Construct validity of the Experiences of Therapy Questionnaire (ETQ)

ObjectiveThe Experiences of Therapy Questionnaire (ETQ) is a reliable measure of adverse effects associated with psychotherapy. The measure has not been subject to validity analyses. This study sought to examine the validity of the ETQ by comparison against a measure of therapist satisfaction.MethodsParticipants were recruited from the Black Dog Institute¿s website and completed all measures online, at two time points (two weeks apart). Correlational analyses compared scale scores on the ETQ with related constructs of the Therapist Satisfaction Scale (TSS). To exclude any impact of current depression on ratings, we examined correlations between salient ETQ and TSS scales after controlling for depression severity.ResultsForty-six participants completed all the measures at both time points. Hypothesised associations between the ETQ and TSS scales were supported, irrespective of current depression severity.ConclusionsThe validity of the ETQ is supported; however limitations of the study are noted, including generalizability due to sample characteristics

GSH23.0-0.7+117, a neutral hydrogen shell in the inner Galaxy

GSH23.0-0.7+117 is a well-defined neutral hydrogen shell discovered in the VLA Galactic Plane Survey (VGPS). Only the blueshifted side of the shell was detected. The expansion velocity and systemic velocity were determined through the systematic behavior of the HI emission with velocity. The center of the shell is at (l,b,v)=(23.05,-0.77,+117 km/s). The angular radius of the shell is 6.8', or 15 pc at a distance of 7.8 kpc. The HI mass divided by the volume of the half-shell implies an average density n_H = 11 +/- 4 cm^{-3} for the medium in which the shell expanded. The estimated age of GSH23.0-0.7+117 is 1 Myr, with an upper limit of 2 Myr. The modest expansion energy of 2 * 10^{48} erg can be provided by the stellar wind of a single O4 to O8 star over the age of the shell. The 3 sigma upper limit to the 1.4 GHz continuum flux density (S_{1.4} < 248 mJy) is used to derive an upper limit to the Lyman continuum luminosity generated inside the shell. This upper limit implies a maximum of one O9 star (O8 to O9.5 taking into account the error in the distance) inside the HI shell, unless most of the incident ionizing flux leaks through the HI shell. To allow this, the shell should be fragmented on scales smaller than the beam (2.3 pc). If the stellar wind bubble is not adiabatic, or the bubble has burst (as suggested by the HI channel maps), agreement between the energy and ionization requirements is even less likely. The limit set by the non-detection in the continuum provides a significant challenge for the interpretation of GSH23.0-0.7+117 as a stellar wind bubble. A similar analysis may be applicable to other Galactic HI shells that have not been detected in the continuum.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures. Figures 1 and 4 separately in GIF format. Accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journa

Surface ozone in the Colorado northern Front Range and the influence of oil and gas development during FRAPPE/DISCOVER-AQ in summer 2014

High mixing ratios of ozone (O3) in the northern Front Range (NFR) of Colorado are not limited to the urban Denver area but were also observed in rural areas where oil and gas activity is the primary source of O3 precursors. On individual days, oil and gas O3 precursors can contribute in excess of 30 ppb to O3 growth and can lead to exceedances of the EPA O3 National Ambient Air Quality Standard. Data used in this study were gathered from continuous surface O3 monitors for June–August 2013–2015 as well as additional flask measurements and mobile laboratories that were part of the FRAPPE/DISCOVER-AQ field campaign of July–August 2014. Overall observed O3 levels during the summer of 2014 were lower than in 2013, likely due to cooler and damper weather than an average summer. This study determined the median hourly surface O3 mixing ratio in the NFR on summer days with limited photochemical production to be approximately 45–55 ppb. Mobile laboratory and flask data collected on three days provide representative case studies of different O3 formation environments in and around Greeley, Colorado. Observations of several gases (including methane, ethane, CO, nitrous oxide) along with O3 are used to identify sources of O3 precursor emissions. A July 23 survey demonstrated low O3 (45–60 ppb) while August 3 and August 13 surveys recorded O3 levels of 75–80 ppb or more. August 3 exemplifies influence of moderate urban and high oil and gas O3 precursor emissions. August 13 demonstrates high oil and gas emissions, low agricultural emissions, and CO measurements that were well correlated with ethane from oil and gas, suggesting an oil and gas related activity as a NOx and O3 precursor source. Low isoprene levels indicated that they were not a significant contributor to O3 precursors measured during the case studies

Reprocessing the Hipparcos data for evolved giant stars II. Absolute magnitudes for the R-type carbon stars

The Hipparcos Intermediate Astrometric Data for carbon stars have been reprocessed using an algorithm which provides an objective criterion for rejecting anomalous data points and constrains the parallax to be positive. New parallax solutions have been derived for 317 cool carbon stars, mostly of types R and N. In this paper we discuss the results for the R stars. The most important result is that the early R stars (i.e., R0 - R3) have absolute magnitudes and V-K colors locating them among red clump giants in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. Stars with subtypes R4 - R9 tend to be cooler and have similar luminosity to the N-type carbon stars, as confirmed by their position in the (J-H, H-K) color-color diagram. The sample of early R-type stars selected from the Hipparcos Catalogue appears to be approximately complete to magnitude K_0 ~ 7, translating into a completeness distance of 600 pc if all R stars had M_K= -2 (400 pc if M_K= -1). With about 30 early R-type stars in that volume, they comprise about 0.04% (0.14% for M_K= -1) of the red clump stars in the solar neighborhood. Identification with the red clump locates these stars at the helium core burning stage of stellar evolution, while the N stars are on the asymptotic giant branch, where helium shell burning occurs. The present analysis suggests that for a small fraction of the helium core burning stars (far lower than the fraction of helium shell-burning stars), carbon produced in the interior is mixed to the atmosphere in sufficient quantities to form a carbon star.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, A&A Latex. To appear in A&

The VLA Galactic Plane Survey

The VLA Galactic Plane Survey (VGPS) is a survey of HI and 21-cm continuum emission in the Galactic plane between longitude 18 degrees 67 degr. with latitude coverage from |b| < 1.3 degr. to |b| < 2.3 degr. The survey area was observed with the Very Large Array (VLA) in 990 pointings. Short-spacing information for the HI line emission was obtained by additional observations with the Green Bank Telescope (GBT). HI spectral line images are presented with a resolution of 1 arcmin x 1 arcmin x 1.56 km/s (FWHM) and rms noise of 2 K per 0.824 km/s channel. Continuum images made from channels without HI line emission have 1 arcmin (FWHM) resolution. VGPS images are compared with images from the Canadian Galactic Plane Survey (CGPS) and the Southern Galactic Plane Survey (SGPS). In general, the agreement between these surveys is impressive, considering the differences in instrumentation and image processing techniques used for each survey. The differences between VGPS and CGPS images are small, < 6 K (rms) in channels where the mean HI brightness temperature in the field exceeds 80 K. A similar degree of consistency is found between the VGPS and SGPS. The agreement we find between arcminute resolution surveys of the Galactic plane is a crucial step towards combining these surveys into a single uniform dataset which covers 90% of the Galactic disk: the International Galactic Plane Survey (IGPS). The VGPS data will be made available on the World Wide Web through the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC).Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal. 41 pages, 13 figures. For information on data release, colour images etc. see http://www.ras.ucalgary.ca/VGP

Polarization Gradient Study of Interstellar Medium Turbulence Using The Canadian Galactic Plane Survey

We have investigated the magneto-ionic turbulence in the interstellar medium through spatial gradients of the complex radio polarization vector in the Canadian Galactic Plane Survey (CGPS). The CGPS data cover 1300 square-degrees, over the range ${53^{\circ}}\leq{\ell}\leq{192^{\circ}}$, ${-3^{\circ}}\leq{b}\leq{5^{\circ}}$ with an extension to ${b}={17.5^{\circ}}$ in the range ${101^{\circ}}\leq{\ell}\leq{116^{\circ}}$, and arcminute resolution at 1420 MHz. Previous studies found a correlation between the skewness and kurtosis of the polarization gradient and the Mach number of the turbulence, or assumed this correlation to deduce the Mach number of an observed turbulent region. We present polarization gradient images of the entire CGPS dataset, and analyze the dependence of these images on angular resolution. The polarization gradients are filamentary, and the length of these filaments is largest towards the Galactic anti-center, and smallest towards the inner Galaxy. This may imply that small-scale turbulence is stronger in the inner Galaxy, or that we observe more distant features at low Galactic longitudes. For every resolution studied, the skewness of the polarization gradient is influenced by the edges of bright polarization gradient regions, which are not related to the turbulence revealed by the polarization gradients. We also find that the skewness of the polarization gradient is sensitive to the size of the box used to calculate the skewness, but insensitive to Galactic longitude, implying that the skewness only probes the number and magnitude of the inhomogeneities within the box. We conclude that the skewness and kurtosis of the polarization gradient are not ideal statistics for probing natural magneto-ionic turbulence.Comment: 21 pages, 15 figures, accepted by Ap

Knowing what you know in brain segmentation using Bayesian deep neural networks

In this paper, we describe a Bayesian deep neural network (DNN) for predicting FreeSurfer segmentations of structural MRI volumes, in minutes rather than hours. The network was trained and evaluated on a large dataset (n = 11,480), obtained by combining data from more than a hundred different sites, and also evaluated on another completely held-out dataset (n = 418). The network was trained using a novel spike-and-slab dropout-based variational inference approach. We show that, on these datasets, the proposed Bayesian DNN outperforms previously proposed methods, in terms of the similarity between the segmentation predictions and the FreeSurfer labels, and the usefulness of the estimate uncertainty of these predictions. In particular, we demonstrated that the prediction uncertainty of this network at each voxel is a good indicator of whether the network has made an error and that the uncertainty across the whole brain can predict the manual quality control ratings of a scan. The proposed Bayesian DNN method should be applicable to any new network architecture for addressing the segmentation problem.Comment: Submitted to Frontiers in Neuroinformatic

Blood Pressure and Cognitive Decline Over 8 Years in Middle-Aged and Older Black and White Americans

Although the association between high blood pressure (BP), particularly in midlife, and late-life dementia is known, less is known about variations by race and sex. In a prospective national study of 22 164 blacks and whites ≥45 years without baseline cognitive impairment or stroke from the REGARDS cohort study (Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke), enrolled 2003 to 2007 and followed through September 2015, we measured changes in cognition associated with baseline systolic and diastolic BP (SBP and DBP), as well as pulse pressure (PP) and mean arterial pressure, and we tested whether age, race, and sex modified the effects. Outcomes were global cognition (Six-Item Screener; primary outcome), new learning (Word List Learning), verbal memory (Word List Delayed Recall), and executive function (Animal Fluency Test). Median follow-up was 8.1 years. Significantly faster declines in global cognition were associated with higher SBP, lower DBP, and higher PP with increasing age ( P<0.001 for age×SBP×follow-up-time, age×DBP×follow-up-time, and age×PP×follow-up-time interaction). Declines in global cognition were not associated with mean arterial pressure after adjusting for PP. Blacks, compared with whites, had faster declines in global cognition associated with SBP ( P=0.02) and mean arterial pressure ( P=0.04). Men, compared with women, had faster declines in new learning associated with SBP ( P=0.04). BP was not associated with decline of verbal memory and executive function, after controlling for the effect of age on cognitive trajectories. Significantly faster declines in global cognition over 8 years were associated with higher SBP, lower DBP, and higher PP with increasing age. SBP-related cognitive declines were greater in blacks and men

Electronic states and Landau levels in graphene stacks

We analyze, within a minimal model that allows analytical calculations, the electronic structure and Landau levels of graphene multi-layers with different stacking orders. We find, among other results, that electrostatic effects can induce a strongly divergent density of states in bi- and tri-layers, reminiscent of one-dimensional systems. The density of states at the surface of semi-infinite stacks, on the other hand, may vanish at low energies, or show a band of surface states, depending on the stacking order