Towards energy resolution at the statistical limit from a negative ion time projection chamber

We make a proof-of-principle demonstration that improved energy resolution can be obtained in a negative-ion time projection chamber, by individually counting each electron produced by ionizing radiation.Comment: Submitted to Nucl. Instr. Meth.

Cervical Screening and General Physical Examination Behaviors of Women Exposed In Utero to Diethylstilbestrol

Objective. To estimate whether women exposed in utero to diethylstilbestrol (DES) report receiving more cervical and general physical examinations compared to unexposed women. Materials and Methods. 1994 Diethylstilbestrol Adenosis cohort data are used to assess the degree of recommended compliance of cervical screenings found in 3,140 DES-exposed and 826 unexposed women. Participants were enrolled at 4 sites: Houston, Boston, Rochester, and Los Angeles. Logistic regression modeling was used to analyze mailed questionnaire data, which included reported frequency over the preceding 5 years (1990-1994) of Papanicolaou smears and general physical examinations. Results. Diethylstilbestrol-exposed women exceeded the recommended frequency of Papanicolaou smear screenings [adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 2.15, 95% CI (confidence interval) = 1.60-2.88] compared to the unexposed. This association held among those without a history of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (aOR = 1.88, 95% CI = 1.35-2.62). Diethylstilbestrol-exposed women exceeded annual recommendations for physical examinations (aOR = 2.27, 95% CI = 1.16-4.43) among women without a history of chronic disease when compared to unexposed women. Conclusions. Most DES-exposed women are receiving cervical cancer screening at least at recommended intervals, but one third of the women are not receiving annual Papanicolaou smear examinations

Conversational Grammar- Feminine Grammar? A Sociopragmatic Corpus Study

One area in language and gender research that has so far received only little attention is the extent to which the sexes make use of what recent corpus research has termed “conversational grammar.” The author’s initial findings have suggested that the majority of features distinctive of conversational grammar may be used predominantly by female speakers. This article reports on a study designed to test the hypothesis that conversational grammar is “feminine grammar” in the sense that women’s conversational language is more adapted to the conversational situation than men’s. Based on data from the conversational subcorpus of the British National Corpus and following the situational framework for the description of conversational features elaborated in the author’s previous research, features distinctive of conversational grammar are grouped into five functional categories and their normed frequencies compared across the sexes. The functional categories distinguish features that can be seen as adaptations to constraints set by the situational factors of (1) Shared Context, (2) Co-Construction, (3) Real-Time Processing, (4) Discourse Management, and (5) Relation Management. The study’s results, described in detail in relation to the biological category of speaker sex and cultural notions of gender, suggest that the feminine grammar hypothesis is valid

TOROS optical follow-up of the advanced LIGO–VIRGO O2 second observational campaign

We present themethods and results of the optical follow-up, conducted by the Transient Optical Robotic Observatory of the South Collaboration, of gravitational wave events detected during the Advanced LIGO–Virgo second observing run (2016 November–2017 August). Given the limited field of view (∼100 arcmin) of our observational instrumentation, we targeted galaxies within the area of high localization probability that were observable from our sites. We analysed the observations using difference imaging, followed by a random forest algorithm to discriminate between real and spurious transients. Our observations were conducted using telescopes at Estacion Astrofısica de Bosque Alegre, Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, the Dr. Cristina V. Torres Memorial Astronomical Observatory, and an observing station in Salta, Argentina

Obstacle tower : a generalization challenge in vision, control, and planning

The rapid pace of recent research in AI has been driven in part by the presence of fast and challenging simulation environments. These environments often take the form of games; with tasks ranging from simple board games, to competitive video games. We propose a new benchmark - Obstacle Tower: a high fidelity, 3D, 3rd person, procedurally generated environment. An agent playing Obstacle Tower must learn to solve both low-level control and high-level planning problems in tandem while learning from pixels and a sparse reward signal. Unlike other benchmarks such as the Arcade Learning Environment, evaluation of agent performance in Obstacle Tower is based on an agent's ability to perform well on unseen instances of the environment. In this paper we outline the environment and provide a set of baseline results produced by current state-of-the-art Deep RL methods as well as human players. These algorithms fail to produce agents capable of performing near human level.peer-reviewe

Rare Coding Variants in RCN3 Are Associated with Blood Pressure

BACKGROUND: While large genome-wide association studies have identified nearly one thousand loci associated with variation in blood pressure, rare variant identification is still a challenge. In family-based cohorts, genome-wide linkage scans have been successful in identifying rare genetic variants for blood pressure. This study aims to identify low frequency and rare genetic variants within previously reported linkage regions on chromosomes 1 and 19 in African American families from the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) program. Genetic association analyses weighted by linkage evidence were completed with whole genome sequencing data within and across TOPMed ancestral groups consisting of 60,388 individuals of European, African, East Asian, Hispanic, and Samoan ancestries. RESULTS: Associations of low frequency and rare variants in RCN3 and multiple other genes were observed for blood pressure traits in TOPMed samples. The association of low frequency and rare coding variants in RCN3 was further replicated in UK Biobank samples (N = 403,522), and reached genome-wide significance for diastolic blood pressure (p = 2.01 × 10− 7). CONCLUSIONS: Low frequency and rare variants in RCN3 contributes blood pressure variation. This study demonstrates that focusing association analyses in linkage regions greatly reduces multiple-testing burden and improves power to identify novel rare variants associated with blood pressure traits

Trends in misdemeanor arrest rates in New York.

John Jay College of Criminal Justice is pleased to publish this report documenting patterns in misdemeanor arrests in New York City (and, to a lesser extent, in New York State) over the past three decades. This report presents trends in the types of misdemeanors for which New Yorkers have been arrested; analyzes these data by the age, gender, and race/ethnicity of those receiving this enforcement attention; examines shifts in misdemeanor arrest activity by police precincts; displays changes in the issuance of Desk Appearance Tickets over time; and traces these misdemeanor arrests to the initial court disposition at arraignment. (from Introduction, p. 8) Report downloaded from: https://datacollaborativeforjustice.org/publication/trends-in-misdemeanor-arrests-in-new-york Table of Contents Acknowledgements -- List of figures -- Introduction -- Goals of the Project -- About the data presented in this publication -- Overall trends : felony arrests and misdemeanor arrests -- Overall trends by gender -- Overall trends by age -- Overall trends by race/ethnicity -- Overall trends by charge types --Overall trends by disposition types -- Ovrall trends by sentence types -- A closer look at New York City -- Desk appearance tickets -- Arrests by precincts from 1993 to 2013 -- Conclusion -- Appendix A: Charge codes, frequency, and categories from 1980 to 2013 for New York State -- Appendix B: Rates of misdemeanor arrests for females in New York City by age -- Appendix C: Number of misdemeanor arrests in New York City by precincts from 1993 to 2003. Link to the report in the John Jay College Library Catalog

Measurement of electrons from semileptonic heavy-flavor hadron decays in pp collisions at s =2.76TeV

The pT-differential production cross section of electrons from semileptonic decays of heavy-flavor hadrons has been measured at mid-rapidity in proton-proton collisions at √s = 2.76 TeV in the trans- verse momentum range 0.5 < pT < 12 GeV/c with the ALICE detector at the LHC. The analysis was performed using minimum bias events and events triggered by the electromagnetic calorime- ter. Predictions from perturbative QCD calculations agree with the data within the theoretical and experimental uncertainties