Diagnosing space telescope misalignment and jitter using stellar images

Accurate knowledge of the telescope's point spread function (PSF) is essential for the weak gravitational lensing measurements that hold great promise for cosmological constraints. For space telescopes, the PSF may vary with time due to thermal drifts in the telescope structure, and/or due to jitter in the spacecraft pointing (ground-based telescopes have additional sources of variation). We describe and simulate a procedure for using the images of the stars in each exposure to determine the misalignment and jitter parameters, and reconstruct the PSF at any point in that exposure's field of view. The simulation uses the design of the SNAP (http://snap.lbl.gov) telescope. Stellar-image data in a typical exposure determines secondary-mirror positions as precisely as $20 {\rm nm}$. The PSF ellipticities and size, which are the quantities of interest for weak lensing are determined to $4.0 \times 10^{-4}$ and $2.2 \times 10^{-4}$ accuracies respectively in each exposure, sufficient to meet weak-lensing requirements. We show that, for the case of a space telescope, the PSF estimation errors scale inversely with the square root of the total number of photons collected from all the usable stars in the exposure.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figs, submitted to PAS

Challenging teenagers’ ideas about people with mental health problems

Mental health service users are one of the most socially excluded groups in society. Surveys indicate that younger people have less understanding of their own and others’ mental health. In this article we discuss attempts to promote a psychosocial understanding of mental health in schools and describe a brief classroom-based intervention in a secondary school. It emphasises the importance of psychologists and service users working together to challenge discrimination against people with mental health difficulties

Working with young people to challenge discrimination against mental health service users: a psychosocial pilot study

This article argues that biomedical approaches to challenging mental health discrimination have been largely unsuccessful. We describe a pilot study advocating psychosocial understandings of mental health difficulties and active service user involvement to challenge young people’s negative beliefs about people experiencing mental health problems

Hybrid CPU-GPU generation of the Hamiltonian and overlap matrices in FLAPW methods

In this paper we focus on the integration of high-performance numerical libraries in ab initio codes and the portability of performance and scalability. The target of our work is FLEUR, a software for electronic structure calculations developed in the Forschungszentrum J\"ulich over the course of two decades. The presented work follows up on a previous effort to modernize legacy code by re-engineering and rewriting it in terms of highly optimized libraries. We illustrate how this initial effort to get efficient and portable shared-memory code enables fast porting of the code to emerging heterogeneous architectures. More specifically, we port the code to nodes equipped with multiple GPUs. We divide our study in two parts. First, we show considerable speedups attained by minor and relatively straightforward code changes to off-load parts of the computation to the GPUs. Then, we identify further possible improvements to achieve even higher performance and scalability. On a system consisting of 16-cores and 2 GPUs, we observe speedups of up to 5x with respect to our optimized shared-memory code, which in turn means between 7.5x and 12.5x speedup with respect to the original FLEUR code

Exact results for the reactivity of a single-file system

We derive analytical expressions for the reactivity of a Single-File System with fast diffusion and adsorption and desorption at one end. If the conversion reaction is fast, then the reactivity depends only very weakly on the system size, and the conversion is about 100%. If the reaction is slow, then the reactivity becomes proportional to the system size, the loading, and the reaction rate constant. If the system size increases the reactivity goes to the geometric mean of the reaction rate constant and the rate of adsorption and desorption. For large systems the number of nonconverted particles decreases exponentially with distance from the adsorption/desorption end.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Selection of the scaling solution in a cluster coalescence model

The scaling properties of the cluster size distribution of a system of diffusing clusters is studied in terms of a simple kinetic mean field model. It is shown that a one parameter family of mathematically valid scaling solutions exists. Despite this, the kinetics reaches a unique scaling solution independent of initial conditions. This selected scaling solution is marginally physical; i.e., it is the borderline solution between the unphysical and physical branches of the family of solutions.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Steady-State Properties of Single-File Systems with Conversion

We have used Monte-Carlo methods and analytical techniques to investigate the influence of the characteristic parameters, such as pipe length, diffusion, adsorption, desorption and reaction rate constants on the steady-state properties of Single-File Systems with a reaction. We looked at cases when all the sites are reactive and when only some of them are reactive. Comparisons between Mean-Field predictions and Monte-Carlo simulations for the occupancy profiles and reactivity are made. Substantial differences between Mean-Field and the simulations are found when rates of diffusion are high. Mean-Field results only include Single-File behavior by changing the diffusion rate constant, but it effectively allows passing of particles. Reactivity converges to a limit value if more reactive sites are added: sites in the middle of the system have little or no effect on the kinetics. Occupancy profiles show approximately exponential behavior from the ends to the middle of the system.Comment: 15 pages, 20 figure

Fast diffusion of a Lennard-Jones cluster on a crystalline surface

We present a Molecular Dynamics study of large Lennard-Jones clusters evolving on a crystalline surface. The static and the dynamic properties of the cluster are described. We find that large clusters can diffuse rapidly, as experimentally observed. The role of the mismatch between the lattice parameters of the cluster and the substrate is emphasized to explain the diffusion of the cluster. This diffusion can be described as a Brownian motion induced by the vibrationnal coupling to the substrate, a mechanism that has not been previously considered for cluster diffusion.Comment: latex, 5 pages with figure

A Nonzero Gap Two-Dimensional Carbon Allotrope from Porous Graphene

Graphene is considered one of the most promising materials for future electronic. However, in its pristine form graphene is a gapless material, which imposes limitations to its use in some electronic applications. In order to solve this problem many approaches have been tried, such as, physical and chemical functionalizations. These processes compromise some of the desirable graphene properties. In this work, based on ab initio quantum molecular dynamics, we showed that a two-dimensional carbon allotrope, named biphenylene carbon (BPC) can be obtained from selective dehydrogenation of porous graphene. BPC presents a nonzero bandgap and well-delocalized frontier orbitals. Synthetic routes to BPC are also addressed.Comment: Published on J. Phys. Chem. C, 2012, 116 (23), pp 12810-1281

P2Y13 receptors regulate microglial morphology, surveillance, and resting levels of interleukin 1β release

Microglia sense their environment using an array of membrane receptors. While P2Y12 receptors are known to play a key role in targeting directed motility of microglial processes to sites of damage where ATP/ADP is released, little is known about the role of P2Y13 , which transcriptome data suggest is the second most expressed neurotransmitter receptor in microglia. We show that, in patch-clamp recordings in acute brain slices from mice lacking P2Y13 receptors, the THIK-1 K+ current density evoked by ADP activating P2Y12 receptors was increased by ~50%. This increase suggested that the P2Y12 -dependent chemotaxis response should be potentiated; however, the time needed for P2Y12 -mediated convergence of microglial processes onto an ADP-filled pipette or to a laser ablation was longer in the P2Y13 KO. Anatomical analysis showed that the density of microglia was unchanged, but that they were less ramified with a shorter process length in the P2Y13 KO. Thus, chemotactic processes had to grow further and so arrived later at the target, and brain surveillance was reduced by ~30% in the knock-out. Blocking P2Y12 receptors in brain slices from P2Y13 KO mice did not affect surveillance, demonstrating that tonic activation of these high-affinity receptors is not needed for surveillance. Strikingly, baseline interleukin-1β release was increased fivefold while release evoked by LPS and ATP was not affected in the P2Y13 KO, and microglia in intact P2Y13 KO brains were not detectably activated. Thus, P2Y13 receptors play a role different from that of their close relative P2Y12 in regulating microglial morphology and function