Context. The luminous Galactic Cepheid RS Puppis is unique in being surrounded by a dust nebula illuminated by the variable light of the Cepheid. In a recent paper in this journal, Kervella et al. (2008) report a very precise geometric distance to RS Pup, based on measured phase lags of the light variations of individual knots in the reflection nebula. Aims. In this commentary, we examine the v...

Outer hair cells (OHCs) drive cochlear amplification that enhances our ability to detect and discriminate sounds. The motor protein, prestin, which evolved from the SLC26 anion transporter family, underlies the OHC's voltage-dependent mechanical activity (eM). Here we report on simultaneous measures of prestin's voltage-sensor charge movement (nonlinear capacitance, NLC) and eM that evidence di...

A patient with well documented cyclic neutropenia (CN) was given chronic lithium therapy as well as a short course of plasmapheresis with therapeutic intention. While on lithium therapy, an increase in the amplitude of the granulocyte oscillations was observed, but recurrent agranulocytotic periods persisted. A 2-wk course of plasmapheresis (total exchange 17 liters) resulted in a gradual decre...

This paper analyses the impact of using different macroeconomic variables and output decompositions to estimate the euro area output gap. We estimate twelve multivariate unobserved components models with phase shifts being allowed between individual cyclical components. As output decomposition plays a central role in all multivariate models, three different output decompositions are utilised; t...

BACKGROUND The time taken, or 'time lags', between biomedical/health research and its translation into health improvements is receiving growing attention. Reducing time lags should increase rates of return to such research. However, ways to measure time lags are under-developed, with little attention on where time lags arise within overall timelines. The process marker model has been proposed a...

It was well known that most of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are dominated by positive spectral lags, while a small fraction GRBs show negative lags. However, Wei et al. firstly identified well-defined transition from lags to in GRB 160625B, and then got robust limits on possible violation Lorentz Invariance (LIV) based the observation. Recently, such has been found three different emission episodes ...

Locomotion provides superb examples of cooperation among neuromuscular systems, environmental reaction forces, and sensory feedback. As part of a program to understand the neuromechanics of locomotion, here we construct a model of anguilliform (eel-like) swimming in slender fishes. Building on a continuum mechanical representation of the body as an viscoelastic rod, actuated by a traveling wave...

One of the largest karst springs in North China, the Jinci Springs, dried up and has remained dry since 1994. We develop a correlation analysis with time-lag and a regression analysis with time-lag to study the relation between spring flow and precipitation. This allows us to obtain a better understanding of karst hydrological processes by differentiating the contribution of variation in precip...

We report the results from measuring the phase lag and coherence function of X-ray emission from black hole candidate XTE J1550-564. These temporal X-ray properties have been recognized to be increasingly important in providing important diagnostics of the dynamics of accretion flows around black holes. For XTE J1550-564, we found significant hard lag-the X-ray variability in high-energy bands ...