Close-range remote sensing of Saturn's rings during Cassini's ring-grazing orbits and Grand Finale

Saturn’s rings are an accessible exemplar of an astrophysical disk, tracing the Saturn system’s dynamical processes and history. We present close-range remote-sensing observations of the main rings from the Cassini spacecraft. We find detailed sculpting of the rings by embedded masses, and banded texture belts throughout the rings. Saturn-orbiting streams of material impact the F ring. There are fine-scaled correlations among optical depth, spectral properties, and temperature in the B ring, but anticorrelations within strong density waves in the A ring. There is no spectral distinction between plateaux and the rest of the C ring, whereas the region outward of the Keeler gap is spectrally distinct from nearby regions. These results likely indicate that radial stratification of particle physical properties, rather than compositional differences, is responsible for producing these ring structures. © 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All rights reserved

How young can children reliably and validly self-report their health-related quality of life?: An analysis of 8,591 children across age subgroups with the PedsQL™ 4.0 Generic Core Scales

BACKGROUND: The last decade has evidenced a dramatic increase in the development and utilization of pediatric health-related quality of life (HRQOL) measures in an effort to improve pediatric patient health and well-being and determine the value of healthcare services. The emerging paradigm shift toward patient-reported outcomes (PROs) in clinical trials has provided the opportunity to further emphasize the value and essential need for pediatric patient self-reported outcomes measurement. Data from the PedsQL™ Database(SM )were utilized to test the hypothesis that children as young as 5 years of age can reliably and validly report their HRQOL. METHODS: The sample analyzed represented child self-report age data on 8,591 children ages 5 to 16 years from the PedsQL™ 4.0 Generic Core Scales Database(SM). Participants were recruited from general pediatric clinics, subspecialty clinics, and hospitals in which children were being seen for well-child checks, mild acute illness, or chronic illness care (n = 2,603, 30.3%), and from a State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) in California (n = 5,988, 69.7%). RESULTS: Items on the PedsQL™ 4.0 Generic Core Scales had minimal missing responses for children as young as 5 years old, supporting feasibility. The majority of the child self-report scales across the age subgroups, including for children as young as 5 years, exceeded the minimum internal consistency reliability standard of 0.70 required for group comparisons, while the Total Scale Scores across the age subgroups approached or exceeded the reliability criterion of 0.90 recommended for analyzing individual patient scale scores. Construct validity was demonstrated utilizing the known groups approach. For each PedsQL™ scale and summary score, across age subgroups, including children as young as 5 years, healthy children demonstrated a statistically significant difference in HRQOL (better HRQOL) than children with a known chronic health condition, with most effect sizes in the medium to large effect size range. CONCLUSION: The results demonstrate that children as young as the 5 year old age subgroup can reliably and validly self-report their HRQOL when given the opportunity to do so with an age-appropriate instrument. These analyses are consistent with recent FDA guidelines which require instrument development and validation testing for children and adolescents within fairly narrow age groupings and which determine the lower age limit at which children can provide reliable and valid responses across age categories

Review of Saturn's icy moons following the Cassini mission

We review our knowledge of the icy moons of Saturn prior to the Cassini orbital mission, describe the discoveries made by the instrumentation onboard the Cassini spacecraft

Complete genome sequences of 17 rapidly growing nontuberculous mycobacterial strains

We report the complete genome sequences of 17 rapidly growing nontuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) strains, including 16 Mycobacterium abscessus complex strains and one M. immunogenum strain. These sequences add value to studies of the genetic diversity of rapidly growing NTM strains recovered from human specimens.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/175989/2/Complete Genome Sequences of 17 Rapidly Growing Nontuberculous Mycobacterial Strains. .pdfPublished versio

Complete genome sequence of Mycobacterium abscessus subsp. bolletii

We report the complete genome sequence of a Mycobacterium abscessus subsp. bolletii isolate recovered from a sputum culture from an individual with cystic fibrosis. This sequence is the first completed whole-genome sequence of M. abscessus subsp. bolletii and adds value to studies of M. abscessus complex genomics.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/175988/2/Complete Genome Sequence of Mycobacterium abscessus subsp. bolletii. .pdfPublished versio

OSS (Outer Solar System): A fundamental and planetary physics mission to Neptune, Triton and the Kuiper Belt

The present OSS (Outer Solar System) mission continues a long and bright tradition by associating the communities of fundamental physics and planetary sciences in a single mission with ambitious goals in both domains. OSS is an M-class mission to explore the Neptune system almost half a century after the flyby of the Voyager 2 spacecraft. Several discoveries were made by Voyager 2, including the Great Dark Spot (which has now disappeared) and Triton's geysers. Voyager 2 revealed the dynamics of Neptune's atmosphere and found four rings and evidence of ring arcs above Neptune. Benefiting from a greatly improved instrumentation, a mission as OSS would result in a striking advance in the study of the farthest planet of the solar system. Furthermore, OSS would provide a unique opportunity to visit a selected Kuiper Belt object subsequent to the passage of the Neptunian system. OSS would help consolidate the hypothesis of the origin of Triton as a Kuiper Belt object captured by Neptune, and to improve our knowledge on the formation of the solar system. The OSS probe would carry instruments allowing precise tracking of the spacecraft during the cruise. It would facilitate the best possible tests of the laws of gravity in deep space. These objectives are important for fundamental physics, as they test General Relativity, our current theoretical description of gravitation, but also for cosmology, astrophysics and planetary science, as General Relativity is used as a tool in all these domains. In particular, the models of solar system formation uses General Relativity to describe the crucial role of gravity. OSS is proposed as an international cooperation between ESA and NASA, giving the capability for ESA to launch an M-class mission towards the farthest planet of the solar system, and to a Kuiper Belt object. The proposed mission profile would allow to deliver a 500 kg class spacecraft. The design of the probe is mainly constrained by the deep space gravity test in order to minimize the perturbation of the accelerometer measurement. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V

Role of intestinal M cells in microbial pathogenesis

The Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn carries the composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS) designed to study thermal emission from Saturn and its rings and moons. CIRS, a Fourier transform spectrometer, is an indispensable part of the payload providing unique measurements and important synergies with the other instruments. It takes full advantage of Cassini's 13-year-long mission and surpasses the capabilities of previous spectrometers on Voyager 1 and 2. The instrument, consisting of two interferometers sharing a telescope and a scan mechanism, covers over a factor of 100 in wavelength in the mid and far infrared. It is used to study temperature, composition, structure, and dynamics of the atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn, and Titan, the rings of Saturn, and surfaces of the icy moons. CIRS has returned a large volume of scientific results, the culmination of over 30 years of instrument development, operation, data calibration, and analysis. As Cassini and CIRS reach the end of their mission in 2017, we expect that archived spectra will be used by scientists for many years to come

Composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS) on Cassini

The Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn carries the composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS) designed to study thermal emission from Saturn and its rings and moons. CIRS, a Fourier transform spectrometer, is an indispensable part of the payload providing unique measurements and important synergies with the other instruments. It takes full advantage of Cassini's 13-year-long mission and surpasses the capabilities of previous spectrometers on Voyager 1 and 2. The instrument, consisting of two interferometers sharing a telescope and a scan mechanism, covers over a factor of 100 in wavelength in the mid and far infrared. It is used to study temperature, composition, structure, and dynamics of the atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn, and Titan, the rings of Saturn, and surfaces of the icy moons. CIRS has returned a large volume of scientific results, the culmination of over 30 years of instrument development, operation, data calibration, and analysis. As Cassini and CIRS reach the end of their mission in 2017, we expect that archived spectra will be used by scientists for many years to come