Comparison and relative utility of inequality measurements: as applied to Scotland’s child dental health

This study compared and assessed the utility of tests of inequality on a series of very large population caries datasets. National cross-sectional caries datasets for Scotland’s 5-year-olds in 1993/94 (n = 5,078); 1995/96 (n = 6,240); 1997/98 (n = 6,584); 1999/00 (n = 6,781); 2002/03 (n = 9,747); 2003/04 (n = 10,956); 2005/06 (n = 10,945) and 2007/08 (n = 12,067) were obtained. Outcomes were based on the d3mft metric (i.e. the number of decayed, missing and filled teeth). An area-based deprivation category (DepCat) measured the subjects’ socioeconomic status (SES). Simple absolute and relative inequality, Odds Ratios and the Significant Caries Index (SIC) as advocated by the World Health Organization were calculated. The measures of complex inequality applied to data were: the Slope Index of Inequality (absolute) and a variety of relative inequality tests i.e. Gini coefficient; Relative Index of Inequality; concentration curve; Koolman and Doorslaer’s transformed Concentration Index; Receiver Operator Curve and Population Attributable Risk (PAR). Additional tests used were plots of SIC deciles (SIC10) and a Scottish Caries Inequality Metric (SCIM10). Over the period, mean d3mft improved from 3.1(95%CI 3.0–3.2) to 1.9(95%CI 1.8–1.9) and d3mft = 0% from 41.1(95%CI 39.8–42.3) to 58.3(95%CI 57.8–59.7). Absolute simple and complex inequality decreased. Relative simple and complex inequality remained comparatively stable. Our results support the use of the SII and RII to measure complex absolute and relative SES inequalities alongside additional tests of complex relative inequality such as PAR and Koolman and Doorslaer’s transformed CI. The latter two have clear interpretations which may influence policy makers. Specialised dental metrics (i.e. SIC, SIC10 and SCIM10) permit the exploration of other important inequalities not determined by SES, and could be applied to many other types of disease where ranking of morbidity is possible e.g. obesity. More generally, the approaches described may be applied to study patterns of health inequality affecting worldwide populations

Photometric calibrations for 21st century science

The answers to fundamental science questions in astrophysics, ranging from the history of the expansion of the universe to the sizes of nearby stars, hinge on our ability to make precise measurements of diverse astronomical objects. As our knowledge of the underlying physics of objects improves along with advances in detectors and instrumentation, the limits on our capability to extract science from measurements is set, not by our lack of understanding of the nature of these objects, but rather by the most mundane of all issues: the precision with which we can calibrate observations in physical units. In principle, photometric calibration is a solved problem - laboratory reference standards such as blackbody furnaces achieve precisions well in excess of those needed for astrophysics. In practice, however, transferring the calibration from these laboratory standards to astronomical objects of interest is far from trivial - the transfer must reach outside the atmosphere, extend over 4{pi} steradians of sky, cover a wide range of wavelengths, and span an enormous dynamic range in intensity. Virtually all spectrophotometric observations today are calibrated against one or more stellar reference sources, such as Vega, which are themselves tied back to laboratory standards in a variety of ways. This system's accuracy is not uniform. Selected regions of the electromagnetic spectrum are calibrated extremely well, but discontinuities of a few percent still exist, e.g., between the optical and infrared. Independently, model stellar atmospheres are used to calibrate the spectra of selected white dwarf stars, e.g. the HST system, but the ultimate accuracy of this system should be verified against laboratory sources. Our traditional standard star systems, while sufficient until now, need to be improved and extended in order to serve future astrophysics experiments. This white paper calls for a program to improve upon and expand the current networks of spectrophotometrically calibrated stars to provide precise calibration with an accuracy of equal to and better than 1% in the ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared portions of the spectrum, with excellent sky coverage and large dynamic range

Magnetic Symmetries and Vortices In Chern-Simons Theories

We study the locality properties of the vortex operators in compact U(1) Maxwell-Chern-Simons and SU(N) Yang-Mills-Chern-Simons theories in 2+1 dimensions. We find that these theories do admit local vortex operators and thus in the UV regularized versions should contain stable magnetic vortices. In the continuum limit however the energy of these vortex excitations generically is logarithmically UV divergent. Nevertheless the classical analysis shows that at small values of CS coefficient $\kappa$ the vortices become light. It is conceivable that they in fact become massless and condense due to quantum effects below some small $\kappa$. If this happens the magnetic symmetry breaks spontaneously and the theory is confining.Comment: 21 pages, laTe

Overview of the instrumentation for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) embarked on an ambitious 5 yr survey in 2021 May to explore the nature of dark energy with spectroscopic measurements of 40 million galaxies and quasars. DESI will determine precise redshifts and employ the baryon acoustic oscillation method to measure distances from the nearby universe to beyond redshift z > 3.5, and employ redshift space distortions to measure the growth of structure and probe potential modifications to general relativity. We describe the significant instrumentation we developed to conduct the DESI survey. This includes: a wide-field, 3.°2 diameter prime-focus corrector; a focal plane system with 5020 fiber positioners on the 0.812 m diameter, aspheric focal surface; 10 continuous, high-efficiency fiber cable bundles that connect the focal plane to the spectrographs; and 10 identical spectrographs. Each spectrograph employs a pair of dichroics to split the light into three channels that together record the light from 360–980 nm with a spectral resolution that ranges from 2000–5000. We describe the science requirements, their connection to the technical requirements, the management of the project, and interfaces between subsystems. DESI was installed at the 4 m Mayall Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory and has achieved all of its performance goals. Some performance highlights include an rms positioner accuracy of better than 0.″1 and a median signal-to-noise ratio of 7 of the [O ii] doublet at 8 × 10−17 erg s−1 cm−2 in 1000 s for galaxies at z = 1.4–1.6. We conclude with additional highlights from the on-sky validation and commissioning, key successes, and lessons learned

Comparative communication research

152 p.; 22 cm

Comparative Communication research, Vol. 9/ Edelstein

152 hal.; 22 c

Comparative Communication research, Vol. 9/ Edelstein

152 hal.; 22 c