186 research outputs found
The Use of 4G Android Tablets for Enhanced Patient Activation of Chronic Disease Self-Management in People with Heart Failure
Problem: The purpose of this research was to evaluate the impact of an advanced practice nurse-directed patient education approach to heart failure treatment integrating the use of an interactive 4G android tablet, will enable patients to experience enhanced patient activation and engagement in chronic disease self-management and fewer 30-day rereadmissions.
Data source: This was a prospective patient randomization, multi-center quasi-experimental design study of 50 patients comparing an advanced practice nurse-directed education of disease self-management and use of a 4G android tablet (TC) group (n = 25) and routine medical management (MC) group. The study length was 12 months.
Conclusions: Descriptive statistics were computed, and the intervention and control groups were compared for differences. Descriptive statistics using ANOVA was conducted to calculate for statistical significance of readmissions between the two groups at 30 days. T-tests showed that the 30-day readmissions rate was significantly lower for the tablet groups compared to the medical group at 30 days (8% and 28% respectively; P=0.010).
Implications for Practice: The results support that integrating 4G android tablet technology does have a significant impact on enhancing patient activation and engagement in chronic disease self-management and correlated to reduced 30-day readmissions in people with heart failure
Survey Simulations of a New Near-Earth Asteroid Detection System
We have carried out simulations to predict the performance of a new
space-based telescopic survey operating at thermal infrared wavelengths that
seeks to discover and characterize a large fraction of the potentially
hazardous near-Earth asteroid (NEA) population. Two potential architectures for
the survey were considered: one located at the Earth-Sun L1 Lagrange point, and
one in a Venus-trailing orbit. A sample cadence was formulated and tested,
allowing for the self-follow-up necessary for objects discovered in the daytime
sky on Earth. Synthetic populations of NEAs with sizes >=140 m in effective
spherical diameter were simulated using recent determinations of their physical
and orbital properties. Estimates of the instrumental sensitivity, integration
times, and slew speeds were included for both architectures assuming the
properties of new large-format 10 um detector arrays capable of operating at
~35 K. Our simulation included the creation of a preliminary version of a
moving object processing pipeline suitable for operating on the trial cadence.
We tested this pipeline on a simulated sky populated with astrophysical sources
such as stars and galaxies extrapolated from Spitzer and WISE data, the catalog
of known minor planets (including Main Belt asteroids, comets, Jovian Trojans,
etc.), and the synthetic NEA model. Trial orbits were computed for simulated
position-time pairs extracted from the synthetic surveys to verify that the
tested cadence would result in orbits suitable for recovering objects at a
later time. Our results indicate that the Earth-Sun L1 and Venus-trailing
surveys achieve similar levels of integral completeness for potentially
hazardous asteroids larger than 140 m; placing the telescope in an interior
orbit does not yield an improvement in discovery rates. This work serves as a
necessary first step for the detailed planning of a next-generation NEA survey.Comment: AJ accepted; corrected typ
Preliminary Results from NEOWISE: An Enhancement to the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for Solar System Science
The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has surveyed the entire sky at four infrared wavelengths with greatly improved sensitivity and spatial resolution compared to its predecessors, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite and the Cosmic Background Explorer. NASA's Planetary Science Division has funded an enhancement to the WISE data processing system called "NEOWISE" that allows detection and archiving of moving objects found in the WISE data. NEOWISE has mined the WISE images for a wide array of small bodies in our solar system, including near-Earth objects (NEOs), Main Belt asteroids, comets, Trojans, and Centaurs. By the end of survey operations in 2011 February, NEOWISE identified over 157,000 asteroids, including more than 500 NEOs and ~120 comets. The NEOWISE data set will enable a panoply of new scientific investigations
Gas and Star Formation in the Circinus Galaxy
We present a detailed study of the Circinus Galaxy, investigating its star
formation, dust and gas properties both in the inner and outer disk. To achieve
this, we obtained high-resolution Spitzer mid-infrared images with the IRAC
(3.6, 5.8, 4.5, 8.0 micron) and MIPS (24 and 70 micron) instruments and
sensitive HI data from the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) and the
64-m Parkes telescope. These were supplemented by CO maps from the Swedish-ESO
Submillimetre Telescope (SEST). Because Circinus is hidden behind the Galactic
Plane, we demonstrate the careful removal of foreground stars as well as large-
and small-scale Galactic emission from the Spitzer images. We derive a visual
extinction of Av = 2.1 mag from the Spectral Energy Distribution of the
Circinus Galaxy and total stellar and gas masses of 9.5 x 10^{10} Msun and 9 x
10^9 Msun, respectively. Using various wavelength calibrations, we find
obscured global star formation rates between 3 and 8 Msun yr^{-1}. Star forming
regions in the inner spiral arms of Circinus, which are rich in HI, are
beautifully unveiled in the Spitzer 8 micron image. The latter is dominated by
polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emission from heated interstellar dust.
We find a good correlation between the 8 micron emission in the arms and
regions of dense HI gas. The (PAH 8 micron) / 24 micron surface brightness
ratio shows significant variations across the disk of Circinus.Comment: 18 pages, 14 figures. All figures have been compressed. Contact
authors for original figures. Accepted by MNRA
AKARI Near-Infrared Spectroscopy of Luminous Infrared Galaxies
We present the AKARI near-infrared (NIR; 2.5-5 micron) spectroscopic study of
36 (ultra)luminous infrared galaxies [(U)LIRGs] at z=0.01-0.4. We measure the
NIR spectral features including the strengths of 3.3 micron polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbon (PAH) emission and hydrogen recombination lines (Br\alpha. and
Br\beta), optical depths at 3.1 and 3.4 micron, and NIR continuum slope. These
spectral features are used to identify optically elusive, buried AGN. We find
that half of the (U)LIRGs optically classified as non-Seyferts show AGN
signatures in their NIR spectra. Using a combined sample of (U)LIRGs with NIR
spectra in the literature, we measure the contribution of buried AGN to the
infrared luminosity from the SED-fitting to the IRAS photometry. The
contribution of these buried AGN to the infrared luminosity is 5-10%, smaller
than the typical AGN contribution of (U)LIRGs including Seyfert galaxies
(10-40%). We show that NIR continuum slopes correlate well with WISE
[3.4]-[4.6] colors, which would be useful for identifying a large number of
buried AGN using the WISE data.Comment: ApJ, accepted. 37 pages, 11 figure
Miscentring in Galaxy Clusters: Dark Matter to Brightest Cluster Galaxy Offsets in 10,000 SDSS Clusters
We characterise the typical offset between the Dark Matter (DM) projected
centre and the Brightest Cluster Galaxy (BCG) in 10,000 SDSS clusters. To place
constraints on the centre of DM, we use an automated strong-lensing analysis,
mass-modelling technique which is based on the well-tested assumption that
light traces mass. The cluster galaxies are modelled with a steep power-law,
and the DM component is obtained by smoothing the galaxy distribution fitting a
low-order 2D polynomial (via spline interpolation), while probing a whole range
of polynomial degrees and galaxy power laws. We find that the offsets between
the BCG and the peak of the smoothed light map representing the DM, \Delta, are
distributed equally around zero with no preferred direction, and are well
described by a log-normal distribution with <log_{10}(\Delta [h^{-1}
Mpc])>=-1.895^{+0.003}_{-0.004}, and \sigma=0.501\pm0.004 (95% confidence
levels), or =0.564\pm0.005, and
\sigma=0.475\pm0.007. Some of the offsets originate in prior misidentifications
of the BCG or other bright cluster members by the cluster finding algorithm,
whose level we make an additional effort to assess, finding that ~10% of the
clusters in the probed catalogue are likely to be misidentified, contributing
to higher-end offsets in general agreement with previous studies. Our results
constitute the first statistically-significant high-resolution distributions of
DM-to-BCG offsets obtained in an observational analysis, and importantly show
that there exists such a typical non-zero offset in the probed catalogue. The
offsets show a weak positive correlation with redshift, so that higher
separations are generally found for higher-z clusters in agreement with the
hierarchical growth of structure, which in turn could help characterise the
merger, relaxation and evolution history of clusters, in future studies.
[ABRIDGED]Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures; MNRAS in press; V3 includes minor text update
Understanding psychiatric institutionalization: a conceptual review
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
Preliminary Results from NEOWISE: An Enhancement to the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for Solar System Science
The \emph{Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer} has surveyed the entire sky at
four infrared wavelengths with greatly improved sensitivity and spatial
resolution compared to its predecessors, the \emph{Infrared Astronomical
Satellite} and the \emph{Cosmic Background Explorer}. NASA's Planetary Science
Division has funded an enhancement to the \WISE\ data processing system called
"NEOWISE" that allows detection and archiving of moving objects found in the
\WISE\ data. NEOWISE has mined the \WISE\ images for a wide array of small
bodies in our Solar System, including Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), Main Belt
asteroids, comets, Trojans, and Centaurs. By the end of survey operations in
February 2011, NEOWISE identified over 157,000 asteroids, including more than
500 NEOs and 120 comets. The NEOWISE dataset will enable a panoply of new
scientific investigations.Comment: ApJ accepte
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