The AIROPA software package - Milestones for testing general relativity in the strong gravity regime with AO

General relativity can be tested in the strong gravity regime by monitoring stars orbiting the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Center with adaptive optics. However, the limiting source of uncertainty is the spatial PSF variability due to atmospheric anisoplanatism and instrumental aberrations. The Galactic Center Group at UCLA has completed a project developing algorithms to predict PSF variability for Keck AO images. We have created a new software package (AIROPA), based on modified versions of StarFinder and Arroyo, that takes atmospheric turbulence profiles, instrumental aberration maps, and images as inputs and delivers improved photometry and astrometry on crowded fields. This software package will be made publicly available soon

The AIROPA software package - Milestones for testing general relativity in the strong gravity regime with AO

General relativity can be tested in the strong gravity regime by monitoring stars orbiting the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Center with adaptive optics. However, the limiting source of uncertainty is the spatial PSF variability due to atmospheric anisoplanatism and instrumental aberrations. The Galactic Center Group at UCLA has completed a project developing algorithms to predict PSF variability for Keck AO images. We have created a new software package (AIROPA), based on modified versions of StarFinder and Arroyo, that takes atmospheric turbulence profiles, instrumental aberration maps, and images as inputs and delivers improved photometry and astrometry on crowded fields. This software package will be made publicly available soon

Voices of Peasant Farmers from the Margins of the Global Food Crisis

First paragraphs: Haroon Akram-Lodhi's Hungry for Change: Farmers, Food Justice and the Agrarian Question adds to the growing literature on food sovereignty and social movements from around the globe. The books Food Sovereignty in Canada: Creating Just and Sustainable Food Systems (2011) and Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community (2010), written by scholars and agrarian activists and edited by Hannah Wittman, Annette Aurelie Desmarais, and Nettie Wiebe, detail the origins of food sovereignty and analyze food regimes and food crises. The authors outline agrarian reforms from historical and contemporary perspectives and explain the relationships between food systems, energy, climate change, environment, and food regime restructuring. Through an examination of socio-economic and environmental consequences of the food system, the authors provide examples of peasant movements that are transforming relationships between food, markets, and local and global communities. Other recent books include Food Regimes and Agrarian Questions by Philip McMichael (2013), Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change by Henry Bernstein (2010), and Peasants and the Art of Farming: A Chayanovian Manifesto by Jan Douwe van der Ploeg (2013). These scholars focus on the structure and dynamics of peasant farms, production and labor, and consistent marginalization of peasants as result of liberalization and globalization. Such books as Food for Thought: A Multidisciplinary Discussion by Robert Stewart and Susan Korol (2012) and Food for Change: The Politics and Values of Social Movements by Jeff Pratt and Pete Luetchford (2013) seek to address food production, distribution, and food choices people make in order to show how important alternative food movements are in creating an economic system within which individuals know where, how, and by whom their food is produced. These influential authors address food sover­eignty issues from a systemic perspective to help their readers understand the complex relationships between agriculture, market, laws, and environment and their influences on each other both locally and on a global scale. Building on these and other books, Akram-Lodhi’s Hungry for Change puts a human face on agricultural development by exam­ining the socio-economic transformations in indi­vidual peasant farmers’ lives and the lives of their families as a segment of a bigger global picture. Akram-Lodhi’s approach is especially useful as an introduction for readers who wish to understand the devastating effects of the global food regimes on the lives of individuals, especially in the global South. Through personal accounts of peasant farmers, the author fills a niche in the literature by examining the process by which the world food system has become a capitalist enterprise in the hands of power holders, corporations, the IMF and World Bank, and privileged consumers in the North...

Integrating Care for Individuals with FASD: Results from a Multi-Stakeholder Symposium

BACKGROUND: Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) has a significant impact on communities and systems such as health, education, justice and social services. FASD is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder that results in permanent disabilities and associated service needs that change across affected individuals’ lifespans. There is a degree of interdependency among medical and non-medical providers across these systems that do not frequently meet or plan a coordinated continuum of care. Improving overall care integration will increase provider-specific and system capacity, satisfaction, quality of life and outcomes. METHODS: We conducted a consensus generating symposium comprised of 60 experts from different stakeholder groups: Allied & Mental Health, Education, First Nations & Métis Health, Advocates, Primary Care, Government Health Policy, Regional FASD Coordinators, Social Services, and Youth Justice. Research questions addressed barriers and solutions to integration across systems and group-specific and system-wide research priorities. Solutions and consensus on prioritized lists were generated by combining the Electronic Meeting System approach with a modified ‘Nominal Group Technique’. RESULTS: FASD capacity (e.g., training, education, awareness) needs to be increased in both medical and non-medical providers. Outcomes and integration will be improved by implementing: multidisciplinary primary care group practice models, FASD system navigators/advocates, and patient centred medical homes. Electronic medical records that are accessible to multiple medical and non-medical providers are a key tool to enhancing integration and quality. Eligibility criteria for services are a main barrier to integration across systems. There is a need for culturally and community-specific approaches for First Nations communities. CONCLUSIONS: There is a need to better integrate care for individuals and families living with FASD. Primary Care is well positioned to play a central and important role in facilitating and supporting increased integration. Research is needed to better address best practices (e.g., interventions, supports and programs) and long-term individual and family outcomes following a diagnosis of FASD