Are steady magnetospheric convection events prolonged substorms?

Magnetospheric modes, including substorms, sawtooth events, and steady magnetospheric convection events, have in the past been described as different responses of the magnetosphere to coupling with the solar wind. Using previously determined event lists for sawtooth events, steady magnetospheric convection events, and substorms, we produce a statistical study of these event types to examine their similarities and behavior in terms of solar wind parameters, auroral brightness, open magnetospheric flux, and geomagnetic indices. A superposed epoch analysis shows that individual sawteeth show the same signatures as substorms but occur during more extreme cases of solar wind driving as well as geomagnetic activity. We also explore the limitations of current methods of identifying steady magnetospheric convection events and explain why some of those events are flagged inappropriately. We show that 58% of the steady magnetospheric convection events considered, as identified by criteria defined in previous studies are part of a prolonged version of substorms due to continued dayside driving during expansion phase. The remaining 42% are episodes of enhanced magnetospheric convection, occurring after extended periods of dayside driving

Clues to the kludonometer

Maria-Theresia Walach, Melanie Cookson-Carter and Rachel Roberts discuss the life work of Captain William Nelson Greenwood, whose legacy includes a mysterious tide calculato

The Changing Eigenfrequency Continuum during Geomagnetic Storms:Implications for Plasma Mass Dynamics and ULF Wave Coupling

Geomagnetic storms are one of the most energetic space weather phenomena. Previous studies have shown that the eigenfrequencies of ultralow frequency (ULF) waves on closed magnetic field lines in the inner magnetosphere decrease during storm times. This change suggests either a reduction in the magnetic field strength and/or an increase in its plasma mass density distribution. We investigate the changes in local eigenfrequencies by applying a superposed multiple‐epoch analysis to cross‐phase spectra from 132 geomagnetic storms. Six ground magnetometer pairs are used to investigate variations from approximately 3 4, the eigenfrequencies decrease by as much as 50% relative to their quiet time values. Both a decrease in magnetic field strength and an increase in plasma mass density, in some locations by more than a factor of 2, are responsible for this reduction. The enhancement of the ring current and an increase in oxygen ion density could explain these observations. At L < 4, the eigenfrequencies increase due to the decrease in plasma mass density caused by plasmaspheric erosion

Classical homeopathy in the treatment of cancer patients - a prospective observational study of two independent cohorts

BACKGROUND: Many cancer patients seek homeopathy as a complementary therapy. It has rarely been studied systematically, whether homeopathic care is of benefit for cancer patients. METHODS: We conducted a prospective observational study with cancer patients in two differently treated cohorts: one cohort with patients under complementary homeopathic treatment (HG; n = 259), and one cohort with conventionally treated cancer patients (CG; n = 380). For a direct comparison, matched pairs with patients of the same tumour entity and comparable prognosis were to be formed. Main outcome parameter: change of quality of life (FACT-G, FACIT-Sp) after 3 months. Secondary outcome parameters: change of quality of life (FACT-G, FACIT-Sp) after a year, as well as impairment by fatigue (MFI) and by anxiety and depression (HADS). RESULTS: HG: FACT-G, or FACIT-Sp, respectively improved statistically significantly in the first three months, from 75.6 (SD 14.6) to 81.1 (SD 16.9), or from 32.1 (SD 8.2) to 34.9 (SD 8.32), respectively. After 12 months, a further increase to 84.1 (SD 15.5) or 35.2 (SD 8.6) was found. Fatigue (MFI) decreased; anxiety and depression (HADS) did not change. CG: FACT-G remained constant in the first three months: 75.3 (SD 17.3) at t0, and 76.6 (SD 16.6) at t1. After 12 months, there was a slight increase to 78.9 (SD 18.1). FACIT-Sp scores improved significantly from t0 (31.0 - SD 8.9) to t1 (32.1 - SD 8.9) and declined again after a year (31.6 - SD 9.4). For fatigue, anxiety, and depression, no relevant changes were found. 120 patients of HG and 206 patients of CG met our criteria for matched-pairs selection. Due to large differences between the two patient populations, however, only 11 matched pairs could be formed. This is not sufficient for a comparative study. CONCLUSION: In our prospective study, we observed an improvement of quality of life as well as a tendency of fatigue symptoms to decrease in cancer patients under complementary homeopathic treatment. It would take considerably larger samples to find matched pairs suitable for comparison in order to establish a definite causal relation between these effects and homeopathic treatment

Subitizing with Variational Autoencoders

Numerosity, the number of objects in a set, is a basic property of a given visual scene. Many animals develop the perceptual ability to subitize: the near-instantaneous identification of the numerosity in small sets of visual items. In computer vision, it has been shown that numerosity emerges as a statistical property in neural networks during unsupervised learning from simple synthetic images. In this work, we focus on more complex natural images using unsupervised hierarchical neural networks. Specifically, we show that variational autoencoders are able to spontaneously perform subitizing after training without supervision on a large amount images from the Salient Object Subitizing dataset. While our method is unable to outperform supervised convolutional networks for subitizing, we observe that the networks learn to encode numerosity as basic visual property. Moreover, we find that the learned representations are likely invariant to object area; an observation in alignment with studies on biological neural networks in cognitive neuroscience

Average field‐aligned current configuration parameterized by solar wind conditions

We present the first large-scale comparison of the spatial distribution of field-aligned currents as measured by the Active Magnetosphere and Planetary Electrodynamics Response Experiment, with the location and brightness of the average auroral oval, determined from the Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration far ultraviolet instrument. These distributions are compared under the same interplanetary magnetic field magnitude and clock angle conditions. The field-aligned currents and auroral oval drop to lower latitudes, as the interplanetary magnetic field becomes both increasingly stronger in magnitude and increasingly southward. We find that the region 2 currents are more closely aligned with the distribution of auroral UV emission, whether that be in the discrete auroral zone about dusk or in the postmidnight diffuse aurora sector. The lack of coincidence between the region 1 field-aligned currents with the auroral oval in the dusk sector is contrary to expectation

Statistical comparison of electron loss and enhancement in the outer radiation belt during storms

The near-relativistic electron population in the outer Van Allen radiation belt is highly dynamic and strongly coupled to geomagnetic activity such as storms and substorms, which are driven by the interaction of the magnetosphere with the solar wind. The energy, content and spatial extent of electrons in the outer radiation belt can vary on timescales of hours to days, dictated by the continuously evolving influence of acceleration and loss processes. While net changes in the electron population are directly observable, the relative influence of different processes is far from fully understood. Using a continuous 12-year dataset from the Proton Electron Telescope (PET) on board the Solar Anomalous Magnetospheric Particle Explorer (SAMPEX), we statistically compare the relative variations of trapped electrons to those in the bounce loss cone. Our results show that there is a proportional increase in flux entering the bounce loss cone outside the plasmapause during storm main phase and early recovery phase. Loss enhancement is sustained on the dawnside throughout the recovery phase while loss on the duskside is enhanced around minimum Sym-H and quickly diminishes. Spatial variations are also examined in relation to geomagnetic activity, making comparisons to possible causal wave modes such as whistler-mode chorus and plasmaspheric hiss

Comparative study of large-scale auroral signatures of substorms, steady magnetospheric convection events, and sawtooth events

This paper investigates the auroral evolution during different magnetospheric modes: substorms, steady magnetospheric convection, and sawtooth events. We undertake a superposed epoch analysis using data from the Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration Far Ultraviolet spectrographic imager and wideband imaging camera for each of these event types. We find that the auroral oval narrows and shows an equatorward movement prior to substorm onset. At substorm onset, the auroral oval brightens explosively near 23 magnetic local time (MLT). After this the aurorae expand poleward and the brightening stretches duskward and dawnward, with the duskward expansion being faster. Approximately 20 min after substorm onset, the aurorae begin to dim. Steady magnetospheric convection events with preceding substorms initially show the same signatures as substorms, but instead of the recovery after 20 min postonset, the aurorae stay bright for an extended period of time (at least 4 h after onset). Despite continued dayside driving of the system during steady magnetospheric convection events, we see a reconfiguration in the nightside auroral activity, taking place between 120 to 150 min after onset. Sawtooth events show very similar signatures to substorms, except for the auroral emission being much brighter, covering a wider MLT extent, and taking significantly less time to recover. The proton aurorae during substorms take ∼2–4 h to dim, during sawtooth events this process takes less than 1 h, despite enhanced reconnection rates. A similar effect is seen in the electron aurorae, albeit not as extreme

Testing nowcasts of the ionospheric convection from the expanding and contracting polar cap model

The expanding/contracting polar cap (ECPC) model, or the time-dependent Dungey cycle, provides a theoretical framework for understanding solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling. The ECPC describes the relationship between magnetopause reconnection and substorm growth phase, magnetotail reconnection and substorm expansion phase, associated changes in auroral morphology, and ionospheric convective motions. Despite the many successes of the model, there has yet to be a rigorous test of the predictions or nowcasts made regarding ionospheric convection, which remains a final hurdle for the validation of the ECPC. In this study we undertake a comparison of ionospheric convection, as measured in situ by ion drift meters on board DMSP (Defense Meteorological Satellite Program) satellites and from the ground by SuperDARN (Super Dual Auroral Radar Network), with motions nowcasted by a theoretical model. The model is coupled to measurements of changes in the size of the polar cap made using global auroral imagery from the IMAGE FUV (Imager for Magnetopause to Aurora Global Exploration Far Ultraviolet) instrument, as well as the dayside reconnection rate, estimated using the OMNI data set. The results show that we can largely nowcast the magnitudes of ionospheric convection flows using the context of our understanding of magnetic reconnection at the magnetopause and in the magnetotail