Targeted Merit Aid: Implications of the Tennessee Education Lottery Scholarship Program

As the nation\u27s newest broad-based merit aid program, the Tennessee Education Lottery Scholarship program\u27s generous eligibility requirements may target the very students who are disproportionately left out of similar programs in other states. This article compares the scholarship eligibility rates of Tennessee students with three other states: Florida, Louisiana, and West Virginia. This study suggests that Tennessee\u27s model may mitigate recent criticisms of merit aid programs and may compel policymakers to consider more fully the negative consequences of traditional merit aid

Marketing Merit Aid: The Response of Flagship Campuses to State Merit Aid Programs

This article identifies the conundrum that exists between removing financial access barriers to college and the student recipients’ inability to sustain reenrollment. After reviewing the findings of 7 research studies related to the impact of financial aid on persistence, the article concludes with a discussion of possible intervention strategies to employ in conjunction with financial aid packages

Nutritional Approaches to Achieve Weight Loss in Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease.

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) can range in spectrum from simple hepatic steatosis to nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), which is characterized by lipotoxicity, hepatocellular ballooning, and inflammation and can progress to cirrhosis. Weight loss is the cornerstone treatment for NAFLD and NASH. Various randomized controlled trials have shown that weight loss of ≥5-10% leads to significant improvements in hepatic steatosis. Diets high in sodium and fructose have been implicated in the pathogenesis of NAFLD. Although some clinical studies suggest that an isocaloric high-fructose diet does not worsen NAFLD, these clinical studies are often short in duration. More recently, the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension diet, a sodium-restricted diet, has been associated with less prevalence of NAFLD and has been shown to improve NAFLD. In addition, the Mediterranean diet has been promising in improving hepatic steatosis, and a larger randomized controlled trial is currently enrolling subjects. For those who are unable to pursue weight loss through dietary approaches, bariatric surgery has been shown to improve hepatic steatosis and steatohepatitis. This method has been variable in improving hepatic fibrosis. In conclusion, weight loss is crucial to the improvement of NAFLD and NASH, and patients should attempt various diets in an attempt to achieve weight loss

Sharp dose profiles for high precision proton therapy using focused proton beams

Proton beam therapy has been developed to irradiate the tumor with higher precision and dose conformity compared to conventional X-ray irradiation. The dose conformity of this treatment modality may be further improved if narrower proton beams are used. Still, this is limited by multiple Coulomb scattering of protons through tissue. The primary aim of this work was to develop techniques to produce narrow proton beams and investigate the resulting dose profiles. We introduced and assessed three different proton beam shaping techniques: 1) metal collimators (100/150~MeV), 2) focusing of conventional- (100/150~MeV), and 3) focusing of high-energy (350~MeV, shoot-through) proton beams. Focusing was governed by the initial value of the Twiss parameter $\alpha$~($\alpha_0$), and can be implemented with magnetic particle accelerator optics. The dose distributions in water were calculated by Monte Carlo simulations using Geant4, and evaluated by target to surface dose ratio (TSDR) in addition to the transverse beam size~($\sigma_T$) at the target. The target was defined as the location of the Bragg peak or the focal point. The different techniques showed greatly differing dose profiles, where focusing gave pronouncedly higher relative target dose and efficient use of primary protons. Metal collimators with radii ~3.6~mm). In contrast, a focused beam of conventional (150~MeV) energy produced a very high TSDR (>~80) with similar $\sigma_T$ as a collimated beam. High-energy focused beams were able to produce TSDRs > 100 and $\sigma_T$ around 1.5~mm. From this study, it appears very attractive to implement magnetically focused proton beams in radiotherapy of small lesions or tumors in close vicinity to healthy organs at risk. This can also lead to a paradigm change in spatially fractionated radiotherapy.Comment: Submitted to Scientific Report

CLIC Wake Field Monitor as a detuned Cavity Beam Position Monitor: Explanation of center offset between TE and TM channels in the TD26 structure

The Wake Field Monitor (WFM) system installed on the CLIC prototype accelerating structure in CERN Linear Accelerator for Research (CLEAR) has two channels for each horizontal/vertical plane, operating at different frequencies. When moving the beam relative to the aperture of the structure, a disagreement is observed between the center position of the structure as measured with the two channels in each plane. This is a challenge for the planned use of WFMs in the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC), where they will be used to measure the center offset between the accelerating structures and the beam. Through a mixture of simulations and measurements, we have discovered a potential mechanism for this, which is discussed along with implications for improving position resolution near the structure center, and the possibility determination of the sign of the beam offset.Comment: 16 pages, 20 figure

3D global multi‐species Hall‐MHD simulation of the Cassini T9 flyby

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/94961/1/grl23831.pd

Serendipitous Nebular-phase JWST Imaging of SN Ia 2021aefx: Testing the Confinement of 56-Co Decay Energy

We present new 0.3-21 micron photometry of SN 2021aefx in the spiral galaxy NGC 1566 at +357 days after B-band maximum, including the first detection of any SN Ia at >15 micron. These observations follow earlier JWST observations of SN 2021aefx at +255 days after the time of maximum brightness, allowing us to probe the temporal evolution of the emission properties. We measure the fraction of flux emerging at different wavelengths and its temporal evolution. Additionally, the integrated 0.3-14 micron decay rate of $\Delta m_{0.3-14} = 1.35 \pm 0.05$ mag/100 days is higher than the decline rate from the radioactive decay of $^{56}$Co of $\sim 1.2$mag/100 days. The most plausible explanation for this discrepancy is that flux is shifting to >14 micron, and future JWST observations of SNe Ia will be able to directly test this hypothesis. However, models predicting non-radiative energy loss cannot be excluded with the present data.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJL; 11 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables in two-column AASTEX63 forma