A model for microinstability destabilization and enhanced transport in the presence of shielded 3-D magnetic perturbations

A mechanism is presented that suggests shielded 3-D magnetic perturbations can destabilize microinstabilities and enhance the associated anomalous transport. Using local 3-D equilibrium theory, shaped tokamak equilibria with small 3-D deformations are constructed. In the vicinity of rational magnetic surfaces, the infinite-n ideal MHD ballooning stability boundary is strongly perturbed by the 3-D modulations of the local magnetic shear associated with the presence of nearresonant Pfirsch-Schluter currents. These currents are driven by 3-D components of the magnetic field spectrum even when there is no resonant radial component. The infinite-n ideal ballooning stability boundary is often used as a proxy for the onset of virulent kinetic ballooning modes (KBM) and associated stiff transport. These results suggest that the achievable pressure gradient may be lowered in the vicinity of low order rational surfaces when 3-D magnetic perturbations are applied. This mechanism may provide an explanation for the observed reduction in the peak pressure gradient at the top of the edge pedestal during experiments where edge localized modes have been completely suppressed by applied 3-D magnetic fields

Cosmological parameter estimation using Very Small Array data out to ℓ= 1500

We estimate cosmological parameters using data obtained by the Very Small Array (VSA) in its extended configuration, in conjunction with a variety of other cosmic microwave background (CMB) data and external priors. Within the flat Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM) model, we find that the inclusion of high-resolution data from the VSA modifies the limits on the cosmological parameters as compared to those suggested by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) alone, while still remaining compatible with their estimates. We find that Ωbh2= 0.0234+0.0012−0.0014, Ωdmh2= 0.111+0.014−0.016, h= 0.73+0.09−0.05, nS= 0.97+0.06−0.03, 1010AS= 23+7−3 and τ= 0.14+0.14−0.07 for WMAP and VSA when no external prior is included. On extending the model to include a running spectral index of density fluctuations, we find that the inclusion of VSA data leads to a negative running at a level of more than 95 per cent confidence ( nrun=−0.069 ± 0.032 ), something that is not significantly changed by the inclusion of a stringent prior on the Hubble constant. Inclusion of prior information from the 2dF galaxy redshift survey reduces the significance of the result by constraining the value of Ωm. We discuss the veracity of this result in the context of various systematic effects and also a broken spectral index model. We also constrain the fraction of neutrinos and find that fν < 0.087 at 95 per cent confidence, which corresponds to mν < 0.32 eV when all neutrino masses are equal. Finally, we consider the global best fit within a general cosmological model with 12 parameters and find consistency with other analyses available in the literature. The evidence for nrun < 0 is only marginal within this model

Social reward among juvenile mice

Mammalian social relationships, such as mother–offspring attachments and pair bonds, can directly affect reproductive output. However, conspecifics approach one another in a comparatively broad range of contexts, so conceivably there are motivations for social congregation other than those underlying reproduction, parental care or territoriality. Here, we show that reward mediated by social contact is a fundamental aspect of juvenile mouse sociality. Employing a novel social conditioned place preference (SCPP) procedure, we demonstrate that social proximity is rewarding for juvenile mice from three inbred strains (A/J, C57BL/6J and DBA/2J), while mice from a fourth strain (BALB/cJ) are much less responsive to social contact. Importantly, this strain-dependent difference was not related to phenotypic variability in exploratory behavior or contextual learning nor influenced by the genetic background associated with maternal care or social conditioning. Furthermore, the SCPP phenotype was expressed early in development (postnatal day 25) and did not require a specific sex composition within the conditioning group. Finally, SCPP responses resulted from an interaction between two specifiable processes: one component of the interaction facilitated approach toward environments that were associated with social salience, whereas a second component mediated avoidance of environmental cues that predicted social isolation. We have thus identified a genetically prescribed process that can attribute value onto conditions predicting a general form of social contact. To our knowledge, this is the first definitive evidence to show that genetic variation can influence a form of social valuation not directly related to a reproductive behavior

A cross-sectional study on fatigue, anxiety, and symptoms of depression and their relation with medical status in adult patients with Marfan syndrome:Psychological consequences in Marfan syndrome

Marfan syndrome (MFS) is a connective tissue disorder affecting the cardiovascular, ocular, and skeletal system, which may be accompanied by psychological features. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of fatigue, anxiety, and symptoms of depression in MFS patients, and to assess the degree to which sociodemographic and clinical variables are associated with fatigue and psychological aspects. The prevalence of fatigue, anxiety, and symptoms of depression were assessed in two cohorts of MFS patients and compared with healthy controls. The checklist individual strength (CIS), and hospital anxiety and depression scale (HADS) questionnaires were utilized. Medical status was assessed (family history of MFS, aortic root dilatation >40 mm, previous aortic surgery, aortic dissection, chronic pain, skeletal involvement, and scoliosis). Severe fatigue was experienced by 37% of the total MFS cohort (n = 155). MFS patients scored significantly higher on the CIS questionnaire, concerning severe fatigue, as compared with the general Dutch population (p < 0.0001). There were no differences in HADS anxiety or depression scores. In older MFS patients, with a more severe cardiovascular phenotype, chronic pain, and a higher unemployment rate, significantly more symptoms of depression were observed, when compared with the general population (p = 0.027) or compared with younger MFS patients (p = 0.026). Multivariate analysis, showed that anxiety was associated with chronic pain (p = 0.022) and symptoms of depression with unemployment (p = 0.024). MFS patients report significantly more severe fatigue as compared with the general population. Since the cause of fatigue is unclear, more research may be needed. Psychological intervention, for example, cognitive behavioral therapy, may contribute to a reduction in psychological symptoms

Stripes, Pseudogaps, and Van Hove Nesting in the Three-band tJ Model

Slave boson calculations have been carried out in the three-band tJ model for the high-T_c cuprates, with the inclusion of coupling to oxygen breathing mode phonons. Phonon-induced Van Hove nesting leads to a phase separation between a hole-doped domain and a (magnetic) domain near half filling, with long-range Coulomb forces limiting the separation to a nanoscopic scale. Strong correlation effects pin the Fermi level close to, but not precisely at the Van Hove singularity (VHS), which can enhance the tendency to phase separation. The resulting dispersions have been calculated, both in the uniform phases and in the phase separated regime. In the latter case, distinctly different dispersions are found for large, random domains and for regular (static) striped arrays, and a hypothetical form is presented for dynamic striped arrays. The doping dependence of the latter is found to provide an excellent description of photoemission and thermodynamic experiments on pseudogap formation in underdoped cuprates. In particular, the multiplicity of observed gaps is explained as a combination of flux phase plus charge density wave (CDW) gaps along with a superconducting gap. The largest gap is associated with VHS nesting. The apparent smooth evolution of this gap with doping masks a crossover from CDW-like effects near optimal doping to magnetic effects (flux phase) near half filling. A crossover from large Fermi surface to hole pockets with increased underdoping is found. In the weakly overdoped regime, the CDW undergoes a quantum phase transition ($T_{CDW}\to 0$), which could be obscured by phase separation.Comment: 15 pages, Latex, 18 PS figures Corrects a sign error: major changes, esp. in Sect. 3, Figs 1-4,6 replace

Observing the First Stars and Black Holes

The high sensitivity of JWST will open a new window on the end of the cosmological dark ages. Small stellar clusters, with a stellar mass of several 10^6 M_sun, and low-mass black holes (BHs), with a mass of several 10^5 M_sun should be directly detectable out to redshift z=10, and individual supernovae (SNe) and gamma ray burst (GRB) afterglows are bright enough to be visible beyond this redshift. Dense primordial gas, in the process of collapsing from large scales to form protogalaxies, may also be possible to image through diffuse recombination line emission, possibly even before stars or BHs are formed. In this article, I discuss the key physical processes that are expected to have determined the sizes of the first star-clusters and black holes, and the prospect of studying these objects by direct detections with JWST and with other instruments. The direct light emitted by the very first stellar clusters and intermediate-mass black holes at z>10 will likely fall below JWST's detection threshold. However, JWST could reveal a decline at the faint-end of the high-redshift luminosity function, and thereby shed light on radiative and other feedback effects that operate at these early epochs. JWST will also have the sensitivity to detect individual SNe from beyond z=10. In a dedicated survey lasting for several weeks, thousands of SNe could be detected at z>6, with a redshift distribution extending to the formation of the very first stars at z>15. Using these SNe as tracers may be the only method to map out the earliest stages of the cosmic star-formation history. Finally, we point out that studying the earliest objects at high redshift will also offer a new window on the primordial power spectrum, on 100 times smaller scales than probed by current large-scale structure data.Comment: Invited contribution to "Astrophysics in the Next Decade: JWST and Concurrent Facilities", Astrophysics & Space Science Library, Eds. H. Thronson, A. Tielens, M. Stiavelli, Springer: Dordrecht (2008

QUIJOTE scientific results - VI. The Haze as seen by QUIJOTE

The Haze is an excess of microwave intensity emission surrounding the Galactic Centre. It is spatially correlated with the γ -ray Fermi bubbles, and with the S-PASS radio polarization plumes, suggesting a possible common provenance. The models proposed to explain the origin of the Haze, including energetic events at the Galactic Centre and dark matter decay in the Galactic halo, do not yet provide a clear physical interpretation. In this paper, we present a reanalysis of the Haze including new observations from the Multi-Frequency Instrument (MFI) of the Q-U-I Joint TEnerife (QUIJOTE) experiment, at 11 and 13 GHz. We analyse the Haze in intensity and polarization, characterizing its spectrum. We detect an excess of diffuse intensity signal ascribed to the Haze. The spectrum at frequencies 11 GHz ≤ ν ≤ 70 GHz is a power law with spectral index βH = −2.79 ± 0.08, which is flatter than the Galactic synchrotron in the same region (βS = −2.98 ± 0.04), but steeper than that obtained from previous works (βH ∼ −2.5 at 23 GHz ≤ ν ≤ 70 GHz). We also observe an excess of polarized signal in the QUIJOTE-MFI maps in the Haze area. This is a first hint detection of polarized Haze, or a consequence of curvature of the synchrotron spectrum in that area. Finally, we show that the spectrum of polarized structures associated with Galactic Centre activity is steep at low frequencies (β ∼ −3.2 at 2.3 GHz ≤ ν ≤ 23 GHz), and becomes flatter above 11 GHz.The QUIJOTE experiment is being developed by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC), the Instituto de Fisica de Cantabria (IFCA), and the Universities of Cantabria, Manchester and Cambridge. We thank the staff of the Teide Observatory for invaluable assistance in the commissioning and operation of QUIJOTE. Partial financial support was provided by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under the projects AYA2007-68058-C03-01, AYA2007- 68058-C03-02, AYA2010-21766-C03-01, AYA2010-21766-C03-02, AYA2014-60438-P, ESP2015-70646-C2-1-R, AYA2017-84185-P, ESP2017-83921-C2-1-R, AYA2017-90675-REDC (co-funded with EU FEDER funds), PGC2018-101814-B-I00, PID2019-110610RBC21, PID2020-120514GB-I00, IACA13-3E-2336, IACA15-BE3707, EQC2018-004918-P, the Severo Ochoa Programs SEV-2015- 0548 and CEX2019-000920-S, the Maria de Maeztu Program MDM2017-0765, and by the Consolider-Ingenio project CSD2010-00064 (EPI: Exploring the Physics of Inflation). We acknowledge support from the ACIISI, Consejeria de Economia, Conocimiento y Empleo del Gobierno de Canarias and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under grant with reference ProID2020010108. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement number 687312 (RADIOFOREGROUNDS). This research made use of computing time available on the high-performance computing systems at the IAC. We thankfully acknowledge the technical expertise and assistance provided by the Spanish Supercomputing Network (Red Española de Supercomputacion), as well as the computer resources used: the Deimos/Diva Supercomputer, located at the IAC. FG acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 101001897). EdlH acknowledges partial financial support from the Concepción Arenal Programme of the Universidad de Cantabria. FP acknowledges support from the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) under grant number PID2019-105552RB-C43. BR-G acknowledges ASI-INFN Agreement 2014-037-R.0. DT acknowledges the support from the Chinese Academy of Sciences President’s International Fellowship Initiative, Grant N. 2020PM0042. This work has made use of S-band Polarisation All Sky Survey (S-PASS) data. Some ofthe resultsin this paper have been derived using the HEALPIX (Gorski et al. 2005) and HEALPY (Zonca et al. 2019) packages. We also use NUMPY (Harris et al. 2020), and MATPLOTLIB (Hunter 2007)

Planck 2015 results. XXVII. The Second Planck Catalogue of Sunyaev-Zeldovich Sources

We present the all-sky Planck catalogue of Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) sources detected from the 29 month full-mission data. The catalogue (PSZ2) is the largest SZ-selected sample of galaxy clusters yet produced and the deepest all-sky catalogue of galaxy clusters. It contains 1653 detections, of which 1203 are confirmed clusters with identified counterparts in external data-sets, and is the first SZ-selected cluster survey containing > $10^3$ confirmed clusters. We present a detailed analysis of the survey selection function in terms of its completeness and statistical reliability, placing a lower limit of 83% on the purity. Using simulations, we find that the Y5R500 estimates are robust to pressure-profile variation and beam systematics, but accurate conversion to Y500 requires. the use of prior information on the cluster extent. We describe the multi-wavelength search for counterparts in ancillary data, which makes use of radio, microwave, infra-red, optical and X-ray data-sets, and which places emphasis on the robustness of the counterpart match. We discuss the physical properties of the new sample and identify a population of low-redshift X-ray under- luminous clusters revealed by SZ selection. These objects appear in optical and SZ surveys with consistent properties for their mass, but are almost absent from ROSAT X-ray selected samples

Model confidence sets and forecast combination: an application to age-specific mortality

Background: Model averaging combines forecasts obtained from a range of models, and it often produces more accurate forecasts than a forecast from a single model. Objective: The crucial part of forecast accuracy improvement in using the model averaging lies in the determination of optimal weights from a finite sample. If the weights are selected sub-optimally, this can affect the accuracy of the model-averaged forecasts. Instead of choosing the optimal weights, we consider trimming a set of models before equally averaging forecasts from the selected superior models. Motivated by Hansen et al. (2011), we apply and evaluate the model confidence set procedure when combining mortality forecasts. Data & Methods: The proposed model averaging procedure is motivated by Samuels and Sekkel (2017) based on the concept of model confidence sets as proposed by Hansen et al. (2011) that incorporates the statistical significance of the forecasting performance. As the model confidence level increases, the set of superior models generally decreases. The proposed model averaging procedure is demonstrated via national and sub-national Japanese mortality for retirement ages between 60 and 100+. Results: Illustrated by national and sub-national Japanese mortality for ages between 60 and 100+, the proposed model-average procedure gives the smallest interval forecast errors, especially for males. Conclusion: We find that robust out-of-sample point and interval forecasts may be obtained from the trimming method. By robust, we mean robustness against model misspecification

Exploration of the equilibrium operating space for NSTX-Upgrade

This paper explores a range of high-performance equilibrium scenarios available in the NSTX-Upgrade device [J.E. Menard, submitted for publication to Nuclear Fusion]. NSTX-Upgrade is a substantial upgrade to the existing NSTX device [M. Ono, et al., Nuclear Fusion 40, 557 (2000)], with significantly higher toroidal field and solenoid capabilities, and three additional neutral beam sources with significantly larger current drive efficiency. Equilibria are computed with freeboundary TRANSP, allowing a self consistent calculation of the non-inductive current drive sources, the plasma equilibrium, and poloidal field coil current, using the realistic device geometry. The thermal profiles are taken from a variety of existing NSTX discharges, and different assumptions for the thermal confinement scalings are utilized. The no-wall and idealwall n=1 stability limits are computed with the DCON code. The central and minimum safety factors are quite sensitive to many parameters: they generally increases with large outer plasmawall gaps and higher density, but can have either trend with the confinement enhancement factor. In scenarios with strong central beam current drive, the inclusion of non-classical fast ion diffusion raises qmin, decreases the pressure peaking, and generally improves the global stability, at the expense of a reduction in the non-inductive current drive fraction; cases with less beam current drive are largely insensitive to additional fast ion diffusion. The non-inductive current level is quite sensitive to the underlying confinement and profile assumptions. For instance, for BT=1.0 T and Pinj=12.6 MW, the non-inductive current level varies from 875 kA with ITER-98y,2 thermal confinement scaling and narrow thermal profiles to 1325 kA for an ST specific scaling expression and broad profiles. This sensitivity should facilitate the determination of the correct scaling of transport with current and field to use for future fully non-inductive ST devices. Scenarios are presented which can be sustained for 8-10 seconds, or (20-30)τCR, at βN=3.8-4.5, facilitating, for instance, the study of disruption avoidance for very long pulse. Scenarios have been documented which can operate with βT~25% and equilibrated qmin&gt;1. The value of qmin can be controlled at either fixed non-inductive fraction of 100% or fixed plasma current, by varying which beam sources are used, opening the possibility for feedback qmin control. In terms of quantities like collisionality, neutron emission, non-inductive fraction, or stored energy, these scenarios represent a significant performance extension compared to NSTX and other present spherical torii