"Refsdal" meets Popper: comparing predictions of the re-appearance of the multiply imaged supernova behind MACSJ1149.5+2223

arXiv:1510.05750v2.-- et al.Supernova "Refsdal", multiply imaged by cluster MACS1149.5+2223, represents a rare opportunity to make a true blind test of model predictions in extragalactic astronomy, on a timescale that is short compared to a human lifetime. In order to take advantage of this event, we produced seven gravitational lens models with five independent methods, based on Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Hubble Frontier Field images, along with extensive spectroscopic follow-up observations by HST, the Very Large and the Keck Telescopes. We compare the model predictions and show that they agree reasonably well with the measured time delays and magnification ratios between the known images, even though these quantities were not used as input. This agreement is encouraging, considering that the models only provide statistical uncertainties, and do not include additional sources of uncertainties such as structure along the line of sight, cosmology, and the mass sheet degeneracy. We then present the model predictions for the other appearances of supernova >Refsdal.> A future image will reach its peak in the first half of 2016, while another image appeared between 1994 and 2004. The past image would have been too faint to be detected in existing archival images. The future image should be approximately one-third as bright as the brightest known image (i.e., mag at peak and mag six months before peak), and thus detectable in single-orbit HST images. We will find out soon whether our predictions are correct.This work is supported by NASA through grants HST-GO-13459 and HST-GO-14041 from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. T.T. is supported by the Packard Foundation in the form of a Packard Research Fellowship. J.M.D. is grateful for support from the consolider project CSD2010-00064 and AYA2012-39475-C02-01 funded by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad. A.V.F.'s research is supported by the Christopher R. Redlich Fund, the TABASGO Foundation, and NSF grant AST-1211916. C.G. acknowledges support by the VILLUM FONDEN Young Investigator Programme through grant no. 10123. Support for A.Z. was provided by NASA through Hubble Fellowship grant #HST-HF2-51334.001-A awarded by STScI. The work of M.O. was supported in part by World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI Initiative), MEXT, Japan, and Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the JSPS (26800093). Financial support for this work was provided to S.A.R. by NASA through grants HST-HF-51312 and HST-GO-13386 from STScI. A.H. is supported by NASA Head-quarters under the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship Program, grant ASTRO14F-0007. R.J.F. gratefully acknowledges support from NSF grant AST-1518052, NASA grants HST-GO-14041 and HST-GO-13386, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. This work was supported in part by a NASA Keck PI Data Award (PID 47/2014B N125D, PI Jha).Peer Reviewe

Rotating Strings in Confining AdS/CFT Backgrounds

We study semiclassical rotating strings in AdS/CFT backgrounds that exhibit both confinement and finite-size effects. The energy versus spin dispersion relation for short strings is the expected Regge trajectory behaviour, with the same string tension as is measured by the Wilson loop. Long strings probe the interplay between confinement and finite-size effects. In particular, the dispersion relation for long strings shows a characteristic dependence on the string tension and the finite-size scale.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures. v2: minor changes, refs. adde

Monetizing environmental footprints: index development and application to a solar-powered chemicals self-supplied desalination plant

The assessment of the environmental greenness in the process industry has been quantified by means of the development of an integrated index, i.e., Monetized Footprint Index (MFI), based on the compilation and the integration of land, water and carbon footprint indicators. The MFI has been applied to assess the case study of a seawater reverse osmosis desalination with an integrated electrodialysis with bipolar membranes brine treatment. The MFI enables the evaluation of environmental burdens related to the chosen functional unit based on a weighting procedure, which integers land, water, and CO2 prices. It is neither a tool for the calculation of the production cost nor a sustainability analysis tool as it does not include social or economic indicators. Comparison between selected scenarios, based on the different sources of the requested electricity, grid mix (Spain and Israel, as examples), and photovoltaic solar energy (under a fixed solar irradiation), has been carried out. Maximum values of 0.30 €·m–3 and minimum values of 0.11 €·m–3 for the different scenarios have been obtained in the calculation of the MFI. Moreover, uncertainties in land, water and CO2 prices have been analyzed under a Monte Carlo simulation. This study concludes that MFI, being based on well-known environmental footprint indicators, can simplify and support the decision-making process.Support from MICINN under project CTM2014-57833-R is acknowledged. M.H.-G. thanks the MICINN for FPI grant BES-2015-07350 and the Erasmus+ program for the Student Mobility KA107 grant

Estimating the economic consequences of an increased medication adherence due to a potential improvement in the inhaler technique with Spiromax compared with Turbuhaler in patients with moderate-to-severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in Spain

The objective of this study was to estimate the economic impact of the introduction of DuoResp® Spiromax®, budesonide/formoterol fixed-dose combination (FDC), focusing on an increase in medication adherence due to an enhancement of the inhalation technique for the treatment of COPD patients in Spain and 5 regions including Andalusia, Catalonia, Galicia, Madrid, and Valencia. ..

A budget impact analysis of Spiromax compared with Turbuhaler for the treatment of moderate to severe asthma: a potential improvement in the inhalation technique to strengthen medication adherence could represent savings for the Spanish Healthcare System and five Spanish regions

To assess the economic impact of the introduction of DuoResp(®) Spiromax(®) by focusing on a potential improvement in the inhalation technique to strengthen medication adherence for the treatment of moderate to severe asthmatics in Spain and five Spanish regions including Andalusia, Catalonia, Galicia, Madrid, and Valencia. ..

Electromagnetic Polarization: A New Approach on the Linear Component Method

In this chapter it is elucidated how the analytical solution was obtained to obtain the electromagnetic polarization profile of a completely polarized wave in the region of distant fields. The analytical solution was obtained from the interpretation of the physical phenomenon associated with the method of the linear component, which was adapted for the use of discrete and miniaturized elements, reducing the physical space for the measurement circuit and the expenses associated to the delay circuit. From the analytical solution it is possible to observe that with only one phase measurement in the delay circuit it is possible to obtain the polarization profile of the wave, with the axial ratio and phase, respectively

Duration of antibiotic treatment for Gram-negative bacteremia - Systematic review and individual participant data (IPD) meta-analysis

Background: We aim to compare the effect of short versus long treatment duration in Gram-negative bacteremia on all-cause mortality in pre-specified sub-groups. Methods: Individual participant data meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing short (≤7) versus longer (>7 days) antibiotic treatment for Gram-negative bacteremia. Participants were adults (≥18 years), with Gram-negative bacteremia during hospital stay. We searched PubMed, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and Web of Science to identify trials conducted up to May 2022. Primary outcome was 90-day all-cause mortality. Secondary outcomes were 30-day mortality, relapse of bacteremia, length of hospital stay, readmission, local or distant infection complications, adverse events, and resistance emergence.Outcomes were assessed in pre-specified subgroups: women vs men; non-urinary vs urinary source; presence vs absence of hypotension on initial presentation; immunocompromised patients versus non-immunocompromised patients, and age (above/below 65). Fixed-effect meta-analysis model was used to estimate pooled odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI). All three trials had low risk of bias for allocation generation and concealment. Findings: Three RCTs (1186 patients) were included; 1121 with enterobacterales bacteremia. No significant difference in mortality was demonstrated between 7- and 14-days treatment (90-day mortality: OR 1.08, 95% CI 0.73-1.58; 30-day mortality: 1.08, 0.62-1.91). Relapse (1.00, 0.50-1.97); length of hospital stay (P = 0.78); readmission (0.96, 0.80-1.22); and infection complications (local: 1.62 0.76-3.47; distant: 2.00, 0.18-22.08), were without significant difference, and so were adverse events or resistance emergence.No significant difference in clinical outcomes between 7 and 14 days of antibiotics was demonstrated in the subgroups of gender, age, hemodynamic status, immune status, and source of infection. Interpretation: For patients hemodynamically stable and afebrile at 48 h prior to discontinuation, seven days of antibiotic therapy for enterobacterales bacteremia result in similar outcomes as 14 days, in terms of mortality, relapse, length of hospital stay, complications of infection, resistance emergence, and adverse events. These results apply for any adult age group, gender, source of infection, immune status, and hemodynamic status on presentation. Funding: There was no funding source for this study

Orbiting strings in AdS black holes and N=4 SYM at finite temperature

Following Gubser, Klebanov and Polyakov [hep-th/0204051], we study strings in AdS black hole backgrounds. With respect to the pure AdS case, rotating strings are replaced by orbiting strings. We interpret these orbiting strings as CFT states of large spin similar to glueballs propagating through a gluon plasma. The energy and the spin of the orbiting string configurations are associated with the energy and the spin of states in the dual finite temperature N=4 SYM theory. We analyse in particular the limiting cases of short and long strings. Moreover, we perform a thermodynamic study of the angular momentum transfer from the glueball to the plasma by considering string orbits around rotating AdS black holes. We find that standard expectations, such as the complete thermal dissociation of the glueball, are borne out after subtle properties of rotating AdS black holes are taken into account.Comment: 17 pages, 1 figure. v2,3 minor refinements. JHEP versio

Early Results from GLASS-JWST. VIII. An Extremely Magnified Blue Supergiant Star at Redshift 2.65 in the A2744 Cluster Field

We report the discovery of an extremely magnified star at redshift z = 2.65 in the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) NIRISS pre-imaging of the A2744 galaxy-cluster field. The star's background host galaxy lies on a fold caustic of the foreground lens, and the cluster creates a pair of images of the region close to the lensed star. We identified the bright transient in one of the merging images at a distance of similar to 0.'' 15 from the critical curve by subtracting the JWST F115W and F150W imaging from coadditions of archival Hubble Space Telescope (HST) F105W and F125W images and F140W and F160W images, respectively. Since the time delay between the two images should be only hours, the transient must be the microlensing event of an individual star, as opposed to a luminous stellar explosion that would persist for days to months. Analysis of individual exposures suggests that the star's magnification is not changing rapidly during the observations. From photometry of the point source through the F115W, F150W, and F200W filters, we identify a strong Balmer break, and modeling allows us to constrain the star's temperature to be approximately 7000-12,000 K.This work is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. The data were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-03127 for JWST. These observations are associated with program JWST-ERS-1324. The specific observations analyzed can be accessed via 10.17909/y6dh-6g16. We acknowledge financial support from NASA through grant JWST-ERS-1324. Archival images from the Hubble Space Telescope were also used. We would like to thank Dr. Pietro Bergamini, Prof. Piero Rosati, Prof. Claudio Grillo, Dr. Ana Acebron, and Dr. Eros Vanzella for their helpful comments on our paper and for sharing the predictions of their lens model.W.C. acknowledges support from NASA HST grant AR-15791. P.L.K. is supported by NSF grant AST-1908823 and NASA/Keck JPL RSA 1644110. R.A.W. acknowledges support from NASA JWST Interdisciplinary Scientist grants NAG5-12460, NNX14AN10G, and 80NSSC18K0200 from GSFC. J.M.D. acknowledges the support of project PGC2018-101814-B-100 (MCIU/AEI/MINECO/FEDER, UE) Ministerio de Ciencia, Investigacion y Universidades. This project was funded by the Agencia Estatal de Investigacion, Unidad de Excelencia Maria de Maeztu, ref. MDM-2017-0765. A.K. is supported by scientist grants NAG5-12460, NNX14AN10G, and 80NSSC18K0200 from GSFC. A.Z. and A.K.M. acknowledge support by Grant No. 2020750 from the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF) and grant No. 2109066 from the United States National Science Foundation (NSF), and by the Ministry of Science & Technology, Israel. M.B. acknowledges support from the Slovenian national research agency ARRS through grant N1-0238

Reaching for the stars – JWST/NIRSpec spectroscopy of a lensed star candidate at z = 4.76

We present JWST/NIRSpec observations of a highly magnified star candidate at a photometric redshift of zphot ≃ 4.8, previously detected in JWST/NIRCam imaging of the strong lensing (SL) cluster MACS J0647+7015 (z = 0.591). The spectroscopic observation allows us to precisely measure the redshift of the host arc at zspec = 4.758 ± 0.004, and the star’s spectrum displays clear Lyman- and Balmer-breaks commensurate with this redshift. A fit to the spectrum suggests a B-type super-giant star of surface temperature  K with either a redder F-type companion (⁠ K) or significant dust attenuation (AV ≃ 0.82) along the line of sight. We also investigate the possibility that this object is a magnified young globular cluster rather than a single star. We show that the spectrum is in principle consistent with a star cluster, which could also accommodate the lack of flux variability between the two epochs. However, the lack of a counter image and the strong upper limit on the size of the object from lensing symmetry, r ≲ 0.5 pc, could indicate that this scenario is somewhat less likely – albeit not completely ruled out by the current data. The presented spectrum seen at a time when the Universe was only ∼1.2 Gyr old showcases the ability of JWST to study early stars through extreme lensing