Distribution of star-forming complexes in dwarf irregular galaxies

We study the distribution of bright star-forming complexes in a homogeneous sample of 72 late-type (``irregular'') dwarf galaxies located within the 10 Mpc volume. Star-forming complexes are identified as bright lumps in B-band galaxy images and isolated by means of the unsharp-masking method. For the sample as a whole the radial number distribution of bright lumps largely traces the underlying exponential-disk light profiles, but peaks at a 10 percent smaller scale length. Moreover, the presence of a tail of star forming regions out to at least six optical scale lengths provides evidence against a systematic star formation truncation within that galaxy extension. Considering these findings, we apply a scale length-independent concentration index, taking into account the implied non-uniform random spread of star formation regions throughout the disk. The number profiles frequently manifest a second, minor peak at about two scale lengths. Relying on a two-dimensional stochastic self-propagating star formation model, we show these secondary peaks to be consistent with triggered star formation; for a few of the brighter galaxies a peculiar peak distribution is observed that is conceivably due to the onset of shear provided by differential rotation. On scales between 100 and 1000 pc, and by taking into account exponential-disk structure, bright lumps reveal cluster dimensions between 1.3 and 2, with a weak trend to higher dimensions for brighter galaxies. Interpreting cluster dimension in terms of porosity of a self-similar intragalactic medium, we derive a relation between current star formation rate, scale length, and porosity.Comment: 16 pages, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Your Unconscious Knows Your Name

One's own name constitutes a unique part of conscious awareness – but does this also hold true for unconscious processing? The present study shows that the own name has the power to bias a person's actions unconsciously even in conditions that render any other name ineffective. Participants judged whether a letter string on the screen was a name or a non-word while this target stimulus was preceded by a masked prime stimulus. Crucially, the participant's own name was among these prime stimuli and facilitated reactions to following name targets whereas the name of another, yoked participant did not. Signal detection results confirmed that participants were not aware of any of the prime stimuli, including their own name. These results extend traditional findings on “breakthrough” phenomena of personally relevant stimuli to the domain of unconscious processing. Thus, the brain seems to possess adroit mechanisms to identify and process such stimuli even in the absence of conscious awareness

Temperature frequency and mortality: Assessing adaptation to local temperature

Assessing the association between temperature frequency and mortality can provide insights into human adaptation to local ambient temperatures. We collected daily time-series data on mortality and temperature from 757 locations in 47 countries/regions during 1979–2020. We used a two-stage time series design to assess the association between temperature frequency and all-cause mortality. The results were pooled at the national, regional, and global levels. We observed a consistent decrease in the risk of mortality as the normalized frequency of temperature increases across the globe. The average increase in mortality risk comparing the 10th to 100th percentile of normalized frequency was 13.03% (95% CI: 12.17–13.91), with substantial regional differences (from 4.56% in Australia and New Zealand to 33.06% in South Europe). The highest increase in mortality was observed for high-income countries (13.58%, 95% CI: 12.56–14.61), followed by lower-middle-income countries (12.34%, 95% CI: 9.27–15.51). This study observed a declining risk of mortality associated with higher temperature frequency. Our findings suggest that populations can adapt to their local climate with frequent exposure, with the adapting ability varying geographically due to differences in climatic and socioeconomic characteristics. © 2024his article appreciates the contribution of MCC network collaborators. This article is published in memory of Simona Fratianni who helped to contribute the data for Romania. Support for title page creation and format was provided by AuthorArranger, a tool developed at the National Cancer Institute. This study was supported by the Australian Research Council (DP210102076) and the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (GNT2000581). YW and BW were supported by China Scholarship Council [grant numbers 202006010044 and 202006010043]. AU was supported by the Czech Science Foundation (project number 22-24920S); PHNS by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP); ST by the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (grant number 18411951600); AG and FS by the Medical Research Council UK (grant ID MR/R013349/1), the Natural Environment Research Council UK (grant ID NE/R009384/1), and the EU’s Horizon 2020 project, Exhaustion (grant ID 820655); FdD by the EU’s Horizon 2020 project, Exhaustion (grant ID 820655). SL was supported by an Emerging Leader Fellowship of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (GNT2009866). YG was supported by the Career Development Fellowship (GNT1163693) and Leader Fellowship (GNT2008813) of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council. The funders had no role in study design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Regional variation in the role of humidity on city-level heat-related mortality

The rising humid heat is regarded as a severe threat to human survivability, but the proper integration of humid heat into heat-health alerts is still being explored. Using state-of-the-art epidemiological and climatological datasets, we examined the association between multiple heat stress indicators (HSIs) and daily human mortality in 739 cities worldwide. Notable differences were observed in the long-term trends and timing of heat events detected by HSIs. Air temperature (Tair) predicts heat-related mortality well in cities with a robust negative Tair-relative humidity correlation (CT-RH). However, in cities with near-zero or weak positive CT-RH, HSIs considering humidity provide enhanced predictive power compared to Tair. Furthermore, the magnitude and timing of heat-related mortality measured by HSIs could differ largely from those associated with Tair in many cities. Our findings provide important insights into specific regions where humans are vulnerable to humid heat and can facilitate the further enhancement of heat-health alert systems. © The Author(s) 2024.Q.G., M.H., and T.O. were supported by the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (JPMEERF23S21120) of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency provided by the Ministry of the Environment of Japan. Q.G. was supported by the Musha Shugyo international travel grants from the School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo. T.O. was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (KAKENHI: 21H05002), and the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency of Japan (JPMEERF23S21100). M.N.M. was supported by the European Commission (H2020-MSCA-IF-2020) under REA grant agreement no. 101022870. A.G. was supported by the Medical Research Council-UK (Grant ID: MR/V034162/1) and European Union’s Horizon 2020 Project Exhaustion (Grant ID: 820655). J.K. was supported by the Czech Science Foundation, project 23-06749S. A.M.V.-C. supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (TMSGI3_211626). V.H. was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (H2020-MSCA-IF-2020, Grant No.: 101032087). Y.S. was supported by Brain Pool Plus program funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2021H1D3A2A03097768), and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korean government (MSIT) (NRF-2023R1A2C1004754)

Protocol for a randomized controlled study of Iyengar yoga for youth with irritable bowel syndrome

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Irritable bowel syndrome affects as many as 14% of high school-aged students. Symptoms include discomfort in the abdomen, along with diarrhea and/or constipation and other gastroenterological symptoms that can significantly impact quality of life and daily functioning. Emotional stress appears to exacerbate irritable bowel syndrome symptoms suggesting that mind-body interventions reducing arousal may prove beneficial. For many sufferers, symptoms can be traced to childhood and adolescence, making the early manifestation of irritable bowel syndrome important to understand. The current study will focus on young people aged 14-26 years with irritable bowel syndrome. The study will test the potential benefits of Iyengar yoga on clinical symptoms, psychospiritual functioning and visceral sensitivity. Yoga is thought to bring physical, psychological and spiritual benefits to practitioners and has been associated with reduced stress and pain. Through its focus on restoration and use of props, Iyengar yoga is especially designed to decrease arousal and promote psychospiritual resources in physically compromised individuals. An extensive and standardized teacher-training program support Iyengar yoga's reliability and safety. It is hypothesized that yoga will be feasible with less than 20% attrition; and the yoga group will demonstrate significantly improved outcomes compared to controls, with physiological and psychospiritual mechanisms contributing to improvements.</p> <p>Methods/Design</p> <p>Sixty irritable bowel syndrome patients aged 14-26 will be randomly assigned to a standardized 6-week twice weekly Iyengar yoga group-based program or a wait-list usual care control group. The groups will be compared on the primary clinical outcomes of irritable bowel syndrome symptoms, quality of life and global improvement at post-treatment and 2-month follow-up. Secondary outcomes will include visceral pain sensitivity assessed with a standardized laboratory task (water load task), functional disability and psychospiritual variables including catastrophizing, self-efficacy, mood, acceptance and mindfulness. Mechanisms of action involved in the proposed beneficial effects of yoga upon clinical outcomes will be explored, and include the mediating effects of visceral sensitivity, increased psychospiritual resources, regulated autonomic nervous system responses and regulated hormonal stress response assessed via salivary cortisol.</p> <p>Trial registration</p> <p>ClinicalTrials.gov <a href="http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01107977">NCT01107977</a>.</p

Creativity and the Social Brain

The neuroscience of imagination has revealed extensive parallels between the brain correlates of creative cognition and those of social cognition. There is, however, scarcely any exchange of ideas between the different research communities that is aimed at understanding what such commonalities reveal. The evidence indicates that there are some fundamental similarities in very nature of the information processing mechanisms that underlie cognitive and social aspects of mental life that are customarily viewed to be quite distinct from one another. This chapter features reflections on these similarities by generating cross-connections between current knowledge on creative cognition and social cognition. Themes that are explored include candidate mechanisms of correspondences between creativity and social behaviour, such as the ‘intention to communicate’ (by means of expression), the ‘intention to understand’ (by means of inference and discovery), and the ‘personal relevance bias’ (by means of alertness to self-related salience and significance)

Impact of population aging on future temperature-related mortality at different global warming levels

Data availability: All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. Data were collected within the MCC Collaborative Research Network under a data sharing agreement and cannot be made publicly available.Code availability: A sample of the analysis code is available from https://github.com/CHENlab-Yale/MCC_ProjAging_Temp .Supplementary information is available online at: https://link-springer-com.ezproxytest.brunel.ac.uk/article/10.1038/s41467-024-45901-z#Sec15 .Older adults are generally amongst the most vulnerable to heat and cold. While temperature-related health impacts are projected to increase with global warming, the influence of population aging on these trends remains unclear. Here we show that at 1.5 °C, 2 °C, and 3 °C of global warming, heat-related mortality in 800 locations across 50 countries/areas will increase by 0.5%, 1.0%, and 2.5%, respectively; among which 1 in 5 to 1 in 4 heat-related deaths can be attributed to population aging. Despite a projected decrease in cold-related mortality due to progressive warming alone, population aging will mostly counteract this trend, leading to a net increase in cold-related mortality by 0.1%–0.4% at 1.5–3 °C global warming. Our findings indicate that population aging constitutes a crucial driver for future heat- and cold-related deaths, with increasing mortality burden for both heat and cold due to the aging population.We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme, which, through its Working Group on Coupled Modeling, coordinated and promoted CMIP6. We thank the climate modeling groups for producing and making available their model output, the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) for archiving the data and providing access, and the multiple funding agencies who support CMIP6 and ESGF. K.C. was supported by the Yale Planetary Solutions Project seed grant. A.G., A.S., and S.R. were supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Project Exhaustion grant (820655). A.G. was also supported by the Medical Research Council UK grant (MR/V034162/1). J.M. received funding from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnlogia Grant (SFRH/BPD/115112/2016). A.T. was supported by the MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 grant (CEX2018-000794-S). A.U. and J.K. were supported by the Czech Science Foundation (22-24920S). F.S. was supported by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR), Department of Excellence project 2023-2027 ReDS ‘Rethinking Data Science’ - Department of Statistics, Computer Science and Applications - University of Florence. MNM. was supported by the European Commission (H2020-MSCA-IF-2020) under REA grant agreement no. 101022870. A.V.C. acknowledges the support of the Swiss National Foundation (TMSGI3_211626). V.H. received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No.: 101032087)