A Direct Comparison of Lyman-Alpha and Neutral Hydrogen Morphologies

The Lyman-Alpha Reference Sample (LARS) and its extension (eLARS) represent an exhaustive campaign to reverse-engineer galaxies. The main goal is to understand how \lya radiation is transported within galaxies: what fraction of it escapes, and what physical properties affect the \lya morphology and radiative transport (e.g., dust and gas content, metallicity, kinematics, properties of the producing and underlying stellar populations). Two galaxies from the sample, LARS02 and LARS09, were observed using the B and C configurations of the Very Large Array to examine the neutral hydrogen emission, which can be used to determine a galaxy\u27s neutral hydrogen (HI) structure and kinematics. Images of the \HI mass surface density and of the intensity weighted \HI velocity field were created at angular scales of $\sim$8 arcseconds, which corresponds to $\sim$5 kpc for LARS02 and $\sim$8 kpc for LARS09. Extended \HI gas is detected at high significance up to $\sim$30 kpc from the optical body of LARS02. LARS09 has a severely disturbed optical morphology; our new \HI observations reveal that LARS09 is interacting with the nearby field galaxy SDSS J082353.65+280622.2. By combining these moment maps with direct imaging of the \lya morphology from the Hubble Space Telescope, this program has produced the first direct comparison of \lya and \HI morphologies. These observations demonstrate concept for a significant observational campaign to produce similar comparisons in the remaining 40 LARS and eLARS galaxies

Campbell v. Campbell: Requiring Adherence to the Correct Legal Standard in Child Custody Proceedings - the Best Interest of the Child

Should a divorce court be permitted to consider evidence of a parent\u27s misuse of legal process when rendering a child custody decree? In Campbell v. Campbell the Maine Superior Court concluded that Mrs. Campbell had sought an ex parte protection from abuse order against her husband in an effort to gain a tactical advantage in the custody proceeding—she did not need protection from abuse. The court then awarded Mr. Campbell custody of the children, on the basis of Mrs. Campbell\u27s misuse of legal process. Yet, by focusing its attention upon one parent\u27s conduct, the superior court deviated from what was supposed to be its central focus—the best interest of the children. In the appeal of Campbell v. Campbell the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, considered for the first time whether and to what extent a court should include one parent\u27s unsuccessful prosecution of a protection from abuse complaint as relevant evidence when awarding parental rights and responsibilities in a divorce proceeding. The Law court concluded that the evidence may be relevant and refuted the position advanced by the Maine Attorney General that any such evidence should be excluded. This Note will show that the Law Court\u27s unanimous decision appropriately focused upon the correct legal standard in child custody cases: the best interest of the child. The court applied a legitimate interpretation of the best interest of the child standard as established in both Maine case law and Maine statutory law. The court determined that a parent\u27s willful, tactical misuse of a protective order may provide relevant evidence, if it indicates that the parents\u27 future ability to cooperate with one another has been diminished. The Law Court reasoned that if the parents\u27 ability to cooperate is impaired, the children\u27s best interests could be adversely affected. This Note will explain how the Law Court\u27s analysis recognized the divorce court\u27s critical responsibility as parens patriae to focus upon the best interests of the children in awarding parental rights and responsibilities. This Note will also explain how the Law Court\u27s emphasis upon the parents\u27 ability to cooperate was consistent with the legislative intent underlying the codification of Maine\u27s best interest of the child standard

Methane emissions inventory verification in southern California

Methane (CH4) and carbon monoxide (CO) mixing ratios were measured at an air quality monitoring station near the Mt. Wilson (MW) Observatory in southern California starting in the spring of 2007. Diurnal variation and mixing ratio correlation (R2 = 0.81) were observed. The correlation results observed agree with previous aircraft measurements collected over the greater Los Angeles (LA) metropolitan area. The consistent agreement between CH4 and CO indicates these gases are well-mixed before reaching the sampling site and the emission source contributions of both compounds are reasonably constant. Since CH4 and CO are considered non-reactive on the time scale of dispersion within the LA urban area and their emission sources are likely to be similarly distributed (e.g., associated with human activities) they are subject to similar scales of atmospheric transport and dilution. This behavior allows the relationship of CH4 and CO to be applied for estimation of CH4 emissions using well-documented CO emissions. Applying this relationship a "top-down" CH4 inventory was calculated for LA County based on the measurements observed at MW and compared with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) "bottom-up" CH4 emissions inventory based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommended methodologies. The "top-down" CH4 emissions inventory is approximately one-third greater than CARB's "bottom-up" inventory for LA County. Considering the uncertainties in both methodologies, the different CH4 emissions inventory approaches are in good agreement, although some under and/or uninventoried CH4 sources may exist

Lessons from an initiative to address gender bias

How a letter addressing the lack of women invited to speak at a conference in brain stimulation encouraged researchers to take action

Comparative Effectiveness of Endovascular vs Surgical Arteriovenous Fistulas: A Preliminary Analysis

Purpose: The objective of this study was to compare the efficacy and safety of endovascular arteriovenous fistula (endoAVF) creation versus open surgical AVF (openAVF) for hemodialysis access across centers participating in the Dialysis Access Learning and Innovation Collaborative (DiAL-In Collaborative) in the United States. In this preliminary analysis, we report the baseline characteristics and clinical profile of patients enrolled at a single center. Materials and Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted in chronic kidney disease patients who underwent creation of an upper arm autogenous vascular access for hemodialysis (2018-2022) at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA. Data were gathered from the Vascular Quality Initiative dataset and supplemented with chart adjudication. All patients were followed for a minimum of one year with a maximum follow-up until July 2023. Results: A total of 145 patients were enrolled (13 endoAVF and 132 openAVF). Overall, 67% of patients were hemodialysis dependent and 2% were peritoneal dialysis dependent at the time of fistula creation. Patients with an endoAVF were older (75 vs. 67 years; p= 0.073), and more likely to be male (62% vs. 48%; p= 0.047 ). The openAVF cohort had a higher proportion of patients with medical comorbidities such as congestive heart failure (44% vs. 31%; p= 0.057), history of percutaneous coronary intervention (19% vs. 8%; p= 0.022), and diabetes (58% vs. 46%; p=.089). Conclusions: In this single-center preliminary analysis, we found differences in the baseline demographic and clinical profile of patients undergoing endoAVF and openAVF for hemodialysis. A thoughtful analytical approach will need to be employed to account for these important baseline differences to compare outcomes of endoAVF versus openAVF in the multicenter DiAL-In Collaborative

Evaluation of the IDI-MRSA assay on the SmartCycler real-time PCR platform for rapid detection of MRSA from screening specimens

Rapid accurate detection is a prerequisite for the successful control of meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The IDI-MRSA real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay was designed to provide rapid results from nasal specimens collected in Stuart’s liquid transport medium. This study has evaluated the IDI-MRSA kit for use in a clinical laboratory by investigating the following parameters: (1) limits of detection (LoD), (2) performance with Amies’ gel-based transport medium, (3) ability to detect strains of MRSA in a collection representative of MRSA in Ireland since 1974 (n 113) and (4) performance in a clinical trial with swabs from nose, throat and groin/perineum sites from 202 patients. LoDs (colony-forming units per ml) of the IDI-MRSA kit, direct culture on MRSA-Select chromogenic agar (CA) and saltenrichment culture (with subculture onto CA) were 1,000 , 1,000 and 100 , respectively. LoDs with Stuart’s and Amies’ transport media were comparable. All except one of the 113 MRSA isolates were detected by the kit but, when six control strains carrying staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) type IV element subtypes IVa d and SCCmec types V and VT were tested, the kit failed to detect MRSA carrying SCCmec V. The sensitivity and specificity for detection of MRSA from nose, throat and groin perineum specimens were comparable with slightly lower sensitivities from throat and groin/perineum specimens compared with nasal swabs (90%, 97%; 89%, 99%; 88%, 99%, respectively). Overall sensitivity, specificity and positive and negative predictive values for specimens from all sites were 88%, 99%, 94% and 97%, respectively. Further developments to improve the sensitivity of this highly worthwhile assay are required

Data Fusion of Objects Using Techniques Such as Laser Scanning, Structured Light and Photogrammetry for Cultural Heritage Applications

In this paper we present a semi-automatic 2D-3D local registration pipeline capable of coloring 3D models obtained from 3D scanners by using uncalibrated images. The proposed pipeline exploits the Structure from Motion (SfM) technique in order to reconstruct a sparse representation of the 3D object and obtain the camera parameters from image feature matches. We then coarsely register the reconstructed 3D model to the scanned one through the Scale Iterative Closest Point (SICP) algorithm. SICP provides the global scale, rotation and translation parameters, using minimal manual user intervention. In the final processing stage, a local registration refinement algorithm optimizes the color projection of the aligned photos on the 3D object removing the blurring/ghosting artefacts introduced due to small inaccuracies during the registration. The proposed pipeline is capable of handling real world cases with a range of characteristics from objects with low level geometric features to complex ones