The Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) offers powerful new capabilities for studying the polarised and magnetised Universe at radio wavelengths. In this paper, we introduce the Polarisation Sky Survey of the Universe’s Magnetism (POSSUM), a groundbreaking survey with three primary objectives: (1) to create a comprehensive Faraday rotation measure (RM) grid of up to one million compact extragalactic sources across the southern ∼ 50 per cent of the sky (20,630 deg2); (2) to map the intrinsic polarisation and RM properties of a wide range of discrete extragalactic and Galactic objects over the same area; and (3) to contribute interferometric data with excellent surface brightness sensitivity, which can be combined with single-dish data to study the diffuse Galactic interstellar medium. Observations for the full POSSUM survey commenced in May 2023 and are expected to conclude by mid-2028. POSSUM will achieve an RM grid density of around 30–50 RMs per square degree with a median measurement uncertainty of ∼1 rad m−2. The survey operates primarily over a frequency range of 800–1088 MHz, with an angular resolution of 20″ and a typical RMS sensitivity in Stokes Q or U of 18 μJy beam−1. Additionally, the survey will be supplemented by similar observations covering 1296–1440 MHz over 38 per cent of the sky. POSSUM will enable the discovery and detailed investigation of magnetized phenomena in a wide range of cosmic environments, including the intergalactic medium and cosmic web, galaxy clusters and groups, active galactic nuclei and radio galaxies, the Magellanic System and other nearby galaxies, galaxy halos and the circumgalactic medium, and the magnetic structure of the Milky Way across a very wide range of scales, as well as the interplay between these components. This paper reviews the current science case developed by the POSSUM Collaboration and provides an overview of POSSUM’s observations, data processing, outputs, and its complementarity with other radio and multi-wavelength surveys, including future work with the SKA.

We examine the optical counterparts of the 1829 neutral hydrogen (H I) detections in three pilot fields in the Widefield ASKAP L-band Legacy All-sky Blind surveY (WALLABY) using data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Legacy Imaging Surveys DR10. We find that 17 per cent (315) of the detections are optically low surface brightness galaxies (LSBGs; mean g-band surface brightness within 1 Re of > 23 mag arcsec−2) and 3 per cent (55) are optically ‘dark’. We find that the gas-rich WALLABY LSBGs have low star formation efficiencies, and have stellar masses spanning five orders of magnitude, which highlights the diversity of properties across our sample. 75 per cent of the LSBGs and all of the dark H I sources had not been catalogued prior to WALLABY. We examine the optically dark sample of the WALLABY pilot survey to verify the fidelity of the catalogue and investigate the implications for the full survey for identifying dark H I sources. We assess the H I detections without optical counterparts and identify 38 which pass further reliability tests. Of these, we find that 13 show signatures of tidal interactions. The remaining 25 detections have no obvious tidal origin, so are candidates for isolated galaxies with high H I masses, but low stellar masses and star-formation rates. Deeper H I and optical follow-up observations are required to verify the true nature of these dark sources.

The viruses associated with bats have generated significant concern; however, there is limited knowledge regarding the endoparasites that affect these mammals. This study involved the collection of seven nematode specimens (three males and four females) from the intestines of Hipposideros armiger in Shaoguan City, Guangdong, China. Next-generation sequencing was employed to obtain the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genome, which was determined to be 14,130 base pairs in length. The mitochondrial genome comprised 12 protein-coding genes, 21 tRNA genes, 2 rRNA genes, and an AT-rich non-coding region. Phylogenetic analyses based on mtDNA sequences indicated that the nematode forms a sister clade to Nematodirus, exhibiting only 74% nucleotide identity. In contrast, the nuclear ITS1 gene demonstrated a high degree of nucleotide identity (98.6%–98.8%) with Durettenema guangdongense. Consequently, the parasitic nematode identified from H. armiger is likely to belong to the genus Durettenema and has been designated as Durettenema sp. 888. Furthermore, an epidemiological investigation revealed the presence of the parasitic nematode infections in H. armiger collected from Guangdong, Guangxi, and Guizhou Provinces. Given the widespread distribution of H. armiger and their tendency to inhabit areas in close proximity to human dwellings, the influence of parasite prevalence on bat population numbers and potential for human and domestic animal transmission of this pathogen warrants further investigation.

Portable MRI (pMRI) technology, which promises to transform brain imaging research by facilitating scanning in new geographic areas and the participation of new, diverse populations, raises many ethical, legal, and societal issues (ELSI). To understand this emerging pMRI ELSI landscape, we surveyed expert stakeholder views on ELSI challenges and solutions associated with pMRI research.

Highly portable and accessible MRI technology will allow researchers to conduct field-based MRI research in community settings. Previous guidance for researchers working with fixed MRI does not address the novel ethical, legal, and societal issues (ELSI) of portable MRI (pMRI). Our interdisciplinary Working Group (WG) previously identified 15 core ELSI challenges associated with pMRI research and recommended solutions. In this article, we distill those detailed recommendations into a Portable MRI Research ELSI Checklist that offers practical operational guidance for researchers contemplating using this technology.

We present the Pilot Survey Phase 2 data release for the Wide-field ASKAP L-band Legacy All-sky Blind surveY (WALLABY), carried-out using the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP). We present 1760 H i detections (with a default spatial resolution of 30′′) from three pilot fields including the NGC 5044 and NGC 4808 groups as well as the Vela field, covering a total of $\sim 180$ deg$^2$ of the sky and spanning a redshift up to $z \simeq 0.09$. This release also includes kinematic models for over 126 spatially resolved galaxies. The observed median rms noise in the image cubes is 1.7 mJy per 30′′ beam and 18.5 kHz channel. This corresponds to a 5$\sigma$ H i column density sensitivity of $\sim 9.1\times10^{19}(1 + z)^4$ cm$^{-2}$ per 30′′ beam and $\sim 20$ km s$^{-1}$ channel and a 5$\sigma$ H i mass sensitivity of $\sim 5.5\times10^8 (D/100$ Mpc)$^{2}$ M$_{\odot}$ for point sources. Furthermore, we also present for the first time 12′′ high-resolution images (“cut-outs”) and catalogues for a sub-sample of 80 sources from the Pilot Survey Phase 2 fields. While we are able to recover sources with lower signal-to-noise ratio compared to sources in the Public Data Release 1, we do note that some data quality issues still persist, notably, flux discrepancies that are linked to the impact of side lobes associated with the dirty beams due to inadequate deconvolution. However, in spite of these limitations, the WALLABY Pilot Survey Phase 2 has already produced roughly a third of the number of HIPASS sources, making this the largest spatially resolved H i sample from a single survey to date.

Steinernema longicaudum Shen & Wang is redescribed based on a comparative morphological study of specimens from the type isolate from China, and two other isolates recovered from Korea and the USA. For the first and second generation female, the location of the vulva, shape of the vulval lips, and shape and length of the tail were newly observed diagnostic characters. A more detailed description of the morphology of the male spicules and gubernaculum, and the arrangement of the genital papillae is included. A description, based on scanning electron microscopy observations, of the lateral field pattern of the third-stage infective juveniles is also provided. Additionally, restriction fragment length polymorphism profiles based on the internal transcribed spacer region, and cross-breeding tests supplement the description of this species.

As a typical plasma-based optical element that can sustain ultra-high light intensity, plasma density gratings driven by intense laser pulses have been extensively studied for wide applications. Here, we show that the plasma density grating driven by two intersecting driver laser pulses is not only nonuniform in space but also varies over time. Consequently, the probe laser pulse that passes through such a dynamic plasma density grating will be depolarized, that is, its polarization becomes spatially and temporally variable. More importantly, the laser depolarization may spontaneously take place for crossed laser beams if their polarization angles are arranged properly. The laser depolarization by a dynamic plasma density grating may find application in mitigating parametric instabilities in laser-driven inertial confinement fusion.

FFD (free-form deformation method) is one of the most commonly used parameterisation methods at present. It places the parameterised objects inside the control volume through coordinate system transformation, and controls the control volume through control points, thus realising the deformation control of its internal objects. Firstly, this paper systematically analyses and compares the characteristics and technical requirements of Bernstein, B-spline and NURBS (non-uniform rational b-splines) basic functions that can be adopted by FFD, and uses the minimum number of control points required to achieve the specified control effect threshold to express the control capability. Aiming at the problem of discontinuity at the right end in the actual calculation of B-spline basis function, a method of adding a small epsilon is proposed to solve it. Then, three basic functions are applied to the FFD parameterisation method, respectively, and the differences are compared from two aspects of the accurate expression of the model and the ability of deformation control. It is found that the BFFD (b-spline free-form deformation) approach owns better comprehensive performance when the control points are distributed correctly. In this paper, the BFFD method is improved, and a p-BFFD (reverse solution points based BFFD) method based on inverse solution is proposed to realise the free distribution of control points under the specified topology. Further, for the lifting body configuration, the control points of the p-BFFD method are brought closer to the airframe forming the EDGE-p-BFFD (edge constraints based p-BFFD) method. For the case in this paper, the proposed EDGE-p-BFFD method not only has fairly high parameterisation accuracy, but also reduces the expression error from 1.01E-3 to 1.25E-4, which is nearly ten times. It can also achieve effective lifting body guideline constraints, and has the ability of local deformation adapting to the configuration characteristics. In terms of the proportion of effective control points, the EDGE-p-BFFD method increases the proportion of effective control points from 36.7% to 50%, and the more control points, the more obvious the proportion increase effect. The new method also has better effect on the continuity of geometric deformation. At the same time, this paper introduces the independent deformation method of the upper and lower surfaces based on the double control body frames, which effectively avoids the deformation coupling problem of the simultaneous change of the upper and lower surfaces caused by the movement of control points in the traditional single control framework.

We present the Widefield ASKAP L-band Legacy All-sky Blind surveY (WALLABY) Pilot Phase I Hi kinematic models. This first data release consists of Hi observations of three fields in the direction of the Hydra and Norma clusters, and the NGC 4636 galaxy group. In this paper, we describe how we generate and publicly release flat-disk tilted-ring kinematic models for 109/592 unique Hi detections in these fields. The modelling method adopted here—which we call the WALLABY Kinematic Analysis Proto-Pipeline (WKAPP) and for which the corresponding scripts are also publicly available—consists of combining results from the homogeneous application of the FAT and 3DBarolo algorithms to the subset of 209 detections with sufficient resolution and $S/N$ in order to generate optimised model parameters and uncertainties. The 109 models presented here tend to be gas rich detections resolved by at least 3–4 synthesised beams across their major axes, but there is no obvious environmental bias in the modelling. The data release described here is the first step towards the derivation of similar products for thousands of spatially resolved WALLABY detections via a dedicated kinematic pipeline. Such a large publicly available and homogeneously analysed dataset will be a powerful legacy product that that will enable a wide range of scientific studies.

We present WALLABY pilot data release 1, the first public release of H i pilot survey data from the Wide-field ASKAP L-band Legacy All-sky Blind Survey (WALLABY) on the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder. Phase 1 of the WALLABY pilot survey targeted three $60\,\mathrm{deg}^{2}$ regions on the sky in the direction of the Hydra and Norma galaxy clusters and the NGC 4636 galaxy group, covering the redshift range of $z \lesssim 0.08$ . The source catalogue, images and spectra of nearly 600 extragalactic H i detections and kinematic models for 109 spatially resolved galaxies are available. As the pilot survey targeted regions containing nearby group and cluster environments, the median redshift of the sample of $z \approx 0.014$ is relatively low compared to the full WALLABY survey. The median galaxy H i mass is $2.3 \times 10^{9}\,{\rm M}_{{\odot}}$ . The target noise level of $1.6\,\mathrm{mJy}$ per 30′′ beam and $18.5\,\mathrm{kHz}$ channel translates into a $5 \sigma$ H i mass sensitivity for point sources of about $5.2 \times 10^{8} \, (D_{\rm L} / \mathrm{100\,Mpc})^{2} \, {\rm M}_{{\odot}}$ across 50 spectral channels ( ${\approx} 200\,\mathrm{km \, s}^{-1}$ ) and a $5 \sigma$ H i column density sensitivity of about $8.6 \times 10^{19} \, (1 + z)^{4}\,\mathrm{cm}^{-2}$ across 5 channels ( ${\approx} 20\,\mathrm{km \, s}^{-1}$ ) for emission filling the 30′′ beam. As expected for a pilot survey, several technical issues and artefacts are still affecting the data quality. Most notably, there are systematic flux errors of up to several 10% caused by uncertainties about the exact size and shape of each of the primary beams as well as the presence of sidelobes due to the finite deconvolution threshold. In addition, artefacts such as residual continuum emission and bandpass ripples have affected some of the data. The pilot survey has been highly successful in uncovering such technical problems, most of which are expected to be addressed and rectified before the start of the full WALLABY survey.

We report the experimental results of the commissioning phase in the 10 PW laser beamline of the Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF). The peak power reaches 2.4 PW on target without the last amplifying during the experiment. The laser energy of 72 ± 9 J is directed to a focal spot of approximately 6 μm diameter (full width at half maximum) in 30 fs pulse duration, yielding a focused peak intensity around 2.0 × 1021 W/cm2. The first laser-proton acceleration experiment is performed using plain copper and plastic targets. High-energy proton beams with maximum cut-off energy up to 62.5 MeV are achieved using copper foils at the optimum target thickness of 4 μm via target normal sheath acceleration. For plastic targets of tens of nanometers thick, the proton cut-off energy is approximately 20 MeV, showing ring-like or filamented density distributions. These experimental results reflect the capabilities of the SULF-10 PW beamline, for example, both ultrahigh intensity and relatively good beam contrast. Further optimization for these key parameters is underway, where peak laser intensities of 1022–1023 W/cm2 are anticipated to support various experiments on extreme field physics.

Background: Despite a higher prevalence of traumatic spinal cord injury (TSCI) amongst Canadian Indigenous peoples, there is a paucity of studies focused on Indigenous TSCI. We present the first Canada-wide study comparing TSCI amongst Canadian Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. Methods: This study is a retrospective analysis of prospectively-collected TSCI data from the Rick Hansen Spinal Cord Injury Registry (RHSCIR) from 2004-2019. We divided participants into Indigenous and non-Indigenous cohorts and compared them with respect to demographics, injury mechanism, level, severity, and outcomes. Results: Compared with non-Indigenous patients, Indigenous patients were younger, more female, less likely to have higher education, and less likely to be employed. The mechanism of injury was more likely due to assault or transportation-related trauma in the Indigenous group. The length of stay for Indigenous patients was longer. Indigenous patients were more likely to be discharged to a rural setting, less likely to be discharged home, and more likely to be unemployed following injury. Conclusions: Our results suggest that more resources need to be dedicated for transitioning Indigenous patients sustaining a TSCI to community living and for supporting these patients in their home communities. A focus on resources and infrastructure for Indigenous patients by engagement with Indigenous communities is needed.

Using detailed data on company visits by Chinese mutual funds, we provide direct evidence of mutual fund information acquisition activities and the consequent informational advantages mutual funds establish in local firms. Mutual funds are more likely to visit local and nearby firms both in and outside of their portfolios, but the ease of travel between fund and firm locations can substantially alleviate geographic distance constraints. Company visits by mutual funds are strongly associated with both fund trading activities and fund trading performance. Our results show that geographic constraints and costly information acquisition amplify information asymmetry in financial markets.

We report on experimental observation of non-laminar proton acceleration modulated by a strong magnetic field in laser irradiating micrometer aluminum targets. The results illustrate the coexistence of ring-like and filamentation structures. We implement the knife edge method into the radiochromic film detector to map the accelerated beams, measuring a source size of 30–110 μm for protons of more than 5 MeV. The diagnosis reveals that the ring-like profile originates from low-energy protons far off the axis whereas the filamentation is from the near-axis high-energy protons, exhibiting non-laminar features. Particle-in-cell simulations reproduced the experimental results, showing that the short-term magnetic turbulence via Weibel instability and the long-term quasi-static annular magnetic field by the streaming electric current account for the measured beam profile. Our work provides direct mapping of laser-driven proton sources in the space-energy domain and reveals the non-laminar beam evolution at featured time scales.

A disruption database characterizing the current quench of disruptions with ITER-like tungsten divertor has been developed on EAST. It provides a large number of plasma parameters describing the predisruptive plasma, current quench time, eddy current, and mitigation by massive impurity injection, which shows that the current quench time strongly depends on magnetic energy and post-disruption electron temperature. Further, the energy balance and magnetic energy dissipation during the current quench phase has been well analysed. Magnetic energy is also demonstrated to be dissipated mainly by ohmic reheating and inductive coupling, and both of the two channels have great effects on current quench time. Also, massive gas injection is an efficient method to speed up the current quench and increase the fraction of impurity radiation.

Flexibility is one of the important mechanical performance parameters of stent. The flexibility of tapered stents, especially self-expanding tapered stents, remains unknown. In this study, we developed a new selfexpanding tapered stent for tapered arteries and performed a numerical investigation of stent flexibility by using finite element method. The effect of stent design parameters, including taper and link space width, on stent flexibility was studied. The flexibility of the proposed stent was also compared with that of traditional cylindrical stents. Results show that the tapered stent is more flexible than the traditional cylindrical stent. Furthermore, the flexibility of the tapered stent increases with increasing stent taper and stent link space width. The increase in the stent link space width can contribute to the reduction in the peak stress. Therefore, tapered stents with high link space width will improve the stent flexibility. This work provides useful information for improvement of stent design and clinical selection.

The present study was designed to detect three single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) located on 22q11 that was thought as being of particularly importance for genetic research into schizophrenia. We recruited a total of 176 Chinese family trios of Han descent, consisting of mothers, fathers and affected offspring with schizophrenia for the genetic analysis. The transmission disequilibrium test (TDT) showed that of three SNPs, rs10314 in the 3′-untranslated region of the CLDN5 locus was associated with schizophrenia (χ2 = 4.75, P = 0.029). The other two SNPs, rs1548359 present in the CDC45L locus centromeric of rs10314 and rs739371 in the 5′-flanking region of the CLDN5 locus, did not show such an association. The global chi-square (χ2) test showed that the 3-SNP haplotype system was not associated with schizophrenia although the 1-df test for individual haplotypes showed that the rs1548359(C)-rs10314(G)-rs739371(C) haplotype was excessively non-transmitted (χ2 = 5.32, P = 0.02). Because the claudin proteins are a major component for barrier-forming tight junctions that could play a crucial role in response to changing natural, physiological and pathological conditions, the CLDN5 association with schizophrenia may be an important clue leading to look into a meeting point of genetic and environmental factors.