Spatial Relationship between Solar Flares and Coronal Mass Ejections

We report on the spatial relationship between solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) observed during 1996-2005 inclusive. We identified 496 flare-CME pairs considering limb flares (distance from central meridian > 45 deg) with soft X-ray flare size > C3 level. The CMEs were detected by the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) on board the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). We investigated the flare positions with respect to the CME span for the events with X-class, M-class, and C-class flares separately. It is found that the most frequent flare site is at the center of the CME span for all the three classes, but that frequency is different for the different classes. Many X-class flares often lie at the center of the associated CME, while C-class flares widely spread to the outside of the CME span. The former is different from previous studies, which concluded that no preferred flare site exists. We compared our result with the previous studies and conclude that the long-term LASCO observation enabled us to obtain the detailed spatial relation between flares and CMEs. Our finding calls for a closer flare-CME relationship and supports eruption models typified by the CSHKP magnetic reconnection model.Comment: 7 pages; 4 figures; Accepted by the Astrophysical Journa

Who is connected with whom? A Social network analysis of institutional interactions in the European CCA and DRR landscape

Communication and collaboration are critical for designing and implementing responses to climate change impacts and related disasters. This acknowledgement has increased interest in understanding social and institutional networks for climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR). In this study, we used Social Network Analysis (SNA) to explore institutional interactions within and across the communities of the aforementioned domains in Europe. Firstly, we investigated the type and intensity of interactions. We calculated SNA metrics to assess the roles of different actors and applied cluster analysis to identify actors with similar patterns of connections. SNA showed that communication is often more intensive within the two communities, while collaboration is frequent around topics related to both CCA and DRR. Cluster analysis revealed that actors tied with DRR were more closely connected, while actors tied with CCA and those with mixed connections showed no obvious clustering affnity. The European Climate Adaptation Platform, Climate-ADAPT, had the highest value for various SNA metrics, reflecting its popularity in the network and its potential for enhancing interactions among its actors. Finally, SNA was complemented by qualitative interviews, which emphasised the importance of connecting CCA and DRR in organisational mission and vision statements

Particle acceleration at ultrarelativistic shocks: an eigenfunction method

We extend the eigenfunction method of computing the power-law spectrum of particles accelerated at a relativistic shock fronts to apply to shocks of arbitrarily high Lorentz factor. In agreement with the findings of Monte-Carlo simulations, we find the index of the power-law distribution of accelerated particles which undergo isotropic diffusion in angle at an ultrarelativistic, unmagnetized shock is s=4.23 (where s=-d(ln f)/dp with f the Lorentz invariant phase-space density and p the momentum). This corresponds to a synchrotron index for uncooled electrons of a=0.62 (taking cooling into account a=1.12), where a=-d(ln F)/dn, F is the radiation flux and n the frequency. We also present an approximate analytic expression for the angular distribution of accelerated particles, which displays the effect of particle trapping by the shock: compared with the non-relativistic case the angular distribution is weighted more towards the plane of the shock and away from its normal. We investigate the sensitivity of our results to the transport properties of the particles and the presence of a magnetic field. Shocks in which the ratio of Poynting to kinetic energy flux upstream is not small are less compressive and lead to larger values of $s$.Comment: Minor additions on publicatio

Association of Organochlorine Pesticides with Peripheral Neuropathy in Patients with Diabetes or Impaired Fasting Glucose

OBJECTIVE—Recent epidemiological studies have shown that background exposure to persistent organic pollutants (POPs)—xenobiotics accumulated in adipose tissue—is strongly associated with type 2 diabetes. Hyperglycemia is the cause of long-term complications of diabetes as well as diabetes itself, and POPs are well-known neurotoxicants. This study was performed to explore whether POPs are associated with peripheral neuropathy, a common long-term complication of diabetes, in people with glucose abnormalities

Feedback Control of the National Airspace System

This paper proposes a general modeling framework adapted to the feedback control of traffic flows in Eulerian models of the National Airspace System. It is shown that the problems of scheduling and routing aircraft flows in the National Airspace System can be posed as the control of a network of queues with load-dependent service rates. Focus can then shift to developing techniques to ensure that the aircraft queues in each airspace sector, which are an indicator of the air traffic controller workloads, are kept small. This paper uses the proposed framework to develop control laws that help prepare the National Airspace System for fast recovery from a weather event, given a probabilistic forecast of capacities. In particular, the model includes the management of airport arrivals and departures subject to runway capacity constraints, which are highly sensitive to weather disruptions.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Contract ECCS-0745237)United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Contract NNA06CN24A

The relationship between smoking exposure and p53 overexpression in colorectal cancer.

Although epidemiological studies of the relationship between cigarette smoking and colorectal cancer risk have been equivocal, a positive association is consistently found for colorectal adenoma development. We performed an epidemiological study to determine whether p53 protein overexpression, in tumours obtained at the time of resection, is associated with cigarette exposure in colorectal cancer. A total of 163 colorectal cancer cases and 326 healthy controls responded to a standardised questionnaire on colorectal cancer risk factors including detailed information on their history of cigarette smoking. All patients' tumours were analysed immunohistochemically for p53 overexpression using an avidin-biotin immunoperoxidase procedure and polyclonal anti-p53 antibody CM1. Comparison of colorectal cases with controls revealed an elevated risk for ex-smokers (OR = 1.34, 95% CI 0.85-2.12) and current smokers (OR = 1.13, 95% CI 0.63-2.02) when compared with non-smokers. No dose-response relationship was found for total pack-years of smoking (trend test: P = 0.19). However, a trend for total pack-years of smoking was found when p53-positive cases were compared with p53-negative cases suggesting aetiological, heterogeneity (trend test: P = 0.06). Estimating the individual relative risk of developing a p53-positive tumour relative to controls showed no associations for smoking status or total pack-years of smoking. However, when p53-negative cases were compared with controls, an elevated risk was found for ex-smokers (OR = 1.84, 95% CI 1.00-3.37) and current years of smoking (trend test: P = 0.03). Colorectal tumours developing through p53-positive dependent pathways were not associated with smoking exposure. A significant increase in risk was observed for the p53-negative independent pathway with smoking. p53 overexpression appears to be associated with smoking exposure in colorectal cancer

Interstellar Turbulence II: Implications and Effects

Interstellar turbulence has implications for the dispersal and mixing of the elements, cloud chemistry, cosmic ray scattering, and radio wave propagation through the ionized medium. This review discusses the observations and theory of these effects. Metallicity fluctuations are summarized, and the theory of turbulent transport of passive tracers is reviewed. Modeling methods, turbulent concentration of dust grains, and the turbulent washout of radial abundance gradients are discussed. Interstellar chemistry is affected by turbulent transport of various species between environments with different physical properties and by turbulent heating in shocks, vortical dissipation regions, and local regions of enhanced ambipolar diffusion. Cosmic rays are scattered and accelerated in turbulent magnetic waves and shocks, and they generate turbulence on the scale of their gyroradii. Radio wave scintillation is an important diagnostic for small scale turbulence in the ionized medium, giving information about the power spectrum and amplitude of fluctuations. The theory of diffraction and refraction is reviewed, as are the main observations and scintillation regions.Comment: 46 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysic

A Standard Platform for Testing and Comparison of MDAO Architectures

The Multidisciplinary Design Analysis and Optimization (MDAO) community has developed a multitude of algorithms and techniques, called architectures, for performing optimizations on complex engineering systems which involve coupling between multiple discipline analyses. These architectures seek to efficiently handle optimizations with computationally expensive analyses including multiple disciplines. We propose a new testing procedure that can provide a quantitative and qualitative means of comparison among architectures. The proposed test procedure is implemented within the open source framework, OpenMDAO, and comparative results are presented for five well-known architectures: MDF, IDF, CO, BLISS, and BLISS-2000. We also demonstrate how using open source soft- ware development methods can allow the MDAO community to submit new problems and architectures to keep the test suite relevant

Peroxiredoxin II Regulates Effector and Secondary Memory CD8+ T cell Responses

Reactive oxygen intermediates (ROI) generated in response to receptor stimulation play an important role in cellular responses. However, the effect of increased H2O2on an antigen-specific CD8+ T cell response was unknown. Following T cell receptor (TCR) stimulation, the expression and oxidation of peroxiredoxin II (PrdxII), a critical antioxidant enzyme, increased in CD8+ T cells. Deletion of PrdxII increased ROI, S phase entry, division, and death during in vitro division. During primary acute viral and bacterial infection, the number of effector CD8+ T cells in PrdxII-deficient mice was increased, while the number of memory cells were similar to those of the wild-type cells. Adoptive transfer of P14 TCR transgenic cells demonstrated that the increased expansion of effector cells was T cell autonomous. After rechallenge, effector CD8+ T cells in mutant animals were more skewed to memory phenotype than cells from wild-type mice, resulting in a larger secondary memory CD8+ T cell pool. During chronic viral infection, increased antigen-specific CD8+ T cells accumulated in the spleens of PrdxII mutant mice, causing mortality. These results demonstrate that PrdxII controls effector CD8+ T cell expansion, secondary memory generation, and immunopathology