Flavor altering excitations of composite fermions

Past theoretical studies have considered excitations of a given flavor of composite fermions across composite-fermion quasi-Landau levels. We show that in general there exists a ladder of flavor changing excitations in which composite fermions shed none, some, or all of their vortices. The lowest energy excitations are obtained when the composite fermions do not change their flavor, whereas in the highest energy excitations they are stripped of all of their vortices, emerging as electrons in the final state. The results are relevant to the intriguing experimental discovery of Hirjibehedin {\em et al.} (cond-mat/0306152) of coexisting excitation modes of composite fermions of different flavor in the filling factor range $1/3>\nu\geq 1/5$.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

The Importance of Education-Occupation Matching in Migration Decisions

In this article, we present and test a model that incorporates education-occupation matching into the migration decision. The literature on education-occupation matching shows that earnings are affected by how individuals\u27 education matches that required by their occupation. Accordingly, individuals with more schooling than required by their occupation have an additional incentive to migrate: the increase in earnings that occurs with a more beneficial education-occupation match. Using data from Mexico, we found statistical support for the importance of education-occupation matching in migration decisions. Education-occupation matching provides a plausible explanation for the mixed findings in the literature on the relationship between educational attainment and migration

Untangling the Health Impacts of Mexico – U.S. Migration

Research has found that immigrant health has a tendency to decline with time spent in the United States.  Using data from the Mexican Migration Project from 2007-2014, this paper is the first to test the impact of domestic and international migration on different types of health measures.  Results find cumulative U.S. migration experience has a negative impact both on self-reported and objective health measures.  By contrast, the number of trips to the United States and migrations made within Mexico impact individual’s self-assessment of their health but not objective health measures.  The analyses suggest that differences in self-reported versus objective health measures may help to explain mixed results in the literature.  Results suggest that individual’s health will suffer considerably more from U.S. migrations than from migration within Mexico which is consistent with the acculturation hypothesis.  Not surprisingly, high levels of BMI and smoking are significant predictors of negative self-reported and objective health.  There is also a troubling significant negative trend in health over time observed in the sample. Taken as a whole, these results suggest that even short trips to the United States can have a negative health effect on immigrants if they are repeated

Are methodological quality and completeness of reporting associated with citation-based measures of publication impact? A secondary analysis of a systematic review of dementia biomarker studies

Objective: To determine whether methodological and reporting quality are associated with surrogate measures of publication impact in the field of dementia biomarker studies. Methods: We assessed dementia biomarker studies included in a previous systematic review in terms of methodological and reporting quality using the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies (QUADAS) and Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy (STARD), respectively. We extracted additional study and journal-related data from each publication to account for factors shown to be associated with impact in previous research. We explored associations between potential determinants and measures of publication impact in univariable and stepwise multivariable linear regression analyses. Outcome measures: We aimed to collect data on four measures of publication impact: two traditional measures—average number of citations per year and 5-year impact factor of the publishing journal and two alternative measures—the Altmetric Attention Score and counts of electronic downloads. Results: The systematic review included 142 studies. Due to limited data, Altmetric Attention Scores and electronic downloads were excluded from the analysis, leaving traditional metrics as the only analysed outcome measures. We found no relationship between QUADAS and traditional metrics. Citation rates were independently associated with 5-year journal impact factor (β=0.42; p<0.001), journal subject area (β=0.39; p<0.001), number of years since publication (β=-0.29; p<0.001) and STARD (β=0.13; p<0.05). Independent determinants of 5-year journal impact factor were citation rates (β=0.45; p<0.001), statement on conflict of interest (β=0.22; p<0.01) and baseline sample size (β=0.15; p<0.05). Conclusions: Citation rates and 5-year journal impact factor appear to measure different dimensions of impact. Citation rates were weakly associated with completeness of reporting, while neither traditional metric was related to methodological rigour. Our results suggest that high publication usage and journal outlet is not a guarantee of quality and readers should critically appraise all papers regardless of presumed impact

A W:B4C multilayer phase retarder for broadband polarization analysis of soft x-ray radiation \ud

A W:B4C multilayer phase retarder has been designed and characterized which shows a nearly constant phase retardance between 640 and 850 eV photon energies when operated near the Bragg condition. This freestanding transmission multilayer was used successfully to determine, for the first time, the full polarization vector at soft x-ray energies above 600 eV, which was not possible before due to the lack of suitable optical elements. Thus, quantitative polarimetry is now possible at the 2p edges of the magnetic substances Fe, Co, and Ni for the benefit of magnetic circular dichroism spectroscopy employing circularly polarized synchrotron radiatio

Effects of contaminants of emerging concern on Megaselia scalaris (Lowe, Diptera: Phoridae) and its microbial community.

Drought, rising temperatures, and expanding human populations are increasing water demands. Many countries are extending potable water supplies by irrigating crops with wastewater. Unfortunately, wastewater contains biologically active, long-lived pharmaceuticals, even after treatment. Run-off from farms and wastewater treatment plant overflows contribute high concentrations of pharmaceuticals to the environment. This study assessed the effects of common pharmaceuticals on a cosmopolitan saprophagous insect, Megaselia scalaris (Diptera: Phoridae). Larvae were reared on artificial diets spiked with contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) at environmentally relevant concentrations. Female flies showed no oviposition preference for treated or untreated diets. Larvae exposed to caffeine in diets showed increased mortality, and larvae fed antibiotics and hormones showed signs of slowed development, especially in females. The normal sex ratio observed in M. scalaris from control diets was affected by exposure to caffeine and pharmaceutical mixture treatments. There was an overall effect of treatment on the flies' microbial communities; notably, caffeine fed insects displayed higher microbial variability. Eight bacterial families accounted for approximately 95% of the total microbes in diet and insects. Our results suggest that CECs at environmentally relevant concentrations can affect the biology and microbial communities of an insect of ecological and medical importance

Matrix Relevance Learning From Spectral Data for Diagnosing Cassava Diseases

We discuss the use of matrix relevance learning, a popular extension to prototype learning algorithms, applied to a three-class classification task of diagnosing cassava diseases from spectral data. Previously this diagnosis has been done using plant image data taken with a smartphone. However for this method disease symptoms need to be visible. Unfortunately for some cassava diseases, once symptoms have manifested on the aerial part of the plant, the root which is the edible part of the plant has been totally destroyed. This research is premised on the hypothesis that diseased crops without visible symptoms can be detected using spectral information, allowing for early interventions. In this paper, we analyze visible and near-infrared spectra captured from leaves infected with two common cassava diseases (cassava brown streak disease and cassava mosaic virus disease) found in Sub-Saharan Africa. We also take spectra from leaves of healthy plants. The spectral data come with thousands of dimensions, therefore different wavelengths are analyzed in order to identify the most relevant spectral bands for diagnosing these disease. To cope with the nominally high number of input dimensions of data, functional decomposition of the spectra is applied. The classification task is addressed using Generalized Matrix Relevance Learning Vector Quantization and compared with the standard classification techniques performed in the space of expansion coefficients