Solar cycle variations in the interplanetary magnetic field

ISEE 3 interplanetary magnetic field measurements have been used to extend the NSSDC hourly averaged IMF composite data set through mid-1982. Most of sunspot cycle 20 (start:1964) and the first half of cycle 21 (start:1976) are now covered. The average magnitude of the field was relatively constant over cycle 20 with approx. 5-10% decreases in 1969 and 1971, when the Sun's polar regions changed polarity, and a 20% decrease in 1975-6 around solar minimum. Since the start of the new cycle, the total field strength has risen with the mean for the first third of 1982 being about 40% greater than the cycle 20 average. As during the previous cycle, an approx. 10% drop in IMF magnitude accompanied the 1980 reversal of the solar magnetic field. While the interplanetary magnetic field is clearly stronger during the present solar cycle, another 5-7 years of observations will be needed to determine if cycle 21 exhibits the same modest variations as the last cycle. Accordingly, it appears at this time that intercycle changes in IMF magnitude may be much larger than the intracycle variations

A Review of Lunar and Planetary Magnetic Field Measurements Using Space Probes

Planetary magnetic field boundaries and field interactions with solar wind determined from data obtained by space probes near Moon, Venus and Mar

Profile of allergy-related articles in the primary academic publication for UK General Practitioners

Background: Concern is often expressed about primary health care professionals’ lack of knowledge about allergies, particularly diagnostic testing and the management of atopic disorders. Limited training opportunities in allergy have been documented in both undergraduate and postgraduate education. The British Journal of General Practice is the leading UK-based Family Practice journal, it has a strong clinical focus. The BJGP was established in 1953. It is a high quality journal and is the world’s 2nd most highly cited journal of general practice and primary care. Methods: Keyword search of bjgp.org. Terms used were ‘allergy’, ‘allergies’, ‘allergic’, ‘rhinitis’, ‘urticaria’, ‘eczema’, ‘angioedema’. All titles and articles from 1953 to 2013 were searched. Full copies of relevant publications were downloaded and variables extracted, including title, year of publication, type of article, clinical focus. As a comparator a similar search was conducted for articles about asthma using the search term ‘asthma’. Results: 41 allergy-related articles were identified in the 60 years since the journal was launched. In the same time period there were 147 articles about asthma. In 31 of the 60 years reviewed there were no articles at all about any allergy-related topic. The focus of the articles published were eczema (6), food allergy (6), rhinoconjunctivitis (5), anaphylaxis (4), urticaria (1). There were no articles on angioedema. Some articles addressed multiple atopic disorders, eg ‘Allergic diseases in the elderly’ (1968), ‘Allergic disorders amongst horticultural, agricultural and forestry workers’ [letter] (1965). Conclusions: Allergy has a low profile in the British Journal of General Practice. This low profile persists despite the increasing prevalence of atopic disorders and major national reports highlighting the need for better care of the allergic patient in primary care. Our exploratory study highlights a missed opportunity to educate and inform General Practitioners about allergy through this widely circulated journal. Further work is needed to understand better why so few articles on allergy are published in the BJGP. If the paucity of publications reflects the number of articles submitted then BSACI members interested in informing and improving allergy management in General Practice should include the BJGP on their list of target journals. Where next: To share these observations with the Editor of the BJGP to understand whether they reflect editorial policy or lack of submissions from clinicians and researchers with expertise in allergy. To work with the BJGP to identify collaborative initiatives to address the serious mismatch between the prevalence of allergy in the clinical consultation and the number of allergy- related articles in the literature for GPs

Spatial dependences in the distant solar wind: Pioneers 10 and 11

Pioneer 10, 11 observations of the solar wind and magnetic field between 1 and 20 AU are reviewed. Spatial dependences, which are emphasized, must be inferred in the presence of large temporal variations including solar cycle effects. The separation of spatial and temporal dependences is achieved principally through the use of multipoint observations including baseline measurements at 1 AU. Measurements of the solar wind parameters (radial speed, flux, proton temperature) and of the magnetic field magnitude and components are compared with two theories, the Parker theory which assumes radial, azimuthally symmetric flow and the Goldstein-Jokipii theory which includes effects associated with stream-stream interactions. The observed radial gradients in the proton density and velocity and the magnetic field are consistent with the Parker model. A qualitative dependence of field magnitude on heliomagnetic latitude, i.e., referred to the observed location of the heliospheric current sheet, was derived. The field strength was found to decrease with distance from the current sheet

Articulatory insights into language variation and change: preliminary findings from an ultrasound study of derhoticization in Scottish English

<p>Scottish English is often cited as a rhotic dialect of English. However, in the 70s and 80s, researchers noticed that postvocalic /r/ was in attrition in Glasgow (Macafee, 1983) and Edinburgh (Romaine, 1978; Johnston and Speitel 1983). Recent research (Stuart-Smith, 2003) confirms that postvocalic /r/ as a canonical phonetically rhotic consonant is being lost in working-class Glaswegian speech. However, auditory and acoustic analysis revealed that the situation was more complicated than simple /r/ vs. zero variation. The derhoticized quality of /r/ seemed to vary socially; in particular male working class speakers often produced intermediate sounds that were difficult to identify. It is clear that although auditory and acoustic analysis are useful, they can only hint at what is going on in the vocal tract. A direct articulatory study is thus motivated.</p> <p>Instrumental phonetic studies that examine the vocal tract during the production of sustained rhotic consonants and in laboratory-based studies of American English /r/ have identified a complex relationship between articulation and acoustics, including articulatory differences with minimal acoustic consequences (starting with Delattre and Freeman, 1968). In other words, different gestural configurations can be used to generate a canonically rhotic consonant. A pilot study (Scobbie and Stuart-Smith, 2006) using Ultrasound Tongue Imaging (UTI) with a Scottish vernacular speaker revealed something rather different: the occurrence of a strong articulatory retroflex tongue motion, which generated little or no rhotic acoustic consequences because it was timed to occur after phonation had ceased, before pause. This tongue motion was found in a speaker who was weakly rhotic. Thus we may have a situation in which acoustic differences with a sociolinguistic function have, in some prosodic contexts, imperceptible articulatory differences in tongue position, though timing will vary. The situation of language variation and change in Scotland means that an articulatory/acoustic study is likely to give very different results to similar studies of rhotic speakers in the USA (Mielke, Twist, and Archangeli, 2006), and be particularly relevant to understanding social variation.</p> <p>Ultrasound is non-invasive and portable and therefore has great potential as an instrumental method for studying aspects of socially stratified variation: articulatory data can be physically collected in every-day social settings. However the technique requires refinement for effective use in recording locations outside the laboratory (e.g. in school, at home), and the potential impact of using the equipment on speech is not known. Gick (2002) suggest methods for fieldwork, but we are not aware of any study which attempts to quantify the effects of the technique on vernacular speakers.</p> <p>Ultrasound is non-invasive and portable and therefore has great potential as an instrumental method for studying aspects of socially stratified variation: articulatory data can be physically collected in every-day social settings. However the technique requires refinement for effective use in recording locations outside the laboratory (e.g. in school, at home), and the potential impact of using the equipment on speech is not known. Gick (2002) suggest methods for fieldwork, but we are not aware of any study which attempts to quantify the effects of the technique on vernacular speakers.</p&gt

Experimental study and evaluation of radioprotective drugs

Experimental study evaluates radioprotective drugs administered before exposure either orally or intravenously. Specifically studied are the sources of radiation, choice of radiation dose, choice of animals, administration of drugs, the toxicity of protective agents and types of protective drug

Generative deep fields : arbitrarily sized, random synthetic astronomical images through deep learning

© 2019 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are a class of artificial neural network that can produce realistic, but artificial, images that resemble those in a training set. In typical GAN architectures these images are small, but a variant known as Spatial-GANs (SGANs) can generate arbitrarily large images, provided training images exhibit some level of periodicity. Deep extragalactic imaging surveys meet this criteria due to the cosmological tenet of isotropy. Here we train an SGAN to generate images resembling the iconic Hubble Space Telescope eXtreme Deep Field (XDF). We show that the properties of 'galaxies' in generated images have a high level of fidelity with galaxies in the real XDF in terms of abundance, morphology, magnitude distributions and colours. As a demonstration we have generated a 7.6-billion pixel 'generative deep field' spanning 1.45 degrees. The technique can be generalised to any appropriate imaging training set, offering a new purely data-driven approach for producing realistic mock surveys and synthetic data at scale, in astrophysics and beyond.Peer reviewe

Rubber-coated bellows improves vibration damping in vacuum lines

Compact-vibration damping systems, consisting of rubber-coated metal bellows with a sliding O-ring connector, are used in vacuum lines. The device presents a metallic surface to the vacuum system and combines flexibility with the necessary stiffness. It protects against physical damage, reduces fatigue failure, and provides easy mating of nonparallel lines

EKG isolator

Light beam transmits heartbeat signal from electrodes on patient to electrocardiograph without exposing patient to possible severe electrical shock. System provides complete isolation between patient and EKG instrumentation