Aspirations of quality, equitable and respectful care for all women in childbirth have, so far, been unrealised. Sub-optimal care remains the norm in many settings despite decades of substantial investment, the introduction of evidence-based policies, procedures and training programmes. Improving the standard of institutional care for childbearing women in Afghanistan is an example. This ethnography of a large public Afghan maternity hospital explored the experiences, motivations and constraints of healthcare providers. The aim was to identify barriers and facilitators in the delivery of care. Participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and focus group discussions were used to gather diverse perspectives on childbirth and care between 2010 and 2012. The influences of the sociocultural setting and political economy on facility-based care are discussed in this paper. Under the surface of this maternity hospital, social norms were in conflict with the principles of biomedicine. Contested areas included the control of knowledge, equity and the primary goal of work. The institutional culture was further complicated by pressure from powerful elites. These unseen values and pressures explain much of the disconnection between policy and implementation, education and the everyday behaviours of healthcare providers. Improving the quality of care and equity in Afghan public maternity hospitals will require political will from all stakeholders to acknowledge these issues and find culturally attuned ways to address them. Furthermore, the notion of competing world-views on healthcare has relevance beyond Afghanistan.
Unpacking ego in role theory : vertical and horizontal role contestation and foreign policy / Cristian Cantir and Juliet Kaarbo -- Role contestation in the July 1914 crisis : the British and French cases / Joe D. Hagan -- Active independent or faithful ally? : the domestic contestation of national role conceptions in Australia after World War II / Klaus Brummer and Cameron G. Thies -- Role theory and Japanese security policy / Keiko Hirata -- Contesting Belgium's role in development cooperation / Marijke Breuning -- Domestic sources of changing Turkish foreign policy towards the MENA during the 2010s : a role theoretic approach / Özgür Özdamar -- Intervention : domestic contestation and Britain's national role conceptions / Jamie Gaskarth -- Belief systems and foreign policy roles : role contestation in U.S. foreign policy decisions / Stephen G. Walker, Mark Schafer, and John Beieler -- To be or not to be a state? : role contestation in the debate over Scottish independence / Ryan Beasley, Juliet Kaarbo, and Hannah Solomon-Strauss -- Multi-level role contestation : the EU in the Libyan crisis -- Nicole koenig -- Agents in structures : insights from cases of internal role contestation / Juliet Kaarbo and Cristian Cantir
Grizzly bears have been observed with increasing frequency in northern Manitoba, Canada over the last four decades (1980 – 2020), likely originating from the established population in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. We summarize and present an interdisciplinary synthesis of documented observations of grizzly bears in northern Manitoba from historical records from the Hudson's Bay Company Archives, published literature, direct observations, remote camera observations, government agency reports, the first author's field notes, volunteered observations, and media and social media reports. A total of 160 observations were recorded, 140 of them since 1980. Spatially, these observations all fall within the Southern Arctic, Hudson Plains, and Taiga Shield ecozones within Manitoba and span from the northern limit of Manitoba at the Nunavut border to the south shore of the Nelson River. Grizzly bears were historically present in northern Manitoba prior to 1980, though in very low numbers, but the frequency of observations has increased significantly since then. Most observations (86%) were less than 1 km from the Hudson Bay coast. Grizzly bears appear to select for open habitats and against forested ones. Reported observations, however, have been largely opportunistic, and the geographical distribution of observer efforts was uneven, so our data likely contain spatial and temporal biases. All confirmed observations were of single bears, suggesting that the present population is likely maintained by dispersal from the population to the north. Understanding grizzly bear ecology, distribution, and demographics north and west of Churchill will be critical for more accurately assessing the status and conservation needs of grizzly bears in the province. ; Au cours des quatre dernières décennies (1980 – 2020), de plus en plus de grizzlis ont été observés dans le nord du Manitoba, au Canada, vraisemblablement en provenance de la population établie au Nunavut et dans les Territoires du Nord-Ouest. Nous résumons et présentons une synthèse interdisciplinaire d'observations documentées de grizzlis dans le nord du Manitoba à partir de dossiers historiques des archives de la Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson, d'ouvrages publiés, d'observations directes, d'observations en provenance de caméras à distance, de rapports d'organismes gouvernementaux, de notes prises sur le terrain par les principaux auteurs, d'observations participatives ainsi que de signalements prélevés dans les médias et les médias sociaux. Dans l'ensemble, 160 observations ont été consignées, dont 140 depuis 1980. Du point de vue géographique, ces observations ont toutes été faites dans les écozones du sud de l'Arctique, des plaines hudsoniennes et de la taïga du Bouclier du Manitoba, allant de la limite nord du Manitoba à la frontière du Nunavut jusqu'à la rive sud du fleuve Nelson. Les grizzlis étaient présents dans le nord du Manitoba avant 1980, bien qu'en très petits nombres, mais la fréquence des observations s'est accrue considérablement depuis cette époque. La plupart des observations (86 %) ont été faites à moins d'un kilomètre de la côte de la baie d'Hudson. Les grizzlis semblent opter pour les habitats ouverts au détriment des habitats forestiers. Cependant, les observations signalées sont largement opportunistes et la répartition géographique des efforts des observateurs n'était pas égale, ce qui signifie que nos données sont vraisemblablement empreintes d'un biais spatial et d'un biais temporel. Toutes les observations confirmées se rapportaient à des ours seuls, ce qui suggère que la présente population découle probablement de la dispersion de la population du Nord. La compréhension de l'écologie, de la répartition et de la démographie des grizzlis au nord et à l'ouest de Churchill jouera un rôle critique dans l'évaluation plus précise de l'état des grizzlis et de leurs besoins en conservation au sein de la province.
In: Bulletin of the World Health Organization: the international journal of public health = Bulletin de l'Organisation Mondiale de la Santé, Band 96, Heft 1, S. 10-17
Background Grip strength is a robust indicator of overall health, is moderately heritable, and predicts longevity in older adults.
Methods Using genome-wide linkage analysis, we identified a novel locus on chromosome 18p (mega-basepair region: 3.4 – 4.0) linked to grip strength in 3755 individuals from 582 families aged 64 ± 12 years (range 30–110 years; 55% women). There were 26 families that contributed to the linkage peak (cumulative logarithm of the odds [LOD] score = 10.94), with six families (119 individuals) accounting for most of the linkage signal (LOD = 6.4). In these 6 families, using whole genome sequencing data, we performed association analyses between the 7312 single nucleotide (SNVs) and insertion deletion (INDELs) variants in the linkage region and grip strength. Models were adjusted for age, age2, sex, height, field center, and population substructure.
Results We found significant associations between genetic variants (8 SNVs and 4 INDELs, p<5*10-5) in the Disks Large-associated Protein 1 (DLGAP1) gene and grip strength. Haplotypes constructed using these variants explained up to 98.1% of the LOD score. Finally, RNAseq data showed that these variants were significantly associated with the expression of nearby Myosin Light Chain 12A (MYL12A), Structural Maintenance of Chromosomes Flexible Hinge Domain Containing 1 (SMCHD1), Erythrocyte Membrane Protein Band 4.1 Like 3 (EPB41L3) genes (p< .0004).
Conclusions The DLGAP1 gene plays an important role in the post-synaptic density of neurons; thus, it is both a novel positional and biological candidate gene for follow-up studies aimed at uncovering genetic determinants of muscle strength.
9. "Pronger You Ignorant Ape ... I Hope You Fall Off Space Mountain!": A Study of the Institutional Work of Sport Fans / Mark Julien -- pt. Three Fans and Media -- 10. "Brett Favre is a God": Sports Fans' Perpetuation of Mythology on Newspaper Websites / Allison Harthcock -- 11. Communicating Organizational History to Sports Fans / Matthew Gill -- 12. The Many Faces of "Fans": How the NBA Reaches Out to Its Different Audience Segments / John A. Fortunato -- 13. From Good ol' Boys to National Spectacle: Motives and Identification among Young NASCAR Fans / John S.W. Spinda -- 14. Why Hispanic Fans Are the Lifeblood of Major League Soccer / Ric Jensen -- pt. Four Fans and Gender -- 15. From Football Widow to Fan: Web Narratives of Women and Sports Spectatorship / Lawrence A. Wenner -- 16. Football Fans Do Wear Pink: Game Day Broadcasts, Female Football Fans and Their NFL / Kathy Brady -- 17. Great Expectations: An Analysis of the Fan Base for WNBA's 2008 Expect Great / Katherine L. Lavelle -- pt. Five Fans and Fantasy Sports -- 18. Fantasy Sports and Sports Fandom: Implications for Mass Media Research / Tom Isaacson -- 19. Show Me the Numbers!: Media Dependency and Fantasy Game Participants / Jeff Boone.
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We present a search for gravitational waves from 116 known millisecond and young pulsars using data from the fifth science run of the LIGO detectors. For this search, ephemerides overlapping the run period were obtained for all pulsars using radio and X-ray observations. We demonstrate an updated search method that allows for small uncertainties in the pulsar phase parameters to be included in the search. We report no signal detection from any of the targets and therefore interpret our results as upper limits on the gravitational wave signal strength. The most interesting limits are those for young pulsars. We present updated limits on gravitational radiation from the Crab pulsar, where the measured limit is now a factor of 7 below the spin-down limit. This limits the power radiated via gravitational waves to be less than similar to 2% of the available spin-down power. For the X-ray pulsar J0537-6910 we reach the spin-down limit under the assumption that any gravitational wave signal from it stays phase locked to the X-ray pulses over timing glitches, and for pulsars J1913+1011 and J1952+3252 we are only a factor of a few above the spin-down limit. Of the recycled millisecond pulsars, several of themeasured upper limits are only about an order of magnitude above their spin-down limits. For these our best (lowest) upper limit on gravitational wave amplitude is 2.3 x 10(-26) for J1603-7202 and our best (lowest) limit on the inferred pulsar ellipticity is 7.0 x 10(-8) for J2124-3358. ; Australian Research Council ; Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India ; Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare of Italy ; Spanish Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia ; Conselleria d'Economia Hisenda i Innovacio of the Govern de les Illes Balears ; Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research ; Royal Society ; Scottish Funding Council ; Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education ; Foundation for Polish Science ; Scottish Universities Physics Alliance ; National Aeronautics and Space Administration ; Carnegie Trust ; Leverhulme Trust ; David and Lucile Packard Foundation ; Research Corporation ; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation ; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada ; Commonwealth Government ; Astronomy
United States National Science Foundation (NSF) ; Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom ; Max-Planck-Society (MPS) ; State of Niedersachsen/Germany ; Australian Research Council ; International Science Linkages program of the Commonwealth of Australia ; Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India ; Department of Science and Technology, India ; Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), India ; Ministry of Human Resource Development, India ; Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad ; Conselleria d'Economia i Competitivitat and Conselleria d'Educaci, Cultura i Universitats of the Govern de les Illes Balears ; Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter - Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research ; Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education ; FOCUS Programme of Foundation for Polish Science ; European Union ; Royal Society ; Scottish Funding Council ; Scottish Universities Physics Alliance ; National Aeronautics and Space Administration ; Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA) ; Lyon Institute of Origins (LIO) ; National Research Foundation of Korea ; Industry Canada ; Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation ; National Science and Engineering Research Council Canada ; Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation ; Carnegie Trust ; Leverhulme Trust ; David and Lucile Packard Foundation ; Research Corporation ; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation ; NSF ; STFC ; MPS ; INFN ; CNRS ; Science and Technology Facilities Council ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000938/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006285/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006269/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000946/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000962/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L003465/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K000845/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/J00166X/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000911/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: PPA/G/S/2002/00652 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006269/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000911/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: 1362895 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006277/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/H002359/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K005014/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K00137X/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/M006735/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/M000931/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000938/1 Gravitational Waves ; We describe directed searches for continuous gravitational waves (GWs) in data from the sixth Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) science data run. The targets were nine young supernova remnants not associated with pulsars; eight of the remnants are associated with non-pulsing suspected neutron stars. One target ' s parameters are uncertain enough to warrant two searches, for a total of 10. Each search covered a broad band of frequencies and first and second frequency derivatives for a fixed sky direction. The searches coherently integrated data from the two LIGO interferometers over time spans from 5.3-25.3 days using the matched-filtering. -statistic. We found no evidence of GW signals. We set 95% confidence upper limits as strong (low) as 4 x 10(-25) on intrinsic strain, 2 x 10(-7) on fiducial ellipticity, and 4 x 10(-5) on r-mode amplitude. These beat the indirect limits from energy conservation and are within the range of theoretical predictions for neutron-star ellipticities and r-mode amplitudes.
United States National Science Foundation (NSF) ; Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom ; Max-Planck-Society (MPS) ; State of Niedersachsen/Germany ; Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) ; French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) ; Australian Research Council ; International Science Linkages program of the Commonwealth of Australia ; Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India ; Department of Science and Technology, India ; Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), India ; Ministry of Human Resource Development, India ; Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad ; Conselleria d'Economia i Competitivitat and Conselleria d'Educaci, Cultura i Universitats of the Govern de les Illes Balears ; Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research ; National Science Centre of Poland ; European Union ; Royal Society ; Scottish Funding Council ; Scottish Universities Physics Alliance ; National Aeronautics and Space Administration ; Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA) ; Lyon Institute of Origins (LIO) ; National Research Foundation of Korea ; Industry Canada ; Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation ; Natural Science and Engineering Research Council, Canada ; Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation ; Carnegie Trust ; Leverhulme Trust ; David and Lucile Packard Foundation ; Research Corporation ; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation ; NSF ; STFC ; MPS ; INFN ; CNRS ; Science and Technology Facilities Council ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000938/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: 1362895 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000962/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006285/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L003465/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000962/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006285/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006242/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/J000019/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/N00003X/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000946/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/N000064/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000954/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K000845/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006269/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000938/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K005014/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006269/1 Gravitational Waves ; We present the results of a search for long-duration gravitational wave transients in two sets of data collected by the LIGO Hanford and LIGO Livingston detectors between November 5, 2005 and September 30, 2007, and July 7, 2009 and October 20, 2010, with a total observational time of 283.0 days and 132.9 days, respectively. The search targets gravitational wave transients of duration 10-500 s in a frequency band of 40-1000 Hz, with minimal assumptions about the signal waveform, polarization, source direction, or time of occurrence. All candidate triggers were consistent with the expected background; as a result we set 90% confidence upper limits on the rate of long-duration gravitational wave transients for different types of gravitational wave signals. For signals from black hole accretion disk instabilities, we set upper limits on the source rate density between 3.4 x 10(-5) and 9.4 x 10(-4) Mpc(-3) yr(-1) at 90% confidence. These are the first results from an all-sky search for unmodeled long-duration transient gravitational waves.
Advanced LIGO ; Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom ; Australian Research Council ; Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India, Department of Science and Technology, India ; Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), India ; Ministry of Human Resource Development, India ; Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad ; Conselleria d'Economia i Competitivitat and Conselleria d'Educacio, Cultura i Universitats of the Govern de les Illes Balears ; National Science Centre of Poland ; FOCUS Programme of Foundation for Polish Science ; European Union ; Royal Society ; Scottish Funding Council ; Scottish Universities Physics Alliance ; Lyon Institute of Origins (LIO) ; National Research Foundation of Korea ; Industry Canada ; Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation ; National Science and Engineering Research Council Canada ; Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation ; Research Corporation, Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan ; Kavli Foundation ; Science and Technology Facilities Council ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000954/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000946/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006269/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006242/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L003465/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/J000019/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/N000072/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K000845/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006269/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/N000633/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/M000931/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K005014/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: PPA/G/S/2002/00652 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/N00003X/1 ; We present a possible observing scenario for the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo gravitational-wave detectors over the next decade, with the intention of providing information to the astronomy community to facilitate planning for multi-messenger astronomy with gravitational waves. We determine the expected sensitivity of the network to transient gravitational-wave signals, and study the capability of the network to determine the sky location of the source. We report our findings for gravitational-wave transients, with particular focus on gravitational-wave signals from the inspiral of binary neutron-star systems, which are considered the most promising for multi-messenger astronomy. The ability to localize the sources of the detected signals depends on the geographical distribution of the detectors and their relative sensitivity, and 90% credible regions can be as large as thousands of square degrees when only two sensitive detectors are operational. Determining the sky position of a significant fraction of detected signals to areas of 5 deg(2) to 20 deg(2) will require at least three detectors of sensitivity within a factor of similar to 2 of each other and with a broad frequency bandwidth. Should the third LIGO detector be relocated to India as expected, a significant fraction of gravitational-wave signals will be localized to a few square degrees by gravitational-wave observations alone.
Australian Research Council ; International Science Linkages program of the Commonwealth of Australia ; Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India, Department of Science and Technology, India ; Science and Engineering Research Board, India ; Ministry of Human Resource Development, India ; Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad ; Conselleria d'Economia i Competitivitat ; Cultura i Universitats of the Govern de les Illes Balears ; Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter - Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research ; National Science Centre of Poland ; European Union ; Royal Society ; Scottish Funding Council ; Scottish Universities Physics Alliance ; National Aeronautics and Space Administration ; Hungarian Scientific Research Fund ; Lyon Institute of Origins ; National Research Foundation of Korea ; Industry Canada ; Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation ; National Science and Engineering Research Council Canada ; Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation ; Carnegie Trust ; Leverhulme Trust ; David and Lucile Packard Foundation ; Research Corporation ; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation ; Conselleria d'Educacio ; Science and Technology Facilities Council ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000962/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: 1362895 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006285/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000938/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000962/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K000845/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K005014/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L003465/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000938/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/N000064/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000946/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000954/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006269/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006269/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/J000019/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006242/1 Gravitational Waves ; In this paper we present the results of the first low frequency all-sky search of continuous gravitational wave signals conducted on Virgo VSR2 and VSR4 data. The search covered the full sky, a frequency range between 20 and 128 Hz with a range of spin-down between -1.0 x 10(-10) and +1.5 x 10(-11) Hz/s, and was based on a hierarchical approach. The starting point was a set of short fast Fourier transforms, of length 8192 s, built from the calibrated strain data. Aggressive data cleaning, in both the time and frequency domains, has been done in order to remove, as much as possible, the effect of disturbances of instrumental origin. On each data set a number of candidates has been selected, using the Frequency Hough transform in an incoherent step. Only coincident candidates among VSR2 and VSR4 have been examined in order to strongly reduce the false alarm probability, and the most significant candidates have been selected. The criteria we have used for candidate selection and for the coincidence step greatly reduce the harmful effect of large instrumental artifacts. Selected candidates have been subject to a follow-up by constructing a new set of longer fast Fourier transforms followed by a further incoherent analysis, still based on the Frequency Hough transform. No evidence for continuous gravitational wave signals was found, and therefore we have set a population-based joint VSR2-VSR4 90% confidence level upper limit on the dimensionless gravitational wave strain in the frequency range between 20 and 128 Hz. This is the first all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves conducted, on data of ground-based interferometric detectors, at frequencies below 50 Hz. We set upper limits in the range between about 10(-24) and 2 x 10(-23) at most frequencies. Our upper limits on signal strain show an improvement of up to a factor of similar to 2 with respect to the results of previous all-sky searches at frequencies below 80 Hz.
United States National Science Foundation (NSF) ; Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom ; MaxPlanck- Society (MPS) ; State of Niedersachsen/Germany ; Australian Research Council ; Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research ; EGO consortium ; Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India, Department of Science and Technology, India ; Science AMP; Engineering Research Board (SERB), India ; Ministry of Human Resource Development, India ; Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad ; Conselleria d'Economia i Competitivitat and Conselleria d'Educacio Cultura i Universitats of the Govern de les Illes Balears ; National Science Centre of Poland ; European Union ; Royal Society ; Scottish Funding Council ; Scottish Universities Physics Alliance ; Lyon Institute of Origins (LIO) ; National Research Foundation of Korea, Industry Canada ; Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation ; National Science and Engineering Research Council Canada ; Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation ; Leverhulme Trust ; Research Corporation, Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan ; Kavli Foundation ; NSF ; STFC ; MPS ; INFN ; CNRS ; Science and Technology Facilities Council ; State of Niedersachsen/Germany: GEO600 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K005014/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000938/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/N000072/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: PPA/G/S/2002/00652 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006269/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000962/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/J00166X/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/M006735/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006285/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/J000019/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006285/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/J000019/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: 1362895 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/M000931/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000962/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000938/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K000845/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006242/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L003465/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/G504284/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006269/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000954/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/N00003X/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/N000633/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000946/1 ; The discovery of the gravitational-wave (GW) source GW150914 with the Advanced LIGO detectors provides the first observational evidence for the existence of binary black hole (BH) systems that inspiral and merge within the age of the universe. Such BH mergers have been predicted in two main types of formation models, involving isolated binaries in galactic fields or dynamical interactions in young and old dense stellar environments. The measured masses robustly demonstrate that relatively heavy BHs (greater than or similar to 25M(circle dot)) can form in nature. This discovery implies relatively weak massive-star winds and thus the formation of GW150914 in an environment with a metallicity lower than about 1/2 of the solar value. The rate of binary-BH (BBH) mergers inferred from the observation of GW150914 is consistent with the higher end of rate predictions (greater than or similar to 1 Gpc(-3) yr(-1)) from both types of formation models. The low measured redshift (z similar or equal to 0.1) of GW150914 and the low inferred metallicity of the stellar progenitor imply either BBH formation in a low-mass galaxy in the local universe and a prompt merger, or formation at high redshift with a time delay between formation and merger of several Gyr. This discovery motivates further studies of binary-BH formation astrophysics. It also has implications for future detections and studies by Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo, and GW detectors in space.
United States National Science Foundation (NSF) ; Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom ; Max-Planck Society ; State of Niedersachsen/Germany ; Australian Research Council ; Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research ; EGO consortium ; Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India ; Department of Science and Technology, India ; Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), India ; Ministry of Human Resource Development, India ; Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad ; Conselleria d'Economia i Competitivitat and Conselleria d'Educacio Cultura i Universitats of the Govern de les Illes Balears ; National Science Centre of Poland ; European Commission ; Royal Society ; Scottish Funding Council ; Scottish Universities Physics Alliance ; Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA) ; Lyon Institute of Origins (LIO) ; National Research Foundation of Korea ; Industry Canada ; Province of Ontario through Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation ; National Science and Engineering Research Council Canada ; Canadian Institute for Advanced Research ; Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation ; Russian Foundation for Basic Research ; Leverhulme Trust ; Research Corporation ; Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan ; Kavli Foundation ; Australian Government ; National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy ; Government of Western Australia ; United States Department of Energy ; United States National Science Foundation ; Ministry of Science and Education of Spain ; Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom ; Higher Education Funding Council for England ; National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ; Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago ; Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics at the Ohio State University ; Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy at Texas AM University ; Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos ; Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ) ; Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) ; Ministerio da Ciencia, Tecnologia e Inovacao ; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft ; Collaborating Institutions in the Dark Energy Survey ; National Science Foundation ; MINECO ; Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa ; European Research Council under European Union's Seventh Framework Programme ; ERC ; NASA (United States) ; DOE (United States) ; IN2P3/CNRS (France) ; CEA/Irfu (France) ; ASI (Italy) ; INFN (Italy) ; MEXT (Japan) ; KEK (Japan) ; JAXA (Japan) ; Wallenberg Foundation ; Swedish Research Council ; National Space Board (Sweden) ; NASA in the United States ; DRL in Germany ; INAF for the project Gravitational Wave Astronomy with the first detections of adLIGO and adVIRGO experiments ; ESA (Denmark) ; ESA (France) ; ESA (Germany) ; ESA (Italy) ; ESA (Switzerland) ; ESA (Spain) ; German INTEGRAL through DLR grant ; US under NASA Grant ; National Science Foundation PIRE program grant ; Hubble Fellowship ; KAKENHI of MEXT Japan ; JSPS ; Optical and Near-Infrared Astronomy Inter-University Cooperation Program - MEXT ; UK Science and Technology Facilities Council ; ERC Advanced Investigator Grant ; Lomonosov Moscow State University Development programm ; Moscow Union OPTICA ; Russian Science Foundation ; National Research Foundation of South Africa ; Australian Government Department of Industry and Science and Department of Education (National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy: NCRIS) ; NVIDIA at Harvard University ; University of Hawaii ; National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Planetary Defense Office ; Queen's University Belfast ; National Aeronautics and Space Administration through Planetary Science Division of the NASA Science Mission Directorate ; European Research Council under European Union's Seventh Framework Programme/ERC ; STFC grants ; European Union FP7 programme through ERC ; 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UK Space Agency: ST/P002196/1 ; This Supplement provides supporting material for Abbott et al. (2016a). We briefly summarize past electromagnetic (EM) follow-up efforts as well as the organization and policy of the current EM follow-up program. We compare the four probability sky maps produced for the gravitational-wave transient GW150914, and provide additional details of the EM follow-up observations that were performed in the different bands.