Neurological, Cognitive, and Psychological Findings Among Survivors of Ebola Virus Disease From the 1995 Ebola Outbreak in Kikwit, Democratic Republic of Congo: A Cross-sectional Study.

BackgroundClinical sequelae of Ebola virus disease (EVD) have not been described more than 3 years postoutbreak. We examined survivors and close contacts from the 1995 Ebola outbreak in Kikwit, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and determined prevalence of abnormal neurological, cognitive, and psychological findings and their association with EVD survivorship.MethodsFrom August to September 2017, we conducted a cross-sectional study in Kikwit, DRC. Over 2 decades after the EVD outbreak, we recruited EVD survivors and close contacts from the outbreak to undergo physical examination and culturally adapted versions of the Folstein mini-mental status exam (MMSE) and Goldberg anxiety and depression scale (GADS). We estimated the strength of relationships between EVD survivorship and health outcomes using linear regression models by comparing survivors versus close contacts, adjusting for age, sex, educational level, marital status, and healthcare worker status.ResultsWe enrolled 20 EVD survivors and 187 close contacts. Among the 20 EVD survivors, 4 (20%) reported at least 1 abnormal neurological symptom, and 3 (15%) had an abnormal neurological examination. Among the 187 close contacts, 14 (11%) reported at least 1 abnormal neurologic symptom, and 9 (5%) had an abnormal neurological examination. EVD survivors had lower mean MMSE and higher mean GADS scores as compared to close contacts (MMSE: adjusted coefficient: -1.85; 95% confidence interval [CI]: -3.63, -0.07; GADS: adjusted coefficient: 3.91; 95% CI: 1.76, 6.04).ConclusionsEVD survivors can have lower cognitive scores and more symptoms of depression and anxiety than close contacts more than 2 decades after Ebola virus outbreaks

Introduction effort, climate matching and species traits as predictors of global establishment success in non-native reptiles

Non-native reptiles are often detrimental to native communities and ecosystems and can be extremely difficult to manage once established. Thus, there is considerable interest in predicting the likelihood of establishment of nonnative reptiles. We assessed three hypotheses describing possible factors contributing to the successful establishment of introduced reptiles in an effort to better identify potential invaders

Investigating Protostellar Accretion-Driven Outflows Across the Mass Spectrum: JWST NIRSpec IFU 3-5~μ\mum Spectral Mapping of Five Young Protostars

Investigating Protostellar Accretion (IPA) is a Cycle 1 JWST program using the NIRSpec+MIRI IFUs to obtain 2.9--28 $\mu$m spectral cubes of five young protostars with luminosities of 0.2 to 10,000 L$_{\odot}$ in their primary accretion phase. This paper introduces the NIRSpec 2.9--5.3 $\mu$m data of the inner 840-9000 au with spatial resolutions from 28-300 au. The spectra show rising continuum emission, deep ice absorption, emission from H$_{2}$, H~I, and [Fe~II], and the CO fundamental series in emission and absorption. Maps of the continuum emission show scattered light cavities for all five protostars. In the cavities, collimated jets are detected in [Fe~II] for the four $< 320$~L$_{\odot}$ protostars, two of which are additionally traced in Br-$\alpha$. Knots of [Fe~II] emission are detected toward the most luminous protostar, and knots of [FeII] emission with dynamical times of $< 30$~yrs are found in the jets of the others. While only one jet is traced in H$_2$, knots of H$_2$ and CO are detected in the jets of four protostars. H$_2$ is seen extending through the cavities showing they are filled by warm molecular gas. Bright H$_2$ emission is seen along the walls of a single cavity, while in three cavities, narrow shells of H$_2$ emission are found, one of which has an [Fe~II] knot at its apex. These data show cavities containing collimated jets traced in atomic/ionic gas surrounded by warm molecular gas in a wide-angle wind and/or gas accelerated by bow shocks in the jets.Comment: 30 pages, 11 figure

The Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

This paper describes the Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), marking the completion of the original goals of the SDSS and the end of the phase known as SDSS-II. It includes 11663 deg^2 of imaging data, with most of the roughly 2000 deg^2 increment over the previous data release lying in regions of low Galactic latitude. The catalog contains five-band photometry for 357 million distinct objects. The survey also includes repeat photometry over 250 deg^2 along the Celestial Equator in the Southern Galactic Cap. A coaddition of these data goes roughly two magnitudes fainter than the main survey. The spectroscopy is now complete over a contiguous area of 7500 deg^2 in the Northern Galactic Cap, closing the gap that was present in previous data releases. There are over 1.6 million spectra in total, including 930,000 galaxies, 120,000 quasars, and 460,000 stars. The data release includes improved stellar photometry at low Galactic latitude. The astrometry has all been recalibrated with the second version of the USNO CCD Astrograph Catalog (UCAC-2), reducing the rms statistical errors at the bright end to 45 milli-arcseconds per coordinate. A systematic error in bright galaxy photometr is less severe than previously reported for the majority of galaxies. Finally, we describe a series of improvements to the spectroscopic reductions, including better flat-fielding and improved wavelength calibration at the blue end, better processing of objects with extremely strong narrow emission lines, and an improved determination of stellar metallicities. (Abridged)Comment: 20 pages, 10 embedded figures. Accepted to ApJS after minor correction

Discovery of a collimated jet from the low luminosity protostar IRAS 16253−-2429 in a quiescent accretion phase with the JWST

Investigating Protostellar Accretion (IPA) is a JWST Cycle~1 GO program that uses NIRSpec IFU and MIRI MRS to obtain 2.9--28~$\mu$m spectral cubes of young, deeply embedded protostars with luminosities of 0.2 to 10,000~L$_{\odot}$ and central masses of 0.15 to 12~M$_{\odot}$. In this Letter, we report the discovery of a highly collimated atomic jet from the Class~0 protostar IRAS~16253$-$2429, the lowest luminosity source ($L_\mathrm{bol}$ = 0.2 $L_\odot$) in the IPA program. The collimated jet is detected in multiple [Fe~II] lines, [Ne~II], [Ni~II], and H~I lines, but not in molecular emission. The atomic jet has a velocity of about 169~$\pm$~15~km\,s$^{-1}$, after correcting for inclination. The width of the jet increases with distance from the central protostar from 23 to~60 au, corresponding to an opening angle of 2.6~$\pm$~0.5\arcdeg. By comparing the measured flux ratios of various fine structure lines to those predicted by simple shock models, we derive a shock {speed} of 54~km\,s$^{-1}$ and a preshock density of 2.0$\times10^{3}$~cm$^{-3}$ at the base of the jet. {From these quantities and using a suite of jet models and extinction laws we compute a mass loss rate between $0.4 -1.1\times10^{-10}~M_{\odot}$~yr~$^{-1}$.} The low mass loss rate is consistent with simultaneous measurements of low mass accretion rate ($2.4~\pm~0.8~\times~10^{-9}~M_{\odot}$~yr$^{-1}$) for IRAS~16253$-$2429 from JWST observations (Watson et al. in prep), indicating that the protostar is in a quiescent accretion phase. Our results demonstrate that very low-mass protostars can drive highly collimated, atomic jets, even during the quiescent phase.Comment: Accepted to ApJL. Comments and feedback welcom

Southern Ocean Action Plan (2021-2030) in support of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development

In 2017, the United Nations proclaimed a Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (hereafter referred to as the UN Ocean Decade) from 2021 until 2030 to support efforts to reverse the cycle of decline in ocean health. To achieve this ambitious goal, this initiative aims to gather ocean stakeholders worldwide behind a common framework that will ensure ocean science can fully support countries in creating improved conditions for sustainable development of the world’s oceans. The initiative strives to strengthen the international cooperation needed to develop the scientific research and innovative technologies that can connect ocean science with the needs of society at the global scale. Based on the recommendations in the Implementation Plan of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (Version 2.0, July 2021), the Southern Ocean community engaged in a stakeholder - oriented process to develop the Southern Ocean Action Plan. The Southern Ocean process engaged a broad community, which includes the scientific research community, the business and industry sector, and governance and management bodies. As part of this global effort, the Southern Ocean Task Force identified the needs of the Southern Ocean community to address the challenges related to the unique environmental characteristics and governance structure of the Southern Ocean. Through this community-driven process, we identified synergies within the Southern Ocean community and beyond in order to elaborate an Action Plan that provides a framework for Southern Ocean stakeholders to formulate and develop tangible actions and deliverables that support the UN Ocean Decade vision. Through the publication of this Action Plan, the Southern Ocean Task Force aims to mobilise the Southern Ocean community and inspire all stakeholders to seek engagement and leverage opportunities to deliver innovative solutions that maintain and foster the unique conditions of the Southern Ocean. This framework provides an initial roadmap to strengthen links between science, industry and policy, as well as to encourage internationally collaborative activities in order to address existing gaps in our knowledge and data coverage

The Rate, Amplitude, and Duration of Outbursts from Class 0 Protostars in Orion

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.At least half of a protostar's mass is accreted in the Class 0 phase, when the central protostar is deeply embedded in a dense, infalling envelope. We present the first systematic search for outbursts from Class 0 protostars in the Orion clouds. Using photometry from Spitzer/IRAC spanning 2004 to 2017, we detect three outbursts from Class 0 protostars with ≥2 mag changes at 3.6 or 4.5 μm. This is comparable to the magnitude change of a known protostellar FU Ori outburst. Two are newly detected bursts from the protostars HOPS 12 and 124. The number of detections implies that Class 0 protostars burst every 438 yr, with a 95% confidence interval of 161 to 1884 yr. Combining Spitzer and WISE/NEOWISE data spanning 2004–2019, we show that the bursts persist for more than nine years with significant variability during each burst. Finally, we use 19–100 μm photometry from SOFIA, Spitzer, and Herschel to measure the amplitudes of the bursts. Based on the burst interval, a duration of 15 yr, and the range of observed amplitudes, 3%–100% of the mass accretion during the Class 0 phase occurs during bursts. In total, we show that bursts from Class 0 protostars are as frequent, or even more frequent, than those from more evolved protostars. This is consistent with bursts being driven by instabilities in disks triggered by rapid mass infall. Furthermore, we find that bursts may be a significant, if not dominant, mode of mass accretion during the Class 0 phase. © 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.This work uses observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope, operated by JPL/Caltech under a contract with NASA. This paper also uses data from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles, and JPL/Caltech, funded by NASA. Observations were also made with the NASA/DLR Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). SOFIA is jointly operated by the Universities Space Research Association, Inc. (USRA), under NASA contract NNA17BF53C, and the Deutsches SOFIA Institut (DSI) under DLR contract 50 OK 0901 to the University of Stuttgart. Herschel is an ESA space observatory with science instruments provided by European-led Principal Investigator consortia and with important participation from NASA. Finally, this work makes use of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive, operated by JPL/Caltech under a contract with NASA. S.T.M. and R.A.G. were supported by the NASA ADAP grant 80NSSC19K0591, and S.T.M. was supported by the NASA ADAP grant 80NSSC20K0454. R.P. was supported by the NASA ADAP grant 80NSSC18K1564. Support for W.J.F. was provided by NASA through award #07_0200 issued by USRA. A.S. gratefully acknowledges funding support through Fondecyt Regular (project code 1180350), from the ANID BASAL project FB210003, and from the Chilean Centro de Excelencia en Astrofísica y Tecnologías Afines (CATA) BASAL grant AFB-170002. M.O. acknowledges support from the Spanish MINECO/AEI AYA2017-84390-C2-1-R (co-funded by FEDER) and MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 through the PID2020-114461GB-I00 grant, and from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award for the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709). This work was completed while STM was a Fulbright Scholar hosted by AS at the Universidad de Concepcíon. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.Peer reviewe

The Second Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has validated and made publicly available its Second Data Release. This data release consists of 3324 deg2 of five-band (ugriz) imaging data with photometry for over 88 million unique objects, 367,360 spectra of galaxies, quasars, stars, and calibrating blank sky patches selected over 2627 deg2 of this area, and tables of measured parameters from these data. The imaging data reach a depth of r ≈ 22.2 (95% completeness limit for point sources) and are photometrically and astrometrically calibrated to 2% rms and 100 mas rms per coordinate, respectively. The imaging data have all been processed through a new version of the SDSS imaging pipeline, in which the most important improvement since the last data release is fixing an error in the model fits to each object. The result is that model magnitudes are now a good proxy for point-spread function magnitudes for point sources, and Petrosian magnitudes for extended sources. The spectroscopy extends from 3800 to 9200 Å at a resolution of 2000. The spectroscopic software now repairs a systematic error in the radial velocities of certain types of stars and has substantially improved spectrophotometry. All data included in the SDSS Early Data Release and First Data Release are reprocessed with the improved pipelines and included in the Second Data Release. Further characteristics of the data are described, as are the data products themselves and the tools for accessing them

A communal catalogue reveals Earth’s multiscale microbial diversity

Our growing awareness of the microbial world’s importance and diversity contrasts starkly with our limited understanding of its fundamental structure. Despite recent advances in DNA sequencing, a lack of standardized protocols and common analytical frameworks impedes comparisons among studies, hindering the development of global inferences about microbial life on Earth. Here we present a meta-analysis of microbial community samples collected by hundreds of researchers for the Earth Microbiome Project. Coordinated protocols and new analytical methods, particularly the use of exact sequences instead of clustered operational taxonomic units, enable bacterial and archaeal ribosomal RNA gene sequences to be followed across multiple studies and allow us to explore patterns of diversity at an unprecedented scale. The result is both a reference database giving global context to DNA sequence data and a framework for incorporating data from future studies, fostering increasingly complete characterization of Earth’s microbial diversity