1,115 research outputs found
Disability and the Ongoing Federalism Revolution
The Supreme Courtâs ânew federalismâ revolution remains one of the most important developments in recent U.S. legal history. The Court revitalized âstatesâ rightsâ doctrines under the Tenth and Eleventh Amendments, rendering states partially or wholly immune from many types of federal litigation. Simultaneously, the Court retrenched the authority of national legislatorsâand aggrandized its own authorityâby limiting what Congress may do under its Commerce Clause, Spending Clause, and Fourteenth Amendment powers. But one important facet of this ânew federalismâ revolution has gone unappreciated: the load-bearing role of earlier disability-related cases. In the 1970s and 1980s, this Feature shows, the Court used disability-related cases to revive the all-but-moribund Eleventh Amendment, even as it declined to embrace Eleventh Amendment arguments in cases involving school desegregation and sex discrimination. So, too, it was disability cases that established and entrenched federalism-grounded âclear statementâ rules of statutory interpretation in the 1980s and early 1990s. Likewise, a disability case in the early 1990s previewed the Courtâs later diminution of Congressâs authority under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. In crucial ways, we show, these disability precedents enabled the ânew federalismâ revolution of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Cases such as Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida (1996) could not have been reasoned as they were without earlier disability precedents. The real-world consequences have been striking: the disability-related cases we discussâand the better-known ânew federalismâ cases that built on themâhave reduced the enforceability of federal civil rights guarantees, threatened wide swaths of social welfare legislation, and diminished Congressâs ability to respond to pressing problems. Moving forward, disability-related federalism precedents will remain important. Doctrines and language from these cases offer some of the best tools that state and local defendants have for extending the more dangerous facets of the ânew federalismââas evidenced by recent litigation in the lower courts involving voting rights and LGBTQ discrimination, among other high-stakes issues. Moreover, at the Supreme Court, disability cases have continued to provide the site for new retrenchments in Congressâs spending power, alongside robust assertions of the Courtâs own authority. Thus, while conventional wisdom treats the ânew federalismâ revolution as a historical artifact, this Feature reveals such an assessment to be both perilous and premature
A purely geometric distance to the binary star Atlas, a member of the Pleiades
We present radial velocity and new interferometric measurements of the double
star Atlas, which permit, with the addition of published interferometric data,
to precisely derive the orbital parameters of the binary system and the masses
of the components. The derived semi-major axis, compared with its measured
angular size, allows to determine a distance to Atlas of 132+-4 pc in a purely
geometrical way. Under the assumption that the location of Atlas is
representative of the average distance of the cluster, we confirm the distance
value generally obtained through main sequence fitting, in contradiction with
the early Hipparcos result (118.3+-3.5 pc).Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in A&A Letter
On Machine-Learned Classification of Variable Stars with Sparse and Noisy Time-Series Data
With the coming data deluge from synoptic surveys, there is a growing need
for frameworks that can quickly and automatically produce calibrated
classification probabilities for newly-observed variables based on a small
number of time-series measurements. In this paper, we introduce a methodology
for variable-star classification, drawing from modern machine-learning
techniques. We describe how to homogenize the information gleaned from light
curves by selection and computation of real-numbered metrics ("feature"),
detail methods to robustly estimate periodic light-curve features, introduce
tree-ensemble methods for accurate variable star classification, and show how
to rigorously evaluate the classification results using cross validation. On a
25-class data set of 1542 well-studied variable stars, we achieve a 22.8%
overall classification error using the random forest classifier; this
represents a 24% improvement over the best previous classifier on these data.
This methodology is effective for identifying samples of specific science
classes: for pulsational variables used in Milky Way tomography we obtain a
discovery efficiency of 98.2% and for eclipsing systems we find an efficiency
of 99.1%, both at 95% purity. We show that the random forest (RF) classifier is
superior to other machine-learned methods in terms of accuracy, speed, and
relative immunity to features with no useful class information; the RF
classifier can also be used to estimate the importance of each feature in
classification. Additionally, we present the first astronomical use of
hierarchical classification methods to incorporate a known class taxonomy in
the classifier, which further reduces the catastrophic error rate to 7.8%.
Excluding low-amplitude sources, our overall error rate improves to 14%, with a
catastrophic error rate of 3.5%.Comment: 23 pages, 9 figure
Gaia Eclipsing Binary and Multiple Systems. A study of detectability and classification of eclipsing binaries with Gaia
In the new era of large-scale astronomical surveys, automated methods of
analysis and classification of bulk data are a fundamental tool for fast and
efficient production of deliverables. This becomes ever more imminent as we
enter the Gaia era. We investigate the potential detectability of eclipsing
binaries with Gaia using a data set of all Kepler eclipsing binaries sampled
with Gaia cadence and folded with the Kepler period. The performance of fitting
methods is evaluated with comparison to real Kepler data parameters and a
classification scheme is proposed for the potentially detectable sources based
on the geometry of the light curve fits. The polynomial chain (polyfit) and
two-Gaussian models are used for light curve fitting of the data set.
Classification is performed with a combination of the t-SNE (t-distrubuted
Stochastic Neighbor Embedding) and DBSCAN (Density-Based Spatial Clustering of
Applications with Noise) algorithms. We find that approximately 68% of Kepler
Eclipsing Binary sources are potentially detectable by Gaia when folded with
the Kepler period and propose a classification scheme of the detectable sources
based on the morphological type indicative of the light curve, with subclasses
that reflect the properties of the fitted model (presence and visibility of
eclipses, their width, depth, etc.).Comment: 9 pages, 18 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy &
Astrophysic
Search for high-amplitude Delta Scuti and RR Lyrae stars in Sloan Digital Sky Survey Stripe 82 using principal component analysis
We propose a robust principal component analysis (PCA) framework for the
exploitation of multi-band photometric measurements in large surveys. Period
search results are improved using the time series of the first principal
component due to its optimized signal-to-noise ratio.The presence of correlated
excess variations in the multivariate time series enables the detection of
weaker variability. Furthermore, the direction of the largest variance differs
for certain types of variable stars. This can be used as an efficient attribute
for classification. The application of the method to a subsample of Sloan
Digital Sky Survey Stripe 82 data yielded 132 high-amplitude Delta Scuti
variables. We found also 129 new RR Lyrae variables, complementary to the
catalogue of Sesar et al., 2010, extending the halo area mapped by Stripe 82 RR
Lyrae stars towards the Galactic bulge. The sample comprises also 25
multiperiodic or Blazhko RR Lyrae stars.Comment: 23 pages, 17 figure
Pralidoxime in Acute Organophosphorus Insecticide Poisoning-A Randomised Controlled Trial
Background: Poisoning with organophosphorus (OP) insecticides is a major global public health problem, causing an estimated 200,000 deaths each year. Although the World Health Organization recommends use of pralidoxime, this antidote's effectiveness remains unclear. We aimed to determine whether the addition of pralidoxime chloride to atropine and supportive care offers benefit. Methods and Findings: We performed a double-blind randomised placebo-controlled trial of pralidoxime chloride (2 g loading dose over 20 min, followed by a constant infusion of 0.5 g/h for up to 7 d) versus saline in patients with organophosphorus insecticide self-poisoning. Mortality was the primary outcome; secondary outcomes included intubation, duration of intubation, and time to death. We measured baseline markers of exposure and pharmacodynamic markers of response to aid interpretation of clinical outcomes. Two hundred thirty-five patients were randomised to receive pralidoxime (121) or saline placebo (114). Pralidoxime produced substantial and moderate red cell acetylcholinesterase reactivation in patients poisoned by diethyl and dimethyl compounds, respectively. Mortality was nonsignificantly higher in patients receiving pralidoxime: 30/121 (24.8%) receiving pralidoxime died, compared with 18/114 (15.8%) receiving placebo (adjusted hazard ratio HR] 1.69, 95% confidence interval CI] 0.88-3.26, p = 0.12). Incorporating the baseline amount of acetylcholinesterase already aged and plasma OP concentration into the analysis increased the HR for patients receiving pralidoxime compared to placebo, further decreasing the likelihood that pralidoxime is beneficial. The need for intubation was similar in both groups (pralidoxime 26/121 21.5%], placebo 24/114 21.1%], adjusted HR 1.27 95% CI 0.71-2.29]). To reduce confounding due to ingestion of different insecticides, we further analysed patients with confirmed chlorpyrifos or dimethoate poisoning alone, finding no evidence of benefit. Conclusions: Despite clear reactivation of red cell acetylcholinesterase in diethyl organophosphorus pesticide poisoned patients, we found no evidence that this regimen improves survival or reduces need for intubation in patients with organophosphorus insecticide poisoning. The reason for this failure to benefit patients was not apparent. Further studies of different dose regimens or different oximes are required
Predicting outcome using butyrylcholinesterase activity in organophosphorus pesticide self-poisoning
Gaia eclipsing binary and multiple systems. Two-Gaussian models applied to OGLE-III eclipsing binary light curves in the Large Magellanic Cloud
The advent of large scale multi-epoch surveys raises the need for automated
light curve (LC) processing. This is particularly true for eclipsing binaries
(EBs), which form one of the most populated types of variable objects. The Gaia
mission, launched at the end of 2013, is expected to detect of the order of few
million EBs over a 5-year mission.
We present an automated procedure to characterize EBs based on the geometric
morphology of their LCs with two aims: first to study an ensemble of EBs on a
statistical ground without the need to model the binary system, and second to
enable the automated identification of EBs that display atypical LCs. We model
the folded LC geometry of EBs using up to two Gaussian functions for the
eclipses and a cosine function for any ellipsoidal-like variability that may be
present between the eclipses. The procedure is applied to the OGLE-III data set
of EBs in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) as a proof of concept. The bayesian
information criterion is used to select the best model among models containing
various combinations of those components, as well as to estimate the
significance of the components.
Based on the two-Gaussian models, EBs with atypical LC geometries are
successfully identified in two diagrams, using the Abbe values of the original
and residual folded LCs, and the reduced . Cleaning the data set from
the atypical cases and further filtering out LCs that contain non-significant
eclipse candidates, the ensemble of EBs can be studied on a statistical ground
using the two-Gaussian model parameters. For illustration purposes, we present
the distribution of projected eccentricities as a function of orbital period
for the OGLE-III set of EBs in the LMC, as well as the distribution of their
primary versus secondary eclipse widths.Comment: 20 pages, 29 figures. Submitted to A&
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