Breaking up with the continuous exoplanet mass-radius relation

We use a carefully selected subsample of 1053 confirmed exoplanets from the NASA Exoplanet Archive to construct empirical power-law exoplanet mass-radius-temperature ($M$-$R$-$T$) relations. Using orthogonal distance regression to account for errors in both mass and radius, we allow the data to decide: 1) the number of distinct planetary regimes; 2) whether the boundaries of these regimes are best described by broken power laws joined at mass break points, or by discontinuous power laws motivated by changes in equations of state and temperature. We find strong support from the data for three distinct planetary $M$-$R$ regimes and for those regimes to be discontinuous. Our most successful model involves an $M$-$R$-$T$ relation in which ice/rock (rocky) and ice-giant (neptunian) planets are segregated by a pure-ice equation of state, whilst neptunes and gas giant (jovian) planets are segregated by a mass break at $M_{\rm br} = 115\pm19~M_{\oplus}$. The rocky planet regime is shown to follow $M \propto R^{0.34\pm0.01}$, whilst neptunes have $M\propto R^{0.55\pm0.02}$. Planets in both regimes are seen to extend to similar maximum masses. In the jovian regime, we find that $M \propto R^{0.00\pm0.01}T^{0.35\pm 0.02}$, where $T$ is the planet equilibrium temperature. This implies that, for jovian planets detected so far, equilibrium temperature alone provides a robust estimator of mass.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures. For submission to The Open Journal of Astrophysic

Glioblastoma in Pregnant Patient with Pathologic and Exogenous Sex Hormone Exposure and Family History of High-Grade Glioma

Please view the PDF to see the formatted meeting abstract.

Emotional Attention Bias and Pupillometry Biomarkers as Mediators of Caregiving Effectiveness on Child Behavior

Early life adversity experienced during childhood and adolescence negatively impacts development with increased risk of poor health outcomes and early mortality, making child maltreatment a significant public health concern. Adversity exposure broadly impacts developmental trajectories and alters physiological processes supporting emotional processing and regulation (e.g., changes or dysregulation of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis or autonomic nervous system function). Changes to neural physiology resulting from adversity exposure dynamically influence the way children engage with the environment and the way the environment continues to influence physiology and behavior throughout development. Largely, trauma-centered research has focused primarily on children and child outcomes without factoring in caregivers as a developmental context. Caregivers are important for the development of emotion regulation and emotion processing skills with decreased emotional literacy negatively impacting the relationship between early life stress and typical behavior. An eye-tracking study employing an emotion identification task was conducted on caregiver-child dyads to assess two potential biomarkers. Attention biases exhibited by children with prenatal substance exposure in response to emotionally valenced social stimuli were evaluated as a potential biomarker for emotional processing dysregulation. Results suggest physiologically characterized emotional literacy in the caregiver mediates the relationship between negative emotion processing and significant behavior problems in the child. Problematic behaviors are likely rooted in physiological shifts and changes to autonomic nervous system function may play a role in the relationship between adversity exposure and child behavior. Child pupillometry served as a biomarker of changes to locus coeruleus and norepinephrine reactivity in response to negatively valenced emotional stimuli. Results demonstrated caregiver emotional literacy partially mediated the relationship between child pupillometry and externalizing behaviors. Broadly, results demonstrate the important role of caregivers as mediators of child emotional processing and emotion regulation for children with significant life adversity

Podcast PD

Reports of police corruption are becoming more and more common in American media. In this podcast, we will discuss the distrust between the police and the community, some of the causes of the problem, and will address ways to resolve it. Throughout the duration of the podcast, we will provide the viewpoint of both sides and try to explain why they feel the way they do. To get the community’s input, our group decided to poll random students across campus to get a better understanding on their view of the police state in the US. For the police’s side, we decided to interview an officer for his input on why these controversial stories are being displayed all over the media, and asked what he thinks should be done to improve the relationship between the two parties. By including the thoughts of the opposing sides, as well as using data from some of the instances reported in the media, we hope that our listeners will gain a better understanding of the issue and proactively try to improve the relationship between the community and the police

Political participation: the vocational motivations of Labour party employees

Party employees are an under-researched group in political science. This article begins to address this oversight by examining Labour Party employees using new quantitative and qualitative data. It argues that party employment should be regarded as a form of political participation and as a consequence, existing models of political participation can be utilised to help explain why people work for political parties. After testing these propositions, the article concludes that existing models are indeed helpful in explaining the motivations for party employment

Infrared-Faint Radio Sources: A New Population of High-redshift Radio Galaxies

We present a sample of 1317 Infrared-Faint Radio Sources (IFRSs) that, for the first time, are reliably detected in the infrared, generated by cross-correlating the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) all-sky survey with major radio surveys. Our IFRSs are brighter in both radio and infrared than the first generation IFRSs that were undetected in the infrared by the Spitzer Space Telescope. We present the first spectroscopic redshifts of IFRSs, and find that all but one of the IFRSs with spectroscopy has z > 2. We also report the first X-ray counterparts of IFRSs, and present an analysis of radio spectra and polarization, and show that they include Gigahertz-Peaked Spectrum, Compact Steep Spectrum, and Ultra-Steep Spectrum sources. These results, together with their WISE infrared colours and radio morphologies, imply that our sample of IFRSs represents a population of radio-loud Active Galactic Nuclei at z > 2. We conclude that our sample consists of lower-redshift counterparts of the extreme first generation IFRSs, suggesting that the fainter IFRSs are at even higher redshift.Comment: 23 pages, 17 figures. Submitted to MNRA

Parabrachial opioidergic projections to preoptic hypothalamus mediate behavioral and physiological thermal defenses

Maintaining stable body temperature through environmental thermal stressors requires detection of temperature changes, relay of information, and coordination of physiological and behavioral responses. Studies have implicated areas in the preoptic area of the hypothalamus (POA) and the parabrachial nucleus (PBN) as nodes in the thermosensory neural circuitry and indicate that the opioid system within the POA is vital in regulating body temperature. In the present study we identify neurons projecting to the POA from PBN expressing the opioid peptides dynorphin and enkephalin. Using mouse models, we determine that warm-activated PBN neuronal populations overlap with both prodynorphin (Pdyn) and proenkephalin (Penk) expressing PBN populations. Here we report that in the PB