A Detailed Observational Analysis of V1324 Sco, the Most Gamma-Ray Luminous Classical Nova to Date

It has recently been discovered that some, if not all, classical novae emit GeV gamma rays during outburst, but the mechanisms involved in the production of the gamma rays are still not well understood. We present here a comprehensive multi-wavelength dataset---from radio to X-rays---for the most gamma-ray luminous classical nova to-date, V1324 Sco. Using this dataset, we show that V1324 Sco is a canonical dusty Fe-II type nova, with a maximum ejecta velocity of 2600 km s$^{-1}$ and an ejecta mass of few $\times 10^{-5}$ M$_{\odot}$. There is also evidence for complex shock interactions, including a double-peaked radio light curve which shows high brightness temperatures at early times. To explore why V1324~Sco was so gamma-ray luminous, we present a model of the nova ejecta featuring strong internal shocks, and find that higher gamma-ray luminosities result from higher ejecta velocities and/or mass-loss rates. Comparison of V1324~Sco with other gamma-ray detected novae does not show clear signatures of either, and we conclude that a larger sample of similarly well-observed novae is needed to understand the origin and variation of gamma rays in novae.Comment: 26 pages, 13 figure

A combinatorial TIR1/AFB–Aux/IAA co-receptor system for differential sensing of auxin

The plant hormone auxin regulates virtually every aspect of plant growth and development. Auxin acts by binding the F-box protein transport inhibitor response 1 (TIR1) and promotes the degradation of the AUXIN/INDOLE-3-ACETIC ACID (Aux/IAA) transcriptional repressors. Here we show that efficient auxin binding requires assembly of an auxin co-receptor complex consisting of TIR1 and an Aux/IAA protein. Heterologous experiments in yeast and quantitative IAA binding assays using purified proteins showed that different combinations of TIR1 and Aux/IAA proteins form co-receptor complexes with a wide range of auxin-binding affinities. Auxin affinity seems to be largely determined by the Aux/IAA. As there are 6 TIR1/AUXIN SIGNALING F-BOX proteins (AFBs) and 29 Aux/IAA proteins in Arabidopsis thaliana, combinatorial interactions may result in many co-receptors with distinct auxin-sensing properties. We also demonstrate that the AFB5–Aux/IAA co-receptor selectively binds the auxinic herbicide picloram. This co-receptor system broadens the effective concentration range of the hormone and may contribute to the complexity of auxin response

WARNING: Physics Envy May Be Hazardous To Your Wealth!

The quantitative aspirations of economists and financial analysts have for many years been based on the belief that it should be possible to build models of economic systems - and financial markets in particular - that are as predictive as those in physics. While this perspective has led to a number of important breakthroughs in economics, "physics envy" has also created a false sense of mathematical precision in some cases. We speculate on the origins of physics envy, and then describe an alternate perspective of economic behavior based on a new taxonomy of uncertainty. We illustrate the relevance of this taxonomy with two concrete examples: the classical harmonic oscillator with some new twists that make physics look more like economics, and a quantitative equity market-neutral strategy. We conclude by offering a new interpretation of tail events, proposing an "uncertainty checklist" with which our taxonomy can be implemented, and considering the role that quants played in the current financial crisis.Comment: v3 adds 2 reference

Cheddar: analysis and visualisation of ecological communities in R

There has been a lack of software available to ecologists for the management, visualisation and analysis of ecological community and food web data. Researchers have been forced to implement their own data formats and software, often from scratch, resulting in duplicated effort and bespoke solutions that are difficult to apply to future analyses and comparative studies. We introduce Cheddar – an R package that provides standard, transparent implementations of a wide range of food web and community-level analyses and plots, focussing on ecological network data that are augmented with estimates of body mass and/or numerical abundance. The package allows analysis of individual communities, as well as collections of communities, allowing examination of changes in structure through time, across environmental gradients, or due to experimental manipulations. Several commonly analysed food web data sets are included and used in worked examples. This is the first time these important features have been combined in a single package that helps improve research efficiency and serves as a unified framework for future development

Albuminuria Testing in Hypertension and Diabetes:An Individual-Participant Data Meta-Analysis in a Global Consortium

Albuminuria is an under-recognized component of chronic kidney disease definition, staging, and prognosis. Guidelines, particularly for hypertension, conflict on recommendations for urine albumin-to-creatinine ratio (ACR) measurement. Separately among 1 344 594 adults with diabetes and 2 334 461 nondiabetic adults with hypertension from the chronic kidney disease Prognosis Consortium, we assessed ACR testing, estimated the prevalence and incidence of ACR ≥30 mg/g and developed risk models for ACR ≥30 mg/g. The ACR screening rate (cohort range) was 35.1% (12.3%-74.5%) in diabetes and 4.1% (1.3%-20.7%) in hypertension. Screening was largely unrelated to the predicted risk of prevalent albuminuria. The median prevalence of ACR ≥30 mg/g across cohorts was 32.1% in diabetes and 21.8% in hypertension. Higher systolic blood pressure was associated with a higher prevalence of albuminuria (odds ratio [95% CI] per 20 mm Hg in diabetes, 1.50 [1.42-1.60]; in hypertension, 1.36 [1.28-1.45]). The ratio of undetected (due to lack of screening) to detected ACR ≥30 mg/g was estimated at 1.8 in diabetes and 19.5 in hypertension. Among those with ACR/g, the median 5-year incidence of ACR ≥30 mg/g across cohorts was 23.9% in diabetes and 21.7% in hypertension. Incident albuminuria was associated with initiation of renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system inhibitors (incidence-rate ratio [95% CI], diabetes 3.09 [2.71-3.53]; hypertension 2.87 [2.29-3.59]). In conclusion, despite similar risk of albuminuria to those with diabetes, ACR screening in patients with hypertension was low. Our findings suggest that regular albuminuria screening should be emphasized to enable early detection of chronic kidney disease and initiation of treatment with cardiovascular and renal benefits

Application of non-HDL cholesterol for population-based cardiovascular risk stratification: results from the Multinational Cardiovascular Risk Consortium.

BACKGROUND: The relevance of blood lipid concentrations to long-term incidence of cardiovascular disease and the relevance of lipid-lowering therapy for cardiovascular disease outcomes is unclear. We investigated the cardiovascular disease risk associated with the full spectrum of bloodstream non-HDL cholesterol concentrations. We also created an easy-to-use tool to estimate the long-term probabilities for a cardiovascular disease event associated with non-HDL cholesterol and modelled its risk reduction by lipid-lowering treatment. METHODS: In this risk-evaluation and risk-modelling study, we used Multinational Cardiovascular Risk Consortium data from 19 countries across Europe, Australia, and North America. Individuals without prevalent cardiovascular disease at baseline and with robust available data on cardiovascular disease outcomes were included. The primary composite endpoint of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease was defined as the occurrence of the coronary heart disease event or ischaemic stroke. Sex-specific multivariable analyses were computed using non-HDL cholesterol categories according to the European guideline thresholds, adjusted for age, sex, cohort, and classical modifiable cardiovascular risk factors. In a derivation and validation design, we created a tool to estimate the probabilities of a cardiovascular disease event by the age of 75 years, dependent on age, sex, and risk factors, and the associated modelled risk reduction, assuming a 50% reduction of non-HDL cholesterol. FINDINGS: Of the 524 444 individuals in the 44 cohorts in the Consortium database, we identified 398 846 individuals belonging to 38 cohorts (184 055 [48·7%] women; median age 51·0 years [IQR 40·7-59·7]). 199 415 individuals were included in the derivation cohort (91 786 [48·4%] women) and 199 431 (92 269 [49·1%] women) in the validation cohort. During a maximum follow-up of 43·6 years (median 13·5 years, IQR 7·0-20·1), 54 542 cardiovascular endpoints occurred. Incidence curve analyses showed progressively higher 30-year cardiovascular disease event-rates for increasing non-HDL cholesterol categories (from 7·7% for non-HDL cholesterol <2·6 mmol/L to 33·7% for ≥5·7 mmol/L in women and from 12·8% to 43·6% in men; p<0·0001). Multivariable adjusted Cox models with non-HDL cholesterol lower than 2·6 mmol/L as reference showed an increase in the association between non-HDL cholesterol concentration and cardiovascular disease for both sexes (from hazard ratio 1·1, 95% CI 1·0-1·3 for non-HDL cholesterol 2·6 to <3·7 mmol/L to 1·9, 1·6-2·2 for ≥5·7 mmol/L in women and from 1·1, 1·0-1·3 to 2·3, 2·0-2·5 in men). The derived tool allowed the estimation of cardiovascular disease event probabilities specific for non-HDL cholesterol with high comparability between the derivation and validation cohorts as reflected by smooth calibration curves analyses and a root mean square error lower than 1% for the estimated probabilities of cardiovascular disease. A 50% reduction of non-HDL cholesterol concentrations was associated with reduced risk of a cardiovascular disease event by the age of 75 years, and this risk reduction was greater the earlier cholesterol concentrations were reduced. INTERPRETATION: Non-HDL cholesterol concentrations in blood are strongly associated with long-term risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. We provide a simple tool for individual long-term risk assessment and the potential benefit of early lipid-lowering intervention. These data could be useful for physician-patient communication about primary prevention strategies. FUNDING: EU Framework Programme, UK Medical Research Council, and German Centre for Cardiovascular Research

Protecting an ecosystem service: approaches to understanding and mitigating threats to wild insect pollinators

Insect pollination constitutes an ecosystem service of global importance, providing significant economic and aesthetic benefits as well as cultural value to human society, alongside vital ecological processes in terrestrial ecosystems. It is therefore important to understand how insect pollinator populations and communities respond to rapidly changing environments if we are to maintain healthy and effective pollinator services. This paper considers the importance of conserving pollinator diversity to maintain a suite of functional traits to provide a diverse set of pollinator services. We explore how we can better understand and mitigate the factors that threaten insect pollinator richness, placing our discussion within the context of populations in predominantly agricultural landscapes in addition to urban environments. We highlight a selection of important evidence gaps, with a number of complementary research steps that can be taken to better understand: i) the stability of pollinator communities in different landscapes in order to provide diverse pollinator services; ii) how we can study the drivers of population change to mitigate the effects and support stable sources of pollinator services; and, iii) how we can manage habitats in complex landscapes to support insect pollinators and provide sustainable pollinator services for the future. We advocate a collaborative effort to gain higher quality abundance data to understand the stability of pollinator populations and predict future trends. In addition, for effective mitigation strategies to be adopted, researchers need to conduct rigorous field-testing of outcomes under different landscape settings, acknowledge the needs of end-users when developing research proposals and consider effective methods of knowledge transfer to ensure effective uptake of actions

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

Custom Integrated Circuits

Contains reports on nine research projects.Analog Devices, Inc.International Business Machines CorporationJoint Services Electronics Program Contract DAAL03-89-C-0001U.S. Air Force - Office of Scientific Research Contract AFOSR 86-0164BDuPont CorporationNational Science Foundation Grant MIP 88-14612U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research Contract N00014-87-K-0825American Telephone and TelegraphDigital Equipment CorporationNational Science Foundation Grant MIP 88-5876