Real-time RFI Mitigation in Radio Astronomy

As the use of wireless technology has increased around the world, Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) has become more and more of a problem for radio astronomers. Preventative measures exist to limit the presence of RFI, and programs exist to remove it from saved data, but the use of algorithms to detect and remove RFI as an observation is occurring is much less common. Such a method would be incredibly useful for observations in which the data must undergo several rounds of processing before being saved, as in pulsar timing studies. Strategies for real-time mitigation have been discussed and tested with simulated data, but ideally the results of any approach would be validated by a detailed comparison of the final data products with and without mitigation applied. The goal of this project is to develop an RFI mitigation approach based on strategies suggested by Buch et al.(2016) and to test this program on real data from the observation of pulsar J1713+0747 at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. We use a Median Absolute Deviation (MAD) filter to identify interference in the observation and replace the compromised data with random Gaussian noise to match a characteristic radio signal from space. In order to verify our results, we analyze the pulsar’s timing residuals obtained both from the mitigated data and from data processed through offline RFI removal software. Comparing the two, our preliminary findings indicate that our program is able to significantly improve the quality of timing results from the observation

Health Insurance Enrollment of Children and Young Adults in Wayne County, Michigan: A Qualitative Evaluation

Since the Affordable Care Act went into effect, community outreach to increase health insurance enrollment of young adults and children in low-income families of color has been a priority in Wayne County, Michigan. Our objective was to inform community efforts for improved outreach, we explored perceptions around the importance of health insurance and barriers to enrollment for children and young adults through a qualitative research study. We conducted a focus group with enrollment assisters and nine focus groups with Arab American, Latino/Hispanic, and African American community members. Several themes emerged about community members’ perceptions and experiences: they believe that children have time sensitive and specific health needs; they appreciate the generous, public health insurance options available for children; they experience frustration with the affordability of enrolling dependents in private insurance; young adults experience frequent denials and failures with insurance enrollment; and they experience confusion about how insurance eligibility changes during the young adulthood. There is a need for community outreach in Wayne County to focus on connecting low-income, working families to affordable health insurance options and tailoring help to young adults to overcome barriers to enrollment in public insurance

'To live and die [for] Dixie': Irish civilians and the Confederate States of America

Around 20,000 Irishmen served in the Confederate army in the Civil War. As a result, they left behind, in various Southern towns and cities, large numbers of friends, family, and community leaders. As with native-born Confederates, Irish civilian support was crucial to Irish participation in the Confederate military effort. Also, Irish civilians served in various supporting roles: in factories and hospitals, on railroads and diplomatic missions, and as boosters for the cause. They also, however, suffered in bombardments, sieges, and the blockade. Usually poorer than their native neighbours, they could not afford to become 'refugees' and move away from the centres of conflict. This essay, based on research from manuscript collections, contemporary newspapers, British Consular records, and Federal military records, will examine the role of Irish civilians in the Confederacy, and assess the role this activity had on their integration into Southern communities. It will also look at Irish civilians in the defeat of the Confederacy, particularly when they came under Union occupation. Initial research shows that Irish civilians were not as upset as other whites in the South about Union victory. They welcomed a return to normalcy, and often 'collaborated' with Union authorities. Also, Irish desertion rates in the Confederate army were particularly high, and I will attempt to gauge whether Irish civilians played a role in this. All of the research in this paper will thus be put in the context of the Drew Gilpin Faust/Gary Gallagher debate on the influence of the Confederate homefront on military performance. By studying the Irish civilian experience one can assess how strong the Confederate national experiment was. Was it a nation without a nationalism

Demographic gaps and requirements for participation: A systematic review of clinical trial designs in Hidradenitis Suppurativa

Background: Hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) is a chronic inflammatory disease that disproportionally affects women, as well as Black and biracial individuals. While adalimumab remains the only therapy approved by the Food and Drug Administration for HS, many HS clinical trials for novel and re-tasked therapies are ongoing or upcoming. To optimize treatment equity, reflect the patient population, and facilitate trial participation, it is important to elucidate aspects of clinical trial protocols that may systematically exclude specific patient groups or impose hardships. Objective: The study aimed to systematically review inclusion and exclusion criteria as well as participant demographics in HS clinical trials. Methods: A literature search of PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Central, and Web of Science databases was conducted. Peer-reviewed publications of randomized controlled trials that were written in English and had at least 10 participants were included. Title and abstract screening and data extraction were completed by two independent reviewers, with disagreements resolved by a third. Results: Twenty-three studies totaling 1,496 adult participants met the inclusion criteria. Race and ethnicity were not reported in 473/1,496 (31.6%) and 1,420/1,496 (94.9%) trial participants, respectively. Trial participants were predominantly white (811/1,023, 79.3%) and female (1,057/1,457, 72.5%). The median of each study’s average age was 35.7 years (IQR 33.5–38.0), and 17/23 (73.9%) trials excluded pediatric patients. Nearly all participants had Hurley Stage II (499/958, 52.0%) or Hurley Stage III (385/958, 40.2%) disease. Many trials excluded patients who were pregnant (19/23, 82.6%) and breastfeeding (13/23, 56.5%), or who had HS that was “too severe” (8/23, 34.8%) or “too mild” (16/23, 70.0%). Frequently, trial protocols required prolonged washout periods from HS therapies, relatively long duration in the study’s placebo arm, and prohibited concurrent analgesic use. Conclusions: This systematic review of 23 HS clinical trials totaling 1,496 participants identified substantial hardships imposed by trial participation, high rates of missing race and ethnicity data, and low representation of key patient groups, including those who identify as Black. Future trials with pragmatic study designs, broader inclusion criteria, and study sites in diverse communities may alleviate burdens of trial participation and improve enrollment of diverse patient groups

Spotting the old foe-revisiting the case definition for TB.

Disease case definitions are important instruments for clinical care, interventional research, and surveillance. Therefore, it is concerning that the current case definitions for tuberculosis remain underscored by the classic paradigm of binary states of latent infection and active disease, with a stepwise, linear transition under which symptoms, bacteriological positivity, and disease pathology are assumed to emerge broadly together (figure, A).1 This assumption has resulted in a reliance on symptom screening to distinguish these two states. However, in recent prevalence surveys, 40–79% of bacteriologically positive tuberculosis occurs in the absence of patient-recognised tuberculosis symptoms.2 Rather than explicitly addressing this discordance, tuberculosis case definitions are often ambiguous regarding tuberculosis symptoms, or internally inconsistent

Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Emergencies Resource Book.

Disaster Preparedness/Preparedness Manuals/Handbooks/Checklists. (60.1) Nuclear Disaster. (1280) Hazardous Materials. (1285) Oil Spill. (1281)The digital Cuny Archive was made available in part through funding assistance from USAID.International Resources Group and Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute

A Prototype for Real-Time RFI Mitigation for Single-Dish Radio Telescopes

International audienceRadio Frequency Interference (RFI) is a profound obstacle for radio astronomy, corrupting otherwise useful observations. The increase in wireless technologies only serves to exacerbate this issue. Single-dish radio telescopes are especially vulnerable to RFI in comparison to interferometers, which inherently due to the spatial separation of their antennas have less susceptibility to interference. In this paper, we present and prototype a real-time RFI mitigation strategy for complex raw voltage time samples streaming from single-dish radio telescopes. Impulsive RFI is mitigated in the time domain. For narrowband RFI, we perform a Fourier transform, and mitigate in the frequency domain. We use a combination of techniques, include a “robust recursive power” estimator, coupled with strong and weak Bernoulli detectors; median absolute deviation determination and outlier detection; and spectral kurtosis. Corrupted voltage samples are replaced with random Gaussian noise. The prototype successfully mitigates broadband RFI in the time domain and narrowband RFI in the frequency domain.The astronomical consequences of real-time RFI mitigation are investigated. To conduct the study, 1.28TB of L band 0.16µs complex voltage samples were obtained from the GUPPI backend of the Green Bank Telescope. These observations are of the millisecond pulsar, Pulsar J1713+0747. Preliminary analysis indicates that the RFI-mitigated data produces improved pulsar residuals, compared to both unprocessed data and the current RFI mitigation post-processing software.The promising results encourage development from prototype to real-time implementation. The Python prototype runs 95x slower than real-time, as it does not utilize any parallel programming. A CUDA implementation wrapped in the Hybrid Task Graph Scheduler software is rapidly being created to exploit parallel structures in the data. Expected speed increases will reduce runtime to real-time

Real-Time RFI Mitigation in Pulsar Observations

International audienceAs the use of wireless technology has increased around the world, RadioFrequency Interference (RFI) has become more and more of a problem forradio astronomers. Preventative measures exist to limit the presence ofRFI, and programs exist to remove it from saved data, but the routineuse of algorithms to detect and remove RFI as an observation isoccurring is much less common. Such a method would be incredibly usefulfor observations in which the data must undergo several rounds ofprocessing before being saved, as in pulsar timing studies. Strategiesfor real-time mitigation have been discussed and tested with simulateddata (Buch et al., 2016), but ideally the results of any approach wouldbe validated by a detailed comparison of the final data products - forpulsar timing, the variance in the pulse times of arrival (TOAs) - withand without mitigation applied. The goal of this project is to developan RFI mitigation approach based on the previously suggested strategiesand test this program on actual data from the observation of pulsarJ1713+0747. We use a Median Absolute Deviation (MAD) filter to identifyinterference in the observation and replace the compromised data withrandom Gaussian noise to match a characteristic radio signal from space.In order to verify our results, we analyze the pulsar?s TOAs obtainedboth from the mitigated data and from the unmitigated data processedthrough offline RFI removal software. Comparing the two, our preliminaryfindings indicate that our program is able to improve the quality oftiming results from the observation. <P /&gt