Magnetospheric convection electric field dynamics and stormtime particle energization: Case study of the magnetic storm of 4 May 1998

It is shown that narrow channels of high electric field are an effective mechanism for injecting plasma into the inner magnetosphere. Analytical expressions for the electric field cannot produce these channels of intense plasma flow, and thus, result in less entry and adiabatic energization of the plasma sheet into near-Earth space. For the ions, omission of these channels leads to an underprediction of the strength of the stormtime ring current and therefore, an underestimation of the geoeffectiveness of the storm event. For the electrons, omission of these channels leads to the inability to create a seed population of 10-100 keV electrons deep in the inner magnetosphere. These electrons can eventually be accelerated into MeV radiation belt particles. To examine this, the 1-7 May 1998 magnetic storm is studied with a plasma transport model by using three different convection electric field models: Volland-Stern, Weimer, and AMIE. It is found that the AMIE model can produce particle fluxes that are several orders of magnitude higher in the <i>L</i> = 2 – 4 range of the inner magnetosphere, even for a similar total cross-tail potential difference. <br><br><b>Key words.</b> Space plasma physics (charged particle motion and acceleration) – Magnetospheric physics (electric fields, storms and substorms

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

A comparison of practices during the confinement period among Chinese, Malay, and Indian mothers in Singapore

BACKGROUND: Confinement (restrictions placed on diet and practices during the month right after delivery) represents a key feature of Asian populations. Few studies, however, have focused specifically on ethnic differences in confinement practices. This study assesses the confinement practices of three ethnic groups in a multi-ethnic Asian population.METHODS: Participants were part of a prospective birth cohort study that recruited 1,247 pregnant women (57.2% Chinese, 25.5% Malay, and 17.3% Indian) during their first trimester. The 1,220 participants were followed up 3 weeks postpartum at home when questionnaires were administered to ascertain the frequency of adherence to the following confinement practices: showering; confinement-specific meals; going out with or without the baby; choice of caregiver assistance; and the use of massage therapy.RESULTS: Most participants reported that they followed confinement practices during the first 3 weeks postpartum (Chinese: 96.4%, Malay: 92.4%, Indian: 85.6%). Chinese and Indian mothers tended to eat more special confinement diets than Malay mothers (p < 0.001), and Chinese mothers showered less and were more likely to depend on confinement nannies during this period than mothers from the two other ethnic groups (p < 0.001 for all). Malay mothers tended to make greater use of massage therapy (p < 0.001), whilst Indian mothers tended to have their mothers or mothers-in-law as assistant caregivers (p < 0.001).CONCLUSION: Most Singapore mothers follow confinement practices, but the three Asian ethnic groups differed in specific confinement practices. Future studies should examine whether ethnic differences persist in later childrearing practices

Nutrients or nursing? Understanding how breast milk feeding affects child cognition

10.1007/s00394-019-01929-2European Journal of NutritionEJNUFGUSTO (Growing up towards Healthy Outcomes

Direct vs. Expressed breast milk feeding: Relation to duration of breastfeeding

10.3390/nu9060547Nutrients96105-113GUSTO (Growing up towards Healthy Outcomes

The determinants of credit ratings in the United Kingdom insurance industry

This paper examines the determinants of external credit ratings attained by insurance firms in the United Kingdom (UK) and of the likelihood that insurers will have such an assessment. Using panel data relating to A.M. Best-rated and Standard and Poor's (S&P)-rated insurers over the period 1993-1997, a trichotomous logit model and an ordered probit model with sample selection are employed to show that the factors which influence the likelihood of having external credit assessments not only vary between the two agencies but also differ from those which determine the ratings themselves. Our results are shown to be of potential interest to participants in the insurance industry and policy-makers alike. Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2002.

A comparison of practices during the confinement period among Chinese, Malay, and Indian mothers in Singapore

10.1111/birt.12233Birth433247-254GUSTO (Growing up towards Healthy Outcomes