Improving water and hand-washing services in rural health care facilities in Kitui County, Kenya

This study draws upon a diagnostic survey of WASH in health care facilities in Kitui County, Kenya, in 2019, and a pilot intervention providing professional delivery of water and soap services to 11 rural dispensaries in 2020. Three objectives guide the work. First, to estimate the annualised cost of providing safe water and soap in dispensaries. Second, to understand how these costs vary by location. Third, to chart the relative difference in costs of water from piped water schemes and vended water. The results estimate an annualised cost of water and soap services of around USD 1 per health care facility visit. Costs vary by remoteness and are higher for dispensaries relying on vended water provision rather than piped water schemes. The authors propose that county government include these cost estimates in future budget and investment planning, support professional service delivery models, and exploit synergies to manage water services to schools and communities

Ultraviolet observations of the Saturnian north aurora and polar haze distribution with the HST-FOC

Near simultaneous observations of the Saturnian H2 north ultraviolet aurora and the polar haze were made at 153 nm and 210 nm respectively with the Faint Object Camera on board the Hubble Space Telescope. The auroral observations cover a complete rotation of the planet and, when co-added, reveal the presence of an auroral emission near 80 deg N with a peak brightness of about 150 kR of total H2 emission. The maximum optical depth of the polar haze layer is found to be located approximately 5 deg equatorward of the auroral emission zone. The haze particles are presumably formed by hydrocarbon aerosols initiated by H2+ auroral production. In this case, the observed haze optical depth requires an efficiency of aerosol formation of about 6 percent, indicating that auroral production of hydrocarbon aerosols is a viable source of high-latitude haze

The Discovery of Argon in Comet C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp)

On 30.14 March 1997 we observed the EUV spectrum of the bright comet C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp) at the time of its perihelion, using our EUVS sounding rocket telescope/spectrometer. The spectra reveal the presence H Ly beta, O+, and, most notably, Argon. Modelling of the retrieved Ar production rates indicates that comet Hale-Bopp is enriched in Ar relative to cosmogonic expectations. This in turn indicates that Hale-Bopp's deep interior has never been exposed to the 35-40 K temperatures necessary to deplete the comet's primordial argon supply.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures. ApJ, 545, in press (2000

Rocket FUV Observations of the Io Plasma Torus During the Shoemaker-Levy/9 Impacts

We observed the Io torus from 820-1140 A on universal time (UT) 20.25 July 1994 from a sounding rocket telescope/spectrograph. These observations serve as only the fourth published spectrum of the torus in this wavelength range, and the only far ultraviolet (FUV) data documenting the state of the torus during the Shoemaker Levy 9 Impacts

Outbursts from IGR J17473-2721

We have investigated the outbursts of IGR J17473-2721. We analyzed all available observations carried out by RXTE on IGR J17473-2721 during its later outburst and as well all the available SWIFT/BAT data. The flux of the latter outburst rose in ~ one month and then kept roughly constant for the following ~ two months. During this time period, the source was in a low/hard state. The source moved to a high/soft state within the following three days, accompanied by the occurrence of an additional outburst at soft X-rays and the end of the preceding outburst in hard X-rays. During the decay of this soft outburst, the source went back to a low/hard state within 6 days, with a luminosity 4 times lower than the first transition. This shows a full cycle of the hysteresis in transition between the hard and the soft states. The fact that the flux remained roughly constant for ~ two months at times prior to the spectral transition to a high/soft state might be regarded as the result of balancing the evaporation of the inner disk and the inward accretion flow, in a model in which the state transition is determined by the mass flow rate. Such a balance might be broken via an additional mass flow accreting onto the inner disk, which lightens the extra soft outburst and causes the state transition. However, the possibility of an origin of the emission from the jet during this time period cannot be excluded. The spectral analysis suggests an inclined XRB system for IGR J17473-2721. Such a long-lived preceding low/hard state makes IGR J17473-2721 resemble the behavior of outbursts seen in black hole X-ray binaries like GX 339-4.Comment: A&A in pres

Loss of Prestin Does Not Alter the Development of Auditory Cortical Dendritic Spines

Disturbance of sensory input during development can have disastrous effects on the development of sensory cortical areas. To examine how moderate perturbations of hearing can impact the development of primary auditory cortex, we examined markers of excitatory synapses in mice who lacked prestin, a protein responsible for somatic electromotility of cochlear outer hair cells. While auditory brain stem responses of these mice show an approximately 40 dB increase in threshold, we found that loss of prestin produced no changes in spine density or morphological characteristics on apical dendrites of cortical layer 5 pyramidal neurons. PSD-95 immunostaining also showed no changes in overall excitatory synapse density. Surprisingly, behavioral assessments of auditory function using the acoustic startle response showed only modest changes in prestin KO animals. These results suggest that moderate developmental hearing deficits produce minor changes in the excitatory connectivity of layer 5 neurons of primary auditory cortex and surprisingly mild auditory behavioral deficits in the startle response

Time of life as it is in LiFeAs

The time of life of fermionic quasiparticles, the distribution of which in the momentum-energy space can be measured by angle resolved photoemission (ARPES), is the first quantity to look for fingerprints of interaction responsible for the superconducting pairing. Such an approach has been recently used for superconducting cuprates, but its direct application to pnictides was not possible due to essential three-dimensionality of the electronic band structure and magnetic ordering. Here, we report the investigation of the quasiparticle lifetime in LiFeAs, a non-magnetic stoichiometric superconductor with a well separated two-dimensional band. We have found two energy scales: the lower one contains clear fingerprints of optical phonon modes while the higher scale indicates a presence of strong electron-electron interaction. The result suggests that LiFeAs is a phonon mediated superconductor with strongly enhanced electronic density of states at the Fermi level.Comment: reevaluated electron-phonon coupling strength, added reference