Opening the Eyes of Parents of Visually Handicapped Children: Putting Public Law to Work for You

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Discovery of Western European R1b1a2 Y Chromosome Variants in 1000 Genomes Project Data: An Online Community Approach

The authors have used an online community approach, and tools that were readily available via the Internet, to discover genealogically and therefore phylogenetically relevant Y-chromosome polymorphisms within core haplogroup R1b1a2-L11/S127 (rs9786076). Presented here is the analysis of 135 unrelated L11 derived samples from the 1000 Genomes Project. We were able to discover new variants and build a much more complex phylogenetic relationship for L11 sub-clades. Many of the variants were further validated using PCR amplification and Sanger sequencing. The identification of these new variants will help further the understanding of population history including patrilineal migrations in Western and Central Europe where R1b1a2 is the most frequent haplogroup. The fine-grained phylogenetic tree we present here will also help to refine historical genetic dating studies. Our findings demonstrate the power of citizen science for analysis of whole genome sequence data

"I am becoming more and more like my eldest brother!": the relationship between older siblings, adolescent gambling severity, and the attenuating role of parents in a large-scale nationally representative survey study

The present study examined the association between having older siblings who gamble and adolescent at-risk/problem gambling and how parents (i.e., parental knowledge of their whereabouts) and peers might moderate such effects. Data were drawn from the ESPAD®Italia2012 survey (European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs) comprising a nationally representative Italian sample of adolescents. The analysis was carried out on a subsample of 10,063 Italian students aged 15–19 years (average age = 17.10; 55 % girls) who had at least one older sibling and who had gambled at some point in their lives. Respondents’ problem gambling severity, older gambler sibling, gambler peers, parental knowledge, and socio-demographic characteristics were individually assessed. Multinomial logistic regression analyses including two- and three-way interactions were conducted. The odds of being an at-risk/problem gambler were higher among high school students with older siblings that gambled and those with peers who gambled. Higher parental knowledge (of who the adolescent was with and where they were in their leisure time) was associated with lower rates of at-risk/problem gambling. There was also an interaction between gamblers with older siblings and parental knowledge. The combination of having siblings who gambled and a greater level of parental knowledge was associated with lower levels of problem gambling. The present study confirmed the occurrence of social risk processes (older siblings and peers who gambled) and demonstrated that gambling among older siblings and peers represents an important contextual factor for increased at-risk/problem gambling. However, parental knowledge appears to be sufficient to counterbalance the influence of older siblings

Acute effects of high-intensity exercise on brain mechanical properties and cognitive function

Previous studies have shown that engagement in even a single session of exercise can improve cognitive performance in the short term. However, the underlying physiological mechanisms contributing to this effect are still being studied. Recently, with improvements to advanced quantitative neuroimaging techniques, brain tissue mechanical properties can be sensitively and noninvasively measured with magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) and regional brain mechanical properties have been shown to reflect individual cognitive performance. Here we assess brain mechanical properties before and immediately after engagement in a high-intensity interval training (HIIT) regimen, as well as one-hour post-exercise. We find that immediately after exercise, subjects in the HIIT group had an average global brain stiffness decrease of 4.2% (p < 0.001), and an average brain damping ratio increase of 3.1% (p = 0.002). In contrast, control participants who did not engage in exercise showed no significant change over time in either stiffness or damping ratio. Changes in brain mechanical properties with exercise appeared to be regionally dependent, with the hippocampus decreasing in stiffness by 10.4%. We also found that one-hour after exercise, brain mechanical properties returned to initial baseline values. The magnitude of changes to brain mechanical properties also correlated with improvements in reaction time on executive control tasks (Eriksen Flanker and Stroop) with exercise. Understanding the neural changes that arise in response to exercise may inform potential mechanisms behind improvements to cognitive performance with acute exercise

Subsidence and exhumation of the Mesozoic Qiangtang Basin: Implications for the growth of the Tibetan plateau

The subsidence and exhumation histories of the Qiangtang Basin and their contributions to the early evolution of the Tibetan plateau are vigorously debated. This paper reconstructs the subsidence history of the Mesozoic Qiangtang Basin with eleven selected composite stratigraphic sections and constrains the first stage of cooling using apatite fission track data. Facies analysis, biostratigraphy, paleo‐environment interpretation, and paleo‐water depth estimation are integrated to create eleven composite sections through the basin. Backstripped subsidence calculations combined with previous work on sediment provenance and timing of deformation, show that the evolution of the Mesozoic Qiangtang Basin can be divided into two stages. From Late Triassic to Early Jurassic times, the North Qiangtang was a retro‐foreland basin. In contrast, the South Qiangtang was a collisional pro‐foreland basin. During Middle Jurassic to Early Cretaceous times, the North Qiangtang is interpreted as a hinterland basin between the Jinsha orogen and the Central Uplift; the South Qiangtang was controlled by subduction of Meso‐Tethyan Ocean lithosphere and associated dynamic topography combined with loading from the Central Uplift. Detrital apatite fission track ages from Mesozoic sandstones concentrate in late Early to Late Cretaceous (120.9‐84.1 Ma) and Paleogene‐Eocene (65.4‐40.1 Ma). Thermal history modelling results record Early Cretaceous rapid cooling; the termination of subsidence and onset of exhumation of the Mesozoic Qiangtang Basin suggest that the accumulation of crustal thickening in central Tibet probably initiated during Late Jurassic‐Early Cretaceous times (150‐130 Ma), involving underthrusting of both the Lhasa and Songpan‐Ganze terranes beneath the Qiangtang terrane, or the collision of Amdo terrane

Use of electrochemical sensors for measurement of air pollution: correcting interference response and validating measurements

The environments in which we live, work, and play are subject to enormous variability in air pollutant concentrations. To adequately characterize air quality (AQ), measurements must be fast (real time), scalable, and reliable (with known accuracy, precision, and stability over time). Lower-cost air-quality-sensor technologies offer new opportunities for fast and distributed measurements, but a persistent characterization gap remains when it comes to evaluating sensor performance under realistic environmental sampling conditions. This limits our ability to inform the public about pollution sources and inspire policy makers to address environmental justice issues related to air quality. In this paper, initial results obtained with a recently developed lower-cost air-quality-sensor system are reported. In this project, data were acquired with the ARISense integrated sensor package over a 4.5-month time interval during which the sensor system was co-located with a state-operated (Massachusetts, USA) air quality monitoring station equipped with reference instrumentation measuring the same pollutant species. This paper focuses on validating electrochemical (EC) sensor measurements of CO, NO, NO2, and O3 at an urban neighborhood site with pollutant concentration ranges (parts per billion by volume, ppb; 5 min averages, ±1σ): [CO]  =  231 ± 116 ppb (spanning 84–1706 ppb), [NO]  =  6.1 ± 11.5 ppb (spanning 0–209 ppb), [NO2]  =  11.7 ± 8.3 ppb (spanning 0–71 ppb), and [O3]  =  23.2 ± 12.5 ppb (spanning 0–99 ppb). Through the use of high-dimensional model representation (HDMR), we show that interference effects derived from the variable ambient gas concentration mix and changing environmental conditions over three seasons (sensor flow-cell temperature  =  23.4 ± 8.5 °C, spanning 4.1 to 45.2 °C; and relative humidity  =  50.1 ± 15.3 %, spanning 9.8–79.9 %) can be effectively modeled for the Alphasense CO-B4, NO-B4, NO2-B43F, and Ox-B421 sensors, yielding (5 min average) root mean square errors (RMSE) of 39.2, 4.52, 4.56, and 9.71 ppb, respectively. Our results substantiate the potential for distributed air pollution measurements that could be enabled with these sensors

Cryogenic optical beam steering for superconducting device calibration

We have developed a calibration system based on a micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) mirror that is capable of delivering an optical beam over a wavelength range of 180 -- 2000 nm (0.62 -- 6.89 eV) in a sub-Kelvin environment. This portable, integrated system can steer the beam over a $\sim$3 cm $\times$ 3 cm area on the surface of any sensor with a precision of $\sim$100 $\mu$m, enabling characterization of device response as a function of position. This fills a critical need in the landscape of calibration tools for sub-Kelvin devices, including those used for dark matter detection and quantum computing. These communities have a shared goal of understanding the impact of ionizing radiation on device performance, which can be pursued with our system. This paper describes the design of the first-generation calibration system and the results from successfully testing its performance at room temperature and 20 mK.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures, submitted to SPI

First Measurement of Correlated Charge Noise in Superconducting Qubits at an Underground Facility

We measure space- and time-correlated charge jumps on a four-qubit device, operating 107 meters below the Earth's surface in a low-radiation, cryogenic facility designed for the characterization of low-threshold particle detectors. The rock overburden of this facility reduces the cosmic ray muon flux by over 99% compared to laboratories at sea level. Combined with 4$\pi$ coverage of a movable lead shield, this facility enables quantifiable control over the flux of ionizing radiation on the qubit device. Long-time-series charge tomography measurements on these weakly charge-sensitive qubits capture discontinuous jumps in the induced charge on the qubit islands, corresponding to the interaction of ionizing radiation with the qubit substrate. The rate of these charge jumps scales with the flux of ionizing radiation on the qubit package, as characterized by a series of independent measurements on another energy-resolving detector operating simultaneously in the same cryostat with the qubits. Using lead shielding, we achieve a minimum charge jump rate of 0.19$^{+0.04}_{-0.03}$ mHz, almost an order of magnitude lower than that measured in surface tests, but a factor of roughly eight higher than expected based on reduction of ambient gammas alone. We operate four qubits for over 22 consecutive hours with zero correlated charge jumps at length scales above three millimeters.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, 4 tables. Minor update to the measured gamma flux ratio (Page 4 and Supplemental Section F) in the LMO detector, from 23 to 20. Typos corrected, references added. Extraneous .tex files have been removed that were causing errors with the "HTML (experimental)" arxiv featur