The Facilitation of the Brady Plan: Emerging Markets Debt Trading From 1989 to 1993

This Article completes the analysis of the first decade of the modern emerging market\u27s operation by considering two further periods: (iv) Adolescence: March 1989 to October 1991; and (v) Young Adulthood: October 1991 to December 1993. The primary importance of the market in these periods, as will be discovered, lies in its promotion and facilitation of the Brady Plan

Osteoarthritis in Italy: Impact on Health-Related Quality of Life and Health Care Resources

OBJECTIVE: To determine how osteoarthritis (OA) severity correlates with self-reported outcomes relevant from the patient’s perspective in the Italian clinical setting.METHODS: Data were drawn from the 2017-18 Adelphi OA Disease Specific ProgrammeTM (DSP). Data were collected in the Italian clinical practice settings by primary care physicians, rheumatologists, orthopedists, and their patients with OA, during their regular office visits. Physicians completed information about OA-related visits to healthcare professionals (HCPs), tests/scans conducted, emergency room (ER) visits, surgeries, and OA-related treatment. Physicians also rated patients’ functioning on a 0 to 10 scale (0 = fully functional; 10 = completely impaired). Outcomes included Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) score, functional limitations, treatment needs, EuroQoL-5 Dimension (EQ-5D) visual analogue scale (VAS), the work productivity and activity impairment. Descriptive statistics (numbers and percent for categorical variables; means with standard deviations [SD] for continuous variables) were used to evaluate the different variables as appropriate.RESULTS: The study population comprised 900 patients from Italy with knee (40.9%), back (38.7%), hip (27.9%), and/or shoulder (20.3%) OA. Mean age was 66.6 years with a prevalence of female (63%) patients. Patients had mild (26%), moderate (54%), severe (20%) disease severity. Patients with severe disease reported higher functional limitations, greater use of treatments, reduced quality of life, and impaired work productivity and activity. The burdens were higher among elderly and obese patients and in patients with highest pain severity score.CONCLUSIONS: The results from this cross-sectional study show the impact of OA disease severity on all dimensions of health-related quality of life (HRQoL), as well as in OA-related health care resource use

Understanding Accretion Outbursts in Massive Protostars through Maser Imaging

The bright maser emission produced by several molecular species at centimeter to long millimeter wavelengths provides an essential tool for understanding the process of massive star formation. Unimpeded by the high dust optical depths that affect shorter wavelength observations, the high brightness temperature of these emission lines offers a way to resolve accretion and outflow motions down to scales below $\sim$1 au in deeply embedded Galactic star-forming regions at kiloparsec distances. The recent identification of extraordinary accretion outbursts in two high-mass protostars, both of which were heralded by maser flares, has rapidly impacted the traditional view of massive protostellar evolution, leading to new hydrodynamic simulations that can produce such episodic outbursts. In order to understand how these massive protostars evolve in response to such events, larger, more sensitive ground-based centimeter wavelength interferometers are needed that can simultaneously image multiple maser species in the molecular gas along with faint continuum from the central ionized gas. Fiducial observations of a large sample of massive protostars will be essential in order to pinpoint the progenitors of future accretion outbursts, and to quantify the outburst-induced changes in their protostellar photospheres and outflow and accretion structures. Knowledge gained from these studies will have broader impact on the general topic of accretion onto massive objects.Comment: Science white paper submitted to the Astro2020 Decadal Survey. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1806.0698

The direct interconnection of the UK and Nordic power market – Impact on social welfare and renewable energy integration

United Kingdom and the Nordic power market have plans to interlink directly through a sub-sea power transmission line in The North Sea. Such power market couplings have complicated implications for the interconnected energy systems and for different agents in the common power market. We analyse this case by modelling the hourly operation of the Nordic-UK power market coupling, considering the local district heating (DH) system in each country as well. According to the results, after the operation of the new interconnection between Norway and the UK (North Sea Link), the overall socio-economic benefits (social welfare) in the region will likely improve by 220–230 million euro per year, without considering the cost of the interconnector itself. The UK-Nordic market coupling enhances the flexibility of the UK power system in wind integration, irrespective of the share of wind in the Nordic countries. However, increasing wind capacity in the UK will diminish the expected economic benefits of the link. The merit order effect of wind integration in the UK will reduce the price gap between UK and Norway, and so the congestion income of the link in many hours a year when the link is congested from Norway towards the UK

The evolving jet spectrum of the neutron star X-ray binary Aql X-1 in transitional states during its 2016 outburst

We report on quasi-simultaneous observations from radio to X-ray frequencies of the neutron star X-ray binary Aql X-1 over accretion state transitions during its 2016 outburst. All the observations show radio to millimetre spectra consistent with emission from a jet, with a spectral break from optically thick to optically thin synchrotron emission that decreases from ~100 GHz to <5.5 GHz during the transition from a hard to a soft accretion state. The 5.5 GHz radio flux density as the source reaches the soft state, 0.82 ± 0.03 mJy, is the highest recorded to date for this source. During the decay of the outburst, the jet spectral break is detected again at a frequency of ~30-100 GHz. The flux density is 0.75 ± 0.03 mJy at 97.5 GHz at this stage. This is the first time that a change in the frequency of the jet break of a neutron star X-ray binary has been measured, indicating that the processes at play in black holes are also present in neutron stars, supporting the idea that the internal properties of the jet rely most critically on the conditions of the accretion disc and corona around the compact object, rather than the black hole mass or spin or the neutron star surface or magnetic field

Sunglint correction in airborne hyperspectral images over inland waters

This study assessed sunglint effects in airborne high spatial and high spectral resolution images acquired by the SpecTIR sensor under different view-illumination geometries over the Brazilian Ibitinga reservoir (Case II waters). These effects were corrected using the Goodman et al. (2008) and the Kutser et al. (2009) methods, and a variant that used the continuum removal technique to calculate the oxygen absorption band depth. The performance of each method to removing sunglint effects was evaluated by a quantitative analysis of pre- and post-sunglint correction reflectance values (residual reflectance images). Furthermore, the analysis was supported by inspection of the reflectance differences along transects placed over homogeneous masses of waters or over specific portions of the scenes affected and non-affected by sunglint. Results showed that the algorithm of Goodman et al. (2008) produced better results than the other two methods, as it approached to zero the amplitude of the reflectance values between homogenous water masses free and contaminated by sunglint. The Kutser et al. (2009) method had also good performance, except for the most contaminated sunglint portions of the scenes. When the continuum removal technique was incorporated to the Kutser et al. (2009) method, results varied with the scene and were more sensitive to atmospheric correction artifacts and instrumental signal-to-noise ratio

Geological, multispectral, and meteorological imaging results from the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover in Jezero crater

Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z instrument provides high-resolution stereo and multispectral images with a unique combination of spatial resolution, spatial coverage, and wavelength coverage along the rover’s traverse in Jezero crater, Mars. Images reveal rocks consistent with an igneous (including volcanic and/or volcaniclastic) and/or impactite origin and limited aqueous alteration, including polygonally fractured rocks with weathered coatings; massive boulder-forming bedrock consisting of mafic silicates, ferric oxides, and/or iron-bearing alteration minerals; and coarsely layered outcrops dominated by olivine. Pyroxene dominates the iron-bearing mineralogy in the fine-grained regolith, while olivine dominates the coarse-grained regolith. Solar and atmospheric imaging observations show significant intra- and intersol variations in dust optical depth and water ice clouds, as well as unique examples of boundary layer vortex action from both natural (dust devil) and Ingenuity helicopter–induced dust lifting. High-resolution stereo imaging also provides geologic context for rover operations, other instrument observations, and sample selection, characterization, and confirmation

In vivo Observation of Tree Drought Response with Low-Field NMR and Neutron Imaging

Using a simple low-field NMR system, we monitored water content in a livingtree in a greenhouse over two months. By continuously running thesystem, we observed changes in tree water content on a scale of halfan hour. The data showed a diurnal change in water content consistentboth with previous NMR and biological observations. Neutron imaging experiments showthat our NMR signal is primarily due to water being rapidly transported through the plant, and not to other sources of hydrogen, such as water in cytoplasm, or water in cell walls. After accountingfor the role of temperature in the observed NMR signal, we demonstratea change in the diurnal signal behavior due to simulated drought conditionsfor the tree. These results illustrate the utility of our system toperform noninvasive measurements of tree water content outside of a temperature controlled environment

China, Great Power Responsibility and Arctic Security

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