Cation-exchange capacities determined by methylene blue adsorption (CEC MB) and by the amount of K displaced from a K-saturated clay by NH4 (CEC K//NH4) correlate closely in five soil clays from Pennsylvania, but differ greatly in two soil clays with a large content of amorphous material. CEC MB was found to provide a more precise distinction between montmorillonite and vermiculite than CEC K//NH4. Synthetic aluminosilicate gels showed CEC K//NH4 > CEC Ca/Mg > CEC MB, but no relation to the behavior of the two soil clays with a large content of amorphous material was found.

A program of simultaneous linear equations has been developed to calculate component proportions and/or component property values for mineral mixtures in soil clays and sediments. The analysis is based on quantitatively measured chemical and physical properties of samples and involves (1) qualitative identification of the mineral components in the mixture by any appropriate means; (2) quantitative measure of the sample property values selected for use in the program; (3) estimation of the proportion of each component in the mixture by a technique such as X-ray powder diffraction; (4) assignment of limits to component property ranges; (5) selection of one of four available calculation options and application of the simultaneous linear-equations program; (6) examination of the residuals of the analysis and, if appropriate, adjustment of the initial estimates for component proportions or property ranges and then repeating step 5; and (7) verification of the final component proportions by comparison with information from step 1. Completeness and/or accuracy of the final results for component proportions may be checked by the closeness of approach to 1.0 for the sum of the component proportions. The method requires that, at minimum, the number of properties measured must equal the number of components in the samples being analyzed and that the minimum number of samples must equal the number of properties measured.

Using the clay fractions of 15 Pennsylvania soils containing kaolinite, illite, smectite, vermiculite, chlorite, interstratified vermiculite/chlorite, quartz, and noncrystalline material, and measuring methylene blue cation-exchange capacity, the amount of Ca displaced by Mg from a Ca-saturated clay, the amount of K displaced by NH4 from a K-saturated clay heated to 110°C, % K2O, % SiO2, % MgO, and weight loss at 110°–300°C and 300°–950°C, the adjustment of property values was found to have the lowest residual value and the most consistent results. The source of analytical errors was also located by examination of residual tables. Samples that were similar in composition gave more reliable component proportions.

Homeless shelter residents and staff may be at higher risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, SARS-CoV-2 infection estimates in this population have been reliant on cross-sectional or outbreak investigation data. We conducted routine surveillance and outbreak testing in 23 homeless shelters in King County, Washington, to estimate the occurrence of laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection and risk factors during 1 January 2020–31 May 2021. Symptom surveys and nasal swabs were collected for SARS-CoV-2 testing by RT-PCR for residents aged ≥3 months and staff. We collected 12,915 specimens from 2,930 unique participants. We identified 4.74 (95% CI 4.00–5.58) SARS-CoV-2 infections per 100 individuals (residents: 4.96, 95% CI 4.12–5.91; staff: 3.86, 95% CI 2.43–5.79). Most infections were asymptomatic at the time of detection (74%) and detected during routine surveillance (73%). Outbreak testing yielded higher test positivity than routine surveillance (2.7% versus 0.9%). Among those infected, residents were less likely to report symptoms than staff. Participants who were vaccinated against seasonal influenza and were current smokers had lower odds of having an infection detected. Active surveillance that includes SARS-CoV-2 testing of all persons is essential in ascertaining the true burden of SARS-CoV-2 infections among residents and staff of congregate settings.

Gravitational waves from coalescing neutron stars encode information about nuclear matter at extreme densities, inaccessible by laboratory experiments. The late inspiral is influenced by the presence of tides, which depend on the neutron star equation of state. Neutron star mergers are expected to often produce rapidly rotating remnant neutron stars that emit gravitational waves. These will provide clues to the extremely hot post-merger environment. This signature of nuclear matter in gravitational waves contains most information in the 2–4 kHz frequency band, which is outside of the most sensitive band of current detectors. We present the design concept and science case for a Neutron Star Extreme Matter Observatory (NEMO): a gravitational-wave interferometer optimised to study nuclear physics with merging neutron stars. The concept uses high-circulating laser power, quantum squeezing, and a detector topology specifically designed to achieve the high-frequency sensitivity necessary to probe nuclear matter using gravitational waves. Above 1 kHz, the proposed strain sensitivity is comparable to full third-generation detectors at a fraction of the cost. Such sensitivity changes expected event rates for detection of post-merger remnants from approximately one per few decades with two A+ detectors to a few per year and potentially allow for the first gravitational-wave observations of supernovae, isolated neutron stars, and other exotica.

Multiple cortical and subcortical regions have been shown to exhibit altered transcriptional states in association with schizophrenia (SZ) through gene expression studies. Select nuclei of the thalamus, a subcortical region, have been previously shown to have neuron and volume loss. These thalamic regions are reciprocally connected with areas of cortex which have been implicated in SZ. The thalamic anterior nucleus (AN) is of particular interest due to its reciprocal connectivity with the SZ-associated anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). To identify SZ-related gene expression changes we used whole genome microarray screening to compare transcriptional profiles of two thalamic regions, the AN and VPL (a lateral tier nucleus not considered SZ-impacted) in the same subject with SZ. The same microarray screening comparison was performed with the same regions in non-psychiatric controls (NC) subjects. Differentially expressed genes common to both analyses were removed from the SZ list to sharpen focus on disease-related genes. One-hundred thirty-six gene expression changes were identified. This list was used with DAVID functional annotation and Ingenuity pathway tools which indicated their involvement in endocytosis, neuron projection morphogenesis, and cytoskeleton organization. These findings further support the notion of schizophrenia being a “disease of the synapse.”

Viral pneumonia is an important cause of death and morbidity among infants worldwide. Transmission of non-influenza respiratory viruses in households can inform preventative interventions and has not been well-characterised in South Asia. From April 2011 to April 2012, household members of pregnant women enrolled in a randomised trial of influenza vaccine in rural Nepal were surveyed weekly for respiratory illness until 180 days after birth. Nasal swabs were tested by polymerase chain reaction for respiratory viruses in symptomatic individuals. A transmission event was defined as a secondary case of the same virus within 14 days of initial infection within a household. From 555 households, 825 initial viral illness episodes occurred, resulting in 79 transmission events. The overall incidence of transmission was 1.14 events per 100 person-weeks. Risk of transmission incidence was associated with an index case age 1–4 years (incidence rate ratio (IRR) 2.35; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.40–3.96), coinfection as initial infection (IRR 1.94; 95% CI 1.05–3.61) and no electricity in household (IRR 2.70; 95% CI 1.41–5.00). Preventive interventions targeting preschool-age children in households in resource-limited settings may decrease the risk of transmission to vulnerable household members, such as young infants.

TAOS II is a next-generation occultation survey with the goal of measuring the size distribution of the small end of the Kuiper Belt (objects with diameters 0.5–30 km). Such objects have magnitudes r > 30, and are thus undetectable by direct imaging. The project will operate three telescopes at San Pedro Mártir Observatory in Baja California, México. Each telescope will be equipped with a custom-built camera comprised of a focal-plane array of CMOS imagers. The cameras will be capable of reading out image data from 10,000 stars at a cadence of 20 Hz. The telescopes will monitor the same set of stars simultaneously to search for coincident occultation detections, thus minimising the false-positive rate. This talk described the project, and reported on the progress of the development of the survey infrastructure.

In linear system, in-plane motions are decoupled from out-of-plane motions for planar frame structures. A theoretical method is proposed that permits the efficient calculations of modal characteristics of planar multi-story frame structures. There are 3 × m beam components for a planar m-story frame structure. By analyzing the transverse and longitudinal motions of each component simultaneously and considering the compatibility requirements across each frame joint, the undetermined variables of the entire m-story frame structure system can be reduced to six, regardless of the number of stories, and that can be determined by the application of the boundary conditions. The main feature of this method is to decrease the dimensions of the matrix involved in the finite element methods and certain other analytical methods.

This study examined the temporal and spatial patterns of diarrhoea in relation to hydro-meteorological factors in the Mekong Delta area in Vietnam. A time-series design was applied to examine the temporal pattern of the climate–diarrhoea relationship using Poisson regression models. Spatial analysis was applied to examine the spatial clusters of diarrhoea using Global Moran's I and local indicators of spatial autocorrelation (LISA). The temporal pattern showed that the highest peak of diarrhoea was from weeks 30–42 corresponding to August–October annually. A 1 cm increase in river water level at a lag of 1 week was associated with a small [0·07%, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0·01–0·1] increase in the diarrhoeal rate. A 1 °C increase in temperature at lag of 2 and 4 weeks was associated with a 1·5% (95% CI 0·3−2·7) and 1·1% (95% CI 0·1−2·3) increase in diarrhoeal risk, respectively. Relative humidity and diarrhoeal risk were in nonlinear relationship. The spatial analysis showed significant clustering of diarrhoea, and the LISA map shows three multi-centred diarrhoeal clusters and three single-centred clusters in the research location. The findings suggest that climatic conditions projected to be associated with climate change have important implication for human health impact in the Mekong Delta region.

We present a high precision frequency determination method for digitized NMR FID signals. The method employs high precision numerical integration rather than simple summation as in many other techniques. With no independent knowledge of the other parameters of a NMR FID signal (phase ф, amplitude A, and transverse relaxation time T2) this method can determine the signal frequency f0 with a precision of if the observation time T ≫ T2. The method is especially convenient when the detailed shape of the observed FT NMR spectrum is not well defined. When T2 is +∞ and the signal becomes pure sinusoidal, the precision of the method is which is one order more precise than the ±1 count error induced precision of a typical frequency counter. Analysis of this method shows that the integration reduces the noise by bandwidth narrowing as in a lock-in amplifier, and no extra signal filters are needed. For a pure sinusoidal signal we find from numerical simulations that the noise-induced error in this method reaches the Cramer-Rao Lower Band (CRLB) on frequency determination. For the damped sinusoidal case of most interest, the noise-induced error is found to be within a factor of 2 of CRLB when the measurement time T is 2 or 3 times larger than T2. We discuss possible improvements for the precision of this method.

We introduce the concept of a rare element in a non-associative normed algebra and show that the existence of such an element is the only obstruction to continuity of a surjective homomorphism from a non-associative Banach algebra to a unital normed algebra with simple completion. Unital associative algebras do not admit any rare elements, and hence automatic continuity holds.

We examined the spatial distribution pattern and meteorological drivers of dengue fever (DF) in Guangdong Province, China. Annual incidence of DF was calculated for each county between 2005 and 2011 and the geographical distribution pattern of DF was examined using Moran's I statistic and excess risk maps. A time-stratified case-crossover study was used to investigate the short-term relationship between DF and meteorological factors and the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI). High-epidemic DF areas were restricted to the Pearl River Delta region and the Han River Delta region, Moran's I of DF distribution was significant from 2005 to 2006 and from 2009 to 2011. Daily vapour pressure, mean and minimum temperatures were associated with increased DF risk. Maximum temperature and SOI were negatively associated with DF transmission. The risk of DF was non-randomly distributed in the counties in Guangdong Province. Meteorological factors could be important predictors of DF transmission.

Since 2004, efforts to improve poliovirus detection have significantly increased the volume of specimen testing from acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) patients in India. One option to decrease collection and testing burden would be collecting only a single stool specimen instead of two. We investigated stool specimen sensitivity for poliovirus detection in India to estimate the contribution of the second specimen. We reviewed poliovirus isolation data for 303984 children aged <15 years with AFP during 2000–2010. Using maximum-likelihood estimation, we determined specimen sensitivity of each stool specimen, combined sensitivity of both specimens, and sensitivity added by the second specimen. Of 5184 AFP patients with poliovirus isolates, 382 (7·4%) were identified only by the second specimen. Sensitivity was 91·4% for the first specimen and 84·5% for the second specimen; the second specimen added 7·3% sensitivity, giving a combined sensitivity of 98·7%. Combined sensitivity declined, and added sensitivity increased, as the time from paralysis onset to stool collection increased (P = 0·032). The sensitivity added by the second specimen is important to detect the last chains of poliovirus transmission and to achieve certification of polio eradication. For sensitive surveillance, two stool specimens should continue to be collected from each AFP patient in India.