Carmel River Lagoon Enhancement Project: Water Quality and Aquatic Wildlife Monitoring, 2005-6

In summer and fall 2004, the California Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) initiated the Carmel River Lagoon Enhancement Project. The project involved excavation of a dry remnant Arm of the lagoon and adjacent disused farmland to form a significant new lagoon volume. The intention was to provide habitat, in particular, for two Federally threatened species: the California Red-Legged Frog, and the Steelhead Trout (South Central-Coastal California Evolutionary Significant Unit). DPR contracted with the Foundation of California State University Monterey Bay (Central Coast Watershed Studies Team, Watershed Institute) to monitor water quality and aquatic invertebrates in association with the enhancement, and to attempt to monitor steelhead using novel video techniques. The monitoring objective was to assess whether the enhancement was successful in providing habitat with good water quality, adequate invertebrate food for steelhead, and ultimately the presence of steelhead. (Document contains 102 pages

LEADERSHIP: SUPPORTING STUDENTS WITH ASD AND THE SCHOOL WIDE COMMUNITY

Leaders work collaboratively with all stakeholders to help understand what systems and supports need to be put into place to meet individual needs. School leaders must create continuous learning opportunities and reinforcement systems for educators in the areas of evidence-based practices, individualized teaching strategies, and student transition plans. Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) require consistent and structured programming starting in preschool and carrying through to post-secondary education. It is imperative that school leaders provide the appropriate training and supports to educators and specialists in relation to executive functioning skills and evidence-based practices to best support students with ASD. This literature review dissects evidence-based teaching strategies that support executive function skills, systematic implementation programs to support school transitions for student with ASD, and breaks down how school leaders can support students, education professionals, and families throughout the proces

Running Spectral Index from Inflation with Modulations

We argue that a large negative running spectral index, if confirmed, might suggest that there are abundant structures in the inflaton potential, which result in a fairly large (both positive and negative) running of the spectral index at all scales. It is shown that the center value of the running spectral index suggested by the recent CMB data can be easily explained by an inflaton potential with superimposed periodic oscillations. In contrast to cases with constant running, the perturbation spectrum is enhanced at small scales, due to the repeated modulations. We mention that such features at small scales may be seen by 21 cm observations in the future.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, v2: published in JCA

Understanding vaccine hesitancy through communities of place

This UK-US collaborative study examining vaccine engagement highlights the importance of tapping into local knowledge and leadership in efforts to improve Covid-19 vaccine take-up. It explores levels of vaccine engagement in four locations: Oldham and Tower Hamlets in the UK, and the cities of Boston and Hartford in the US

Born too soon: accelerating actions for prevention and care of 15 million newborns born too soon.

Preterm birth complication is the leading cause of neonatal death resulting in over one million deaths each year of the 15 million babies born preterm. To accelerate change, we provide an overview of the comprehensive strategy required, the tools available for context-specifi c health system implementation now, and the priorities for research and innovation. There is an urgent need for action on a dual track: (1) through strategic research to advance the prevention of preterm birth and (2) improved implementation and innovation for care of the premature neonate. We highlight evidence-based interventions along the continuum of care, noting gaps in coverage, quality, equity and implications for integration and scale up. Improved metrics are critical for both burden and tracking programmatic change. Linked to the United Nation’s Every Women Every Child strategy, a target was set for 50% reduction in preterm deaths by 2025. Three analyses informed this target: historical change in high income countries, recent progress in best performing countries, and modelling of mortality reduction with high coverage of existing interventions. If universal coverage of selected interventions were to be achieved, then 84% or more than 921,000 preterm neonatal deaths could be prevented annually, with antenatal corticosteroids and Kangaroo Mother Care having the highest impact. Everyone has a role to play in reaching this target including government leaders, professionals, private sector, and of course families who are aff ected the most and whose voices have been critical for change in many of the countries with the most progress

Variable accretion as a mechanism for brightness variations in T Tau S

(Note: this is a shortened version of the original A&A-style structured abstract). The physical nature of the strong photometric variability of T Tau Sa, the more massive member of the Southern "infrared companion" to T Tau, has long been debated. Intrinsic luminosity variations due to variable accretion were originally proposed but later challenged in favor of apparent fluctuations due to time-variable foreground extinction. In this paper we use the timescale of the variability as a diagnostic for the underlying physical mechanism. Because the IR emission emerging from Sa is dominantly thermal emission from circumstellar dust at <=1500K, we can derive a minimum size of the region responsible for the time-variable emission. In the context of the variable foreground extinction scenario, this region must be (un-) covered within the variability timescale, which implies a minimum velocity for the obscuring foreground material. If this velocity supercedes the local Kepler velocity we can reject foreground extinction as a valid variability mechanism. The variable accretion scenario allows for shorter variability timescales since the variations in luminosity occur on much smaller scales, essentially at the surface of the star, and the disk surface can react almost instantly on the changing irradiation with a higher or lower dust temperature and according brightness. We have detected substantial variations at long wavelengths in T Tau S: +26% within four days at 12.8 micron. We show that this short-term variability cannot be due to variable extinction and instead must be due to variable accretion. Using a radiative transfer model of the Sa disk we show that variable accretion can in principle also account for the much larger (several magnitude) variations observed on timescales of several years. For the long-term variability, however, also variable foreground extinction is a viable mechanism.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures, Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

CARMA follow-up of the northern unconfirmed PLANCK galaxy cluster candidates

We present CARMA observations of the three northern unconfirmed galaxy clusters discovered by the PLANCK satellite. We confirm the existence of two massive clusters (PLCKESZ G115.71+17.52 and PLCKESZ G121.11+57.01) at high significance. For these clusters, we present refined centroid locations from the 31 GHz CARMA data, as well as mass estimates obtained from a joint analysis of CARMA and PLANCK data. We do not detect the third candidate, PLCKESZ G189.84-37.24, and place an upper limit on its mass of M500 < 3.2 X 10^(14) M_SUN at 68% confidence. Considering our data and the characteristics of the PLANCK Early Release SZ Catalog, we conclude that this object is likely to be a cold-core object in the plane of our Galaxy. As a result, we estimate the purity of the ESZ Catalog to be greater than 99.5%.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. 9 pages, 4 figures, 4 tables. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:astro-ph/061011

BINGO: A code for the efficient computation of the scalar bi-spectrum

We present a new and accurate Fortran code, the BI-spectra and Non-Gaussianity Operator (BINGO), for the efficient numerical computation of the scalar bi-spectrum and the non-Gaussianity parameter f_{NL} in single field inflationary models involving the canonical scalar field. The code can calculate all the different contributions to the bi-spectrum and the parameter f_{NL} for an arbitrary triangular configuration of the wavevectors. Focusing firstly on the equilateral limit, we illustrate the accuracy of BINGO by comparing the results from the code with the spectral dependence of the bi-spectrum expected in power law inflation. Then, considering an arbitrary triangular configuration, we contrast the numerical results with the analytical expression available in the slow roll limit, for, say, the case of the conventional quadratic potential. Considering a non-trivial scenario involving deviations from slow roll, we compare the results from the code with the analytical results that have recently been obtained in the case of the Starobinsky model in the equilateral limit. As an immediate application, we utilize BINGO to examine of the power of the non-Gaussianity parameter f_{NL} to discriminate between various inflationary models that admit departures from slow roll and lead to similar features in the scalar power spectrum. We close with a summary and discussion on the implications of the results we obtain.Comment: v1: 5 pages, 5 figures; v2: 35 pages, 11 figures, title changed, extensively revised; v3: 36 pages, 11 figures, to appear in JCAP. The BINGO code is available online at http://www.physics.iitm.ac.in/~sriram/bingo/bingo.htm

The Build-up of the Colour-Magnitude Relation as a Function of Environment

We discuss the environmental dependence of galaxy evolution based on deep panoramic imaging of two distant clusters taken with Suprime-Cam as part of the PISCES project. By combining with the SDSS data as a local counterpart for comparison, we construct a large sample of galaxies that spans wide ranges in environment, time, and stellar mass (or luminosity). We find that colours of galaxies, especially those of faint galaxies ($M_V>M_V^*+1$), change from blue to red at a break density as we go to denser regions. Based on local and global densities of galaxies, we classify three environments: field, groups, and clusters. We show that the cluster colour-magnitude relation is already built at $z=0.83$. In contrast to this, the bright-end of the field colour-magnitude relation has been vigorously built all the way down to the present-day and the build-up at the faint-end has not started yet. A possible interpretation of these results is that galaxies evolve in the 'down-sizing' fashion. That is, massive galaxies complete their star formation first and the truncation of star formation is propagated to smaller objects as time progresses. This trend is likely to depend on environment since the build-up of the colour-magnitude relation is delayed in lower-density environments. Therefore, we may suggest that the evolution of galaxies took place earliest in massive galaxies and in high density regions, and it is delayed in less massive galaxies and in lower density regions.Comment: 23pages, 19 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

A measurement of secondary cosmic microwave background anisotropies with two years of South Pole Telescope observations

We present the first three-frequency South Pole Telescope (SPT) cosmic microwave background (CMB) power spectra. The band powers presented here cover angular scales 2000 < ell < 9400 in frequency bands centered at 95, 150, and 220 GHz. At these frequencies and angular scales, a combination of the primary CMB anisotropy, thermal and kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effects, radio galaxies, and cosmic infrared background (CIB) contributes to the signal. We combine Planck and SPT data at 220 GHz to constrain the amplitude and shape of the CIB power spectrum and find strong evidence for non-linear clustering. We explore the SZ results using a variety of cosmological models for the CMB and CIB anisotropies and find them to be robust with one exception: allowing for spatial correlations between the thermal SZ effect and CIB significantly degrades the SZ constraints. Neglecting this potential correlation, we find the thermal SZ power at 150 GHz and ell = 3000 to be 3.65 +/- 0.69 muK^2, and set an upper limit on the kinetic SZ power to be less than 2.8 muK^2 at 95% confidence. When a correlation between the thermal SZ and CIB is allowed, we constrain a linear combination of thermal and kinetic SZ power: D_{3000}^{tSZ} + 0.5 D_{3000}^{kSZ} = 4.60 +/- 0.63 muK^2, consistent with earlier measurements. We use the measured thermal SZ power and an analytic, thermal SZ model calibrated with simulations to determine sigma8 = 0.807 +/- 0.016. Modeling uncertainties involving the astrophysics of the intracluster medium rather than the statistical uncertainty in the measured band powers are the dominant source of uncertainty on sigma8 . We also place an upper limit on the kinetic SZ power produced by patchy reionization; a companion paper uses these limits to constrain the reionization history of the Universe.Comment: 25 pages; 14 figures; Submitted to ApJ (Updated to reflect referee comments