Linear programming can help identify practical solutions to improve the nutritional quality of food aid.

OBJECTIVES: To assess the nutritional quality of food aid delivered by food banks in France and to identify practical modifications to improve it. DESIGN: National-level data were collected for all food aid distributed by French food banks in 2004, and its nutrient content per 2000 kcal was estimated and compared with French recommendations for adults. Starting with the actual donation and allowing new foods into the food aid donation, linear programming was used to identify the minimum changes required in the actual donation to achieve the French recommendations. RESULTS: French food-bank-delivered food aid does not achieve the French recommendations for dietary fibre, ascorbic acid, vitamin D, folate, magnesium, docosahexaenoic acid, alpha-linolenic acid and the percentage of energy from saturated fatty acids. Linear programming analysis showed that these recommendations are achievable if more fruits, vegetables, legumes and fish were collected and less cheese, refined cereals and foods rich in fat, sugar and/or salt. In addition, new foods not previously collected are needed, particularly nuts, wholemeal bread and rapeseed oil. These changes increased the total edible weight (42%) and economic value (55%) of the food aid donation, with one-third of its edible weight coming from fruits and vegetables, one-third from staples, one-quarter from dairy products and approximately a tenth from meat/fish/eggs. CONCLUSIONS: Important changes in the types and amounts of food collected will improve the nutritional quality of food-bank-delivered food aid in France. Such changes are recommended to improve the diets of deprived French populations

The Star-Forming Dwarf Galaxy Populations of two z ~ 0.4 Clusters: MS1512.4+3647 and Abell 851

We present the results of a deep narrow-band [OII] 3727 \AA emission-line search for faint ($g <$ 27), star-forming galaxies in the field of the $z=0.37$ MS1512.4+3647 cluster. We find no evidence for an over-density of emission-line sources relative to the field at $z \sim$ 0.4 (Hogg et al. 1998), and therefore conclude that the MS1512.4+3647 sample is dominated by field [OII] emission-line galaxies which lie along the $\sim$ 180 Mpc line of sight immediately in front and behind the cluster. This is surprising, given that the previously surveyed $z=0.41$ cluster Abell 851 has 3-4 times the field emission-line galaxy density (Martin et al. 2000). We find that the MS1512.4+3647 sample is deficient in galaxies with intermediate colors (1.0 $< g-i <$ 2.0) and implied star-formation exponential decay timescales $\tau \sim$ 100 Myr - 1 Gyr that dominate the Abell 851 emission-line galaxy population. Instead, the majority of [OII] emission-line galaxies surrounding the MS1512.4+3647 cluster are blue ($g-i \leq 1.0$) and forming stars in bursts with $\tau <$ 100 Myr. In both samples, galaxies with the shortest star-formation timescales are preferentially among the faintest star-forming objects. Their i luminosities are consistent with young stellar populations \sim 10^8 - 10^9 \Msun, although an additional factor of ten in stellar mass could be hiding in underlying old stellar populations. We discuss the implications for the star-formation histories of dwarf galaxies in the field and rich clusters.Comment: 26 pages, including 5 tables and 13 figures; accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

A kinematic study of the Andromeda dwarf spheroidal system

We present a homogeneous kinematic analysis of red giant branch stars within 18 of the 28 Andromeda dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies, obtained using the Keck I LRIS and Keck II DEIMOS spectrographs. Based on their g-i colors (taken with the CFHT MegaCam imager), physical positions on the sky, and radial velocities, we assign probabilities of dSph membership to each observed star. Using this information, the velocity dispersions, central masses and central densities of the dark matter halos are calculated for these objects, and compared with the properties of the Milky Way dSph population. We also measure the average metallicity ([Fe/H]) from the co-added spectra of member stars for each M31 dSph and find that they are consistent with the trend of decreasing [Fe/H] with luminosity observed in the Milky Way population. We find that three of our studied M31 dSphs appear as significant outliers in terms of their central velocity dispersion, And XIX, XXI and XXV, all of which have large half-light radii (>700 pc) and low velocity dispersions (sigma_v<5 km/s). In addition, And XXV has a mass-to-light ratio within its half-light radius of just [M/L]_{half}=10.3^{+7.0}_{-6.7}, making it consistent with a simple stellar system with no appreciable dark matter component within its 1 sigma uncertainties. We suggest that the structure of the dark matter halos of these outliers have been significantly altered by tides.Comment: 41 pages, 23 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap

Outcomes after angiography with sodium bicarbonate and acetylcysteine

Background: Intravenous sodium bicarbonate and oral acetylcysteine are widely used to prevent acute kidney injury and associated adverse outcomes after angiography without definitive evidence of their efficacy. Methods: Using a 2-by-2 factorial design, we randomly assigned 5177 patients at high risk for renal complications who were scheduled for angiography to receive intravenous 1.26% sodium bicarbonate or intravenous 0.9% sodium chloride and 5 days of oral acetylcysteine or oral placebo; of these patients, 4993 were included in the modified intention-to-treat analysis. The primary end point was a composite of death, the need for dialysis, or a persistent increase of at least 50% from baseline in the serum creatinine level at 90 days. Contrast-associated acute kidney injury was a secondary end point. Results: The sponsor stopped the trial after a prespecified interim analysis. There was no interaction between sodium bicarbonate and acetylcysteine with respect to the primary end point (P=0.33). The primary end point occurred in 110 of 2511 patients (4.4%) in the sodium bicarbonate group as compared with 116 of 2482 (4.7%) in the sodium chloride group (odds ratio, 0.93; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.72 to 1.22; P=0.62) and in 114 of 2495 patients (4.6%) in the acetylcysteine group as compared with 112 of 2498 (4.5%) in the placebo group (odds ratio, 1.02; 95% CI, 0.78 to 1.33; P=0.88). There were no significant between-group differences in the rates of contrast-associated acute kidney injury. Conclusions: Among patients at high risk for renal complications who were undergoing angiography, there was no benefit of intravenous sodium bicarbonate over intravenous sodium chloride or of oral acetylcysteine over placebo for the prevention of death, need for dialysis, or persistent decline in kidney function at 90 days or for the prevention of contrast-associated acute kidney injury. (Funded by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Research and Development and the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia; PRESERVE ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01467466.

On the Efficiency of the Tidal Stirring Mechanism for the Origin of Dwarf Spheroidals: Dependence on the Orbital and Structural Parameters of the Progenitor Disky Dwarfs

(Abridged) The tidal stirring model posits the formation of dSph galaxies via the tidal interactions between rotationally-supported dwarfs and MW-sized host galaxies. Using a set of collisionless N-body simulations, we investigate the efficiency of the tidal stirring mechanism. We explore a wide variety of dwarf orbital configurations and initial structures and demonstrate that in most cases the disky dwarfs experience significant mass loss and their stellar components undergo a dramatic morphological and dynamical transformation: from disks to bars and finally to pressure-supported spheroidal systems with kinematic and structural properties akin to those of the classic dSphs in the Local Group (LG). Our results suggest that such tidal transformations should be common occurrences within the currently favored cosmological paradigm and highlight the key factor responsible for an effective metamorphosis to be the strength of the tidal shocks at the pericenters of the orbit. We demonstrate that the combination of short orbital times and small pericenters, characteristic of dwarfs being accreted at high redshift, induces the strongest transformations. Our models also indicate that the transformation efficiency is affected significantly by the structure of the progenitor disky dwarfs. Lastly, we find that the dwarf remnants satisfy the relation Vmax = \sqrt{3} * sigma, where sigma is the 1D, central stellar velocity dispersion and Vmax is the maximum halo circular velocity, with intriguing implications for the missing satellites problem. Overall, we conclude that the action of tidal forces from the hosts constitutes a crucial evolutionary mechanism for shaping the nature of dwarf galaxies in environments such as that of the LG. Environmental processes of this type should thus be included as ingredients in models of dwarf galaxy formation and evolution.Comment: submitted to ApJ, 34 pages, 15 figures, LaTeX (uses emulateapj.cls

Pictor A (PKS 0518-45) - From Nucleus to Lobes

We present radio and optical imaging and kinematic data for the radio galaxy Pictor A, including HST continuum and [OIII], emission-line images (at a resolution of 25 - 100 mas) and ground-based imaging and spectroscopy (at a resolution of ~ 1.5". The radio data include 3 cm Australia Telescope images of the core, at a resolution comparable to that of the optical, ground-based images, and a VLBI image of a jet in the compact core (at a resolution of 2 - 25 mas), which seems to align with a continuum ``jet'' found in the HST images. The core radio jet, the HST optical continuum ``jet'', and the NW H-alpha filaments all appear to point toward the optical-synchrotron hot-spot in the NW lobe of this object and are associated with a disrupted velocity field in the extended ionized gas. The ground-based spectra which cover this trajectory also yield line ratios for the ionized gas which have anomalously low [NII] (6564), suggesting either a complex, clumpy structure in the gas with a higher cloud-covering factor at larger radii and with denser clouds than is found in the nuclear regions of most NLRG and Seyfert 2 galaxies, or some other, unmodeled, mechanism for the emergent spectrum from this region. The H-alpha emission-line filaments to the N appear to be associated with a 3 cm radio continuum knot which lies in a gap in the filaments ~ 4" from the nucleus. Altogether, the data in this paper provide good circumstantial evidence for non-disruptive redirection of a radio jet by interstellar gas clouds in the host galaxy.Comment: 19 pages, 6 ps.gz fig pages, to appear in the Ap.J. Supp