BAO+BBN revisited -- Growing the Hubble tension with a 0.7km/s/Mpc constraint

The combination of Baryonic Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) data together with light element abundance measurements from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) has been shown to constrain the cosmological expansion history to an unprecedented degree. Using the newest LUNA data and DR16 data from SDSS, the BAO+BBN probe puts tight constraints on the Hubble parameter ($H_0 = 67.6 \pm 1.0 \mathrm{km/s/Mpc}$), resulting in a $3.7\sigma$ tension with the local distance ladder determination from SH0ES in a $\Lambda$CDM model. In the updated BAO data the high- and low-redshift subsets are mutually in excellent agreement, and there is no longer a mild internal tension to artificially enhance the constraints. Adding the recently-developed ShapeFit analysis yields $H_0 = 68.3 \pm 0.7 \mathrm{km/s/Mpc}$ ($3.8 \sigma$ tension). For combinations with additional data sets, there is a strong synergy with the sound horizon information of the cosmic microwave background, which leads to one of the tightest constraints to date, $H_0 = 68.30\pm 0.45\mathrm{km/s/Mpc}$, in $4.2\sigma$ tension with SH0ES. The region preferred by this combination is perfectly in agreement with that preferred by ShapeFit. The addition of supernova data also yields a $4.2\sigma$ tension with SH0ES for Pantheon, and a $3.5\sigma$ tension for PantheonPLUS. Finally, we show that there is a degree of model-dependence of the BAO+BBN constraints with respect to early-time solutions of the Hubble tension, and the loss of constraining power in extended models depends on whether the model can be additionally constrained from BBN observations.Comment: 27 pages, 9 figures, 1 table. Comments are welcome

KiDS+GAMA: Constraints on Horndeski gravity from combined large-scale structure probes

We present constraints on Horndeski gravity from a combined analysis of cosmic shear, galaxy–galaxy lensing and galaxy clustering from 450deg2 of the Kilo-Degree Survey and the Galaxy And Mass Assembly survey.The Horndeski class of dark energy/modified gravity models includes the majority of universally coupled extensions to ΛCDM with one scalar field in addition to the metric. We study the functions of time that fully describe the evolution of linear perturbations in Horndeski gravity. Our results are compatible throughout with a ΛCDM model. By imposing gravitational wave constraints, we fix the tensor speed excess to zero and consider a subset of models including, e.g. quintessence and f(R) theories. Assuming proportionality of the Horndeski functions αB and αM (kinetic braiding and the Planck mass run rate, respectively) to the dark energy density fraction ΩDE(a) = 1 − Ωm(a), we find for the proportionality coefficients α^B=0.20+0.20−0.33 and α^M=0.25+0.19−0.29⁠. Our value of S8≡σ8Ωm/0.3−−−−−−√ is in better agreement with the Planck estimate when measured in the enlarged Horndeski parameter space than in a pure ΛCDM scenario. In our joint three-probe analysis, we report a downward shift of the S8 best-fitting value from the Planck measurement of ΔS8=0.016+0.048−0.046 in Horndeski gravity, compared to ΔS8=0.059+0.040−0.039 in ΛCDM. Our constraints are robust to the modelling uncertainty of the non-linear matter power spectrum in Horndeski gravity. Our likelihood code for multiprobe analysis in both ΛCDM and Horndeski gravity is publicly available at https://github.com/alessiospuriomancini/KiDSHorndeski

Additive scales in degenerative disease - calculation of effect sizes and clinical judgment

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The therapeutic efficacy of an intervention is often assessed in clinical trials by scales measuring multiple diverse activities that are added to produce a cumulative global score. Medical communities and health care systems subsequently use these data to calculate pooled effect sizes to compare treatments. This is done because major doubt has been cast over the clinical relevance of statistically significant findings relying on <it>p </it>values with the potential to report chance findings. Hence in an aim to overcome this pooling the results of clinical studies into a meta-analyses with a statistical calculus has been assumed to be a more definitive way of deciding of efficacy.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We simulate the therapeutic effects as measured with additive scales in patient cohorts with different disease severity and assess the limitations of an effect size calculation of additive scales which are proven mathematically.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We demonstrate that the major problem, which cannot be overcome by current numerical methods, is the complex nature and neurobiological foundation of clinical psychiatric endpoints in particular and additive scales in general. This is particularly relevant for endpoints used in dementia research. 'Cognition' is composed of functions such as memory, attention, orientation and many more. These individual functions decline in varied and non-linear ways. Here we demonstrate that with progressive diseases cumulative values from multidimensional scales are subject to distortion by the limitations of the additive scale. The non-linearity of the decline of function impedes the calculation of effect sizes based on cumulative values from these multidimensional scales.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Statistical analysis needs to be guided by boundaries of the biological condition. Alternatively, we suggest a different approach avoiding the error imposed by over-analysis of cumulative global scores from additive scales.</p

The Convex Geometry of Linear Inverse Problems

In applications throughout science and engineering one is often faced with the challenge of solving an ill-posed inverse problem, where the number of available measurements is smaller than the dimension of the model to be estimated. However in many practical situations of interest, models are constrained structurally so that they only have a few degrees of freedom relative to their ambient dimension. This paper provides a general framework to convert notions of simplicity into convex penalty functions, resulting in convex optimization solutions to linear, underdetermined inverse problems. The class of simple models considered are those formed as the sum of a few atoms from some (possibly infinite) elementary atomic set; examples include well-studied cases such as sparse vectors and low-rank matrices, as well as several others including sums of a few permutations matrices, low-rank tensors, orthogonal matrices, and atomic measures. The convex programming formulation is based on minimizing the norm induced by the convex hull of the atomic set; this norm is referred to as the atomic norm. The facial structure of the atomic norm ball carries a number of favorable properties that are useful for recovering simple models, and an analysis of the underlying convex geometry provides sharp estimates of the number of generic measurements required for exact and robust recovery of models from partial information. These estimates are based on computing the Gaussian widths of tangent cones to the atomic norm ball. When the atomic set has algebraic structure the resulting optimization problems can be solved or approximated via semidefinite programming. The quality of these approximations affects the number of measurements required for recovery. Thus this work extends the catalog of simple models that can be recovered from limited linear information via tractable convex programming

Evaluation of Pax6 Mutant Rat as a Model for Autism

Autism is a highly variable brain developmental disorder and has a strong genetic basis. Pax6 is a pivotal player in brain development and maintenance. It is expressed in embryonic and adult neural stem cells, in astrocytes in the entire central nervous system, and in neurons in the olfactory bulb, amygdala, thalamus, and cerebellum, functioning in highly context-dependent manners. We have recently reported that Pax6 heterozygous mutant (rSey2/+) rats with a spontaneous mutation in the Pax6 gene, show impaired prepulse inhibition (PPI). In the present study, we further examined behaviors of rSey2/+ rats and revealed that they exhibited abnormality in social interaction (more aggression and withdrawal) in addition to impairment in rearing activity and in fear-conditioned memory. Ultrasonic vocalization (USV) in rSey2+ rat pups was normal in male but abnormal in female. Moreover, treatment with clozapine successfully recovered the defects in sensorimotor gating function, but not in fear-conditioned memory. Taken together with our prior human genetic data and results in other literatures, rSey2/+ rats likely have some phenotypic components of autism

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