An X-ray Survey of Galaxies in Pairs

Results are reported from the first survey of X-ray emission from galaxies in pairs. The sample consists of fifty-two pairs of galaxies from the Catalog of Paired Galaxies Karachentsev (1972) whose coordinates overlap ROSAT Position Sensitive Proportional Counter pointed observations. The mean observed log l_x for early-type pairs is 41.35 +/-0.21 while the mean log l_x predicted using the l_x-l_b relationship for isolated early-type galaxies is 42.10 +/-0.19. With 95% confidence, the galaxies in pairs are underluminous in the X-ray, compared to isolated galaxies, for the same l_b. A significant fraction of the mixed pair sample also appear similarly underluminous. A spatial analysis shows that the X-ray emission from pairs of both types typically has an extent of ~10 - 50 kpc, much smaller than group intergalactic medium and thus likely originates from the galaxies. CPG 564, the most X-ray luminous early-type pair, 4.7x10^42 ergs/sec, is an exception. The extent of it's X-ray emission, >169 kpc, and HWHM, ~80 kpc, is comparable to that expected from an intergalactic medium. The sample shows only a weak correlation, ~81% confidence, between l_x and l_b, presumably due to variations in gas content within the galaxies. No correlation between l_x and the pair velocity difference, separation, or far-infrared luminosity is found though the detection rate is low, 22%.Comment: 40 pages, 6 jpg figures, ApJ (in press

Covering California's Kids: The Impact of Healthy Kids on Access, Health Status and Costs

Summarizes how the implementation of CHIs designed to improve children's access to primary care helped reduce preventable hospitalizations among lower-income children. Includes policy implications

Recidivism Risk Assessment for Aboriginal Males: A Brief Review of the Scientific Literature

No level of violent recidivism is acceptable to Correctional Service of Canada staff or the Canadian public. Among other tools, CSC staff use counselling, supervision, education, and treatment programs to ensure the safe community reintegration of eligible offenders. The core method of determining risk for recidivism is an actuarially-based risk assessment instrument. The general process of contemporary risk assessment is outlined in this paper revealing a number of efficient and effective measures suitable for all male offender populations. Theory and research are reviewed showing that established risk prediction factors such as age, criminal history, anti-social peers, anti-social attitudes, and substance abuse predict criminal recidivism for all offenders regardless of cultural, racial, or geographic heritage. The majority of these validated risk assessment instruments have moderate predictive power for all male offenders. Seven of these instruments are individually reviewed with regard to their use with Aboriginal groups. This paper concludes with recommendations for further research on risk assessment among cultural groups

Modelling the impacts of ammonia emissions reductions on North American air quality

A unified regional air-quality modelling system (AURAMS) was used to investigate the effects of reductions in ammonia emissions on regional air quality, with a focus on particulate-matter formation. Three simulations of one-year duration were performed for a North American domain: (1) a base-case simulation using 2002 Canadian and US national emissions inventories augmented by a more detailed Canadian emissions inventory for agricultural ammonia; (2) a 30% North-American-wide reduction in agricultural ammonia emissions; and (3) a 50% reduction in Canadian beef-cattle ammonia emissions. The simulations show that a 30% continent-wide reduction in agricultural ammonia emissions lead to reductions in median hourly PM<sub>2.5</sub> mass of <1 μg m<sup>−3</sup> on an annual basis. The atmospheric response to these emission reductions displays marked seasonal variations, and on even shorter time scales, the impacts of the emissions reductions are highly episodic: 95th-percentile hourly PM<sub>2.5</sub> mass decreases can be up to a factor of six larger than the median values. <br><br> A key finding of the modelling work is the linkage between gas and aqueous chemistry and transport; reductions in ammonia emissions affect gaseous ammonia concentrations close to the emissions site, but substantial impacts on particulate matter and atmospheric deposition often occur at considerable distances downwind, with particle nitrate being the main vector of ammonia/um transport. Ammonia emissions reductions therefore have trans-boundary consequences downwind. Calculations of critical-load exceedances for sensitive ecosystems in Canada suggest that ammonia emission reductions will have a minimal impact on current ecosystem acidification within Canada, but may have a substantial impact on future ecosystem acidification. The 50% Canadian beef-cattle ammonia emissions reduction scenario was used to examine model sensitivity to uncertainties in the new Canadian agricultural ammonia emissions inventory, and the simulation results suggest that further work is needed to improve the emissions inventory for this particular sector. It should be noted that the model in its current form neglects coarse mode base cation chemistry, so the predicted effects of ammonia emissions reductions shown here should be considered upper limits

Voluntary DNA-based information exchange and contact services following donor conception: an analysis of service users’ needs

Medical science has enabled the creation of families through the use of donor conception but some lifelong policy and practice implications are only recently being recognized. Research and practice have shown that donor conception can, for some, carry substantial long-term consequences. In this paper we present findings from a questionnaire-based study that sought to shed light on donor-conceived adults’ and gamete donors’ views on service and support needs when searching for genetic relatives with the aid of DNA testing. The findings demonstrate the complexity and sensitivity of providing services in this newly emerging area of need. Such provision requires collaboration between very different disciplines and agencies (scientific and psychosocial), introduces the potential for blurring of lines of accountability and responsibility, and highlights the challenges of identifying appropriate funding streams. In addition, the findings demonstrate the opportunities and limitations afforded by the use of DNA in identifying unknown genetic relatives

Physician and patient use of and attitudes toward complementary and alternative medicine in the treatment of infertility

ObjectiveTo determine use of and attitudes toward complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) among infertility patients and subspecialty physicians.MethodsInfertility patients were asked to complete anonymous written surveys at an academic infertility practice; members of the Society for Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility were electronically surveyed. Both groups were assessed regarding their use of and attitudes toward CAM.ResultsThe response rate was 32.1% (115/358) among patients and 22.6% (225/995) among physicians (P < 0.05). In total, 105 (91.3%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 85.8–96.2) patients used CAM, and 84 (73.0%; 95% CI, 64.9–81.1) regarded it as beneficial to their fertility treatment. However, only 30 (26.1%; 95% CI, 18.0–34.0) patients reported CAM use to physicians, with the most common reason being that they were “never asked.” Overall, 202 (89.8%; 95% CI, 85.9–93.8) physicians reported inquiring about CAM.ConclusionSignificant discrepancies exist between subfertile patients and physicians in attitudes toward the use of CAM. The current prevalence of CAM use among infertility patients requires greater physician attention and justifies further study on the risks and benefits of integrating CAM into the biomedical treatment of infertility.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135333/1/ijgo253.pd

Temporal perception deficits in schizophrenia: integration is the problem, not deployment of attentions

Patients with schizophrenia are known to have impairments in sensory processing. In order to understand the specific temporal perception deficits of schizophrenia, we investigated and determined to what extent impairments in temporal integration can be dissociated from attention deployment using Attentional Blink (AB). Our findings showed that there was no evident deficit in the deployment of attention in patients with schizophrenia. However, patients showed an increased temporal integration deficit within a hundred-millisecond timescale. The degree of such integration dysfunction was correlated with the clinical manifestations of schizophrenia. There was no difference between individuals with/without schizotypal personality disorder in temporal integration. Differently from previous studies using the AB, we did not find a significant impairment in deployment of attention in schizophrenia. Instead, we used both theoretical and empirical approaches to show that previous findings (using the suppression ratio to correct for the baseline difference) produced a systematic exaggeration of the attention deficits. Instead, we modulated the perceptual difficulty of the task to bring the baseline levels of target detection between the groups into closer alignment. We found that the integration dysfunction rather than deployment of attention is clinically relevant, and thus should be an additional focus of research in schizophrenia

Realizing Dynamic and Efficient Bipedal Locomotion on the Humanoid Robot DURUS

© 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.DOI: 10.1109/ICRA.2016.7487325This paper presents the methodology used to achieve efficient and dynamic walking behaviors on the prototype humanoid robotics platform, DURUS. As a means of providing a hardware platform capable of these behaviors, the design of DURUS combines highly efficient electromechanical components with “control in the loop” design of the leg morphology. Utilizing the final design of DURUS, a formal framework for the generation of dynamic walking gaits which maximizes efficiency by exploiting the full body dynamics of the robot, including the interplay between the passive and active elements, is developed. The gaits generated through this methodology form the basis of the control implementation experimentally realized on DURUS; in particular, the trajectories generated through the formal framework yield a feedforward control input which is modulated by feedback in the form of regulators that compensate for discrepancies between the model and physical system. The end result of the unified approach to control-informed mechanical design, formal gait design and regulator-based feedback control implementation is efficient and dynamic locomotion on the humanoid robot DURUS. In particular, DURUS was able to demonstrate dynamic locomotion at the DRC Finals Endurance Test, walking for just under five hours in a single day, traveling 3.9 km with a mean cost of transport of 1.61-the lowest reported cost of transport achieved on a bipedal humanoid robot

A Rigorous Correctness Proof for Pastry

International audiencePeer-to-peer protocols for maintaining distributed hash tables, such as Pastry or Chord, have become popular for a class of Internet applications. While such protocols promise certain properties concerning correctness and performance, verification attempts using formal methods invariably discover border cases that violate some of those guarantees. Tianxiang Lu reported correctness problems in published versions of Pastry and also developed a model, which he called LuPastry, for which he provided a partial proof of correct delivery assuming no node departures, mechanized in the TLA+ Proof System. Lu's proof is based on certain assumptions that were left unproven. We found counterexamples to several of these assumptions. In this paper, we present a revised model and rigorous proof of correct delivery, which we call LuPastry+. Aside from being the first complete proof, LuPastry+ also improves upon Lu's work by reformulating parts of the specification in such a way that the reasoning complexity is confined to a small part of the proof

Alpha-band rhythms in visual task performance: phase-locking by rhythmic sensory stimulation

Oscillations are an important aspect of neuronal activity. Interestingly, oscillatory patterns are also observed in behaviour, such as in visual performance measures after the presentation of a brief sensory event in the visual or another modality. These oscillations in visual performance cycle at the typical frequencies of brain rhythms, suggesting that perception may be closely linked to brain oscillations. We here investigated this link for a prominent rhythm of the visual system (the alpha-rhythm, 8-12 Hz) by applying rhythmic visual stimulation at alpha-frequency (10.6 Hz), known to lead to a resonance response in visual areas, and testing its effects on subsequent visual target discrimination. Our data show that rhythmic visual stimulation at 10.6 Hz: 1) has specific behavioral consequences, relative to stimulation at control frequencies (3.9 Hz, 7.1 Hz, 14.2 Hz), and 2) leads to alpha-band oscillations in visual performance measures, that 3) correlate in precise frequency across individuals with resting alpha-rhythms recorded over parieto-occipital areas. The most parsimonious explanation for these three findings is entrainment (phase-locking) of ongoing perceptually relevant alpha-band brain oscillations by rhythmic sensory events. These findings are in line with occipital alpha-oscillations underlying periodicity in visual performance, and suggest that rhythmic stimulation at frequencies of intrinsic brain-rhythms can be used to reveal influences of these rhythms on task performance to study their functional roles