A General Relativistic Rotating Evolutionary Universe - Part II

As a sequel to (Berman, 2008a), we show that the rotation of the Universe can be dealt by generalised Gaussian metrics, defined in this paper. Robertson-Walker's metric has been employed with proper-time, in its standard applications; the generalised Gaussian metric imply in the use of a non-constant temporal metric coefficient modifying Robertson-Walker's standard form. Experimental predictions are madeComment: 7 pages including front cover. Publishe

Advances in Global and Local Helioseismology: an Introductory Review

Helioseismology studies the structure and dynamics of the Sun's interior by observing oscillations on the surface. These studies provide information about the physical processes that control the evolution and magnetic activity of the Sun. In recent years, helioseismology has made substantial progress towards the understanding of the physics of solar oscillations and the physical processes inside the Sun, thanks to observational, theoretical and modeling efforts. In addition to the global seismology of the Sun based on measurements of global oscillation modes, a new field of local helioseismology, which studies oscillation travel times and local frequency shifts, has been developed. It is capable of providing 3D images of the subsurface structures and flows. The basic principles, recent advances and perspectives of global and local helioseismology are reviewed in this article.Comment: 86 pages, 46 figures; "Pulsation of the Sun and Stars", Lecture Notes in Physics, Vol. 832, Rozelot, Jean-Pierre; Neiner, Coralie (Eds.), 201

Assessment of systemic AAV-microdystrophin gene therapy in the GRMD model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a progressive muscle wasting disease caused by the absence of dystrophin, a membrane-stabilizing protein encoded by the DMD gene. Although mouse models of DMD provide insight into the potential of a corrective therapy, data from genetically homologous large animals, such as the dystrophin-deficient golden retriever muscular dystrophy (GRMD) model, may more readily translate to humans. To evaluate the clinical translatability of an adeno-associated virus serotype 9 vector (AAV9)–microdystrophin (μDys5) construct, we performed a blinded, placebo-controlled study in which 12 GRMD dogs were divided among four dose groups [control, 1 × 1013 vector genomes per kilogram (vg/kg), 1 × 1014 vg/kg, and 2 × 1014 vg/kg; n = 3 each], treated intravenously at 3 months of age with a canine codon-optimized microdystrophin construct, rAAV9-CK8e-c-μDys5, and followed for 90 days after dosing. All dogs received prednisone (1 milligram/kilogram) for a total of 5 weeks from day-7 through day 28. We observed dose-dependent increases in tissue vector genome copy numbers; μDys5 protein in multiple appendicular muscles, the diaphragm, and heart; limb and respiratory muscle functional improvement; and reduction of histopathologic lesions. As expected, given that a truncated dystrophin protein was generated, phenotypic test results and histopathologic lesions did not fully normalize. All administrations were well tolerated, and adverse events were not seen. These data suggest that systemically administered AAV-microdystrophin may be dosed safely and could provide therapeutic benefit for patients with DMD

All-sky search for long-duration gravitational wave transients with initial LIGO

We present the results of a search for long-duration gravitational wave transients in two sets of data collected by the LIGO Hanford and LIGO Livingston detectors between November 5, 2005 and September 30, 2007, and July 7, 2009 and October 20, 2010, with a total observational time of 283.0 days and 132.9 days, respectively. The search targets gravitational wave transients of duration 10-500 s in a frequency band of 40-1000 Hz, with minimal assumptions about the signal waveform, polarization, source direction, or time of occurrence. All candidate triggers were consistent with the expected background; as a result we set 90% confidence upper limits on the rate of long-duration gravitational wave transients for different types of gravitational wave signals. For signals from black hole accretion disk instabilities, we set upper limits on the source rate density between 3.4×10-5 and 9.4×10-4 Mpc-3 yr-1 at 90% confidence. These are the first results from an all-sky search for unmodeled long-duration transient gravitational waves. © 2016 American Physical Society

All-sky search for long-duration gravitational wave transients with initial LIGO

We present the results of a search for long-duration gravitational wave transients in two sets of data collected by the LIGO Hanford and LIGO Livingston detectors between November 5, 2005 and September 30, 2007, and July 7, 2009 and October 20, 2010, with a total observational time of 283.0 days and 132.9 days, respectively. The search targets gravitational wave transients of duration 10-500 s in a frequency band of 40-1000 Hz, with minimal assumptions about the signal waveform, polarization, source direction, or time of occurrence. All candidate triggers were consistent with the expected background; as a result we set 90% confidence upper limits on the rate of long-duration gravitational wave transients for different types of gravitational wave signals. For signals from black hole accretion disk instabilities, we set upper limits on the source rate density between 3.4×10-5 and 9.4×10-4 Mpc-3 yr-1 at 90% confidence. These are the first results from an all-sky search for unmodeled long-duration transient gravitational waves. © 2016 American Physical Society

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Early diagnosis is associated with improved clinical outcomes in benign esophageal perforation: an individual patient data meta-anal

Background: Time of diagnosis (TOD) of benign esophageal perforation is regarded as an important risk factor for clinical outcome, although convincing evidence is lacking. The aim of this study is to assess whether time between onset of perforation and diagnosis is associated with clinical outcome in patients with iatrogenic esophageal perforation (IEP) and Boerhaave’s syndrome (BS). Methods: We searched MEDLINE, Embase and Cochrane library through June 2018 to identify studies. Authors were invited to share individual patient data and a meta-analysis was performed (PROSPERO: CRD42018093473). Patients were subdivided in early (≤ 24 h) and late (> 24 h) TOD and compared with mixed effects multivariable analysis while adjusting age, gender, location of perforation, initial treatment and center. Primary outcome was overall mortality. Secondary outcomes were length of hospital stay, re-interventions and ICU admission. Results: Our meta-analysis included IPD of 25 studies including 576 patients with IEP and 384 with BS. In IEP, early TOD was not associated with overall mortality (8% vs. 13%, OR 2.1, 95% CI 0.8–5.1), but was associated with a 23% decrease in ICU admissions (46% vs. 69%, OR 3.0, 95% CI 1.2–7.2), a 22% decrease in re-interventions (23% vs. 45%, OR 2.8, 95% CI 1.2–6.7) and a 36% decrease in length of hospital stay (14 vs. 22 days, p 24 h) in benign esophageal perforations, particularly in IEP, is associated with improved clinical outcome

Soviet satellite communications science and technology

This is a report by six US scientists and engineers concerning the current state of the art and projections of future Soviet satellite communications technologies. The panel members are experts in satellite stabilization, spacecraft environments, space power generation, launch systems, spacecraft communications sciences and technologies, onboard processing, ground stations, and other technologies that impact communications. The panel assessed the Soviet ability to support high-data-rate space missions at 128 Mbps by evaluating current and projected Soviet satellite communications technologies. A variety of space missions were considered, including Earth-to-Earth communications via satellites in geostationary or highly elliptical orbits, those missions that require space-to-Earth communications via a direct path and those missions that require space-to-Earth communications via a relay satellite. Soviet satellite communications capability, in most cases, is 10 years behind that of the United States and other industrialized nations. However, based upon an analysis of communications links needed to support these missions using current Soviet capabilities, it is well within the current Soviet technology to support certain space missions outlined above at rates of 128 Mbps or higher, although published literature clearly shows that the Soviet Union has not exceeded 60 Mbps in its current space system. These analyses are necessary but not sufficient to determine mission data rates, and other technologies such as onboard processing and storage could limit the mission data rate well below that which could actually be supported via the communications links. Presently, the Soviet Union appears to be content with data rates in the low-Earth-orbit relay via geostationary mode of 12 Mbps. This limit is a direct result of power amplifier limits, spacecraft antenna size, and the utilization of K{sub u}-band frequencies. 91 refs., 16 figs., 15 tabs