HyGAL: Characterizing the Galactic ISM with observations of hydrides and other small molecules II. The absorption line survey with the IRAM 30 m telescope

As a complement to the HyGAL Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy Legacy Program, we report the results of a ground-based absorption line survey of simple molecules in diffuse and translucent Galactic clouds. Using the Institut de Radioastronomie Millim\'etrique (IRAM) 30 m telescope, we surveyed molecular lines in the 2 mm and 3 mm wavelength ranges toward 15 millimeter continuum sources. These sources, which are all massive star-forming regions located mainly in the first and second quadrants of the Milky Way, form the subset of the HyGAL sample that can be observed by the IRAM 30 m telescope. We detected HCO$^+$ absorption lines toward 14 sightlines, toward which we identified 78 foreground cloud components, as well as lines from HCN, HNC, C$_2$H, and c-C$_3$H$_2$ toward most sightlines. In addition, CS and H$_2$S absorption lines are found toward at least half of the continuum sources. Static Meudon photodissociation region (PDR) isobaric models that consider ultraviolet-dominated chemistry were unable to reproduce the column densities of all seven molecular species by just a factor of a few, except for H$_2$S. The inclusion of other formation routes driven by turbulent dissipation could possibly explain the observed high column densities of these species in diffuse clouds. There is a tentative trend for H$_2$S and CS abundances relative to H$_2$ to be larger in diffuse clouds ($X$(H$_2$S) and $X$(CS) $\sim 10^{-8} - 10^{-7}$) than in translucent clouds ($X$(H$_2$S) and $X$(CS) $\sim 10^{-9} - 10^{-8}$) toward a small sample; however, a larger sample is required in order to confirm this trend. The derived H$_2$S column densities are higher than the values predicted from the isobaric PDR models, suggesting that chemical desorption of H$_2$S from sulfur-containing ice mantles may play a role in increasing the H$_2$S abundance.Comment: 41 pages, 25 figures, 10 tables, and 5 appendices. Accepted for publication in A&

Predictors of Performance during a 161 km Mountain Footrace

Training volume and cardiovascular dynamics influence endurance performance. However, there is limited information on the interplay between training volume, cardiovascular dynamics, and performance in ultra-marathon athletes. PURPOSE: We aimed to determine predictors of performance in finishers of the 2023 Western States Endurance Run (WSER). METHODS: Sixty participants who finished the race (49 males/11 females; mean age: 44.7 ± 9.6 y, range: 26–66 y; BMI: 22.7 ± 2.2 kg/m2) completed pre-race surveys including average training volume (AV) and peak training volume (PV), as well as resting cardiovascular measures including resting heart rate (RHR) and augmentation index (AIx), a measure of wave reflection characteristics. Based on WSER completion time, we calculated average running velocity (RV). We assessed associations among 22 variables using bivariate correlation analysis (Pearson’s Correlation for normally distributed data and Spearman’s Rank Correlation if normality was not met). Within our listed variables, normality was met in age and AV. Additionally, we completed multiple regression analyses for predictors. We present descriptive data as mean ± SD. RESULTS: Participants had an average RV of 6.33 ± 0.97 km/h (3.93 ± 0.6 mph), and reported an AV of 91.9 ± 24.5 km/wk (57.1 ± 15.2 miles/wk) and a PV of 141.0 ± 47.2 km/wk (87.6 ± 29.3 miles/wk). We observed significant associations between RV and age (r(58) = -0.57, p r(58) = 0.41, p r(58) = 0.34, p R2 = 0.37; F(3,56) = 12.4, pb1 = 0.013; t(56) = 2.57, p = 0.013), resulting in a 0.33 km/h increase in RV for every 25-km increase in AV. Last, significant relations existed between RV and AIx (r(58) = -0.30, p = 0.022); and RHR (r(58) = -0.26, p = 0.046). CONCLUSION: We found that (1) average weekly training volume is a significant predictor of performance in elite ultra-marathon athletes and (2) race performance was inversely associated with resting arterial wave reflection characteristics and heart rate

The Catalogue for Astrophysical Turbulence Simulations (CATS)

Turbulence is a key process in many fields of astrophysics. Advances in numerical simulations of fluids over the last several decades have revolutionized our understanding of turbulence and related processes such as star formation and cosmic ray propagation. However, data from numerical simulations of astrophysical turbulence are often not made public. We introduce a new simulation-oriented database for the astronomical community: the Catalogue for Astrophysical Turbulence Simulations (CATS), located at www.mhdturbulence.com. CATS includes magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulent box simulation data products generated by the public codes athena++, arepo, enzo, and flash. CATS also includes several synthetic observational data sets, such as turbulent HI data cubes. We also include measured power spectra and three-point correlation functions from some of these data. We discuss the importance of open-source statistical and visualization tools for the analysis of turbulence simulations such as those found in CATS.D.C. acknowledges compute resources provided by NSF TRAC allocations TG-AST090110, TG-MCA07S014, and TG-AST140008. C.F. acknowledges funding provided by the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project DP170100603 and Future Fellowship FT180100495), the Australia-Germany Joint Research Cooperation Scheme (UA-DAAD), and high-performance computing resources provided by the Leibniz Rechenzentrum, the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (grants pr32lo), and the Australian National Computational Infrastructure (grant ek9) in the framework of the National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme and the ANU Merit Allocation Scheme.and from the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), which is supported by the Australian Government (award jh2). A.L. acknowledges the support of the NSF AST 1816234, NASA TCAN 144AAG1967, NASA ATP AAH7546 and the Flatiron Institute. J.C.'s work is supported by the National R&D Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea Grants funded by the Korean Government (NRF2016R1A5A1013277 and NRF-2016R1D1A1B02015014). P.M. acknowledges support for this work provided by NASA through Einstein Postdoctoral Fellowship grant number PF7-180164 awarded by the Chandra X-ray Center, which is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for NASA under contract NAS8-0306

Modelling semantic transparency

We present models of semantic transparency in which the perceived trans- parency of English noun–noun compounds, and of their constituent words, is pre- dicted on the basis of the expectedness of their semantic structure. We show that such compounds are perceived as more transparent when the first noun is more frequent, hence more expected, in the language generally; when the compound semantic rela- tion is more frequent, hence more expected, in association with the first noun; and when the second noun is more productive, hence more expected, as the second ele- ment of a noun–noun compound. Taken together, our models of compound and con- stituent transparency lead us to two conclusions. Firstly, although compound trans- parency is a function of the transparencies of the constituents, the two constituents differ in the nature of their contribution. Secondly, since all the significant predictors in our models of compound transparency are also known predictors of processing speed, perceived transparency may itself be a reflex of ease of processing

Protein-based identification of quantitative trait loci associated with malignant transformation in two HER2+ cellular models of breast cancer

Background A contemporary view of the cancer genome reveals extensive rearrangement compared to normal cells. Yet how these genetic alterations translate into specific proteomic changes that underpin acquiring the hallmarks of cancer remains unresolved. The objectives of this study were to quantify alterations in protein expression in two HER2+ cellular models of breast cancer and to infer differentially regulated signaling pathways in these models associated with the hallmarks of cancer. Results A proteomic workflow was used to identify proteins in two HER2 positive tumorigenic cell lines (BT474 and SKBR3) that were differentially expressed relative to a normal human mammary epithelial cell line (184A1). A total of 64 (BT474-184A1) and 69 (SKBR3-184A1) proteins were uniquely identified that were differentially expressed by at least 1.5-fold. Pathway inference tools were used to interpret these proteins in terms of functionally enriched pathways in the tumor cell lines. We observed protein ubiquitination and apoptosis signaling pathways were both enriched in the two breast cancer models while IGF signaling and cell motility pathways were enriched in BT474 and amino acid metabolism were enriched in the SKBR3 cell line. Conclusion While protein ubiquitination and apoptosis signaling pathways were common to both the cell lines, the observed patterns of protein expression suggest that the evasion of apoptosis in each tumorigenic cell line occurs via different mechanisms. Evidently, apoptosis is regulated in BT474 via down regulation of Bid and in SKBR3 via up regulation of Calpain-11 as compared to 184A1

A Systematic Review on the Diagnosis of Pediatric Bacterial Pneumonia: When Gold Is Bronze

In developing countries, pneumonia is one of the leading causes of death in children under five years of age and hence timely and accurate diagnosis is critical. In North America, pneumonia is also a common source of childhood morbidity and occasionally mortality. Clinicians traditionally have used the chest radiograph as the gold standard in the diagnosis of pneumonia, but they are becoming increasingly aware that it is not ideal. Numerous studies have shown that chest radiography findings lack precision in defining the etiology of childhood pneumonia. There is no single test that reliably distinguishes bacterial from non-bacterial causes. These factors have resulted in clinicians historically using a combination of physical signs and chest radiographs as a 'gold standard', though this combination of tests has been shown to be imperfect for diagnosis and assigning treatment. The objectives of this systematic review are to: 1) identify and categorize studies that have used single or multiple tests as a gold standard for assessing accuracy of other tests, and 2) given the 'gold standard' used, determine the accuracy of these other tests for diagnosing childhood bacterial pneumonia.Search strategies were developed using a combination of subject headings and keywords adapted for 18 electronic bibliographic databases from inception to May 2008. Published studies were included if they: 1) included children one month to 18 years of age, 2) provided sufficient data regarding diagnostic accuracy to construct a 2x2 table, and 3) assessed the accuracy of one or more index tests as compared with other test(s) used as a 'gold standard'. The literature search revealed 5,989 references of which 256 were screened for inclusion, resulting in 25 studies that satisfied all inclusion criteria. The studies examined a range of bacterium types and assessed the accuracy of several combinations of diagnostic tests. Eleven different gold standards were studied in the 25 included studies. Criterion validity was calculated for fourteen different index tests using eleven different gold standards. The most common gold standard utilized was blood culture tests used in six studies. Fourteen different tests were measured as index tests. PCT was the most common measured in five studies each with a different gold standard.We have found that studies assessing the diagnostic accuracy of clinical, radiological, and laboratory tests for bacterial childhood pneumonia have used a heterogeneous group of gold standards, and found, at least in part because of this, that index tests have widely different accuracies. These findings highlight the need for identifying a widely accepted gold standard for diagnosis of bacterial pneumonia in children

Ultrasonic vocalization in rats self-administering heroin and cocaine in different settings: evidence of substance-specific interactions between drug and setting

Rationale Clinical and preclinical evidence indicates that the setting of drug use affects drug reward in a substance-specific manner. Heroin and cocaine co-abusers, for example, indicated distinct settings for the two drugs: heroin being used preferentially at home and cocaine preferentially outside the home. Similar results were obtained in rats that were given the opportunity to self-administer intravenously both heroin and cocaine. Objectives The goal of the present study was to investigate the possibility that the positive affective state induced by cocaine is enhanced when the drug is taken at home relative to a non-home environment, and vice versa for heroin. Methods To test this hypothesis, we trained male rats to self-administer both heroin and cocaine on alternate days and simultaneously recorded the emission of ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs), as it has been reported that rats emit 50-kHz USVs when exposed to rewarding stimuli, suggesting that these USVs reflect positive affective states. Results We found that Non-Resident rats emitted more 50-kHz USVs when they self-administered cocaine than when self-administered heroin whereas Resident rats emitted more 50-kHz USVs when self-administering heroin than when self-administering cocaine. Differences in USVs in Non-Resident rats were more pronounced during the first self-administration (SA) session, when the SA chambers were completely novel to them. In contrast, the differences in USVs in Resident rats were more pronounced during the last SA sessions. Conclusion These findings indicate that the setting of drug taking exerts a substance-specific influence on the ability of drugs to induce positive affective states