, especially during the recent era of dark energy dominance (z < 1). We provide a redshift-parameterised fit for the SO mass function valid for the entire redshift range to within ~20% as well as a scheme to calculate the mass function for haloes with arbitrary overdensities. The FOF mass function displays a weaker evolution with redshift. We provide a `universal' fit for the FOF mass function, fitted to data across the entire redshift range simultaneously, and observe redshift evolution in our data versus this fit. The relative evolution of the mass functions derived via the two methods is compared and we find that the mass functions most closely match at z=0. The disparity at z=0 between the FOF and SO mass functions resides in their high mass tails where the collapsed fraction of mass in SO haloes is ~80% of that in FOF haloes. This difference grows with redshift so that, by z>20, the SO algorithm finds a ~50-80% lower collapsed fraction in high mass haloes than does the FOF algorithm, due in part to the significant over-linking effects known to affect the FOF method.Comment: v4, 16 pages, 16 colour figures. Changed to match MNRAS print version. NOTE: v1 of this paper has a typo in the fitting function. Please ensure you use the latest versio

Ovine Progressive Pneumonia: A Brief Overview

Ovine progressive pneumonia (OPP), a chronic debilitating disease of adult sheep, develops insidiously over a long incubation period. The infection is widespread and may produce a fatal multisystemic lymphoproliferative disease. There is evidence that OPP virus infection is common in western and midwestern sheep flocks. A survey of cull ewes from western states revealed serological prevalence rates of up to 67 %. In Idaho, infection rates within range flocks were 51-90 %. A recent serological survey of the Iowa State University sheep flock indicated that 49 % of the ewes have opp virus antibodies and carry the virus