CGRaBS: An All-Sky Survey of Gamma-Ray Blazar Candidates

We describe a uniform all-sky survey of bright blazars, selected primarily by their flat radio spectra, that is designed to provide a large catalog of likely gamma-ray AGN. The defined sample has 1625 targets with radio and X-ray properties similar to those of the EGRET blazars, spread uniformly across the |b| > 10 deg sky. We also report progress toward optical characterization of the sample; of objects with known R < 23, 85% have been classified and 81% have measured redshifts. One goal of this program is to focus attention on the most interesting (e.g., high redshift, high luminosity, ...) sources for intensive multiwavelength study during the observations by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on GLAST.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, 1 machine-readable table available at http://astro.stanford.edu/CGRaBS/ ; accepted for publication in ApJ

Equitable Allocation of COVID-19 Vaccines: An Analysis of the Initial Allocation Plans of CDC\u27s Jurisdictions with Implications for Disparate Impact Monitoring

Major global and national vaccine allocation guidelines urge planners to allocate vaccines in ways that recognize, and ideally reduce, existing societal inequities within countries. However, allocation plans of the US will be determined individually by each of the CDC’s 64 jurisdictions (states, the District of Columbia, five cities, and territories). We analyzed whether jurisdictions have incorporated novel approaches to reduce inequity, based on plans published by the CDC in early November 2020 (63 summaries [98% of all jurisdictions] and 47 full guidance documents [73% of all, including all 50 states]). Eighteen states adopted a novel proposal to use a disadvantage index to allocate vaccines more equitably, for five types of equity goals: 1) to prioritize disadvantaged groups directly, 2) to define priority groups in phased systems, 3) to plan tailored outreach and communication, 4) to plan the location of dispensing sites and 5) to monitor uptake. Yet just over a third of all states, and only half of the 16 states with the largest shares of disadvantaged populations—where reducing inequity would be most urgent—pursue such goals. While allocation frameworks are still evolving, the plans we analyzed mark important historical and practical benchmarks, and could become firm policy when COVID-19 vaccines are authorized and delivered. Vaccine roll-out poses unprecedented logistical and practical challenges. To minimize the risk that ethics and social justice falls by the wayside in the busy months to come, planners at the federal, state and local levels should carefully consider on what grounds they decline to adopt equity measures that other planners deem important and feasible for defining priority populations, designing allocation quotas, and just as critical, enabling, and monitoring, uptake

Effect of 5% fluoride varnish application on caries among school children in rural Brazil: a randomized controlled trial

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/91213/1/cdoe656.pd

Effect of health promotion and fluoride varnish on dental caries among Australian Aboriginal children: results from a community-randomized controlled trial*

Objectives:  We tested a dental health program in remote Aboriginal communities of Australia’s Northern Territory, hypothesizing that it would reduce dental caries in preschool children. Methods:  In this 2-year, prospective, cluster-randomized, concurrent controlled, open trial of the dental health program compared to no such program, 30 communities were allocated at random to intervention and control groups. All residents aged 18–47 months were invited to participate. Twice per year for 2 years in the 15 intervention communities, fluoride varnish was applied to children’s teeth, water consumption and daily tooth cleaning with toothpaste were advocated, dental health was promoted in community settings, and primary health care workers were trained in preventive dental care. Data from dental examinations at baseline and after 2 years were used to compute net dental caries increment per child (d3mfs). A multi-level statistical model compared d3mfs between intervention and control groups with adjustment for the clustered randomization design; four other models used additional variables for adjustment. Results:  At baseline, 666 children were examined; 543 of them (82%) were re-examined 2 years later. The adjusted d3mfs increment was significantly lower in the intervention group compared to the control group by an average of 3.0 surfaces per child (95% CI = 1.2, 4.9), a prevented fraction of 31%. Adjustment for additional variables yielded caries reductions ranging from 2.3 to 3.5 surfaces per child and prevented fractions of 24–36%. Conclusions:  These results corroborate findings from other studies where fluoride varnish was efficacious in preventing dental caries in young children.Gary D. Slade, Ross S. Bailie, Kaye Roberts-Thomson, Amanda J. Leach, Iris Raye, Colin Endean, Bruce Simmons and Peter Morri

Blazars in the Fermi Era: The OVRO 40-m Telescope Monitoring Program

The Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope provides an unprecedented opportunity to study gamma-ray blazars. To capitalize on this opportunity, beginning in late 2007, about a year before the start of LAT science operations, we began a large-scale, fast-cadence 15 GHz radio monitoring program with the 40-m telescope at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO). This program began with the 1158 northern (declination>-20 deg) sources from the Candidate Gamma-ray Blazar Survey (CGRaBS) and now encompasses over 1500 sources, each observed twice per week with a ~4 mJy (minimum) and 3% (typical) uncertainty. Here, we describe this monitoring program and our methods, and present radio light curves from the first two years (2008 and 2009). As a first application, we combine these data with a novel measure of light curve variability amplitude, the intrinsic modulation index, through a likelihood analysis to examine the variability properties of subpopulations of our sample. We demonstrate that, with high significance (7-sigma), gamma-ray-loud blazars detected by the LAT during its first 11 months of operation vary with about a factor of two greater amplitude than do the gamma-ray-quiet blazars in our sample. We also find a significant (3-sigma) difference between variability amplitude in BL Lacertae objects and flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs), with the former exhibiting larger variability amplitudes. Finally, low-redshift (z<1) FSRQs are found to vary more strongly than high-redshift FSRQs, with 3-sigma significance. These findings represent an important step toward understanding why some blazars emit gamma-rays while others, with apparently similar properties, remain silent.Comment: 23 pages, 24 figures. Submitted to ApJ

Direct evidence of a sub-stellar companion around CT Cha

In our ongoing search for close and faint companions around T Tauri stars, we found a very faint (Ks=14.9mag, Ks_0=14.4mag) object, just ~2.67" northwest of the Chamaeleon star-forming region member CT Cha corresponding to a projected separation of ~440AU at 165+/-30 pc. We show that CT Cha A and this faint object form a common proper motion pair from data of the VLT Adaptive Optics (AO) instrument NACO taken in February 2006 and March 2007 and that the companion is by >=4 sigma significance not a stationary background object. Our AO integral field spectroscopy with SINFONI in J, and H+K bands yields a temperature of 2600+/-250K for the companion and an optical extinction of A_V=5.2+/-0.8mag, when compared to spectra calculated from Drift-Phoenix model atmospheres. We demonstrate the validity of the model fits by comparison to several other well-known young sub-stellar objects. Relative flux calibration of the bands was achieved using photometry from the NACO imaging data. We conclude that the CT Cha companion is a very low-mass member of Chamaeleon and very likely a physical companion to CT Cha, as the probability for a by chance alignment is <=0.01. Due to a prominent Pa-Beta emission in the J-band, accretion is probably still ongoing onto the CT Cha companion. From temperature and luminosity (log(Lbol/Lsun)= -2.68+/-0.21), we derive a radius of R=2.20+0.81-0.60 R_Jup. We find a consistent mass of M=17+/-6 MJup for the CT Cha companion from both its luminosity and temperature when placed on evolutionary tracks. Hence, the CT Cha companion is most likely a wide brown dwarf companion or possibly even a planetary mass object.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in A&

Paraphilias and paraphilic disorders in Parkinson's disease: a systematic review of the literature

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Solla, P., Bortolato, M., Cannas, A., Mulas, C. S. and Marrosu, F. (2015), Paraphilias and paraphilic disorders in Parkinson's disease: A systematic review of the literature. Mov Disord., 30: 604–613., which has been published in final form at http://doi.org/10.1002/mds.26157. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving

Avoid or Embrace? Practice Effects in Alzheimer's Disease Prevention Trials

Demonstrating a slowing in the rate of cognitive decline is a common outcome measure in clinical trials in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Selection of cognitive endpoints typically includes modeling candidate outcome measures in the many, richly phenotyped observational cohort studies available. An important part of choosing cognitive endpoints is a consideration of improvements in performance due to repeated cognitive testing (termed “practice effects”). As primary and secondary AD prevention trials are comprised predominantly of cognitively unimpaired participants, practice effects may be substantial and may have considerable impact on detecting cognitive change. The extent to which practice effects in AD prevention trials are similar to those from observational studies and how these potential differences impact trials is unknown. In the current study, we analyzed data from the recently completed DIAN-TU-001 clinical trial (TU) and the associated DIAN-Observational (OBS) study. Results indicated that asymptomatic mutation carriers in the TU exhibited persistent practice effects on several key outcomes spanning the entire trial duration. Critically, these practice related improvements were larger on certain tests in the TU relative to matched participants from the OBS study. Our results suggest that the magnitude of practice effects may not be captured by modeling potential endpoints in observational studies where assessments are typically less frequent and drug expectancy effects are absent. Using alternate instrument forms (represented in our study by computerized tasks) may partly mitigate practice effects in clinical trials but incorporating practice effects as outcomes may also be viable. Thus, investigators must carefully consider practice effects (either by minimizing them or modeling them directly) when designing cognitive endpoint AD prevention trials by utilizing trial data with similar assessment frequencies

How attentional boost interacts with reward: the effect of dopaminergic medications in Parkinson's disease.

There is widespread evidence that dopamine is implicated in the regulation of reward and salience. However, it is less known how these processes interact with attention and recognition memory. To explore this question, we used the attentional boost test in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) before and after the administration of dopaminergic medications. Participants performed a visual letter detection task (remembering rewarded target letters and ignoring distractor letters) while also viewing a series of photos of natural and urban scenes in the background of the letters. The aim of the game was to retrieve the target letter after each trial and to win as much virtual money as possible. The recognition of background scenes was not rewarded. We enrolled 26 drug-naive, newly diagnosed patients with PD and 25 healthy controls who were evaluated at baseline and follow-up. Patients with PD received dopamine agonists (pramipexole, ropinirole, rotigotine) during the 12-week follow-up period. At baseline, we found intact attentional boost in patients with PD: they were able to recognize target-associated scenes similarly to controls. At follow-up, patients with PD outperformed controls for both target- and distractor-associated scenes, but not when scenes were presented without letters. The alerting, orienting and executive components of attention were intact in PD. Enhanced attentional boost was replicated in a smaller group of patients with PD (n = 15) receiving l-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (L-DOPA). These results suggest that dopaminergic medications facilitate attentional boost for background information regardless of whether the central task (letter detection) is rewarded or not