MR. FISCAL: The Effects of a Financial Education Curriculum on Family Medicine Residents\u27 and Fellows\u27 Financial Well-Being and Literacy

CONTEXT: Financial education is not routinely offered during medical training. Residents and fellows thus have low financial literacy, high debt, and deficits in their financial preparedness. Poor financial literacy contributes to the ever-growing problems of physician stress, job dissatisfaction, burnout, and depression within primary care. It is postulated that implementation of a financial education curriculum for family medicine physicians-in-training will improve their sense of financial well-being and literacy. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to determine the effects of a formal financial education curriculum on family medicine residents\u27 and fellows\u27 financial well-being and literacy. DESIGN: Solomon four group. PARTICIPANTS: Convenience sample, voluntary participation. Residents and fellows at 16 family medicine residency programs (military, academic/university, and community-based) in the U.S. INTERVENTION: A standardized video-based financial education curriculum entitled Medical Residency Financial Skills Curriculum to Advance Literacy (MR. FISCAL). Topics include: money management, credit, debt management, risk management, investment and retirement planning. Educational content designed by the research team using the Institute for Financial Literacy National Standards for Adult Financial Literacy Education content. INSTRUMENT: Anonymous, web-based, 24-question survey, administered via Qualtrics. Survey is comprised of InCharge Financial Distress/Financial Well-Being (IFDFW) Scale measuring perceived levels of financial distress/well-being, plus 16 additional questions collecting demographic and self-reported financial data. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The effect of this financial education curriculum on family medicine residents’ and fellows’ financial well-being and literacy as measured by the validated and reliable IFDFW scale and comparison of pre and post-intervention self-reported financial data. RESULTS: Work-in-progress. Anticipate comparison of pretest-posttest intervention versus posttest-only control group data. Additional statistical analysis will compare level of training, type of residency program, other demographics, financial data. CONCLUSION: There is currently a paucity of information on financial well-being and literacy among family medicine residents and fellows. This financial curriculum could be shared throughout primary care if improvements are observed

Search for gravitational-lensing signatures in the full third observing run of the LIGO-Virgo network

Gravitational lensing by massive objects along the line of sight to the source causes distortions of gravitational wave-signals; such distortions may reveal information about fundamental physics, cosmology and astrophysics. In this work, we have extended the search for lensing signatures to all binary black hole events from the third observing run of the LIGO--Virgo network. We search for repeated signals from strong lensing by 1) performing targeted searches for subthreshold signals, 2) calculating the degree of overlap amongst the intrinsic parameters and sky location of pairs of signals, 3) comparing the similarities of the spectrograms amongst pairs of signals, and 4) performing dual-signal Bayesian analysis that takes into account selection effects and astrophysical knowledge. We also search for distortions to the gravitational waveform caused by 1) frequency-independent phase shifts in strongly lensed images, and 2) frequency-dependent modulation of the amplitude and phase due to point masses. None of these searches yields significant evidence for lensing. Finally, we use the non-detection of gravitational-wave lensing to constrain the lensing rate based on the latest merger-rate estimates and the fraction of dark matter composed of compact objects

Search for eccentric black hole coalescences during the third observing run of LIGO and Virgo

Despite the growing number of confident binary black hole coalescences observed through gravitational waves so far, the astrophysical origin of these binaries remains uncertain. Orbital eccentricity is one of the clearest tracers of binary formation channels. Identifying binary eccentricity, however, remains challenging due to the limited availability of gravitational waveforms that include effects of eccentricity. Here, we present observational results for a waveform-independent search sensitive to eccentric black hole coalescences, covering the third observing run (O3) of the LIGO and Virgo detectors. We identified no new high-significance candidates beyond those that were already identified with searches focusing on quasi-circular binaries. We determine the sensitivity of our search to high-mass (total mass M>70 M⊙) binaries covering eccentricities up to 0.3 at 15 Hz orbital frequency, and use this to compare model predictions to search results. Assuming all detections are indeed quasi-circular, for our fiducial population model, we place an upper limit for the merger rate density of high-mass binaries with eccentricities 0<e≤0.3 at 0.33 Gpc−3 yr−1 at 90\% confidence level

Ultralight vector dark matter search using data from the KAGRA O3GK run

Among the various candidates for dark matter (DM), ultralight vector DM can be probed by laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors through the measurement of oscillating length changes in the arm cavities. In this context, KAGRA has a unique feature due to differing compositions of its mirrors, enhancing the signal of vector DM in the length change in the auxiliary channels. Here we present the result of a search for U(1)B−L gauge boson DM using the KAGRA data from auxiliary length channels during the first joint observation run together with GEO600. By applying our search pipeline, which takes into account the stochastic nature of ultralight DM, upper bounds on the coupling strength between the U(1)B−L gauge boson and ordinary matter are obtained for a range of DM masses. While our constraints are less stringent than those derived from previous experiments, this study demonstrates the applicability of our method to the lower-mass vector DM search, which is made difficult in this measurement by the short observation time compared to the auto-correlation time scale of DM