Family Unity, Family Health: How Family-Focused Immigration Reform Will Mean Better Health for Children and Families

This report builds on a body of evidence on the impact of immigration policy on communities, paying particular attention to the health and mental health of children and families.Using existing research, predictive quantitative analysis and data from a convenience survey and two focus groups, this reportshines a light on the consequences of a continued policy of detention and deportation on: physical health, mental health, educational and behavioral outcomes among children; adult health status and lifespan; and economic hardship and food access in households

Circadian rest-activity rhythms predict cognitive function in early Parkinson's disease independently of sleep

BACKGROUND: Cognitive impairment is a common and debilitating symptom of Parkinson's disease (PD), and its etiology is likely multifactorial. One candidate mechanism is circadian disruption. Although there is evidence of circadian abnormalities in PD, no studies have directly assessed their association with cognitive impairment. OBJECTIVES: Investigate whether circadian rest-activity rhythm is associated with cognitive function in PD independently of sleep. METHODS: Thirty-five participants with PD wore wrist actigraph monitors and completed sleep diaries for 7 to 10 days, then underwent neuropsychological testing. Rest-activity rhythm was characterized using nonparametric circadian rhythm analysis of actigraphy data. Objective sleep parameters were also estimated using actigraphy data. Hierarchical regression models assessed the independent contributions of sleep and rest-activity rhythm to cognitive performance. RESULTS: Less stable day-to-day rest-activity rhythm was associated with poorer executive, visuospatial, and psychomotor functioning, but not with memory. Hierarchical regressions showed that interdaily stability's contribution to cognitive performance was independent of sleep's contributions. Whereas sleep contributed to executive function, but not psychomotor or visuospatial performance, rest-activity rhythm stability significantly contributed to variance in all three of these domains, uniquely accounting for 14.4% to 17.6% of their performance variance. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings indicate that circadian rest-activity rhythm is associated with cognitive impairment independently of sleep. This suggests the possible utility of rest-activity rhythm as a biomarker for circadian function in PD. Future research should explore interventions to stabilize behavioral rhythms in order to strengthen circadian function, which, in turn, may reduce cognitive impairment in PD.R00 HL102241 - NHLBI NIH HHS; R01 AG048108 - NIA NIH HHSAccepted manuscrip

High-Energy Photon Opacity in the Twisted Magnetospheres of Magnetars

Magnetars are neutron stars characterized by strong surface magnetic fields generally exceeding the quantum critical value of 44.1 TeraGauss. High-energy photons propagating in their magnetospheres can be attenuated by QED processes like photon splitting and magnetic pair creation. In this paper, we compute the opacities due to photon splitting and pair creation by photons emitted anywhere in the magnetosphere of a magnetar. Axisymmetric, twisted dipole field configurations embedded in the Schwarzschild metric are treated. The paper computes the maximum energies for photon transparency that permit propagation to infinity in curved spacetime. Special emphasis is given to cases where photons are generated along magnetic field loops and/or in polar regions; these cases directly relate to resonant inverse Compton scattering models for the hard X-ray emission from magnetars and Comptonized soft gamma-ray emission from giant flares. We find that increases in magnetospheric twists raise or lower photon opacities, depending on both the emission locale, and the competition between field line straightening and field strength enhancement. Consequently, given the implicit spectral transparency of hard X-ray bursts and persistent "tail" emission of magnetars, photon splitting considerations constrain their emission region locales and the twist angle of the magnetosphere; these constraints can be probed by future soft gamma-ray telescopes such as COSI and AMEGO. The inclusion of twists generally increases the opaque volume of pair creation by photons above its threshold, except when photons are emitted in polar regions and approximately parallel to the field.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysics Journa

A Simple and Efficient Method for Preparing Cell Slides and Staining without Using Cytocentrifuge and Cytoclips

Cell staining is a necessary and useful technique for visualizing cell morphology and structure under a microscope. This technique has been used in many areas such as cytology, hematology, oncology, histology, virology, serology, microbiology, cell biology, and immunochemistry. One of the key pieces of equipment for preparing a slide for cell staining is cytology centrifuge (cytocentrifuge) such as cytospin. However, many small labs do not have this expensive equipment and its accessory, cytoclips (also expensive relatively), which makes them difficult to study cell cytology. Here we present an alternative method for preparing a slide and cell staining in the absence of a cytocentrifuge (and cytoclips). This method is based on the principle that a regular cell centrifuge can be used to concentrate cells harvested from cell culture and then deposit the concentrated cell suspension to a slide evenly by using a cell spreader, followed by cell staining. The method presented is simple, rapid, economic, and efficient. This method may also avoid a possible change in cell morphology induced by cytocentrifuge

Magnetars as Astrophysical Laboratories of Extreme Quantum Electrodynamics: The Case for a Compton Telescope

A next generation of Compton and pair telescopes that improve MeV-band detection sensitivity by more than a decade beyond current instrumental capabilities will open up new insights into a variety of astrophysical source classes. Among these are magnetars, the most highly magnetic of the neutron star zoo, which will serve as a prime science target for a new mission surveying the MeV window. This paper outlines the core questions pertaining to magnetars that can be addressed by such a technology. These range from global magnetar geometry and population trends, to incisive probes of hard X-ray emission locales, to providing cosmic laboratories for spectral and polarimetric testing of exotic predictions of QED, principally the prediction of the splitting of photons and magnetic pair creation. Such fundamental physics cannot yet be discerned in terrestrial experiments. State of the art modeling of the persistent hard X-ray tail emission in magnetars is presented to outline the case for powerful diagnostics using Compton polarimeters. The case highlights an inter-disciplinary opportunity to seed discovery at the interface between astronomy and physics.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, Astro2020 Science White Paper submitted to the National Academies of Science

Diagnosing and predicting wind turbine faults from SCADA data using support vector machines

Unscheduled or reactive maintenance on wind turbines due to component failure incurs significant downtime and, in turn, loss of revenue. To this end, it is important to be able to perform maintenance before it's needed. To date, a strong effort has been applied to developing Condition Monitoring Systems (CMSs) which rely on retrofitting expensive vibration or oil analysis sensors to the turbine. Instead, by performing complex analysis of existing data from the turbine's Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system, valuable insights into turbine performance can be obtained at a much lower cost. In this paper, fault and alarm data from a turbine on the Southern coast of Ireland is analysed to identify periods of nominal and faulty operation. Classification techniques are then applied to detect and diagnose faults by taking into account other SCADA data such as temperature, pitch and rotor data. This is then extended to allow prediction and diagnosis in advance of specific faults. Results are provided which show recall scores generally above 80\% for fault detection and diagnosis, and prediction up to 24 hours in advance of specific faults, representing significant improvement over previous techniques

Unleashing Quantum Simulation Advantages: Hamiltonian Subspace Encoding for Resource Efficient Quantum Simulations

Number-conserved subspace encoding for fermionic Hamiltonians, which exponentially reduces qubit cost, is necessary for quantum advantages in variational quantum eigensolver (VQE). However, optimizing the trade-off between qubit compression and increased measurement cost poses a challenge. By employing the Gilbert-Varshamov bound on linear code, we optimize qubit scaling $\mathcal{O}(N\log_2M)$ and measurement cost $\mathcal{O}(M^4)$ for $M$ modes $N$ electrons chemistry problems. The compression is implemented with the Randomized Linear Encoding (RLE) algorithm on VQE for $\text{H}_2$ and LiH in the 6-31G* and STO-3G/6-31G* basis respectively. The resulting subspace circuit expressivity and trainability are enhanced with less circuit depth and higher noise tolerance