Stars made in outflows may populate the stellar halo of the Milky Way

We study stellar-halo formation using six Milky-Way-mass galaxies in FIRE-2 cosmological zoom simulations. We find that 5-40 per cent of the outer (50-300 kpc) stellar halo in each system consists of in-situ stars that were born in outflows from the main galaxy. Outflow stars originate from gas accelerated by superbubble winds, which can be compressed, cool, and form co-moving stars. The majority of these stars remain bound to the halo and fall back with orbital properties similar to the rest of the stellar halo at z = 0. In the outer halo, outflow stars are more spatially homogeneous, metal-rich, and alpha-element-enhanced than the accreted stellar halo. At the solar location, up to ∼10 per cent of our kinematically identified halo stars were born in outflows; the fraction rises to as high as ∼40 per cent for the most metal-rich local halo stars ([Fe/H] >-0.5). Such stars can be retrograde and create features similar to the recently discoveredMilkyWay 'Splash' in phase space.We conclude that theMilkyWay stellar halo could contain local counterparts to stars that are observed to form in molecular outflows in distant galaxies. Searches for such a population may provide a new, near-field approach to constraining feedback and outflow physics. A stellar halo contribution from outflows is a phase-reversal of the classic halo formation scenario of Eggen, Lynden-Bell & Sandange, who suggested that halo stars formed in rapidly infalling gas clouds. Stellar outflows may be observable in direct imaging of external galaxies and could provide a source for metal-rich, extreme-velocity stars in the Milky Way

Research enrichment: evaluation of structured research in the curriculum for dental medicine students as part of the vertical and horizontal integration of biomedical training and discovery

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Research programs within medical and dental schools are important vehicles for biomedical and clinical discovery, serving as effective teaching and learning tools by providing situations in which predoctoral students develop problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. Although research programs at many medical and dental schools are well-established, they may not be well integrated into the predoctoral curriculum to effectively support the learning objectives for their students.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A series of structured seminars, incorporating faculty research, was designed for first-year dental students at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, School of Dental Medicine to reinforce and support the concepts and skills taught in concurrent courses. A structured research enrichment period was also created to facilitate student engagement in active research using faculty and student curricular release time. Course evaluations and surveys were administered to gauge student perceptions of the curricular integration of research, the impact of these seminars on recruitment to the research program, and overall levels of student satisfaction with research enrichment.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The analysis of course surveys revealed that students perceived the research-containing seminars effectively illustrated concepts, were logically sequenced, and were well-integrated into their curriculum. In addition, analysis of surveys revealed that the Integration Seminar courses motivated students to engage in research enrichment. Finally, this analysis provided evidence that students were very satisfied with their overall learning experience during research enrichment.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Curricular integration is one method of improving the teaching and learning of complicated and inter-related concepts, providing an opportunity to incorporate research training and objectives into traditionally separate didactic courses. Despite the benefits of curricular integration, finding the most appropriate points of integration, obtaining release time for curricular development and for research engagement, and funding predoctoral student research remain issues to be addressed in ways that reflect the character of the faculty and the goals of each institution.</p

Differences between patients' and clinicians' report of sleep disturbance: a field study in mental health care in Norway

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The aims of the study was to assess the prevalence of diagnosed insomnia and the agreement between patient- and clinician-reported sleep disturbance and use of prescribed hypnotic medication in patients in treatment for mental disorders.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We used three cross-sectional, multicenter data-sets from 2002, 2005, and 2008. Data-set 1 included diagnostic codes from 93% of all patients receiving treatment in mental health care in Norway (<it>N </it>= 40261). Data-sets 2 (<it>N </it>= 1065) and 3 (<it>N </it>= 1181) included diagnostic codes, patient- and clinician-reported sleep disturbance, and use of prescribed hypnotic medication from patients in 8 mental health care centers covering 10% of the Norwegian population.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>34 patients in data-set 1 and none in data-sets 2 and 3 had a diagnosis of insomnia as a primary or comorbid diagnosis. In data-sets 2 and 3, 42% and 40% of the patients reported sleep disturbance, whereas 24% and 13% had clinician-reported sleep disturbance, and 7% and 9% used hypnotics. Patients and clinicians agreed in 29% and 15% of the cases where the patient or the clinician or both had reported sleep disturbance. Positive predictive value (PPV) of clinicians' evaluations of patient sleep disturbance was 62% and 53%. When the patient reported sleep disturbance as one of their most prominent problems PPV was 36% and 37%. Of the patients who received hypnotic medication, 23% and 29% had neither patient nor clinician-rated sleep disturbance.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>When patients meet the criteria for a mental disorder, insomnia is almost never diagnosed, and sleep disturbance is imprecisely recognized relative to the patients' experience of sleep disturbance.</p

Purpose in life predicts better emotional recovery from negative stimuli

Purpose in life predicts both health and longevity suggesting that the ability to find meaning from life’s experiences, especially when confronting life’s challenges, may be a mechanism underlying resilience. Having purpose in life may motivate reframing stressful situations to deal with them more productively, thereby facilitating recovery from stress and trauma. In turn, enhanced ability to recover from negative events may allow a person to achieve or maintain a feeling of greater purpose in life over time. In a large sample of adults (aged 36-84 years) from the MIDUS study (Midlife in the U.S., http://www.midus.wisc.edu/), we tested whether purpose in life was associated with better emotional recovery following exposure to negative picture stimuli indexed by the magnitude of the eyeblink startle reflex (EBR), a measure sensitive to emotional state. We differentiated between initial emotional reactivity (during stimulus presentation) and emotional recovery (occurring after stimulus offset). Greater purpose in life, assessed over two years prior, predicted better recovery from negative stimuli indexed by a smaller eyeblink after negative pictures offset, even after controlling for initial reactivity to the stimuli during the picture presentation, gender, age, trait affect, and other well-being dimensions. These data suggest a proximal mechanism by which purpose in life may afford protection from negative events and confer resilience is through enhanced automatic emotion regulation after negative emotional provocation

The Human Phenotype Ontology in 2024: phenotypes around the world

\ua9 The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research. The Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO) is a widely used resource that comprehensively organizes and defines the phenotypic features of human disease, enabling computational inference and supporting genomic and phenotypic analyses through semantic similarity and machine learning algorithms. The HPO has widespread applications in clinical diagnostics and translational research, including genomic diagnostics, gene-disease discovery, and cohort analytics. In recent years, groups around the world have developed translations of the HPO from English to other languages, and the HPO browser has been internationalized, allowing users to view HPO term labels and in many cases synonyms and definitions in ten languages in addition to English. Since our last report, a total of 2239 new HPO terms and 49235 new HPO annotations were developed, many in collaboration with external groups in the fields of psychiatry, arthrogryposis, immunology and cardiology. The Medical Action Ontology (MAxO) is a new effort to model treatments and other measures taken for clinical management. Finally, the HPO consortium is contributing to efforts to integrate the HPO and the GA4GH Phenopacket Schema into electronic health records (EHRs) with the goal of more standardized and computable integration of rare disease data in EHRs

From gut dysbiosis to altered brain function and mental illness: mechanisms and pathways

The human body hosts an enormous abundance and diversity of microbes, which perform a range of essential and beneficial functions. Our appreciation of the importance of these microbial communities to many aspects of human physiology has grown dramatically in recent years. We know, for example, that animals raised in a germ-free environment exhibit substantially altered immune and metabolic function, while the disruption of commensal microbiota in humans is associated with the development of a growing number of diseases. Evidence is now emerging that, through interactions with the gut-brain axis, the bidirectional communication system between the central nervous system and the gastrointestinal tract, the gut microbiome can also influence neural development, cognition and behaviour, with recent evidence that changes in behaviour alter gut microbiota composition, while modifications of the microbiome can induce depressive-like behaviours. Although an association between enteropathy and certain psychiatric conditions has long been recognized, it now appears that gut microbes represent direct mediators of psychopathology. Here, we examine roles of gut microbiome in shaping brain development and neurological function, and the mechanisms by which it can contribute to mental illness. Further, we discuss how the insight provided by this new and exciting field of research can inform care and provide a basis for the design of novel, microbiota-targeted, therapies.GB Rogers, DJ Keating, RL Young, M-L Wong, J Licinio, and S Wesseling

The Galaxy Zoo survey for giant AGN-ionized clouds: Past and present black hole accretion events

Some active galactic nuclei (AGN) are surrounded by extended emission-line regions (EELRs), which trace both the illumination pattern of escaping radiation and its history over the light travel time from the AGN to the gas. From a new set of such EELRs, we present evidence that the AGN in many Seyfert galaxies undergo luminous episodes 0.2-2years in duration. Motivated by the discovery of the spectacular nebula known as Hanny's Voorwerp, ionized by a powerful AGN which has apparently faded dramatically withinyears, Galaxy Zoo volunteers have carried out both targeted and serendipitous searches for similar emission-line clouds around low-redshift galaxies. We present the resulting list of candidates and describe spectroscopy identifying 19 galaxies with AGN-ionized regions at projected radiikpc. This search recovered known EELRs (such as Mrk 78, Mrk 266 and NGC 5252) and identified additional previously unknown cases, one with detected emission tokpc. One new Sy 2 was identified. At least 14/19 are in interacting or merging systems, suggesting that tidal tails are a prime source of distant gas out of the galaxy plane to be ionized by an AGN. We see a mix of one- and two-sided structures, with observed cone angles from 23to 112. We consider the energy balance in the ionized clouds, with lower and upper bounds on ionizing luminosity from recombination and ionization-parameter arguments, and estimate the luminosity of the core from the far-infrared data. The implied ratio of ionizing radiation seen by the clouds to that emitted by the nucleus, on the assumption of a non-variable nuclear source, ranges from 0.02 to; 7/19 exceed unity. Small values fit well with a heavily obscured AGN in which only a small fraction of the ionizing output escapes to be traced by surrounding gas. However, large values may require that the AGN has faded over tens of thousands of years, giving us several examples of systems in which such dramatic long-period variation has occurred; this is the only current technique for addressing these time-scales in AGN history. The relative numbers of faded and non-faded objects we infer, and the projected extents of the ionized regions, give our estimate (0.2-2years) for the length of individual bright phases. © 2011 The Authors Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2011 RAS