Splotch: porting and optimizing for the Xeon Phi

With the increasing size and complexity of data produced by large scale numerical simulations, it is of primary importance for scientists to be able to exploit all available hardware in heterogenous High Performance Computing environments for increased throughput and efficiency. We focus on the porting and optimization of Splotch, a scalable visualization algorithm, to utilize the Xeon Phi, Intel's coprocessor based upon the new Many Integrated Core architecture. We discuss steps taken to offload data to the coprocessor and algorithmic modifications to aid faster processing on the many-core architecture and make use of the uniquely wide vector capabilities of the device, with accompanying performance results using multiple Xeon Phi. Finally performance is compared against results achieved with the GPU implementation of Splotch

Radio weak lensing shear measurement in the visibility domain - I. Methodology

The high sensitivity of the new generation of radio telescopes such as the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will allow cosmological weak lensing measurements at radio wavelengths that are competitive with optical surveys. We present an adaptation to radio data of lensfit, a method for galaxy shape measurement originally developed and used for optical weak lensing surveys. This likelihood method uses an analytical galaxy model and makes a Bayesian marginalization of the likelihood over uninteresting parameters. It has the feature of working directly in the visibility domain, which is the natural approach to adopt with radio interferometer data, avoiding systematics introduced by the imaging process. As a proof of concept, we provide results for visibility simulations of individual galaxies with flux density S ≥ 10 μJy at the phase centre of the proposed SKA1-MID baseline configuration, adopting 12 frequency channels in the band 950–1190 MHz. Weak lensing shear measurements from a population of galaxies with realistic flux and scalelength distributions are obtained after natural gridding of the raw visibilities. Shear measurements are expected to be affected by ‘noise bias’: we estimate the bias in the method as a function of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). We obtain additive and multiplicative bias values that are comparable to SKA1 requirements for SNR > 18 and SNR > 30, respectively. The multiplicative bias for SNR >10 is comparable to that found in ground-based optical surveys such as CFHTLenS, and we anticipate that similar shear measurement calibration strategies to those used for optical surveys may be used to good effect in the analysis of SKA radio interferometer data

COMMUNICATION BETWEEN PARENTS AND CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS WITH AUTISM IN UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM OF WORSHIP

Ibadah merupakan kewajiban bagi setiap pemeluk agama. Ibadah menjangkau semua lapisan dan kondisi masyarakat, termasuk anak autis. Masalahnya, anak autis terkenal sulit berkomunikasi, karena berbeda dengan teman normalnya. Untuk itu diperlukan perlakuan khusus dari orang tua agar komunikasi dapat berjalan dengan baik dan tercapai tujuan komunikasi dalam hal ini untuk beribadah. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui bagaimana orang tua berkomunikasi dengan anak autis dan hasil dari komunikasi ini dalam hal ini adalah menanamkan kesadaran akan kewajiban beribadah kepada anak autis. Metode penelitian ini adalah penelitian kualitatif deskriptif. Karakteristik subjek dalam penelitian ini adalah dua orang tua yang memiliki anak dengan gangguan autis ringan, beragama Islam dan juga kerabat peneliti. Teknik pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan wawancara sebagai metode utama dan observasi sebagai metode pendukung. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa komunikasi interpersonal dan instruksional merupakan komunikasi yang dominan dilakukan dengan menggunakan bahasa verbal. Pengajaran ibadah dilakukan dengan cara memberikan keteladanan kepada anak dengan kesabaran dan tindakan persuasif. Orang tua juga terkadang memaklumi anaknya jika keadaannya sangat tidak memungkinkan untuk diminta atau diajak beribadah

Narrative Review of the Complex Interaction between Pain and Trauma in Children: A Focus on Biological Memory, Preclinical Data, and Epigenetic Processes

The incidence and collective impact of early adverse experiences, trauma, and pain continue to increase. This underscores the urgent need for translational efforts between clinical and preclinical research to better understand the underlying mechanisms and develop effective therapeutic approaches. As our understanding of these issues improves from studies in children and adolescents, we can create more precise preclinical models and ultimately translate our findings back to clinical practice. A multidisciplinary approach is essential for addressing the complex and wide-ranging effects of these experiences on individuals and society. This narrative review aims to (1) define pain and trauma experiences in childhood and adolescents, (2) discuss the relationship between pain and trauma, (3) consider the role of biological memory, (4) decipher the relationship between pain and trauma using preclinical data, and (5) examine the role of the environment by introducing the importance of epigenetic processes. The ultimate scope is to better understand the wide-ranging effects of trauma, abuse, and chronic pain on children and adolescents, how they occur, and how to prevent or mitigate their effects and develop effective treatment strategies that address both the underlying causes and the associated physiological and psychological effects

LPS-Induced Garcia Effect and Its Pharmacological Regulation Mediated by Acetylsalicylic Acid: Behavioral and Transcriptional Evidence

Lymnaea stagnalis learns and remembers to avoid certain foods when their ingestion is followed by sickness. This rapid, taste-specific, and long-lasting aversion—known as the Garcia effect—can be formed by exposing snails to a novel taste and 1 h later injecting them with lipopolysaccharide (LPS). However, the exposure of snails to acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) for 1 h before the LPS injection, prevents both the LPS-induced sickness state and the Garcia effect. Here, we investigated novel aspects of this unique form of conditioned taste aversion and its pharmacological regulation. We first explored the transcriptional effects in the snails’ central nervous system induced by the injection with LPS (25 mg), the exposure to ASA (900 nM), as well as their combined presentation in untrained snails. Then, we investigated the behavioral and molecular mechanisms underlying the LPS-induced Garcia effect and its pharmacological regulation by ASA. LPS injection, both alone and during the Garcia effect procedure, upregulated the expression levels of immune- and stress-related targets. This upregulation was prevented by pre-exposure to ASA. While LPS alone did not affect the expression levels of neuroplasticity genes, its combination with the conditioning procedure resulted in their significant upregulation and memory formation for the Garcia effect

Emotional, Behavioral, and Physical Health Consequences in Caregivers of Children with Cancer: A Network Analysis Differentiation in Mothers’ and Fathers’ Reactivity

Background: Pediatric cancer presents mental and physical challenges for patients and their caregivers. However, parental distress has been understudied despite its negative impact on quality of life, disability, and somatic disorders. Parents of oncopediatric patients experience high levels of suffering with their resilience tested throughout their children’s illness. Identifying at-risk parents and offering specific treatments is crucial and urgent to prevent or alleviate negative outcomes. Methods: This study used statistical and network analyses to examine symptom patterns assessed by the Kellner Symptom Questionnaire in 16 fathers and 23 mothers at different time points: diagnosis, treatment, and discharge. Results: The results indicated significantly higher distress levels in parents of oncopediatric children compared to the control reference population. Gender-specific differences in symptom profiles were observed at each time point, and symptoms showed a gradual but non-significant decrease over time. Conclusions: The network analysis yielded valuable insights that, when applied in clinical practice, can guide the implementation of timely treatments to prevent and manage parental distress, thus addressing long-term, stress-related issues in primary caregivers of children diagnosed and treated for cancer

Radio galaxy shape measurement with Hamiltonian Monte Carlo in the visibility domain

Radio weak lensing, while a highly promising complementary probe to optical weak lensing, will require incredible precision in the measurement of galaxy shape parameters. In this paper, we extend the Bayesian Inference for Radio Observations model fitting approach to measure galaxy shapes directly from visibility data of radio continuum surveys, instead of from image data. We apply a Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) technique for sampling the posterior, which is more efficient than the standard Monte Carlo Markov Chain method when dealing with a large dimensional parameter space. Adopting the exponential profile for galaxy model fitting allows us to analytically calculate the likelihood gradient required by HMC, allowing a faster and more accurate sampling. The method is tested on SKA1-MID simulated observations at 1.4 GHz of a field containing up to 1000 star-forming galaxies. It is also applied to a simulated observation of the weak lensing precursor survey SuperCLASS. In both cases we obtain reliable measurements of the galaxies' ellipticity and size for all sources with signal-to-noise ratio ≥ 10, and we also find relationships between the convergence properties of the HMCtechnique and some source parameters. Direct shape measurement in the visibility domain achieves high accuracy at the expected source number densities of the current and next SKA precursor continuum surveys. The proposed method can be easily extended for the fitting of other galaxy and scientific parameters, as well as simultaneously marginalizing over systematic and instrumental effects

Radio galaxy detection in the visibility domain

We explore a new Bayesian method of detecting galaxies from radio interferometric data of the faint sky. Working in the Fourier domain, we fit a single, parameterized galaxy model to simulated visibility data of star-forming galaxies. The resulting multimodal posterior distribution is then sampled using a multimodal nested sampling algorithm such as MULTINEST. For each galaxy, we construct parameter estimates for the position, flux, scale length, and ellipticities from the posterior samples. We first test our approach on simulated SKA1-MID visibility data of up to 100 galaxies in the field of view (FOV), considering a typical weak lensing survey regime (SNR ≥ 10) where 98 per cent of the input galaxies are detected with no spurious source detections. We then explore the low-SNR regime, finding our approach reliable in galaxy detection and providing in particular high accuracy in positional estimates down to SNR ∼ 5. The presented method does not require transformation of visibilities to the image domain, and requires no prior knowledge of the number of galaxies in the FOV, thus could become a useful tool for constructing accurate radio galaxy catalogues in the future