Ariel - Volume 9 Number 3

Executive Editor Emily Wofford Business Manager Fredric Jay Matlin University News John Patrick Welch World News George Robert Coar Editorials Editor Steve Levine Features Mark Rubin Brad Feldstein Photo Rick Spaide Circulation Victor Onufreiczuk Lee Wugofski Graphics and Art Steve Hulkower Commons Editor Brenda Peterso

Metal oxide–zeolite composites in transformation of methanol to hydrocarbons : do iron oxide and nickel oxide matter?

The methanol-to-hydrocarbon (MTH) reaction has received considerable attention as utilizing renewable sources of both value-added chemicals and fuels becomes a number one priority for society. Here, for the first time we report the development of hierarchical zeolites (ZSM-5) containing both iron oxide and nickel oxide nanoparticles. By modifying the iron oxide (magnetite, Fe3O4) amounts, we are able to control the catalyst activity and the product distribution in the MTH process. At the medium Fe3O4 loading, the major fraction is composed of C9–C11 hydrocarbons (gasoline fraction). At the higher Fe3O4 loading, C1–C4 hydrocarbons prevail in the reaction mixture, while at the lowest magnetite loading the major component is the C5–C8 hydrocarbons. Addition of Ni species to Fe3O4–ZSM-5 leads to the formation of mixed Ni oxides (NiO/Ni2O3) positioned either on top of or next to Fe3O4 nanoparticles. This modification allowed us to significantly improve the catalyst stability due to diminishing coke formation and disordering of the coke formed. The incorporation of Ni oxide species also leads to a higher catalyst activity (up to 9.3 g(methanol)/(g(ZSM-5) × h)) and an improved selectivity (11.3% of the C5–C8 hydrocarbons and 23.6% of the C9–C11 hydrocarbons), making these zeolites highly promising for industrial applications

QUEST: A New Frontiers Uranus Orbiter Mission Concept Study

The ice giant planets, Uranus and Neptune, are fundamentally different from the gas giant and terrestrial planets. Though ice giants represent the most common size of exoplanet and possess characteristics that challenge our understanding of the way our solar system formed and evolved, they remain the only class of planetary object without a dedicated spacecraft mission. The inclusion of a Uranus orbiter as the third highest priority Flagship mission in the NASA Planetary Science Decadal Survey “Vision and Voyages for Planetary Science in the Decade 2013–2022” indicates a high level of support for exploration of the ice giants by the planetary science community. However, given the substantial costs associated with a flagship mission, it is critical to explore lower cost options if we intend to visit Uranus within an ideal launch window of 2029 - 2034 when a Jupiter gravity assist becomes available. In this paper, we describe the Quest to Uranus to Explore Solar System Theories (QUEST), a New Frontiers class Uranus orbiter mission concept study performed at the 30th Annual NASA/JPL Planetary Science Summer Seminar. The proposed QUEST platform is a spin-stabilized spacecraft designed to undergo highly elliptical, polar orbits around Uranus during a notional one-year primary science mission. The proposed major science goals of the mission are (1) to use Uranus as a natural laboratory to better understand the dynamos that drive magnetospheres in the solar system and beyond and (2) to identify the energy transport mechanisms in Uranus' magnetic, atmospheric, and interior environments in contrast with the other giant planets. With substantial mass, power, and cost margins, this mission concept demonstrates a compelling, feasible option for a New Frontiers Uranus orbiter mission

Divergent Priors and Well Behaved Bayes Factors

Divergent priors are improper when defined on unbounded supports. Bartlett's paradox has been taken to imply that using improper priors results in ill-defined Bayes factors, preventing model comparison by posterior probabilities. However many improper priors have attractive properties that econometricians may wish to access and at the same time conduct model comparison. We present a method of computing well defined Bayes factors with divergent priors by setting rules on the rate of diffusion of prior certainty. The method is exact; no approximations are used. As a further result, we demonstrate that exceptions to Bartlett's paradox exist. That is, we show it is possible to construct improper priors that result in well defined Bayes factors. One important improper prior, the Shrinkage prior due to Stein (1956), is one such example. This example highlights pathologies with the resulting Bayes factors in such cases, and a simple solution is presented to this problem. A simple Monte Carlo experiment demonstrates the applicability of the approach developed in this paper

Is Canada ready for patient accessible electronic health records? A national scan

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Access to personal health information through the electronic health record (EHR) is an innovative means to enable people to be active participants in their own health care. Currently this is not an available option for consumers of health. The absence of a key technology, the EHR, is a significant obstacle to providing patient accessible electronic records. To assess the readiness for the implementation and adoption of EHRs in Canada, a national scan was conducted to determine organizational readiness and willingness for patient accessible electronic records.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A survey was conducted of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of Canadian public and acute care hospitals.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Two hundred thirteen emails were sent to CEOs of Canadian general and acute care hospitals, with a 39% response rate. Over half (54.2%) of hospitals had some sort of EHR, but few had a record that was predominately electronic. Financial resources were identified as the most important barrier to providing patients access to their EHR and there was a divergence in perceptions from healthcare providers and what they thought patients would want in terms of access to the EHR, with providers being less willing to provide access and patients desire for greater access to the full record.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>As the use of EHRs becomes more commonplace, organizations should explore the possibility of responding to patient needs for clinical information by providing access to their EHR. The best way to achieve this is still being debated.</p

Search for transient optical counterparts to high-energy IceCube neutrinos with Pan-STARRS1

In order to identify the sources of the observed diffuse high-energy neutrino flux, it is crucial to discover their electromagnetic counterparts. IceCube began releasing alerts for single high-energy ($E > 60$ TeV) neutrino detections with sky localisation regions of order 1 deg radius in 2016. We used Pan-STARRS1 to follow-up five of these alerts during 2016-2017 to search for any optical transients that may be related to the neutrinos. Typically 10-20 faint ($m < 22.5$ mag) extragalactic transients are found within the Pan-STARRS1 footprints and are generally consistent with being unrelated field supernovae (SNe) and AGN. We looked for unusual properties of the detected transients, such as temporal coincidence of explosion epoch with the IceCube timestamp. We found only one transient that had properties worthy of a specific follow-up. In the Pan-STARRS1 imaging for IceCube-160427A (probability to be of astrophysical origin of $\sim$50 %), we found a SN PS16cgx, located at 10.0' from the nominal IceCube direction. Spectroscopic observations of PS16cgx showed that it was an H-poor SN at z = 0.2895. The spectra and light curve resemble some high-energy Type Ic SNe, raising the possibility of a jet driven SN with an explosion epoch temporally coincident with the neutrino detection. However, distinguishing Type Ia and Type Ic SNe at this redshift is notoriously difficult. Based on all available data we conclude that the transient is more likely to be a Type Ia with relatively weak SiII absorption and a fairly normal rest-frame r-band light curve. If, as predicted, there is no high-energy neutrino emission from Type Ia SNe, then PS16cgx must be a random coincidence, and unrelated to the IceCube-160427A. We find no other plausible optical transient for any of the five IceCube events observed down to a 5$\sigma$ limiting magnitude of $m \sim 22$ mag, between 1 day and 25 days after detection.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures, accepted to A&

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With the observation of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, interest has risen in models of PeV-mass decaying dark matter particles to explain the observed flux. We present two dedicated experimental analyses to test this hypothesis. One analysis uses 6 years of IceCube data focusing on muon neutrino ‘track’ events from the Northern Hemisphere, while the second analysis uses 2 years of ‘cascade’ events from the full sky. Known background components and the hypothetical flux from unstable dark matter are fitted to the experimental data. Since no significant excess is observed in either analysis, lower limits on the lifetime of dark matter particles are derived: we obtain the strongest constraint to date, excluding lifetimes shorter than $10^{28}$ s at 90% CL for dark matter masses above 10 TeV

Differential limit on the extremely-high-energy cosmic neutrino flux in the presence of astrophysical background from nine years of IceCube data

We report a quasi-differential upper limit on the extremely-high-energy (EHE) neutrino flux above $5\times 10^{6}$ GeV based on an analysis of nine years of IceCube data. The astrophysical neutrino flux measured by IceCube extends to PeV energies, and it is a background flux when searching for an independent signal flux at higher energies, such as the cosmogenic neutrino signal. We have developed a new method to place robust limits on the EHE neutrino flux in the presence of an astrophysical background, whose spectrum has yet to be understood with high precision at PeV energies. A distinct event with a deposited energy above $10^{6}$ GeV was found in the new two-year sample, in addition to the one event previously found in the seven-year EHE neutrino search. These two events represent a neutrino flux that is incompatible with predictions for a cosmogenic neutrino flux and are considered to be an astrophysical background in the current study. The obtained limit is the most stringent to date in the energy range between $5 \times 10^{6}$ and $5 \times 10^{10}$ GeV. This result constrains neutrino models predicting a three-flavor neutrino flux of $E_\nu^2\phi_{\nu_e+\nu_\mu+\nu_\tau}\simeq2\times 10^{-8}\ {\rm GeV}/{\rm cm}^2\ \sec\ {\rm sr}$at$10^9\ {\rm GeV}$. A significant part of the parameter-space for EHE neutrino production scenarios assuming a proton-dominated composition of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays is excluded.Comment: The version accepted for publication in Physical Review

α Cell Function and Gene Expression Are Compromised in Type 1 Diabetes.

Many patients with type 1 diabetes (T1D) have residual β cells producing small amounts of C-peptide long after disease onset but develop an inadequate glucagon response to hypoglycemia following T1D diagnosis. The features of these residual β cells and α cells in the islet endocrine compartment are largely unknown, due to the difficulty of comprehensive investigation. By studying the T1D pancreas and isolated islets, we show that remnant β cells appeared to maintain several aspects of regulated insulin secretion. However, the function of T1D α cells was markedly reduced, and these cells had alterations in transcription factors constituting α and β cell identity. In the native pancreas and after placing the T1D islets into a non-autoimmune, normoglycemic in vivo environment, there was no evidence of α-to-β cell conversion. These results suggest an explanation for the disordered T1D counterregulatory glucagon response to hypoglycemia. Cell Rep 2018 Mar 6; 22(10):2667-2676

Neutrinos below 100 TeV from the southern sky employing refined veto techniques to IceCube data

Many Galactic sources of gamma rays, such as supernova remnants, are expected to produce neutrinos with a typical energy cutoff well below 100 TeV. For the IceCube Neutrino Observatory located at the South Pole, the southern sky, containing the inner part of the Galactic plane and the Galactic Center, is a particularly challenging region at these energies, because of the large background of atmospheric muons. In this paper, we present recent advancements in data selection strategies for track-like muon neutrino events with energies below 100 TeV from the southern sky. The strategies utilize the outer detector regions as veto and features of the signal pattern to reduce the background of atmospheric muons to a level which, for the first time, allows IceCube searching for point-like sources of neutrinos in the southern sky at energies between 100 GeV and several TeV in the muon neutrino charged current channel. No significant clustering of neutrinos above background expectation was observed in four years of data recorded with the completed IceCube detector. Upper limits on the neutrino flux for a number of spectral hypotheses are reported for a list of astrophysical objects in the southern hemisphere.Comment: 19 pages, 17 figures, 2 table