XMM-Newton and Chandra observations of the candidate Fermi-LAT pulsar 4FGL J1015.5-6030

4FGL J1015.5-6030 is an unidentified Fermi-LAT source hosting a bright, extended X-ray source whose X-ray spectrum is consistent with that of a young pulsar, yet no pulsations have been found. Here we report on XMM-Newton timing and Chandra imaging observations of the X-ray counterpart of 4FGL J1015.5-6030. We find no significant periodicity from the source and place a 3$\sigma$ upper-limit on its pulsed fraction of 34$\%$. The Chandra observations resolve the point source from the extended emission. We find that the point source's spectrum is well fit by a blackbody model, with temperature $kT=0.205\pm0.009$ keV, plus a weak power-law component, which is consistent with a thermally emitting neutron star with a magnetospheric component. The extended emission spans angular scales of a few arcseconds up to about 30$''$ from the point source and its spectrum is well fit by a power-law model with a photon index $\Gamma=1.70\pm0.05$. The extended emission's spectrum and 0.5-10 keV luminosity of 4$\times10^{32}$ erg s$^{-1}$ (at a plausible distance of 2 kpc) are consistent with that of a pulsar wind nebula. Based on a comparison to other GeV and X-ray pulsars, we find that this putative pulsar is likely a middle-aged (i.e., $\tau\sim 0.1$--1 Myr) radio-quiet pulsar with $\dot{E}\sim10^{34}-10^{35}$ erg s$^{-1}$.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap

The effects of digital predistortion in a CO-OFDM system – a stochastic approach

Digital predistortion is topic of significant interest in telecommunications – both in the wireless radio field and, more recently, in photonics. In the present letter, the authors undertake a sensitivity analysis of various digital predistortion algorithms. Using recent metamodeling techniques designed for efficient stochastic analysis, the authors show that using predistortion not only leads to a reduction of the error vector magnitude in general but can also make the system less sensitive to uncertainties

The classification of Bedouin Arabic: insights from Northern Jordan

The goal of the present paper is to provide a revaluation of the classification of the Bedouin dialects of Northern Arabia and the Southern Levant, based on published or publicly available data and on first-hand data recently collected amongst some Bedouin tribes in Northern Jordan. We suggest extending previous classifications that identify three types of dialects, namely A (ʿnizi), B (šammari), and C (šāwi). Although intermediary or mixed types combining šammari features with šāwi features were already noted, our data suggest that further combinations are possible, either because they had so far been unnoticed or because recent levelling and dialect mixing have blurred the boundaries between some of the varieties

Impact of the delay to start treatment in patients with lung cancer treated in a densely populated area of Brazil

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study is to evaluate the access of patients with lung cancer in a densely populated area of São Paulo to the Brazilian Public Health System, focusing on the time spent from symptom onset or initial diagnosis until the beginning of treatment. METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed 509 patients with malignant lung neoplasms who were admitted to a single reference oncology center of the public health system between July 2008 and December 2014. Patients were considered eligible for this study if they were older than 18 years and had not undergone any previous oncology treatment when they were admitted to the institution. The following data were collected from all patients: age, gender, smoking status, tumor staging, time from the when the first symptoms were experienced by the patient to when the patient was diagnosed with cancer, time from the first appointment to cancer diagnosis, and time from when the patient was diagnosed with cancer to the initiation of treatment. RESULTS: The median time from symptom onset to diagnosis was three months. From the first appointment to diagnosis, the median time interval was one month; however, 79% of patients were diagnosed in up to two months. The median time from diagnosis to the start of treatment was one month, but most patients (82.5%) started treatment in up to two months. CONCLUSION: In our highly populated region with preferential access to the public health system, patients are required to wait a relatively long time to effectively begin treatment for lung cancer. This type of study is important to alert medical societies and government health agencies

All-sky Medium Energy Gamma-ray Observatory: Exploring the Extreme Multimessenger Universe

The All-sky Medium Energy Gamma-ray Observatory (AMEGO) is a probe class mission concept that will provide essential contributions to multimessenger astrophysics in the late 2020s and beyond. AMEGO combines high sensitivity in the 200 keV to 10 GeV energy range with a wide field of view, good spectral resolution, and polarization sensitivity. Therefore, AMEGO is key in the study of multimessenger astrophysical objects that have unique signatures in the gamma-ray regime, such as neutron star mergers, supernovae, and flaring active galactic nuclei. The order-of-magnitude improvement compared to previous MeV missions also enables discoveries of a wide range of phenomena whose energy output peaks in the relatively unexplored medium-energy gamma-ray band

Contribution of copy number variants to schizophrenia from a genome-wide study of 41,321 subjects

Copy number variants (CNVs) have been strongly implicated in the genetic etiology of schizophrenia (SCZ). However, genome-wide investigation of the contribution of CNV to risk has been hampered by limited sample sizes. We sought to address this obstacle by applying a centralized analysis pipeline to a SCZ cohort of 21,094 cases and 20,227 controls. A global enrichment of CNV burden was observed in cases (OR=1.11, P=5.7×10−15), which persisted after excluding loci implicated in previous studies (OR=1.07, P=1.7 ×10−6). CNV burden was enriched for genes associated with synaptic function (OR = 1.68, P = 2.8 ×10−11) and neurobehavioral phenotypes in mouse (OR = 1.18, P= 7.3 ×10−5). Genome-wide significant evidence was obtained for eight loci, including 1q21.1, 2p16.3 (NRXN1), 3q29, 7q11.2, 15q13.3, distal 16p11.2, proximal 16p11.2 and 22q11.2. Suggestive support was found for eight additional candidate susceptibility and protective loci, which consisted predominantly of CNVs mediated by non-allelic homologous recombination