The Need for Tobacco Education: Studies of Collegiate Dental Hygiene Patients and Faculty

The need for inclusion of comprehensive tobacco control education/training for health care providers continues to be stressed in publications addressing cessation services. The dental appointment presents an excellent opportunity to provide tobacco interventions to basically healthy people on regular intervals. The purpose of this study was twofold: 1) to assess the need (stage of change and concomitant need for tobacco cessation intervention) of dental hygiene patients at a Midwest dental hygiene clinic, and 2) to assess and compare the level of tobacco intervention education currently being offered by dental hygiene educators in a Midwestern state. Patients (n=426) of a collegiate dental health clinic completed a survey that assessed the level and type of tobacco cessation intervention patients might require. A statewide sample of dental hygiene faculty (n=97) were surveyed to determine the attitudes, perceived barriers, and current practices in tobacco education offered in their programs. Of patients who currently smoked (34.5 percent), 24.7 percent indicated being in the Action stage of change; 14.2 percent were in Preparation; 22.2 percent were in Contemplation; and 29 percent were in Precontemplation. Although faculty indicated tobacco education was very important (5.03 on 1-6 scale), they felt only moderately confident delivering tobacco education (3.18 on a 1-5 scale). Only 16 percent to 35 percent of faculty reported that their curriculum included brief motivational interviewing, pharmacotherapies, or setting-up a private practice tobacco control program. The results strongly suggest the need for a comprehensive, competency-based tobacco curriculum to enhance and expand existing dental hygiene programs

Evaluation of a Comprehensive Tobacco Cessation Curriculum for Dental Hygiene Programs

Dental health care providers continue to offer inconsistent and limited tobacco use cessation (TUC) interventions even though smoking-related morbidity and mortality continue to be a substantial health concern. Our purpose was to conduct a comprehensive, three-year (2003-06) TUC curriculum evaluation that included assessment of existing TUC education offered; dental hygiene educators\u27 readiness to incorporate TUC education into the curriculum; and development of a pre-test/post-test assessment instrument and faculty development program. This curriculum study was carried out alongside a research study to evaluate the effectiveness of a peer-reviewed tobacco curriculum (Tobacco Free! Curriculum). Faculty members (baseline n=97; third-year n=42) from the twelve dental hygiene associate degree programs in Illinois participated in the study, which included a pre-treatment survey, six hours of on-site TUC curriculum training, and a post-treatment survey to determine the attitudes, perceived barriers, and current practices in tobacco education. Results showed an average increase of eighty-five minutes spent on tobacco education in the dental hygiene curriculum, a large positive increase in the percentage of faculty members who formally assessed the use of 5As and 5Rs (21 percent to 88 percent), and a dramatic increase (+100) in the percentage of faculty members who taught or included most of the thirteen TUC content areas following the introduction of the curriculum and training program

Texture variations suppress suprathreshold brightness and colour variations

Discriminating material changes from illumination changes is a key function of early vision. Luminance cues are ambiguous in this regard, but can be disambiguated by co-incident changes in colour and texture. Thus, colour and texture are likely to be given greater prominence than luminance for object segmentation, and better segmentation should in turn produce stronger grouping. We sought to measure the relative strengths of combined luminance, colour and texture contrast using a suprathreshhold, psychophysical grouping task. Stimuli comprised diagonal grids of circular patches bordered by a thin black line and contained combinations of luminance decrements with either violet, red, or texture increments. There were two tasks. In the Separate task the different cues were presented separately in a two-interval design, and participants indicated which interval contained the stronger orientation structure. In the Combined task the cues were combined to produce competing orientation structure in a single image. Participants had to indicate which orientation, and therefore which cue was dominant. Thus we established the relative grouping strength of each cue pair presented separately, and compared this to their relative grouping strength when combined. In this way we observed suprathreshold interactions between cues and were able to assess cue dominance at ecologically relevant signal levels. Participants required significantly more luminance and colour compared to texture contrast in the Combined compared to Separate conditions (contrast ratios differed by about 0.1 log units), showing that suprathreshold texture dominates colour and luminance when the different cues are presented in combination

Euclid: the selection of quiescent and star-forming galaxies using observed colours

The Euclid mission will observe well over a billion galaxies out to z ∼ 6 and beyond. This will offer an unrivalled opportunity to investigate several key questions for understanding galaxy formation and evolution. The first step for many of these studies will be the selection of a sample of quiescent and star-forming galaxies, as is often done in the literature by using well-known colour techniques such as the ‘UVJ’ diagram. However, given the limited number of filters available for the Euclid telescope, the recovery of such rest-frame colours will be challenging. We therefore investigate the use of observed Euclid colours, on their own and together with ground-based u-band observations, for selecting quiescent and star-forming galaxies. The most efficient colour combination, among the ones tested in this work, consists of the (u − VIS) and (VIS − J) colours. We find that this combination allows users to select a sample of quiescent galaxies complete to above ∼70 per cent and with less than 15 per cent contamination at redshifts in the range 0.75 65 per cent completeness level and contamination below 20 per cent at 1 < z < 2 for finding quiescent galaxies. In comparison, the sample of quiescent galaxies selected with the traditional UVJ technique is only ∼20 per cent complete at z < 3, when recovering the rest-frame colours using mock Euclid observations. This shows that our new methodology is the most suitable one when only Euclid bands, along with u-band imaging, are available

Polarimetry of binary systems: polars, magnetic CVs, XRBs

Polarimetry provides key physical information on the properties of interacting binary systems, sometimes difficult to obtain by any other type of observation. Indeed, radiation processes such as scattering by free electrons in the hot plasma above accretion discs, cyclotron emission by mildly relativistic electrons in the accretion shocks on the surface of highly magnetic white dwarfs and the optically thin synchrotron emission from jets can be observed. In this review, I will illustrate how optical/near-infrared polarimetry allows one to estimate magnetic field strengths and map the accretion zones in magnetic Cataclysmic Variables as well as determine the location and nature of jets and ejection events in X-ray binaries.Comment: 26 pages, 16 figures; to be published in Astrophysics and Space Science Library 460, Astronomical Polarisation from the Infrared to Gamma Rays, Editors: Mignani, R., Shearer, A., S{\l}owikowska, A., Zane,

<em>Euclid</em>: Early Release Observations – Deep anatomy of nearby galaxies

\ua9 The Authors 2025. Euclid is poised to make significant advances in the study of nearby galaxies in the Local Universe. Here we present a first look at six galaxies observed for the Nearby Galaxy Showcase as part of the Euclid Early Release Observations acquired between August and November, 2023. These targets, three dwarf galaxies (Holmberg II, IC 10, and NGC 6822) and three spirals (IC 342, NGC 2403, and NGC 6744), range in distance from about 0.5 Mpc to 8.8 Mpc. We first assess the surface brightness depths in the stacked Euclid images, and confirm previous estimates in 100 arcsec2 regions for Visible Camera (VIS) of 1σ limits of 30.5 mag arcsec-2, but find deeper than previous estimates for Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer (NISP) with 1σ = 29.2–29.4 mag arcsec-2. By combining Euclid HE, YE, and IE into RGB images, we illustrate the large field of view (FoV) covered by a single reference observing sequence (ROS), together with exquisite detail on scales of &lt;1–4 parsecs in these nearby galaxies. Our analysis of radial surface brightness and color profiles demonstrates that the photometric calibration of Euclid is consistent with what is expected for galaxy colors according to stellar synthesis models. We perform standard source-selection techniques for stellar photometry, and find approximately 1.3 million stars across the six galaxy fields. After subtracting foreground stars and background galaxies, and applying a color and magnitude selection, we extract stellar populations of different ages for the six galaxies. The resolved stellar photometry obtained with Euclid allows us to constrain the star-formation histories of these galaxies, which we do by disentangling the distributions of young stars and asymptotic giant branch and red giant branch stellar populations. We finally examine two galaxies individually for surrounding systems of dwarf galaxy satellites and globular cluster populations. Our analysis of the ensemble of dwarf satellites around NGC 6744 recovers all the previously known dwarf satellites within the Euclid FoV, and also confirms the satellite nature of a previously identified candidate, dw1909m6341, a nucleated dwarf spheroidal at the end of a spiral arm. Our new census of the globular clusters around NGC 2403 yields nine new star-cluster candidates, eight of which exhibit colors indicative of evolved stellar populations. In summary, our first investigation of six “showcase” galaxies demonstrates that Euclid is a powerful probe of stellar structure and stellar populations in nearby galaxies, and will provide vastly improved statistics on dwarf satellite systems and extragalactic globular clusters in the local Universe, among many other exciting results

<em>Euclid</em> preparation: LIII. LensMC, weak lensing cosmic shear measurement with forward modelling and Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling

\ua9 The Authors 2024. LENSMC is a weak lensing shear measurement method developed for Euclid and Stage-IV surveys. It is based on forward modelling in order to deal with convolution by a point spread function (PSF) with comparable size to many galaxies, sampling the posterior distribution of galaxy parameters via Markov chain Monte Carlo, and marginalisation over nuisance parameters for each of the 1.5 billion galaxies observed by Euclid. We quantified the scientific performance through high-fidelity images based on the Euclid Flagship simulations and emulation of the Euclid VIS images, realistic clustering with a mean surface number density of 250 arcmin2 (IE &lt; 29.5) for galaxies, and 6 arcmin2 (IE &lt; 26) for stars, and a diffraction-limited chromatic PSF with a full width at half maximum of 02.22 and spatial variation across the field of view. LENSMC measured objects with a density of 90 arcmin2 (IE &lt; 26.5) in 4500 deg2. The total shear bias was broken down into measurement (our main focus here) and selection effects (which will be addressed in future work). We found measurement multiplicative and additive biases of m1 = (3.6 \ub1 0.2) A- 103, m2 = (4.3 \ub1 0.2) A- 103, c1 = (1.78 \ub1 0.03) A- 104, and c2 = (0.09 \ub1 0.03) A- 104; a large detection bias with a multiplicative component of 1.2 A- 102 and an additive component of 3 A- 104; and a measurement PSF leakage of α1 = (9 \ub1 3) A- 104 and α2 = (2 \ub1 3) A- 104. When model bias is suppressed, the obtained measurement biases are close to Euclid requirement and largely dominated by undetected faint galaxies (5 A- 103). Although significant, model bias will be straightforward to calibrate given its weak sensitivity on galaxy morphology parameters. LENSMC is publicly available at gitlab.com/gcongedo/LensMC

<em>Euclid</em> preparation: LVII. Observational expectations for redshift <em>z</em> &lt; 7 active galactic nuclei in the Euclid Wide and Deep surveys

\ua9 The Authors 2025. We forecast the expected population of active galactic nuclei (AGN) observable in the Euclid Wide Survey (EWS) and Euclid Deep Survey (EDS). Starting from an X-ray luminosity function (XLF), we generated volume-limited samples of the AGN expected in the Euclid survey footprints. Each AGN was assigned a spectral energy distribution (SED) appropriate for its X-ray luminosity and redshift, with perturbations sampled from empirical distributions. The photometric detectability of each AGN was assessed via mock observations of the assigned SED. We estimate 40 million AGN will be detectable in at least one Euclid band in the EWS and 0.24 million in the EDS, corresponding to surface densities of 2.8 7 103 deg-2 and 4.7 7 103 deg-2. The relative uncertainty on our expectation for Euclid detectable AGN is 6.7% for the EWS and 12.5% for the EDS, driven by the uncertainty of the XLF. Employing Euclid-only colour selection criteria on our simulated data we select a sample of 4.8 7 106 (331 deg-2 ) AGN in the EWS and 1.7 7 104 (346 deg-2 ) in the EDS, amounting to 10% and 8% of the AGN detectable in the EWS and EDS. Including ancillary Rubin/LSST bands improves the completeness and purity of AGN selection. These data roughly double the total number of selected AGN to comprise 21% and 15% of the Euclid detectable AGN in the EWS and EDS. The total expected sample of colour-selected AGN contains 6.0 7 106 (74%) unobscured AGN and 2.1 7 106 (26%) obscured AGN, covering 0.02 ≤ z ≲ 5.2 and 43 ≤ log10(Lbol/erg s-1 ) ≤ 47. With these simple colour cuts expected surface densities are already comparable to the yield of modern X-ray and mid-infrared surveys of similar area. The EWS sample is most comparable to the WISE C75 AGN selection and the EDS sample is most similar to the yield of the collated Spitzer cryogenic surveys when considering Euclid bands alone, or the XXL-3XLSS survey AGN sample when also considering selection with ancillary optical bands. We project that 15% (7.6%) of the total Euclid detectable population in the EWS (EDS) will exhibit X-ray fluxes that could be detected in the XMM-COSMOS survey, showing that the vast majority of Euclid-detected AGN would not be detectable in modern medium-depth X-ray surveys

Euclid II. The VIS instrument

This paper presents the specification, design, and development of the Visible Camera (VIS) on the European Space Agency's mission. VIS is a large optical-band imager with a field of view of 0.54 deg$^2$ sampled at with an array of 609 Megapixels and a spatial resolution of . It will be used to survey approximately 14 000 deg$^2$ of extragalactic sky to measure the distortion of galaxies in the redshift range $z=0.1$--1.5 resulting from weak gravitational lensing, one of the two principal cosmology probes leveraged by With photometric redshifts, the distribution of dark matter can be mapped in three dimensions, and the extent to which this has changed with look-back time can be used to constrain the nature of dark energy and theories of gravity. The entire VIS focal plane will be transmitted to provide the largest images of the Universe from space to date, specified to reach AB with a signal-to-noise ratio S/N in a single broad E (r+i+z)$band over a six-year survey. The particularly challenging aspects of the instrument are the control and calibration of observational biases, which lead to stringent performance requirements and calibration regimes. With its combination of spatial resolution, calibration knowledge, depth, and area covering most of the extra-Galactic sky, VIS will also provide a legacy data set for many other fields. This paper discusses the rationale behind the conception of VIS and describes the instrument design and development, before reporting the prelaunch performance derived from ground calibrations and brief results from the in-orbit commissioning. VIS should reach fainter than AB =25$ with $S/N 10$ for galaxies with a full width at half maximum of in a diameter aperture over the Wide Survey, and $m_ AB for a Deep Survey that will cover more than 50 deg$^2$. The paper also describes how the instrument works with the telescope and survey, and with the science data processing, to extract the cosmological information

Breast and cervical cancer screening in Great Britain: Dynamic interrelated processes.

No previous analysis has investigated the determinants of screening uptake for breast and cervical cancer screening for possible spillover effects from one type of screening examination to the other type of screening examination with a dynamic bivariate panel probit model. For our analysis, we used a dynamic random effects bivariate panel probit model with initial conditions (Wooldridge-type estimator) and dependent variables were the participation of breast and cervical cancer screening in the recent year. The balanced panel sample consisted of 844 women from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) from the time period 1992 to 2008. Our analysis showed the high relevance of past screening behaviour and the importance of state dependency for the same and the other type of cancer screening examinations even after controlling for covariates and unobserved heterogeneity. The uptake for breast and cervical cancer screening was higher when the same screening examination was done one or three years earlier. This result is in accordance with the medical screening programmes in Great Britain. With regard to breast and cervical cancer screening positive spillover effects existed between screening examinations in the third order lags. Women with a previous visit to a general practitioner and individuals in the recommended age groups had a higher uptake for breast and cervical cancer screening. Other socioeconomic and health related variables had non-uniform results in both screening examinations. Promoting the uptake of one female prevention activity could also enhance the uptake of the other prevention activity