The quiescent progenitors of four Type II-P/L supernovae

We present Large Binocular Telescope difference imaging data for the final years of four Type II-P/L supernovae progenitors. For all four, we find no significant evidence for stochastic or steady variability in the U, B, V, or R-bands. Our limits constrain variability to no more than roughly 5-10% of the expected R-band luminosities of the progenitors. These limits are comparable to the observed variability of red supergiants in the Magellanic Clouds. Based on these four events, the probability of a Type II-P/L progenitor having an extended outburst after Oxygen ignition is <37% at 90% confidence. Our observations cannot exclude short outbursts in which the progenitor returns to within ~10% of its quiescent flux on the time scale of months with no dust formation.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, 1 table. Accepted to MNRA

The Right to Education: A Reality or Pipe Dream for Incarcerated Young Prisoners in Malawi

Young people are often incarcerated in penitentiaries worldwide. Incarceration is not expected to hinder their access to quality education. This article, guided by Marxist theory, examines the practicality of educational rights at five young prisoners’ facilities in Malawi. The study used a descriptive phenomenological qualitative research design to engage the voices of 52 incarcerated and released young people in semi-structured interviews to ascertain if prisoners’ quality education was a reality or mere pipedream at young prisoners’ facilities. The findings show a disparity between correctional education policies and the actual reality. Due to the inadequacy of resources and the negativity of the prison environment, the facilities failed to provide quality, appealing and motivating education to the already educationally disenchanted incarcerated young people, resulting in low enrolment rates. It was, therefore, concluded that education was still a pipe dream at young prisoners’ centres in Malawi

Characteristics of Ordinary Portland Cement Paste Containing Rice Husk Ash and Conplast

An experimental investigation on rice husk ash (RHA) and Conplast SP 430 (CP-admixture) was carried out to evaluate their effects on the paste characteristics (soundness, consistency, initial and final setting times). The cement content used was 300g and the brand was ‘Ashaka’ Portland cement conforming to BS EN 12 1973. Various combinations of the mixtures OPC-RHA-CP-admixture were used to establish performance characteristics of the pastes. Statistical characteristics, and linear regression models (no-transformation, λ = 0.5, and Box-Cox transformation) were developed on the experimental data for decisions on their performances.

How Effective İs The Nigerian Senior School Agricultural Science Curriculum? A Survey Of Evidence From Content Development To Product

Agricultural science, a vocational subject in Nigerian senior schools is yet to meet its objectives due to various challenges. Consequently, the performance of students in the subject is relatively poor. This study examined the effectiveness of the Nigerian senior school agricultural science curriculum. 255 teachers and 255 students were engaged for the study. Teachers’ Curriculum Evaluation Instrument (TCEI) and Agricultural Achievement Test (AAT) were used for data collection. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics. Findings from the study show that 86% of the teachers perceived the agricultural science curriculum content were suitable for students’ performance, the instructional facilities for agricultural science teaching in schools are not adequately available and agricultural science curriculum implementation was confronted with several challenges. Student performance in agricultural science was poor as about 51% had credit pass in the administered test and 49% failed the test. Using the CIPP frame work, this study concluded that the context (content) is suitable, input (instructional facilities) is deficient, process (implementation) is highly deficient and consequently, the (product) student performance in agricultural science is poor. It is recommended that among others that concerned stakeholders should adequately provide instructional facilities, ensure their adequacy and also supervise their judicious utilization

An Assessment of Relationship between the Consumption Pattern of Carbonated Soft Drinks in Ilorin Emirate

Increased awareness about the health and other hazards of regular and uncontrolled consumption of carbonated drinks has yielded little or no result, in other words there has not been a significant change in production and sales of carbonated plants in the Ilorin Emirate. Secondary data collected from these plants located in the emirate revealed that the first canonical variates U1 V1 is a girth measurement whereas the second variates U2, V2 can be described as a shape measurement approximately proportional to the difference of the standardized sales and quantity produced at each season. The canonical correlations reveals an essentially one dimensional and well specified by single correlation value of 0.94. Keywords: Canonical, Carbonated, Girth, measuremen

A Multiparameter Degeneracy in Microlensing Events with Extreme Finite Source Effects

For microlenses with sufficiently low mass, the angular radius of the source star can be much larger than the angular Einstein ring radius of the lens. For such extreme finite source effect (EFSE) events, finite source effects dominate throughout the duration of the event. Here, we demonstrate and explore a continuous degeneracy between multiple parameters of such EFSE events. The first component in the degeneracy arises from the fact that the directly observable peak change of the flux depends on both the ratio of the angular source radius to the angular Einstein ring radius and the fraction of the baseline flux that is attributable to the lensed source star. The second component arises because the directly observable duration of the event depends on both the impact parameter of the event and the relative lens-source proper motion. These two pairwise degeneracies become coupled when the detailed morphology of the light curve is considered, especially when including a limb-darkening profile of the source star. We derive these degeneracies mathematically through analytic approximations and investigate them further numerically with no approximations. We explore the likely physical situations in which these mathematical degeneracies may be realized and potentially broken. As more and more low-mass lensing events (with ever decreasing Einstein ring radii) are detected with improving precision and increasing cadence from microlensing surveys, one can expect that more of these EFSE events will be discovered. In particular, the detection of EFSE microlensing events could increase dramatically with the Roman Space Telescope Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey

Revealing Short-period Exoplanets and Brown Dwarfs in the Galactic Bulge using the Microlensing Xallarap Effect with the \textit{Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope}

The \textit{Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope} (\textit{ Roman}) will provide an enormous number of microlensing light curves with much better photometric precisions than ongoing ground-based observations. Such light curves will enable us to observe high-order microlensing effects which have been previously difficult to detect. In this paper, we investigate \textit{Roman}'s potential to detect and characterize short-period planets and brown dwarfs (BDs) in source systems using the orbital motion of source stars, the so-called xallarap effect. We analytically estimate the measurement uncertainties of xallarap parameters using the Fisher matrix analysis. We show that the \textit{Roman} Galactic Exoplanet Survey (RGES) can detect warm Jupiters with masses down to 0.5 $M_{\rm Jup}$ and orbital period of 30 days via the xallarap effect. Assuming a planetary frequency function from \citet{Cumming+2008}, we find \textit{Roman} will detect $\sim10$ hot and warm Jupiters and $\sim30$ close-in BDs around microlensed source stars during the microlensing survey. These detections are likely to be accompanied by the measurements of the companion's masses and orbital elements, which will aid in the study of the physical properties for close-in planet and BD populations in the Galactic bulge.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journa

Mentalizing under Uncertainty: Dissociated Neural Responses to Ambiguous and Unambiguous Mental State Inferences

The ability to read the minds of others (i.e., to mentalize) requires that perceivers understand a wide range of different kinds of mental states, including not only others’ beliefs and knowledge but also their feelings, desires, and preferences. Moreover, although such inferences may occasionally rely on observable features of a situation, perceivers more typically mentalize under conditions of “uncertainty,” in which they must generate plausible hypotheses about a target's mental state from ambiguous or otherwise underspecified information. Here, we use functional neuroimaging to dissociate the neural bases of these 2 distinct social–cognitive challenges: 1) mentalizing about different types of mental states (beliefs vs. preferences) and 2) mentalizing under conditions of varying ambiguity. Although these 2 aspects of mentalizing have typically been confounded in earlier research, we observed a double dissociation between the brain regions sensitive to type of mental state and ambiguity. Whereas ventral and dorsal aspects of medial prefrontal cortex responded more during ambiguous than unambiguous inferences regardless of the type of mental state, the right temporoparietal junction was sensitive to the distinction between beliefs and preferences irrespective of certainty. These results underscore the emerging consensus that, rather than comprising a single mental operation, social cognition makes flexible use of different processes as a function of the particular demands of the social context