A Single Circumbinary Disk in the HD 98800 Quadruple System

We present sub-arcsecond thermal infrared imaging of HD 98800, a young quadruple system composed of a pair of low-mass spectroscopic binaries separated by 0.8'' (38 AU), each with a K-dwarf primary. Images at wavelengths ranging from 5 to 24.5 microns show unequivocally that the optically fainter binary, HD 98800B, is the sole source of a comparatively large infrared excess upon which a silicate emission feature is superposed. The excess is detected only at wavelengths of 7.9 microns and longer, peaks at 25 microns, and has a best-fit black-body temperature of 150 K, indicating that most of the dust lies at distances greater than the orbital separation of the spectroscopic binary. We estimate the radial extent of the dust with a disk model that approximates radiation from the spectroscopic binary as a single source of equivalent luminosity. Given the data, the most-likely values of disk properties in the ranges considered are R_in = 5.0 +/- 2.5 AU, DeltaR = 13+/-8 AU, lambda_0 = 2(+4/-1.5) microns, gamma = 0+/-2.5, and sigma_total = 16+/-3 AU^2, where R_in is the inner radius, DeltaR is the radial extent of the disk, lambda_0 is the effective grain size, gamma is the radial power-law exponent of the optical depth, tau, and sigma_total is the total cross-section of the grains. The range of implied disk masses is 0.001--0.1 times that of the moon. These results show that, for a wide range of possible disk properties, a circumbinary disk is far more likely than a narrow ring.Comment: 11 page Latex manuscript with 3 postscript figures. Accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal Letters. Postscript version of complete paper also available at http://www.hep.upenn.edu/PORG/web/papers/koerner00a.p

Posteruptive phenomena in coronal mass ejections and substorms: Indicators of a universal process?

[1] We examine phenomena associated with eruptions in the two different regimes of the solar corona and the terrestrial magnetosphere. We find striking similarities between the speeds of shrinking magnetic field lines in the corona and dipolarization fronts traversing the magnetosphere. We also examine the similarities between supra-arcade downflows observed during solar flares and bursty bulk flows seen in the magnetotail and find that these phenomena have remarkably similar speeds, velocity profiles, and size scales. Thus we show manifest similarities in the magnetic reconfiguration in response to the ejection of coronal mass ejections in the corona and the ejection of plasmoids in the magnetotail. The subsequent return of loops to a quasi-potential state in the corona and field dipolarization in the magnetotail are physical analogs and trigger similar phenomena such as downflows, which provides key insights into the underlying drivers of the plasma dynamics

Comparing nuclear power trajectories in Germany and the UK: from ‘regimes' to ‘democracies’ in sociotechnical transitions and Discontinuities

This paper focuses on arguably the single most striking contrast in contemporary major energy politics in Europe (and even the developed world as a whole): the starkly differing civil nuclear policies of Germany and the UK. Germany is seeking entirely to phase out nuclear power by 2022. Yet the UK advocates a ‘nuclear renaissance’, promoting the most ambitious new nuclear construction programme in Western Europe.Here,this paper poses a simple yet quite fundamental question: what are the particular divergent conditions most strongly implicated in the contrasting developments in these two countries. With nuclear playing such an iconic role in historical discussions over technological continuity and transformation, answering this may assist in wider understandings of sociotechnical incumbency and discontinuity in the burgeoning field of‘sustainability transitions’. To this end, an ‘abductive’ approach is taken: deploying nine potentially relevant criteria for understanding the different directions pursued in Germany and the UK. Together constituted by 30 parameters spanning literatures related to socio-technical regimes in general as well as nuclear technology in particular, the criteria are divided into those that are ‘internal’ and ‘external’ to the ‘focal regime configuration’ of nuclear power and associated ‘challenger technologies’ like renewables. It is ‘internal’ criteria that are emphasised in conventional sociotechnical regime theory, with ‘external’ criteria relatively less well explored. Asking under each criterion whether attempted discontinuation of nuclear power would be more likely in Germany or the UK, a clear picture emerges. ‘Internal’ criteria suggest attempted nuclear discontinuation should be more likely in the UK than in Germany– the reverse of what is occurring. ‘External’ criteria are more aligned with observed dynamics –especially those relating to military nuclear commitments and broader ‘qualities of democracy’. Despite many differences of framing concerning exactly what constitutes ‘democracy’, a rich political science literature on this point is unanimous in characterising Germany more positively than the UK. Although based only on a single case,a potentially important question is nonetheless raised as to whether sociotechnical regime theory might usefully give greater attention to the general importance of various aspects of democracy in constituting conditions for significant technological discontinuities and transformations. If so, the policy implications are significant. A number of important areas are identified for future research, including the roles of diverse understandings and specific aspects of democracy and the particular relevance of military nuclear commitments– whose under-discussion in civil nuclear policy literatures raises its own questions of democratic accountability

AE9, AP9 and SPM: New Models for Specifying the Trapped Energetic Particle and Space Plasma Environment

The radiation belts and plasma in the Earth’s magnetosphere pose hazards to satellite systems which restrict design and orbit options with a resultant impact on mission performance and cost. For decades the standard space environment specification used for spacecraft design has been provided by the NASA AE8 and AP8 trapped radiation belt models. There are well-known limitations on their performance, however, and the need for a new trapped radiation and plasma model has been recognized by the engineering community for some time. To address this challenge a new set of models, denoted AE9/AP9/SPM, for energetic electrons, energetic protons and space plasma has been developed. The new models offer significant improvements including more detailed spatial resolution and the quantification of uncertainty due to both space weather and instrument errors. Fundamental to the model design, construction and operation are a number of new data sets and a novel statistical approach which captures first order temporal and spatial correlations allowing for the Monte-Carlo estimation of flux thresholds for user-specified percentile levels (e.g., 50th and 95th) over the course of the mission. An overview of the model architecture, data reduction methods, statistics algorithms, user application and initial validation is presented in this paper.United States. Air Force (e contracts FA8718-05-C-0036, FA8718-10-C-001, FA8721-05-C-0002 and FA8802-09-C-0001)United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (grant NNG05GM22G

Wielding the brazen serpent:The variety and power of biblical typology in early modern Scotland

In early modern Scotland, both ministers and the laity used typology as a key way of interpreting the Bible, discerning a variety of powerful ways that biblical types resonated in their own context. This article focuses on one of the most frequently expounded types in this period: the brazen serpent. It begins by exploring how its appearances in Numbers, 2 Kings, and John’s Gospel were expounded in Scotland, showing that while types were principally figures of Christ they also had a variety of edifying and rhetorical applications. This article then takes William Guild’s use of the brazen serpent in his typological handbook, commentaries, and sermons as a case study, to illustrate how typology functioned in practice, contending that biblical types played an important role in allowing early modern exegetes to shift or reinforce their expositions, without resorting to more figurative methods of interpretation that were frequently rejected by Reformed theologians

Therapeutic efficacy in a hemophilia B model using a biosynthetic mRNA liver depot system

DNA-based gene therapy has considerable therapeutic potential, but the challenges associated with delivery continue to limit progress. Messenger RNA (mRNA) has the potential to provide for transient production of therapeutic proteins, without the need for nuclear delivery and without the risk of insertional mutagenesis. Here we describe the sustained delivery of therapeutic proteins in vivo in both rodents and non-human primates via nanoparticle-formulated mRNA. Nanoparticles formulated with lipids and lipid-like materials were developed for delivery of two separate mRNA transcripts encoding either human erythropoietin (hEPO) or factor IX (hFIX) protein. Dose-dependent protein production was observed for each mRNA construct. Upon delivery of hEPO mRNA in mice, serum EPO protein levels reached several orders of magnitude (>125 000-fold) over normal physiological values. Further, an increase in hematocrit (Hct) was established, demonstrating that the exogenous mRNA-derived protein maintained normal activity. The capacity of producing EPO in non-human primates via delivery of formulated mRNA was also demonstrated as elevated EPO protein levels were observed over a 72-h time course. Exemplifying the possible broad utility of mRNA drugs, therapeutically relevant amounts of human FIX (hFIX) protein were achieved upon a single intravenous dose of hFIX mRNA-loaded lipid nanoparticles in mice. In addition, therapeutic value was established within a hemophilia B (FIX knockout (KO)) mouse model by demonstrating a marked reduction in Hct loss following injury (incision) to FIX KO mice

Acoustic cloak based on Bézier scatterers

[EN] Among the different approaches proposed to design acoustic cloaks, the one consisting on the use of an optimum distribution of discrete scatters surrounding the concealing object has been successfully tested. The feasibility of acoustic cloaks mainly depends on the number and shape of the scatterers surrounding the object to be cloaked. This work presents a method allowing the reduction of the number of discrete scatterers by optimizing their external shape, which is here defined by a combination of cubic Bézier curves. Based on scattering cancellation, a two-dimensional directional cloak consisting of just 20 Bézier scatters has been designed, fabricated and experimentally characterized. The method of fundamental solutions has been implemented to calculate the interaction of an incident plane wave with scatterers of arbitrary shape. The acoustic cloak here proposed shows a performance, in terms of averaged visibility, similar to that consisting of 120 scatterers with equal circular cross sections. The operational frequency of the proposed cloak is 5940 Hz with a bandwidth of about 110 Hz.J. Sanchez-Dehesa acknowledges the financial support by the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad and the European Union Fondo Europeo para el Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) under Grant with Ref. TEC2014-53088-C3-1-R. Lu Zhimiao acknowledges the financial support from the program of China Scholarships Council (No. 201503170282), Wen Jihong, Cai Li and Lu Zhimiao acknowledge the support by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos 51275519 and 11372346)Lu, Z.; Sanchis Martínez, L.; Wen, J.; Cai, L.; Bi, Y.; Sánchez-Dehesa Moreno-Cid, J. (2018). Acoustic cloak based on Bézier scatterers. Scientific Reports. 8. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-30888-7S8Cummer, S. A. & Schurig, D. One path to acoustic cloaking. New J. Phys. 9(3), 45 (2007).Cai, L.-W. & Sánchez-Dehesa Analysis of Cummer–Schurig acoustic cloaking. J. New J. Phys. 9(12), 450 (2007).Chen, H. & Chan, C. Acoustic cloaking in three dimensions using acoustic metamaterials. Appl. Phys. Lett. 91(18), 183518 (2007).Norris, A. N. Acoustic cloaking theory. Proc. R. Soc. A 464(2097), 2411–2434 (2008).Torrent, D. & Sánchez-Dehesa, J. Acoustic cloaking in two dimensions: a feasible approach. New J. Phys. 10(6), 063015 (2008).Zhang, S., Xia, C. & Fang, N. Broadband acoustic cloak for ultrasound waves. Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 024301 Jan (2011).Popa, B.-I., Zigoneanu, L. & Cummer, S. A. Experimental acoustic ground cloak in air. Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 253901 Jun (2011).Zigoneanu, L., Popa, B.-I. & Cummer, S. A. Design and measurements of a broadband two-dimensional acoustic lens. Nat. Mat 13, 352 (2014).Kan, W. et al. Broadband acoustic cloaking within an arbitrary hard cavity. Phys. Rev. Applied 3, 064019 Jun (2015).Scandrett, C. L., Boisvert, J. E. & Howarth, T. R. Acoustic cloaking using layered pentamode materials. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 127(5), 2856–2864 (2010).Chen, Y. et al. Broadband solid cloak for underwater acoustics. Phys. Rev. B 95, 180104 May (2017).Alù, A. & Engheta, N. Achieving transparency with plasmonic and metamaterial coatings. Phys. Rev. E 72(1), 016623 (2005).Guild, M. D., Alu, A. & Haberman, M. R. Cancellation of acoustic scattering from an elastic sphere. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 129(3), 1355–1365 (2011).García-Chocano, V. M. et al. Acoustic cloak for airborne sound by inverse design. Appl. Phys. Lett. 99(7), 074102 (2011).Sanchis, L. et al. Three-Dimensional Axisymmetric Cloak Based on the Cancellation of Acoustic Scattering from a Sphere. Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 124301 Mar (2013).Andkjær, J. & Sigmund, O. Topology optimized for Airborne sound. ASME J. Vib. Acoust. 135(2), 041011 (2013).Guild, M. D. Acoustic Cloaking of Spherical Objects Unsing Thin Elastic Coatings. Univ. of Texas at Austin (2012).Guild, M. D., Haberman, M. R. & Alú, A. Plasmonic-type Acoustic cloak made of a bilaminate shell. Phys. Rev. B 86(10), 104302 (2012).Rohde, C. A. et al. Experimental demonstration of underwater acoustic scattering cancellation. Sci. Rep. 5, 13175 (2015).Popa, B.-I. & Cummer, S. A. Cloaking with optimized homogeneous anisotropic layers. Phys. Rev. A 79, 023806 Feb (2009).Urzhumov, Y., Landy, N., Driscoll, T., Basov, D. & Smith, D. R. Thin low-loss dielectric coatings for freespace cloaking. Opt. Lett. 38(10), 1606–1608 (2013).Andkjaer, J. & Sigmund, O. Topology optimized low-contrast all-dielectric optical cloak. Appl. Phys. Lett. 98(2), 021112 (2011).Climente, A., Torrent, D. & Sánchez-Dehesa, J. Sound focusing by gradient index sonic lenses. Applied Physics Letters 97(10), 104103 (2010).Håkansson, A., Sánchez-Dehesa, J. & Sanchis, L. Acoustic lens design by genetic algorithms Phys. Rev. B 70, 214302 Dec (2004).Håkansson, A., Cervera, F. & Sánchez-Dehesa, J. Sound focusing by flat acoustic lenses without negative refraction. Applied Physics Letters 86(5), 054102 (2005).Li, D., Zigoneanu, L., Popa, B.-I. & Cummer, S. A. Design of an acoustic metamaterial lens using genetic algorithms. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 132(4), 2823–2833 (2012).Prautzsch, H., Wolfgang Boehm, W. & Paluszny, M. Bézier and B-Spline Techniques. Springer Science & Business Media (2002).Andersen, P. R., Cutanda-Henríquez, V., Aage, N. & Sánchez-Dehesa, J. Viscothermal effects on an acoustic cloak based on scattering cancellation. Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Noise and Vibration Emerging methods (NOVEM 2018 ), 171971, June (2018).Golberg, D. Genetic Algorithms in Search, Optimization and Learning. Addison Wesley, Reading, MA (1989).Kirkpatrick, S., Gelatt, C. D. & Vecchi, M. P. Optimization by simulated annealing. Science 220(4598), 671–680 (1983).Sanchis, L., Cryan, M. J., Pozo, J., Craddock, I. J. & Rarity, J. G. Ultrahigh Purcell factor in photonic crystal slab microcavities Phys. Rev. B 76, 045118 Jul (2007).Karageorghis, A. & Fairweather, G. J. The method of fundamental solutions for axisymmetric acoustic scattering and radiation problems. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 104(6), 3212–3218 (1998).Fairweather, G., Karageorghis, A. & Martin, P. The method of fundamental solutions for scattering and radiation problems. Engineering Analysis with Boundary Elements 27(7), 759–769 (2003).Seybert, A. F., Soenarko, B., Rizzo, F. J. & Shippy, D. J. A special integral equation formulation for acoustic radiation and scattering for axisymmetric bodies and boundary conditions. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 80(4), 1241–1247 (1986)

Racial Differences in Fatal Out-of-Hospital Coronary Heart Disease and the Role of Income in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Cohort Study (1987 to 2017)

Black patients have higher incident fatal coronary heart disease (CHD) rates than do their White counterparts. Racial differences in out-of-hospital fatal CHD could explain the excess risk in fatal CHD among Black patients. We examined racial disparities in in- and out-of-hospital fatal CHD among participants with no history of CHD, and whether socioeconomic status might play a role in this association. We used data from the ARIC (Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities) study, including 4,095 Black and 10,884 White participants, followed between 1987 and 1989 until 2017. Race was self-reported. We examined racial differences in in- and out-of-hospital fatal CHD with hierarchical proportional hazard models. We then examined the role of income in these associations, using Cox marginal structural models for a mediation analysis. The incidence of out-of-hospital and in-hospital fatal CHD was 1.3 and 2.2 in Black participants, and 1.0 and 1.1 in White participants, respectively, per 1,000 person-years. The gender- and age-adjusted hazard ratios comparing out-of-hospital and in-hospital incident fatal CHD in Black with that in White participants were 1.65 (1.32 to 2.07) and 2.37 (1.96 to 2.86), respectively. The income-controlled direct effects of race in Black versus White participants decreased to 1.33 (1.01 to 1.74) for fatal out-of-hospital and to 2.03 (1.61 to 2.55) for fatal in-hospital CHD in Cox marginal structural models. In conclusion, higher rates of fatal in-hospital CHD in Black participants than in their White counterparts likely drive the overall racial differences in fatal CHD. Income largely explained racial differences in both fatal out-of-hospital CHD and fatal in-hospital CHD