CMB observations with the Jodrell Bank - IAC interferometer at 33 GHz

The paper presents the first results obtained with the Jodrell Bank - IAC two-element 33 GHz interferometer. The instrument was designed to measure the level of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) fluctuations at angular scales of 1 - 2 degrees. The observations analyzed here were taken in a strip of the sky at Dec = +41 deg with an element separation of 16.7 lambda, which gives a maximum sensitivity to ~1.6 deg structures on the sky. The data processing and calibration of the instrument are described. The sensitivity achieved in each of the two channels is 7 micro K per resolution element. A reconstruction of the sky at Dec = +41 deg using a maximum entropy method shows the presence of structure at a high level of significance. A likelihood analysis, assuming a flat CMB spatial power spectrum, gives a best estimate of the level of CMB fluctuations of Delta Tl = 43 (+13,-12) micro K for the range l = 109 +/- 19; the main uncertainty in this result arises from sample variance. We consider that the contamination from the Galaxy is small. These results represent a new determination of the CMB power spectrum on angular scales where previous results show a large scatter; our new results are in agreement with the theoretical predictions of the standard inflationary cold dark matter models.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures. Web site at http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/research/cmb/ Accepted for publication in MNRA

Establishing the Effects of Quality in Early Childhood: Comparing Evidence from England

This is the final version. Available from Early Education via the URL in this record.This occasional paper examines the robustness of a paper published by Blanden, Hansen and McNally in February 2017 which sought to investigate the effects of quality within early education and care settings in England (Quality in Early Years Settings and Children's School Achievement, CEP Discussion Paper 1468, The London School of Economics). The authors question the validity of the conclusions reached by Blanden et al about the impact of quality in early childhood education in England

Observations of the bright radio sources in the North Celestial Pole region at the RATAN-600 radio telescope

A survey of the North Celestial Pole region using the RATAN-600 radio telescope at five frequencies in the range 2.3 to 21.7 GHz is described. Sources were chosen from the NVSS catalogue. The flux densities of 171 sources in the Declination range +75 to +88 are presented; typical flux density errors are 5-10 percent including calibration errors. About 20 percent of the sources have flat spectra or a flat component.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures; to be published in Astronomy and Astrophysics (without last figure with the spectra of the observed sources

How many words are Australian children hearing in the first year of life?

Published online: 03 February 2020Background: There is evidence that parents from more socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds engage in fewer verbal interactions with their child than more advantaged parents. This leads to the so-called, ‘30 million word gap’. This study aims to investigate the number of words children hear and the number of vocalizations children produce in their first year of life and examines whether these aspects of the early language home environment differ by maternal education. Methods: Mothers were recruited into a five-year prospective cohort study and categorized into either high or low maternal education groups. Data was derived from the first two waves of the study, when the children were six and twelve months old. At both waves, children were involved in day-long audio recordings using the Language Environment Analysis software that provided automatic counts of adult words spoken to the child, child vocalizations and conversational turns. Descriptive results are presented by maternal education groups. Results: There was large variation within each maternal education group, with the number of adult words spoken to the child ranging from 2958 to 39,583 at six months and 4389 to 45,849 at twelve months. There were no meaningful differences between adult words, child vocalizations or conversational turns across maternal education groups at either wave of data collection. Conclusions: These results show that a word gap related to maternal education is not apparent up to twelve months of age. The large variability among both maternal education groups suggests that universal interventions that encourage all parents to talk more to their child may be more appropriate than interventions targeted towards disadvantaged families during the first year of life.Mary E. Brushe, John W. Lynch, Sheena Reilly, Edward Melhuish and Sally A. Brinkma

Characterization of the Millimeter-Wave Polarization of Centaurus A with QUaD

Centaurus (Cen) A represents one of the best candidates for an isolated, compact, highly polarized source that is bright at typical cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiment frequencies. We present measurements of the 4 degree by 2 degree region centered on Cen A with QUaD, a CMB polarimeter whose absolute polarization angle is known to 0.5 degrees. Simulations are performed to assess the effect of misestimation of the instrumental parameters on the final measurement and systematic errors due to the field's background structure and temporal variability from Cen A's nuclear region are determined. The total (Q, U) of the inner lobe region is (1.00 +/- 0.07 (stat.) +/- 0.04 (sys.), -1.72 +/- 0.06 +/- 0.05) Jy at 100 GHz and (0.80 +/- 0.06 +/- 0.06, -1.40 +/- 0.07 +/- 0.08) Jy at 150 GHz, leading to polarization angles and total errors of -30.0 +/- 1.1 degrees and -29.1 +/- 1.7 degrees. These measurements will allow the use of Cen A as a polarized calibration source for future millimeter experiments.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, v2 matches version published in Ap

First season QUaD CMB temperature and polarization power spectra

QUaD is a bolometric CMB polarimeter sited at the South Pole, operating at frequencies of 100 and 150 GHz. In this paper we report preliminary results from the first season of operation (austral winter 2005). All six CMB power spectra are presented derived as cross spectra between the 100 and 150 GHz maps using 67 days of observation in a low foreground region of approximately 60 deg^2. These data are a small fraction of the data acquired to date. The measured spectra are consistent with the ΛCDM cosmological model. We perform jackknife tests that indicate that the observed signal has negligible contamination from instrumental systematics. In addition, by using a frequency jackknife we find no evidence for foreground contamination

Families' social backgrounds matter : socio-economic factors, home learning and young children's language, literacy and social outcomes

Parental support with children's learning is considered to be one pathway through which socio-economic factors influence child competencies. Utilising a national longitudinal sample from the Millennium Cohort Study, this study examined the relationship between home learning and parents' socio-economic status and their impact on young children's language/literacy and socio-emotional competence. The findings consistently showed that, irrespective of socio-economic status, parents engaged with various learning activities (except reading) roughly equally. The socio-economic factors examined in this study, i.e., family income and maternal educational qualifications, were found to have a stronger effect on children's language/literacy than on social-emotional competence. Socio-economic disadvantage, lack of maternal educational qualifications in particular, remained powerful in influencing competencies in children aged three and at the start of primary school. For children in the first decade of this century in England, these findings have equity implications, especially as the socio-economic gap in our society widens