Timescales of Massive Human Entrainment

The past two decades have seen an upsurge of interest in the collective behaviors of complex systems composed of many agents entrained to each other and to external events. In this paper, we extend concepts of entrainment to the dynamics of human collective attention. We conducted a detailed investigation of the unfolding of human entrainment - as expressed by the content and patterns of hundreds of thousands of messages on Twitter - during the 2012 US presidential debates. By time locking these data sources, we quantify the impact of the unfolding debate on human attention. We show that collective social behavior covaries second-by-second to the interactional dynamics of the debates: A candidate speaking induces rapid increases in mentions of his name on social media and decreases in mentions of the other candidate. Moreover, interruptions by an interlocutor increase the attention received. We also highlight a distinct time scale for the impact of salient moments in the debate: Mentions in social media start within 5-10 seconds after the moment; peak at approximately one minute; and slowly decay in a consistent fashion across well-known events during the debates. Finally, we show that public attention after an initial burst slowly decays through the course of the debates. Thus we demonstrate that large-scale human entrainment may hold across a number of distinct scales, in an exquisitely time-locked fashion. The methods and results pave the way for careful study of the dynamics and mechanisms of large-scale human entrainment.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures, 6 tables, 4 supplementary figures. 2nd version revised according to peer reviewers' comments: more detailed explanation of the methods, and grounding of the hypothese

PTPN11 mutations are not responsible for the Cardiofaciocutaneous (CFC) syndrome

Cardiofaciocutaneous (CFC) syndrome is a multiple congenital anomalies/mental retardation syndrome characterized by congenital heart defects, characteristic facial appearance, short stature, ectodermal abnormalities and mental retardation. It was described in 1986, and to date is of unknown genetic etiology. All reported cases are sporadic, born to non-consanguineous parents and have apparently normal chromosomes. Noonan and Costello syndromes remain its main differential diagnosis. the recent finding of PTPN11 missense mutations in 45-50% of the Noonan patients studied with penetrance of almost 100% and the fact that in animals mutations of this gene cause defects of semilunar valvulogenesis, made PTPN11 mutation screening in CFC patients a matter of interest. We sequenced the entire coding region of the PTPN11 gene in ten well-characterised CFC patients and found no base changes. We also studied PTPN11 cDNA in our patients and demonstrated that there are no interstitial deletions either. the genetic cause of CFC syndrome remains unknown, and PTPN11 can be reasonably excluded as a candidate gene for the CFC syndrome, which we regard as molecular evidence that CFC and Noonan syndromes are distinct genetic entities.Univ Sacred Heart, Ist Genet Med, I-00168 Rome, ItalyUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, Escola Paulista Med, Ctr Med Genet, São Paulo, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, Escola Paulista Med, Dept Dermatol, São Paulo, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, Escola Paulista Med, Ctr Med Genet, São Paulo, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, Escola Paulista Med, Dept Dermatol, São Paulo, BrazilWeb of Scienc

The first wave of pandemic influenza (H1N1) 2009 in Germany: From initiation to acceleration

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The first imported case of pandemic influenza (H1N1) 2009 in Germany was confirmed in April 2009. However, the first wave with measurable burden of disease started only in October 2009. The basic epidemiological and clinical characteristics of the pandemic were analysed in order to understand the course of the pandemic in Germany.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The analysis was based on data from the case-based, mandatory German surveillance system for infectious diseases. Cases notified between 27 April and 11 November 2009 and fulfilling the case definition were included in the study.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Two time periods with distinct epidemiologic characteristics could be determined: 23,789 cases (44.1%) occurred during the initiation period (IP, week 18 to 41), and 30,179 (55.9%) during the acceleration period (AP, week 42 to 45). During IP, coinciding with school summer holidays, 61.1% of cases were travel-related and one death occurred. Strict containment efforts were performed until week 32. During AP the majority of cases (94.3%) was autochthonous, 12 deaths were reported. The main affected age group shifted from 15 to 19 years in IP to 10 to 14 years in AP (median age 19 versus 15 years; p < 0.001). The proportion of cases with underlying medical conditions increased from 4.7% to 6.9% (p < 0.001). Irrespective of the period, these cases were more likely to be hospitalised (OR = 3.6 [95% CI: 3.1; 4.3]) and to develop pneumonia (OR = 8.1 [95% CI: 6.1; 10.7]). Furthermore, young children (0 to 2 years) (OR = 2.8 [95% CI: 1.5; 5.2]) and persons with influenza-like illness (ILI, OR = 1.4 [95% CI: 1.0; 2.1]) had a higher risk to develop pneumonia compared to other age groups and individuals without ILI.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The epidemiological differences we could show between summer and autumn 2009 might have been influenced by the school summer holidays and containment efforts. The spread of disease did not result in change of risk groups or severity. Our results show that analyses of case-based information can advise future public health measures.</p

Search for astronomical neutrinos from blazar TXS 0506+056 in super-kamiokande

We report a search for astronomical neutrinos in the energy region from several GeV to TeV in the direction of the blazar TXS 0506+056 using the Super-Kamiokande detector following the detection of a 100 TeV neutrinos from the same location by the IceCube collaboration. Using Super-Kamiokande neutrino data across several data samples observed from 1996 April to 2018 February we have searched for both a total excess above known backgrounds across the entire period as well as localized excesses on smaller timescales in that interval. No significant excess nor significant variation in the observed event rate are found in the blazar direction. Upper limits are placed on the electron- and muon-neutrino fluxes at the 90% confidence level as 6.0 × 10−7 and 4.5 × 10−7–9.3 × 10−10 [erg cm−2 s−1], respectively

To what extent can behaviour change techniques be identified within an adaptable implementation package for primary care? A prospective directed content analysis

Interpreting evaluations of complex interventions can be difficult without sufficient description of key intervention content. We aimed to develop an implementation package for primary care which could be delivered using typically available resources and could be adapted to target determinants of behaviour for each of four quality indicators: diabetes control, blood pressure control, anticoagulation for atrial fibrillation and risky prescribing. We describe the development and prospective verification of behaviour change techniques (BCTs) embedded within the adaptable implementation packages

Room temperature coherent control of coupled single spins in solid

Coherent coupling between single quantum objects is at the heart of modern quantum physics. When coupling is strong enough to prevail over decoherence, it can be used for the engineering of correlated quantum states. Especially for solid-state systems, control of quantum correlations has attracted widespread attention because of applications in quantum computing. Such coherent coupling has been demonstrated in a variety of systems at low temperature1, 2. Of all quantum systems, spins are potentially the most important, because they offer very long phase memories, sometimes even at room temperature. Although precise control of spins is well established in conventional magnetic resonance3, 4, existing techniques usually do not allow the readout of single spins because of limited sensitivity. In this paper, we explore dipolar magnetic coupling between two single defects in diamond (nitrogen-vacancy and nitrogen) using optical readout of the single nitrogen-vacancy spin states. Long phase memory combined with a defect separation of a few lattice spacings allow us to explore the strong magnetic coupling regime. As the two-defect system was well-isolated from other defects, the long phase memory times of the single spins was not diminished, despite the fact that dipolar interactions are usually seen as undesirable sources of decoherence. A coherent superposition of spin pair quantum states was achieved. The dipolar coupling was used to transfer spin polarisation from a nitrogen-vacancy centre spin to a nitrogen spin, with optical pumping of a nitrogen-vacancy centre leading to efficient initialisation. At the level anticrossing efficient nuclear spin polarisation was achieved. Our results demonstrate an important step towards controlled spin coupling and multi-particle entanglement in the solid state

Measurements of neutrino oscillation in appearance and disappearance channels by the T2K experiment with 6.6 x 10(20) protons on target

111 pages, 45 figures, submitted to Physical Review D. Minor revisions to text following referee comments111 pages, 45 figures, submitted to Physical Review D. Minor revisions to text following referee comments111 pages, 45 figures, submitted to Physical Review D. Minor revisions to text following referee commentsWe thank the J-PARC staff for superb accelerator performance and the CERN NA61/SHINE Collaboration for providing valuable particle production data. We acknowledge the support of MEXT, Japan; NSERC, NRC, and CFI, Canada; CEA and CNRS/IN2P3, France; DFG, Germany; INFN, Italy; National Science Centre (NCN), Poland; RSF, RFBR and MES, Russia; MINECO and ERDF funds, Spain; SNSF and SER, Switzerland; STFC, UK; and the U. S. Deparment of Energy, USA. We also thank CERN for the UA1/NOMAD magnet, DESY for the HERA-B magnet mover system, NII for SINET4, the WestGrid and SciNet consortia in Compute Canada, GridPP, UK, and the Emerald High Performance Computing facility in the Centre for Innovation, UK. In addition, participation of individual researchers and institutions has been further supported by funds from ERC (FP7), EU; JSPS, Japan; Royal Society, UK; and DOE Early Career program, USA

Measurement of the electron neutrino charged-current interaction rate on water with the T2K ND280 pi(0) detector

10 pages, 6 figures, Submitted to PRDhttp://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.91.112010© 2015 American Physical Society11 pages, 6 figures, as accepted to PRD11 pages, 6 figures, as accepted to PRD11 pages, 6 figures, as accepted to PR

Political leadership and the politics of performance:France, Syria and the chemical weapons crisis of 2013

This article draws upon developments in UK research on political rhetoric and political performance in order to examine the incident in 2013 when French President François Hollande committed French forces to a US-led punitive strike against Syria, after the use of chemical weapons in a Damascus suburb on 21 August. The US-led retaliation did not take place. This article analyses Hollande's declaration on 27 July and his TV appearance on 15 September. His rhetoric and style are best understood as generic to the nature of the presidential office of the Fifth Republic. The article concludes by appraising how analysis of the French case contributes to the developing literature on rhetoric, celebrity and performance