Roadmap on cosmic EUV and X-ray spectroscopy

Abstract Cosmic EUV/x-ray spectroscopists, including both solar and astrophysical analysts, have a wide range of high-resolution and high-sensitivity tools in use and a number of new facilities in development for launch. As this bandpass requires placing the spectrometer beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, each mission represents a major investment by a national space agency such as NASA, ESA, or JAXA, and more typically a collaboration between two or three. In general justifying new mission requires an improvement in capabilities of at least an order of magnitude, but the sensitivity of these existing missions are already taxing existing atomic data quantity and accuracy. This roadmap reviews the existing missions, showing how in a number of areas atomic data limits the science that can be performed. The missions that will be launched in the coming Decade will without doubt require both more and improved measurements of wavelengths and rates, along with theoretical calculations of collisional and radiative cross sections for a wide range of processes.</jats:p

Utilisation of an operative difficulty grading scale for laparoscopic cholecystectomy

Background A reliable system for grading operative difficulty of laparoscopic cholecystectomy would standardise description of findings and reporting of outcomes. The aim of this study was to validate a difficulty grading system (Nassar scale), testing its applicability and consistency in two large prospective datasets. Methods Patient and disease-related variables and 30-day outcomes were identified in two prospective cholecystectomy databases: the multi-centre prospective cohort of 8820 patients from the recent CholeS Study and the single-surgeon series containing 4089 patients. Operative data and patient outcomes were correlated with Nassar operative difficultly scale, using Kendall’s tau for dichotomous variables, or Jonckheere–Terpstra tests for continuous variables. A ROC curve analysis was performed, to quantify the predictive accuracy of the scale for each outcome, with continuous outcomes dichotomised, prior to analysis. Results A higher operative difficulty grade was consistently associated with worse outcomes for the patients in both the reference and CholeS cohorts. The median length of stay increased from 0 to 4 days, and the 30-day complication rate from 7.6 to 24.4% as the difficulty grade increased from 1 to 4/5 (both p < 0.001). In the CholeS cohort, a higher difficulty grade was found to be most strongly associated with conversion to open and 30-day mortality (AUROC = 0.903, 0.822, respectively). On multivariable analysis, the Nassar operative difficultly scale was found to be a significant independent predictor of operative duration, conversion to open surgery, 30-day complications and 30-day reintervention (all p < 0.001). Conclusion We have shown that an operative difficulty scale can standardise the description of operative findings by multiple grades of surgeons to facilitate audit, training assessment and research. It provides a tool for reporting operative findings, disease severity and technical difficulty and can be utilised in future research to reliably compare outcomes according to case mix and intra-operative difficulty

Population‐based cohort study of outcomes following cholecystectomy for benign gallbladder diseases

Background The aim was to describe the management of benign gallbladder disease and identify characteristics associated with all‐cause 30‐day readmissions and complications in a prospective population‐based cohort. Methods Data were collected on consecutive patients undergoing cholecystectomy in acute UK and Irish hospitals between 1 March and 1 May 2014. Potential explanatory variables influencing all‐cause 30‐day readmissions and complications were analysed by means of multilevel, multivariable logistic regression modelling using a two‐level hierarchical structure with patients (level 1) nested within hospitals (level 2). Results Data were collected on 8909 patients undergoing cholecystectomy from 167 hospitals. Some 1451 cholecystectomies (16·3 per cent) were performed as an emergency, 4165 (46·8 per cent) as elective operations, and 3293 patients (37·0 per cent) had had at least one previous emergency admission, but had surgery on a delayed basis. The readmission and complication rates at 30 days were 7·1 per cent (633 of 8909) and 10·8 per cent (962 of 8909) respectively. Both readmissions and complications were independently associated with increasing ASA fitness grade, duration of surgery, and increasing numbers of emergency admissions with gallbladder disease before cholecystectomy. No identifiable hospital characteristics were linked to readmissions and complications. Conclusion Readmissions and complications following cholecystectomy are common and associated with patient and disease characteristics

Photoionization of tungsten ions: Experiment and theory for W2+ and W3+

Experimental and theoretical results are reported for single-photon single ionization of W2+ and W3+ tungsten ions. Experiments were performed at the photon-ion merged-beam setup of the Advanced Light Source in Berkeley. Absolute cross sections and detailed energy scans were measured over an energy range 20-90 eV at a bandwidth of 100 meV. Broad peak features with widths typically around 5 eV have been observed with almost no narrow resonances present in the investigated energy range. Theoretical results were obtained from a Dirac-Coulomb R-matrix approach. The calculations were carried out for the lowest-energy terms of the investigated tungsten ions with levels 5s 5p 5d DJ = for W2+ and 5s 5p 5d FJ= for W3+. Assuming a statistically weighted distribution of ions in the initial ground-term levels there is good agreement of theory and experiment for W3+ ions. However, for W2+ ions at higher energies there is a factor of approximately two difference between experimental and theoretical cross sections

Photoionization of tungsten ions: Experiment and theory for W2+ and W3+

Experimental and theoretical results are reported for single-photon single ionization of W2+ and W3+ tungsten ions. Experiments were performed at the photon-ion merged-beam setup of the Advanced Light Source in Berkeley. Absolute cross sections and detailed energy scans were measured over an energy range 20-90 eV at a bandwidth of 100 meV. Broad peak features with widths typically around 5 eV have been observed with almost no narrow resonances present in the investigated energy range. Theoretical results were obtained from a Dirac-Coulomb R-matrix approach. The calculations were carried out for the lowest-energy terms of the investigated tungsten ions with levels 5s 5p 5d DJ = for W2+ and 5s 5p 5d FJ= for W3+. Assuming a statistically weighted distribution of ions in the initial ground-term levels there is good agreement of theory and experiment for W3+ ions. However, for W2+ ions at higher energies there is a factor of approximately two difference between experimental and theoretical cross sections

Single-photon single ionization of W+ ions: Experiment and theory

Experimental and theoretical results are reported for photoionization of Ta-like (W+) tungsten ions. Absolute cross sections were measured in the energy range 16-245 eV employing the photon-ion merged-beam setup at the advanced light source in Berkeley. Detailed photon-energy scans at 100 meV bandwidth were performed in the 16-108 eV range. In addition, the cross section was scanned at 50 meV resolution in regions where fine resonance structures could be observed. Theoretical results were obtained from a Dirac-Coulomb R-matrix approach. Photoionization cross section calculations were performed for singly ionized atomic tungsten ions in their J = 1/2, ground level and the associated excited metastable levels with J = 3/2, 5/2, 7/2 and 9/2. Since the ion beams used in the experiments must be expected to contain long-lived excited states also from excited configurations, additional cross-section calculations were performed for the second-lowest term, J = 5/2, and for the 4F term, with J = 3/2, 5/2, 7/2 and 9/2. Given the complexity of the electronic structure of W+ the calculations reproduce the main features of the experimental cross section quite well

Effect of Systematic Uncertainties on Density and Temperature Estimates in Coronae of Capella

Abstract We estimate the coronal density of Capella using the O vii and Fe xvii line systems in the soft X-ray regime that have been observed over the course of the Chandra mission. Our analysis combines measures of error due to uncertainty in the underlying atomic data with statistical errors in the Chandra data to derive meaningful overall uncertainties on the plasma density of the coronae of Capella. We consider two Bayesian frameworks. First, the so-called pragmatic Bayesian approach considers the atomic data and their uncertainties as fully specified and uncorrectable. The fully Bayesian approach, on the other hand, allows the observed spectral data to update the atomic data and their uncertainties, thereby reducing the overall errors on the inferred parameters. To incorporate atomic data uncertainties, we obtain a set of atomic data replicates, the distribution of which captures their uncertainty. A principal component analysis of these replicates allows us to represent the atomic uncertainty with a lower-dimensional multivariate Gaussian distribution. A t-distribution approximation of the uncertainties of a subset of plasma parameters including a priori temperature information, obtained from the temperature-sensitive-only Fe xvii spectral line analysis, is carried forward into the density- and temperature-sensitive O vii spectral line analysis. Markov Chain Monte Carlo based model fitting is implemented including Multi-step Monte Carlo Gibbs Sampler and Hamiltonian Monte Carlo. Our analysis recovers an isothermally approximated coronal plasma temperature of ≈5 MK and a coronal plasma density of ≈1010 cm−3, with uncertainties of 0.1 and 0.2 dex, respectively.</jats:p

Stabilizing Effects in Oxazolidin-2-ones-Containing Pseudopeptides

Novel homo-oligomers of the Gly-L-Oxd moiety have been prepared and their preferential conformations have been analyzed by IR, 1H NMR and CD spectroscopy, with the aim of checking whether these molecules are able to fold in ordered structures. We have noticed that in these homo-oligomers two stabilizing effects are active: besides the trans conformation of the imide group, the formation of C=O…H-N hydrogen bonds takes place and is very sensitive to the pseudopeptide size

Atomic data for modelling fusion and astrophysical plasmas

Trends and focii of interest in atomic modelling and data are identified in connection with recent observations and experiments in fusion and astrophysics. In the fusion domain, spectral observations are included of core, beam penetrated and divertor plasma. The helium beam experiments at JET and the studies with very heavy species at ASDEX and JET are noted. In the astrophysics domain, illustrations are given from the SOHO and CHANDRA spacecraft which span from the solar upper atmosphere, through soft x-rays from comets to supernovae remnants. It is shown that non-Maxwellian, dynamic and possibly optically thick regimes must be considered. The generalized collisional-radiative model properly describes the collisional regime of most astrophysical and laboratory fusion plasmas and yields self-consistent derived data for spectral emission, power balance and ionization state studies. The tuning of this method to routine analysis of the spectral observations is described. A forward look is taken as to how such atomic modelling, and the atomic data which underpin it, ought to evolve to deal with the extended conditions and novel environments of the illustrations. It is noted that atomic physics influences most aspects of fusion and astrophysical plasma behaviour but the effectiveness of analysis depends on the quality of the bi-directional pathway from fundamental data production through atomic/plasma model development to the confrontation with experiment. The principal atomic data capability at JET, and other fusion and astrophysical laboratories, is supplied via the Atomic Data and Analysis Structure (ADAS) Project. The close ties between the various experiments and ADAS have helped in this path of communication