We present the third data release from the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array (PPTA) project. The release contains observations of 32 pulsars obtained using the 64-m Parkes ‘Murriyang’ radio telescope. The data span is up to 18 yr with a typical cadence of 3 weeks. This data release is formed by combining an updated version of our second data release with $\sim$3 yr of more recent data primarily obtained using an ultra-wide-bandwidth receiver system that operates between 704 and 4032 MHz. We provide calibrated pulse profiles, flux density dynamic spectra, pulse times of arrival, and initial pulsar timing models. We describe methods for processing such wide-bandwidth observations and compare this data release with our previous release.

The purpose of this document is to highlight practical recommendations to assist acute-care hospitals in prioritization and implementation of strategies to prevent healthcare-associated infections through hand hygiene. This document updates the Strategies to Prevent Healthcare-Associated Infections in Acute Care Hospitals through Hand Hygiene, published in 2014. This expert guidance document is sponsored by the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology (SHEA). It is the product of a collaborative effort led by SHEA, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, the American Hospital Association, and The Joint Commission, with major contributions from representatives of a number of organizations and societies with content expertise.

Two introduced carnivores, the European red fox Vulpes vulpes and domestic cat Felis catus, have had extensive impacts on Australian biodiversity. In this study, we collate information on consumption of Australian birds by the fox, paralleling a recent study reporting on birds consumed by cats. We found records of consumption by foxes on 128 native bird species (18% of the non-vagrant bird fauna and 25% of those species within the fox’s range), a smaller tally than for cats (343 species, including 297 within the fox’s Australian range, a subset of that of the cat). Most (81%) bird species eaten by foxes are also eaten by cats, suggesting that predation impacts are compounded. As with consumption by cats, birds that nest or forage on the ground are most likely to be consumed by foxes. However, there is also some partitioning, with records of consumption by foxes but not cats for 25 bird species, indicating that impacts of the two predators may also be complementary. Bird species ≥3.4 kg were more likely to be eaten by foxes, and those <3.4 kg by cats. Our compilation provides an inventory and describes characteristics of Australian bird species known to be consumed by foxes, but we acknowledge that records of predation do not imply population-level impacts. Nonetheless, there is sufficient information from other studies to demonstrate that fox predation has significant impacts on the population viability of some Australian birds, especially larger birds, and those that nest or forage on the ground.

We present a broadband radio study of the transient jets ejected from the black hole candidate X-ray binary MAXI J1535–571, which underwent a prolonged outburst beginning on 2017 September 2. We monitored MAXI J1535–571 with the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) at frequencies from 119 to 186 MHz over six epochs from 2017 September 20 to 2017 October 14. The source was quasi-simultaneously observed over the frequency range 0.84–19 GHz by UTMOST (the Upgraded Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope) the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), and the Australian Long Baseline Array (LBA). Using the LBA observations from 2017 September 23, we measured the source size to be $34\pm1$ mas. During the brightest radio flare on 2017 September 21, the source was detected down to 119 MHz by the MWA, and the radio spectrum indicates a turnover between 250 and 500 MHz, which is most likely due to synchrotron self-absorption (SSA). By fitting the radio spectrum with a SSA model and using the LBA size measurement, we determined various physical parameters of the jet knot (identified in ATCA data), including the jet opening angle ($\phi_{\rm op} = 4.5\pm1.2^{\circ}$) and the magnetic field strength ($B_{\rm s} = 104^{+80}_{-78}$ mG). Our fitted magnetic field strength agrees reasonably well with that inferred from the standard equipartition approach, suggesting the jet knot to be close to equipartition. Our study highlights the capabilities of the Australian suite of radio telescopes to jointly probe radio jets in black hole X-ray binaries via simultaneous observations over a broad frequency range, and with differing angular resolutions. This suite allows us to determine the physical properties of X-ray binary jets. Finally, our study emphasises the potential contributions that can be made by the low-frequency part of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA-Low) in the study of black hole X-ray binaries.

We describe 14 yr of public data from the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array (PPTA), an ongoing project that is producing precise measurements of pulse times of arrival from 26 millisecond pulsars using the 64-m Parkes radio telescope with a cadence of approximately 3 weeks in three observing bands. A comprehensive description of the pulsar observing systems employed at the telescope since 2004 is provided, including the calibration methodology and an analysis of the stability of system components. We attempt to provide full accounting of the reduction from the raw measured Stokes parameters to pulse times of arrival to aid third parties in reproducing our results. This conversion is encapsulated in a processing pipeline designed to track provenance. Our data products include pulse times of arrival for each of the pulsars along with an initial set of pulsar parameters and noise models. The calibrated pulse profiles and timing template profiles are also available. These data represent almost 21 000 h of recorded data spanning over 14 yr. After accounting for processes that induce time-correlated noise, 22 of the pulsars have weighted root-mean-square timing residuals of $<\!\!1\,\mu\text{s}$ in at least one radio band. The data should allow end users to quickly undertake their own gravitational wave analyses, for example, without having to understand the intricacies of pulsar polarisation calibration or attain a mastery of radio frequency interference mitigation as is required when analysing raw data files.

Diversified farms are operations that raise a variety of crops and/or multiple species of livestock, with the goal of utilising the products of one for the growth of the other, thus fostering a sustainable cycle. This type of farming reflects consumers' increasing demand for sustainably produced, naturally raised or pasture-raised animal products that are commonly produced on diversified farms. The specific objectives of this study were to characterise diversified small-scale farms (DSSF) in California, estimate the prevalence of Salmonella enterica and Campylobacter spp. in livestock and poultry, and evaluate the association between farm- and sample-level risk factors and the prevalence of Campylobacter spp. on DSSF in California using a multilevel logistic model. Most participating farms were organic and raised more than one animal species. Overall Salmonella prevalence was 1.19% (95% confidence interval (CI95) 0.6–2), and overall Campylobacter spp. prevalence was 10.8% (CI95 = 9–12.9). Significant risk factors associated with Campylobacter spp. were farm size (odds ratio (OR)10–50 acres: less than 10 acres = 6, CI95 = 2.11–29.8), ownership of swine (OR = 9.3, CI95 = 3.4–38.8) and season (ORSpring: Coastal summer = 3.5, CI95 = 1.1–10.9; ORWinter: Coastal summer = 3.23, CI95 = 1.4–7.4). As the number of DSSF continues to grow, evaluating risk factors and management practices that are unique to these operations will help identify risk mitigation strategies and develop outreach materials to improve the food safety of animal and vegetable products produced on DSSF.

A large-scale measles outbreak (11 495 reported cases, 60% aged ≥15 years) occurred in Georgia during 2013–2015. A nationwide, multistage, stratified cluster serosurvey for hepatitis B and C among persons aged ≥18 years conducted in Georgia in late 2015 provided an opportunity to assess measles and rubella (MR) susceptibility after the outbreak. Residual specimens from 3125 participants aged 18–50 years were tested for Immunoglobulin G antibodies against MR using ELISA. Nationwide, 6.3% (95% CI 4.9%–7.6%) of the surveyed population were seronegative for measles and 8.6% (95% CI 7.1%–10.1%) were seronegative for rubella. Measles susceptibility was highest among 18–24 year-olds (10.1%) and declined with age to 1.2% among 45–50 year-olds (P < 0.01). Susceptibility to rubella was highest among 25–29 year-olds (15.3%), followed by 18–24 year-olds (11.6%) and 30–34 year-olds (10.2%), and declined to <5% among persons aged ≥35 years (P < 0.001). The susceptibility profiles in the present serosurvey were consistent with the epidemiology of recent MR cases and the history of the immunization programme. Measles susceptibility levels >10% among 18–24 year-olds in Georgia revealed continued risk for outbreaks among young adults. High susceptibility to rubella among 18–34 year-olds indicates a continuing risk for congenital rubella cases.

Shallow granular avalanches on slopes close to repose exhibit hysteretic behaviour. For instance, when a steady-uniform granular flow is brought to rest it leaves a deposit of thickness $h_{stop}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D701})$ on a rough slope inclined at an angle $\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}$ to the horizontal. However, this layer will not spontaneously start to flow again until it is inclined to a higher angle $\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}_{start}$, or the thickness is increased to $h_{start}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D701})>h_{stop}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D701})$. This simple phenomenology leads to a rich variety of flows with co-existing regions of solid-like and fluid-like granular behaviour that evolve in space and time. In particular, frictional hysteresis is directly responsible for the spontaneous formation of self-channelized flows with static levees, retrogressive failures as well as erosion–deposition waves that travel through the material. This paper is motivated by the experimental observation that a travelling-wave develops, when a steady uniform flow of carborundum particles on a bed of larger glass beads, runs out to leave a deposit that is approximately equal to $h_{stop}$. Numerical simulations using the friction law originally proposed by Edwards et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 823, 2017, pp. 278–315) and modified here, demonstrate that there are in fact two travelling waves. One that marks the trailing edge of the steady-uniform flow and another that rapidly deposits the particles, directly connecting the point of minimum dynamic friction (at thickness $h_{\ast }$) with the deposited layer. The first wave moves slightly faster than the second wave, and so there is a slowly expanding region between them in which the flow thins and the particles slow down. An exact inviscid solution for the second travelling wave is derived and it is shown that for a steady-uniform flow of thickness $h_{\ast }$ it produces a deposit close to $h_{stop}$ for all inclination angles. Numerical simulations show that the two-wave structure deposits layers that are approximately equal to $h_{stop}$ for all initial thicknesses. This insensitivity to the initial conditions implies that $h_{stop}$ is a universal quantity, at least for carborundum particles on a bed of larger glass beads. Numerical simulations are therefore able to capture the complete experimental staircase procedure, which is commonly used to determine the $h_{stop}$ and $h_{start}$ curves by progressively increasing the inclination of the chute. In general, however, the deposit thickness may depend on the depth of the flowing layer that generated it, so the most robust way to determine $h_{stop}$ is to measure the deposit thickness from a flow that was moving at the minimum steady-uniform velocity. Finally, some of the pathologies in earlier non-monotonic friction laws are discussed and it is explicitly shown that with these models either steadily travelling deposition waves do not form or they do not leave the correct deposit depth $h_{stop}$.

Objective: Detection of cognitive impairment suggestive of risk for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) progression is crucial to the prevention of incipient dementia. This study was performed to determine if performance on a novel object discrimination task improved identification of earlier deficits in older adults at risk for AD. Method: In total, 135 participants from the 1Florida Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center [cognitively normal (CN), Pre-mild cognitive impairment (PreMCI), amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), and dementia] completed a test of object discrimination and traditional memory measures in the context of a larger neuropsychological and clinical evaluation. Results: The Object Recognition and Discrimination Task (ORDT) revealed significant differences between the PreMCI, aMCI, and dementia groups versus CN individuals. Moreover, relative risk of being classified as PreMCI rather than CN increased as an inverse function of ORDT score. Discussion: Overall, the obtained results suggest that a novel object discrimination task improves the detection of very early AD-related cognitive impairment, increasing the window for therapeutic intervention. (JINS, 2019, 25, 688–698)

When a layer of static grains on a sufficiently steep slope is disturbed, an upslope-propagating erosion wave, or retrogressive failure, may form that separates the initially static material from a downslope region of flowing grains. This paper shows that a relatively simple depth-averaged avalanche model with frictional hysteresis is sufficient to capture a planar retrogressive failure that is independent of the cross-slope coordinate. The hysteresis is modelled with a non-monotonic effective basal friction law that has static, intermediate (velocity decreasing) and dynamic (velocity increasing) regimes. Both experiments and time-dependent numerical simulations show that steadily travelling retrogressive waves rapidly form in this system and a travelling wave ansatz is therefore used to derive a one-dimensional depth-averaged exact solution. The speed of the wave is determined by a critical point in the ordinary differential equation for the thickness. The critical point lies in the intermediate frictional regime, at the point where the friction exactly balances the downslope component of gravity. The retrogressive wave is therefore a sensitive test of the functional form of the friction law in this regime, where steady uniform flows are unstable and so cannot be used to determine the friction law directly. Upper and lower bounds for the existence of retrogressive waves in terms of the initial layer depth and the slope inclination are found and shown to be in good agreement with the experimentally determined phase diagram. For the friction law proposed by Edwards et al. (J. Fluid. Mech., vol. 823, 2017, pp. 278–315, J. Fluid. Mech., 2019, (submitted)) the magnitude of the wave speed is slightly under-predicted, but, for a given initial layer thickness, the exact solution accurately predicts an increase in the wave speed with higher inclinations. The model also captures the finite wave speed at the onset of retrogressive failure observed in experiments.

Hill (Twin Research and Human Genetics, Vol. 21, 2018, 84–88) presented a critique of our recently published paper in Cell Reports entitled ‘Large-Scale Cognitive GWAS Meta-Analysis Reveals Tissue-Specific Neural Expression and Potential Nootropic Drug Targets’ (Lam et al., Cell Reports, Vol. 21, 2017, 2597–2613). Specifically, Hill offered several interrelated comments suggesting potential problems with our use of a new analytic method called Multi-Trait Analysis of GWAS (MTAG) (Turley et al., Nature Genetics, Vol. 50, 2018, 229–237). In this brief article, we respond to each of these concerns. Using empirical data, we conclude that our MTAG results do not suffer from ‘inflation in the FDR [false discovery rate]’, as suggested by Hill (Twin Research and Human Genetics, Vol. 21, 2018, 84–88), and are not ‘more relevant to the genetic contributions to education than they are to the genetic contributions to intelligence’.

A green smectitic mineral from Jordan with 16% Cr2O3 (almost 22% on an ignited basis) has been shown by chemical, X-ray, electronoptical, electron microprobe, infrared and thermoanalytical evidence to be an iron-free volkonskoite of composition:

The octahedral occupancy of 4·7, with only Mg2+ and Cr3+ in octahedral positions (in a ratio of 1·14), suggests that the mineral is intermediate between di- and trioctahedral—an inference supported by the uniformity of composition of individual particles (as revealed by the microprobe) and IR evidence, which indicates that it is predominantly dioctahedral but with certain trioctahedral characteristics. A volkonskoite sample from the type area in the USSR, examined for comparison, contained 23·5% Cr2O3 (about 29% on an ignited basis), but proved on electron microprobe examination to be a mixture of at least three species, one of which was aluminium-rich. IR and thermoanalytical characteristics are discussed in relation to the existence of tri-dioctahedral species.

The 2 km × 5 m Newmains Dyke in the Scottish Southern Uplands consists mainly of primitive (mg number > 70), at least partly mantle-derived lamprophyre (vogesite spessartite, SiO2 50–60%), with hornblende-pyroxene-rich cumulates (SiO2 < 50%) and small amounts of quartz syenitic to granite residua (60–73% SiO2). The lamprophyres and cumulates yield an Rb-Sr whole-rock isochron age of 395±9 Ma (MSWD 2.0), and (87Sr/86Sr)i 0.70514±5—identical values to the nearby Criffell granitic pluton. After some 65% hornblende + clinopyroxene fractionation of parent lamprophyre magma, a volatile phase separated and metasomatically enriched the country rock greywackes in K, Ba, and Rb. The remaining quartz syenitic liquids became contaminated by 87Sr from these greywackes, which have a mean (87Sr/86Sr)395 value of 0.70789±114. Further fractionation of the contaminated syenitic liquids gave the granitic rocks, which have (87Sr/86Sr)395 values of 0.7056–64. The dyke appears to demonstrate in situ some of the hidden processes previously invoked to explain the evolution of the Criffell pluton itself.

‘Blue John’ andother purple fluorites have been studied by a wide range of techniques. Hydrocarbons are not the cause of the colour of these fluorites. No significant difference in the concentrations of 73 elements between the purple and colourless zones of Blue John has been detected. The spectroscopic and thermal bleaching behaviour of the purple zones is consistent with the presence of ‘colloidal’ calcium as colouring agent, and coloration of fluorites with calcium vapour gives material showing similar properties. The distribution of colour suggests trapping of the calcium in lattice defects along {111} (cleavage) planes through {001} (growth) zones. The ‘colloids’ could be produced by aggregation of calcium atoms liberated by irradiation from sources found in the geological environment of Blue John. The banding could arise from variations in the concentration of lattice defects caused by variations in growth rates of the fluorite.