The narrative potential of the British Birth Cohort Studies

This paper draws attention to the narrative potential of longitudinal studies such as the British Birth Cohort Studies (BBCS), and explores the possibility of creating narrative case histories and conducting narrative analysis based on information available from the studies. The BBCS have historically adopted a quantitative research design and used structured interviews and questionnaires to collect data from large samples of individuals born in specific years. However, the longitudinal nature of these studies means that they follow the same sample of individuals from birth through childhood into adult life, and this leads to the creation of data that can be understood as a quantitative auto/biography

Very high rotational frequencies and band termination in 73Br

Rotational bands in 73Br have been investigated up to spins of 65/2 using the EUROBALL III spectrometer. One of the negative-parity bands displays the highest rotational frequency 1.85 MeV reported to date in nuclei with mass number greater than 25. At high frequencies, the experimental dynamic moment of inertia for all bands decrease to very low values, indicating a loss of collectivity. The bands are described in the configuration-dependent cranked Nilsson-Strutinsky model. The calculations indicate that one of the negative-parity bands is observed up to its terminating single-particle state at spin 63/2. This result establishes the first band termination case in the A = 70 mass region.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. C as a Rapid Communicatio

The GREAT triggerless total data readout method

Recoil decay tagging (RDT) is a very powerful method for the spectroscopy of exotic nuclei. RDT is a delayed coincidence technique between detectors usually at the target position and at the focal plane of a spectrometer. Such measurements are often limited by dead time. This paper describes a novel triggerless data acquisition method, which is being developed for the Gamma Recoil Electron Alpha Tagging (GREAT) spectrometer, that overcomes this limitation by virtually eliminating dead time. Our solution is a total data readout (TDR) method where all channels run independently and are associated in software to reconstruct events. The TDR method allows all the data from both target position and focal plane to be collected with practically no dead-time losses. Each data word is associated with a timestamp generated from a global 100-MHz clock. Events are then reconstructed in real time in the event builder using temporal and spatial associations defined by the physics of the experimen

Diameters in preferential attachment models

In this paper, we investigate the diameter in preferential attachment (PA-) models, thus quantifying the statement that these models are small worlds. The models studied here are such that edges are attached to older vertices proportional to the degree plus a constant, i.e., we consider affine PA-models. There is a substantial amount of literature proving that, quite generally, PA-graphs possess power-law degree sequences with a power-law exponent \tau>2. We prove that the diameter of the PA-model is bounded above by a constant times \log{t}, where t is the size of the graph. When the power-law exponent \tau exceeds 3, then we prove that \log{t} is the right order, by proving a lower bound of this order, both for the diameter as well as for the typical distance. This shows that, for \tau>3, distances are of the order \log{t}. For \tau\in (2,3), we improve the upper bound to a constant times \log\log{t}, and prove a lower bound of the same order for the diameter. Unfortunately, this proof does not extend to typical distances. These results do show that the diameter is of order \log\log{t}. These bounds partially prove predictions by physicists that the typical distance in PA-graphs are similar to the ones in other scale-free random graphs, such as the configuration model and various inhomogeneous random graph models, where typical distances have been shown to be of order \log\log{t} when \tau\in (2,3), and of order \log{t} when \tau>3

Surface roughness in XeF2 etching of a-Si/c-Si(100)

Single wavelength ellipsometry and at. force microscopy (AFM) were applied in a well-calibrated beam-etching expt. to characterize the dynamics of surface roughening induced by chem. etching of a .apprx.12 nm amorphous Si (a-Si) top layer and the underlying cryst. Si (c-Si) bulk. In both the initial and final phase of etching, where either only a-Si or only c-Si is exposed to the XeF2 flux, we observe a similar evolution of the surface roughness as a function of the XeF2 dose proportional to D(XeF2)b with b~0.2. In the transition region from the pure amorphous to the pure cryst. silicon layer, we observe a strong anomalous increase of the surface roughness proportional to D(XeF2)b with b~1.5. Not only the growth rate of the roughness increases sharply in this phase, also the surface morphol. temporarily changes to a structure that suggests a cusp-like shape. The remaining a-Si patches on the surface act effectively as a capping layer which causes the growth of deep trenches in the c-Si. The ellipsometry data on the roughness are corroborated by the AFM results, by equating the thickness of the rough layer to 6 s, with s the root-mean-square variation of the AFM's distribution function of height differences. In the AFM data, the anomalous behavior is reflected in a too small value of s which again suggests narrow and deep surface features that cannot be tracked by the AFM tip. The final phase morphol. is characterized by an effective increase in surface area by a factor of two, as derived from a simple bilayer model of the reaction layer, using the exptl. etch rate as input. We obtain a local reaction layer thickness of 1.5 monolayer consistent with the 1.7 ML value of Lo et al. [Lo et al., Phys. Rev. B 47, 648 (1993)] that is also independent of surface roughness. [on SciFinder (R)

Phenotypic heterogeneity and genetic modification of P102L inherited prion disease in an international series

The largest kindred with inherited prion disease P102L, historically Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker syndrome, originates from central England, with émigrés now resident in various parts of the English-speaking world. We have collected data from 84 patients in the large UK kindred and numerous small unrelated pedigrees to investigate phenotypic heterogeneity and modifying factors. This collection represents by far the largest series of P102L patients so far reported. Microsatellite and genealogical analyses of eight separate European kindreds support multiple distinct mutational events at a cytosine-phosphate diester-guanidine dinucleotide mutation hot spot. All of the smaller P102L kindreds were linked to polymorphic human prion protein gene codon 129M and were not connected by genealogy or microsatellite haplotype background to the large kindred or each other. While many present with classical Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker syndrome, a slowly progressive cerebellar ataxia with later onset cognitive impairment, there is remarkable heterogeneity. A subset of patients present with prominent cognitive and psychiatric features and some have met diagnostic criteria for sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. We show that polymorphic human prion protein gene codon 129 modifies age at onset: the earliest eight clinical onsets were all MM homozygotes and overall age at onset was 7 years earlier for MM compared with MV heterozygotes (P = 0.02). Unexpectedly, apolipoprotein E4 carriers have a delayed age of onset by 10 years (P = 0.02). We found a preponderance of female patients compared with males (54 females versus 30 males, P = 0.01), which probably relates to ascertainment bias. However, these modifiers had no impact on a semi-quantitative pathological phenotype in 10 autopsied patients. These data allow an appreciation of the range of clinical phenotype, modern imaging and molecular investigation and should inform genetic counselling of at-risk individuals, with the identification of two genetic modifiers

Inkjet printed circuits with two-dimensional semiconductor inks for high-performance electronics

Air-stable semiconducting inks suitable for complementary logic are key to create low-power printed integrated circuits (ICs). High-performance printable electronic inks with two-dimensional materials have the potential to enable the next generation of high performance, low-cost printed digital electronics. Here we demonstrate air-stable, low voltage (< 5 V) operation of inkjet-printed n-type molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) and p-type indacenodithiophene-co-benzothiadiazole (IDT-BT) field-effect transistors (FETs), estimating a switching time of {\tau} ~ 3.3 {\mu}s for the MoS2 FETs. We achieve this by engineering high-quality MoS2 and air-stable IDT-BT inks suitable for inkjet-printing complementary pairs of n-type MoS2 and p-type IDT-BT FETs. We then integrate MoS2 and IDT-BT FETs to realise inkjet-printed complementary logic inverters with a voltage gain |Av| ~ 4 when in resistive load configuration and |Av| ~ 1.36 in complementary configuration. These results represent a key enabling step towards ubiquitous long-term stable, low-cost printed digital ICs

Chronic wasting disease prions are not transmissible to transgenic mice overexpressing human prion protein

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a prion disease that affects free-ranging and captive cervids, including mule deer, white-tailed deer, Rocky Mountain elk and moose. CWD-infected cervids have been reported in 14 USA states, two Canadian provinces and in South Korea. The possibility of a zoonotic transmission of CWD prions via diet is of particular concern in North America where hunting of cervids is a popular sport. To investigate the potential public health risks posed by CWD prions, we have investigated whether intracerebral inoculation of brain and spinal cord from CWD-infected mule deer transmits prion infection to transgenic mice overexpressing human prion protein with methionine or valine at polymorphic residue 129. These transgenic mice have been utilized in extensive transmission studies of human and animal prion disease and are susceptible to BSE and vCJD prions, allowing comparison with CWD. Here, we show that these mice proved entirely resistant to infection with mule deer CWD prions arguing that the transmission barrier associated with this prion strain/host combination is greater than that observed with classical BSE prions. However, it is possible that CWD may be caused by multiple prion strains. Further studies will be required to evaluate the transmission properties of distinct cervid prion strains as they are characterized

High-efficiency and air-stable P3HT-based polymer solar cells with a new non-fullerene acceptor

We thank BASF for partial financial support, as well as EPSRC Projects EP/G037515/1 and EP/M023532/1, EC FP7 Project SC2 (610115), EC FP7 Project ArtESun (604397), EC FP7 Project POLYMED (612538), Project Synthetic carbon allotropes project SFB 953 and the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)