Gravitational lens candidates in the E-CDFS

We report ten lens candidates in the E-CDFS from the GEMS survey. Nine of the systems are new detections and only one of the candidates is a known lens system. For the most promising five systems including the known lens system, we present results from preliminary lens mass modelling, which tests if the candidates are plausible lens systems. Photometric redshifts of the candidate lens galaxies are obtained from the COMBO-17 galaxy catalog. Stellar masses of the candidate lens galaxies within the Einstein radius are obtained by using the $z$-band luminosity and the $V-z$ color-based stellar mass-to-light ratios. As expected, the lensing masses are found to be larger than the stellar masses of the candidate lens galaxies. These candidates have similar dark matter fractions as compared to lenses in SLACS and COSMOS. They also roughly follow the halo mass-stellar mass relation predicted by the subhalo abundance matching technique. One of the candidate lens galaxies qualifies as a LIRG and may not be a true lens because the arc-like feature in the system is likely to be an active region of star formation in the candidate lens galaxy. Amongst the five best candidates, one is a confirmed lens system, one is a likely lens system, two are less likely to be lenses and the status of one of the candidates is ambiguous. Spectroscopic follow-up of these systems is still required to confirm lensing and/or for more accurate determination of the lens masses and mass density profiles.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables, ApJ accepte

Detection of the Gravitational Lens Magnifying a Type Ia Supernova

Objects of known brightness, like Type Ia supernovae (SNIa), can be used to measure distances. If a massive object warps spacetime to form multiple images of a background SNIa, a direct test of cosmic expansion is also possible. However, these lensing events must first be distinguished from other rare phenomena. Recently, a supernova was found to shine much brighter than normal for its distance, which resulted in a debate: was it a new type of superluminous supernova or a normal SNIa magnified by a hidden gravitational lens? Here we report that a spectrum obtained after the supernova faded away shows the presence of a foreground galaxy--the first found to strongly magnify a SNIa. We discuss how more lensed SNIa may be found than previously predicted.Comment: 32 pages, 10 figures. Accepted for publication in Scienc

Transforming Healthcare in Australia: The PeCC Initiative

Many of the current crises in contemporary healthcare management centre on issues concerning information management and costs. Electronic commerce (or e-commerce) activity, grounded in the development of the Internet, is challenging traditional management models and providing new paradigms and possible solutions for improved health care management. Australia’s health industry, like other economic sectors here and globally, is grasping the need to use IT and telecommunications with e-commerce strategies for improved cost-effective services to its key stakeholders. This paper addresses the changes occurring in Australia’s health care industry influenced by trends in information systems. While the Federal government’s recent report, From Telehealth to E-Health: The Unstoppable Rise of EHealth [3], outlines a diverse range of projects and practices, here the authors focus on Australia’s first Internet trading community, The Project Electronic Commerce and Communication for Healthcare, otherwise known as PeCC. This study is supported by an ARC Collaborative Grant. The Industry partner is IBM

Fibromyoma of the uterus and its surgical management

Background: Uterine fibroids are the commonest tumor affecting the female reproductive tract. In many instances they are asymptomatic, but in some women there does appear to be an association with heavy menstrual blood loss and subfertility. Classically treatment has been surgical with hysterectomy the most common approach for women who have completed their fertility and myomectomy for those who wish to conceive. The surgery can be carried out laparoscopically, vaginally and abdominally, although all routes are associated with an appreciable rate of morbidity. The aims of this study are (i) to formulate the line of surgical treatment of fibromyomas according to age and parity of the patient, (ii) to assess their efficacy, safety and long-term outcome.Methods: A study of 50 patients attending the Obstetrics and Gynecology OPD of a tertiary care institute was conducted over a period of one year. Detailed history and examination of the patients were done.Results: The best surgical options for individual patients were evaluated according to age and parity of the patient. Various surgical options were Hysterectomy and Myomectomy.Conclusions: Uterine fibroids can cause multiple bleeding and pain symptoms, which might have a negative impact on women's life, influencing their sexual, social and work life. Despite these consequences uterine fibroid data, especially on epidemiology, symptomatology and their impact on women's health are still limited and further research is required

Promoting Change within Special Education Teacher Preparation Program: A Collision of Needs

The United States is experiencing a systemic teacher shortage (Sutcher et al., 2016). This trend is not new to the field of special education, which has been experiencing teacher shortages for decades (Boe, 2006; McLeskey & Billingsley, 2008; U.S. Department of Education, 2020). To address these critical shortages of teachers in the field, states have created Alternative Routes to Licensure (ARL) options, which are commonly seen as non-traditional approaches to gaining teaching credentials. Although the disruptive practice of ARL is already in place, the evidence to support its effectiveness is not. This paper explores the experiences of junior faculty members working as agents of change by disrupting one special education department’s ARL program. Emphasis is given to the system supports in place to change the ARL and existing systemic barriers to these changes at the department, college and university levels. Additionally, structures which aided or hindered completing programmatic work from the perspective of the untenured faculty members are also discussed

SARCS strong lensing galaxy groups: I - optical, weak lensing, and scaling laws

We present the weak lensing and optical analysis of the SL2S-ARCS (SARCS) sample of strong lens candidates. The sample is based on the Strong Lensing Legacy Survey (SL2S), a systematic search of strong lensing systems in the photometric Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey (CFHTLS). The SARCS sample focuses on arc-like features and is designed to contain mostly galaxy groups. We briefly present the weak lensing methodology that we use to estimate the mass of the SARCS objects. Among 126 candidates, we obtain a weak lensing detection for 89 objects with velocity dispersions of the Singular Isothermal Sphere mass model ranging from 350 to 1000 km/s with an average value of 600km/s, corresponding to a rich galaxy group (or poor cluster). From the galaxies belonging to the bright end of the group's red sequence (M_i<-21), we derive the optical properties of the SARCS candidates. We obtain typical richnesses of N=5-15 galaxies and optical luminosities of L=0.5-1.5e+12 Lsol (within a radius of 0.5 Mpc). We use these galaxies to compute luminosity density maps, from which a morphological classification reveals that a large fraction of the sample are groups with a complex light distribution, either elliptical or multimodal, suggesting that these objects are dynamically young structures. We finally combine the lensing and optical analyses to draw a sample of 80 most secure group candidates, i.e. weak lensing detection and over-density at the lens position in the luminosity map, to remove false detections and galaxy-scale systems from the initial sample. We use this reduced sample to probe the optical scaling relations in combination with a sample of massive galaxy clusters. We detect the expected correlations over the probed range in mass with a typical scatter of 25% in the SIS velocity dispersion at a given richness or luminosity, making these scaling laws interesting mass proxie