Evolution of damped Lyman alpha kinematics and the effect of spatial resolution on 21-cm measurements

We have investigated the effect of spatial resolution on determining pencil-beam like velocity widths and column densities in galaxies. Three 21-cm datasets are used, the HIPASS galaxy catalogue, a subset of HIPASS galaxies with ATCA maps and a high-resolution image of the LMC. Velocity widths measured from 21-cm emission in local galaxies are compared with those measured in intermediate redshift Damped Lyman alpha (DLA) absorbers. We conclude that spatial resolution has a severe effect on measuring pencil-beam like velocity widths in galaxies. Spatial smoothing by a factor of 240 is shown to increase the median velocity width by a factor of two. Thus any difference between velocity widths measured from global profiles or low spatial resolution 21-cm maps at z=0 and DLAs at z>1 cannot unambiguously be attributed to galaxy evolution. The effect on column density measurements is less severe and the values of dN/dz from local low-resolution 21-cm measurements are expected to be overestimated by only ~10 per cent.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS letter

Enzyme activity below the dynamical transition at 220 K

Enzyme activity requires the activation of anharmonic motions, such as jumps between potential energy wells. However, in general, the forms and time scales of the functionally important anharmonic dynamics coupled to motion along the reaction coordinate remain to be determined. In particular, the question arises whether the temperature-dependent dynamical transition from harmonic to anharmonic motion in proteins, which has been observed experimentally and using molecular dynamics simulation, involves the activation of motions required for enzyme function. Here we present parallel measurements of the activity and dynamics of a cryosolution of glutamate dehydrogenase as a function of temperature. The dynamical atomic fluctuations faster than ~100 ps were determined using neutron scattering. The results show that the enzyme remains active below the dynamical transition observed at ~220 K, i.e., at temperatures where no anharmonic motion is detected. Furthermore, the activity shows no significant deviation from Arrhenius behavior down to 190 K. The results indicate that the observed transition in the enzyme's dynamics is decoupled from the rate-limiting step along the reaction coordinate

The Evolution of the CareerAdvance® Program in Tulsa, Oklahoma

CareerAdvance®n collaboration with a multi-disciplinary team of partners, the Ray Marshall Center (RMC) is developing and implementing a sectoral workforce development strategy for low-skilled, low-income parents of children served by early childhood programs in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There is emerging evidence that children whose parents hold stable jobs with progressively rising incomes exhibit better academic and behavioral outcomes. RMC and its partners have undertaken a dual-generation approach to poverty reduction that strengthens the investment in early childhood development by equipping Head Start parents with workforce training and gainful employment opportunities. This approach employs a more holistic model than traditional workforce development programs, as it also includes employee counseling and other support services to help parents complete training and adult basic education, retain their jobs, advance in their careers, and become economically self-sufficient. The goal is to develop a sustainable sectoral strategy that can be replicated beyond Tulsa to other communities across the nation. In the first phase of the project (2008-2009), RMC designed a sectoral job development strategy focused on industries featuring jobs that pay well and provide much-needed employee benefits (e.g., health insurance, annual and sick leave) as well as career advancement opportunities. In April 2009, Community Action Program of Tulsa County launched the pilot, CareerAdvance, at two Head Start sites in Tulsa involving 15 parents. The components of the CareerAdvance are 1) GED and college readiness instruction, as needed; 2) skills training in the healthcare sector progressing from Certified Nursing Aide to Licensed Practical Nurse to Registered Nurse; 3) weekly peer support meetings addressing a flexible set of topics (e.g., life skills, work readiness, family finances); 4) conditional cash incentives (up to $3,000 a year) for participants meeting specified benchmarks to reinforce continued participation and help offset foregone earnings; and 5) workforce intermediation between healthcare employers and training institutions provided through Workforce Tulsa. The report on the project’s first year of operation is available at the link below. In partnership with Harvard University and the University of Oklahoma – Tulsa School of Medicine, a second pilot site was opened in July 2009 at a Tulsa Educare Center. The second pilot, EduCareers, includes all components described above as well as enhanced mental health services for participating households, curriculum enhancements for the children, parent engagement training, and a medical home. The CareerAdvance project has now been expanded to 2015 with support from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families. RMC and partners at Northwestern and Columbia University have been engaged to provide ongoing on data collection, implementation and outcomes analysis of project participants.George Kaiser Family Foundation, W. K. Kellogg Foundation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and FamiliesRay Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resource

Glasgow Gloom or Leeds Glue? Dialect-Specific Vowel Duration Constrains Lexical Segmentation and Access

Timing cues are important in many aspects of speech processing, fromidentifying segments to locating word and phrase boundaries. They vary across accents, yet representation and processing of this variation are poorly understood. We investigated whether an accent difference in vowel duration affects lexical segmentation and access. In Glasgow English (GE), /i u e o/ are shorter than in Leeds English (LE), especially for /i u/ before voiced stops and nasals. In a word-spotting experiment, GE and LE participants heard nonsense sequences (e.g. pobegloomezh) containing embedded words (gloom, glue), with segmental qualities intermediate between GE and LE. Critical vowel durations were manipulated according to accent (GE-appropriate vowels shorter than LE-appropriate ones) and phonological context (vowels shortest before voiceless stops < voiced stops/nasals < voiced fricatives). GE participants generally spotted words like gloom more accurately with GE-appropriate than LE-appropriate vowels. LE participants were less accurate than GE participants to spot words like gloom with GE-appropriate vowels, but more likely to spot embeddings like glue. These results were broadly as predicted based on the accent differences, but depended less than expected on the accent-specific phonological constraints. We discuss theoretical implications regarding the representation of duration and the time course of lexical access

Serial Cross-Sectional Observations of Sun-Protective Behaviors at an Annual Outdoor Motorsport Event in Tropical Queensland, Australia

Skin cancer, the most prevalent cancer in Caucasians resid-ing at low latitudes, can primarily be prevented by avoiding overexposure to sunlight. Serial cross-sectional observations were conducted at an outdoor motorsport event held in Townsville, Queensland each July (Southern winter) to determine whether sun-protection habits changed over time. Most (71.1%) of the 1337 attendees observed (97.6% lightly pigmented skin, 64.0% male) wore a hat (any style shading the face), while few (18.5%) wore three-quarter or full-lengthsleeves. While hat-wearing rates (any style) were similar in 2009 (326, 72.6%) and 2013 (625, 70.4%), the use of sun-protective styles (wide-brimmed/bucket/legionnaires) decreased from 29.2% to 18.6% over the same period, primarily because the use of sun-protective hats halved (from 28.7% to 14.0%) among females, while decreasing from 29.4% to 21.1% in males. Although relatively few individuals wore sun-protective (three-quarter-length or full-length) sleeves regardless of year (OR=0.117, P<0.0001), encouragingly, the use of sun-protective sleeves more than doubled between 2009 (10.5%) and 2013 (22.5%). Interestingly females, albeit the minority, at this sporting event were less likely to wear a hat (OR=0.473, P<0.0001) than males. These findings highlight the need for continued momentum toward skin cancer primary prevention through sun protection with a dedicated focus on outdoor sporting settings

Changing sounds in a changing city: an acoustic phonetic investigation of real-time change over a century of Glaswegian.

This paper contributes some new findings towards answering these general theoretical questions about real-time sound change and place. Our study exploits the possibilities offered for a longer-term perspective on real-time change by combining archive recordings from the First World War with those from a real- and apparent-time corpus from the 1970s. We consider three aspects of urban Scots, vowel quality and duration, and the realization of word-initial /l/, using acoustic phonetic measures. The real-time comparisons reveal change in progress in all three features. The direction of the changes is intriguing, since despite the substantial geographical and social changes which have taken place across the UK during especially the second half of the 20th century, and the impact of these in terms of contact-induced changes on urban British accents (e.g. Foulkes and Docherty 1999), it appears that linguistic and social factors to do with the dialect and its location have played a stronger role

Structured heterogeneity in Scottish stops over the twentieth 20th century

How and why speakers differ in the phonetic implementation of phonological contrasts, and the relationship of this ‘structured heterogeneity’ to language change, has been a key focus over 50 years of variationist sociolinguistics. In phonetics, interest has recently grown in uncovering ‘structured variability’—how speakers can differ greatly in phonetic realization in non-random ways—as part of the longstanding goal of understanding variability in speech. The English stop voicing contrast, which combines extensive phonetic variability with phonological stability, provides an ideal setting for an approach to understanding structured variation in the sounds of a community’s language which illuminates both synchrony and diachrony. This paper examines the voicing contrast in a vernacular dialect (Glasgow Scots) in spontaneous speech, focusing on individual speaker variability within and across cues, including over time. Speakers differ greatly in the use of each of three phonetic cues to the contrast, while reliably using each one to differentiate voiced and voiceless stops. Interspeaker variability is highly structured: speakers lie along a continuum of use of each cue, as well as correlated use of two cues—VOT and closure voicing—along a single axis. Diachronic change occurs along this axis, towards a more aspiration-based and less voicing-based phonetic realization of the contrast, suggesting an important connection between synchronic and diachronic speaker variation

Evaluation of Select Monarda Taxa in Montane and Piedmont Regions of Georgia: II. Floral Morphology and Nectar Production

We analyzed the floral morphology and nectar production of several cultivars and species of Monarda representing five cultivars and four species grown in Georgia Piedmont and Montane regions. Over the course of two seasons, we detected significant differences among the samples in terms of inflorescence size, petal lobe and corolla widths and lengths, and total sugar content. M. didyma had larger glomerules, longer corollas and petal lobes, and higher nectar volume and total sugar content per flower. M. fistulosa and M. punctata had smaller glomerules, corolla and petal lobe lengths, and total sugar content per flower. Petal lobe and corolla length strongly correlated with sucrose and nectar production. Combined with data on horticultural performance, these results could be valuable in informing breeding goals for conservation-oriented landscape plants

Galaxy-galaxy Lensing: Dissipationless Simulations Versus the Halo Model

Galaxy-galaxy lensing is a powerful probe of the relation between galaxies and dark matter halos, but its theoretical interpretation requires a careful modeling of various contributions, such as the contribution from central and satellite galaxies. For this purpose, a phenomenological approach based on the halo model has been developed, allowing for fast exploration of the parameter space of models. In this paper, we investigate the ability of the halo model to extract information from the g-g weak lensing signal by comparing it to high-resolution dissipationless simulations that resolve subhalos. We find that the halo model reliably determines parameters such as the host halo mass of central galaxies, the fraction of galaxies that are satellites, and their radial distribution inside larger halos. If there is a significant scatter present in the central galaxy host halo mass distribution, then the mean and median mass of that distribution can differ significantly from one another, and the halo model mass determination lies between the two. This result suggests that when analyzing the data, galaxy subsamples with a narrow central galaxy halo mass distribution, such as those based on stellar mass, should be chosen for a simpler interpretation of the results.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures; minor changes made, matches MNRAS accepted versio