Perioperative Glycemic Management

Proposals and Goals: 1. We propose creating a standard easy to use and safe protocol for glycemic management for same day/elective surgical patients. 2. Following implementation in same day and elective surgical procedures, we propose expanding the protocol to be effective in urgent and emergent inpatient surgical procedures.https://jdc.jefferson.edu/patientsafetyposters/1068/thumbnail.jp

Standardized Consent Forms for Surgical Procedures: An Intervention to Improve the Resident-led Informed Consent Process

Objectives and Goals: To provide high quality, consistent consent forms for common surgical procedures and improve resident workflow by creating and implementing standardized printed consents for common surgical procedures. These consents will be used by residents consenting patients in the ED or inpatient setting. Consents shall include standardized procedure descriptions, risks and benefits of the procedure, and alternative treatment option descriptions, risks and benefitshttps://jdc.jefferson.edu/patientsafetyposters/1057/thumbnail.jp

Unitarity cutting rules for the nucleus excitation and topological cross sections in hard production off nuclei from nonlinear k_t-factorization

At the partonic level, a typical final state in small-x deep inelastic scattering off nuclei and hard proton-nucleus collisions can be characterized by the multiplicity of color-excited nucleons. Within reggeon field theory, each color-excited nucleon is associated with the unitarity cut of the pomeron exchanged between the projectile and nucleus. In this communication we derive the unitarity rules for the multiplicity of excited nucleons, alias cut pomerons, alias topological cross sections, for typical hard dijet production processes. We demonstrate how the coupled-channel non-Abelian intranuclear evolution of color dipoles, inherent to pQCD, gives rise to the reggeon field theory diagrams for final states in terms of the uncut, and two kinds of cut, pomerons. Upon the proper identification of the uncut and cut pomeron exchanges, the topological cross sections for dijet production follow in a straightforward way from the earlier derived nonlinear k_t - factorization quadratures for the inclusive dijet cross sections. The concept of a coherent (collective) nuclear glue proves extremely useful for the formulation of reggeon field theory vertices of multipomeron - cut and uncut - couplings to particles and between themselves. A departure of our unitarity cutting rules from the ones suggested by the pre-QCD Abramovsky-Kancheli-Gribov rules, stems from the coupled-channel features of intranuclear pQCD. We propose a multiplicity re-summation as a tool for the isolation of topological cross sections for single-jet production.Comment: 53 pages, 16 eps-figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

A Comprehensive Archival Search for Counterparts to Ultra-Compact High Velocity Clouds: Five Local Volume Dwarf Galaxies

We report five Local Volume dwarf galaxies (two of which are presented here for the first time) uncovered during a comprehensive archival search for optical counterparts to ultra-compact high velocity clouds (UCHVCs). The UCHVC population of HI clouds are thought to be candidate gas-rich, low mass halos at the edge of the Local Group and beyond, but no comprehensive search for stellar counterparts to these systems has been presented. Careful visual inspection of all publicly available optical and ultraviolet imaging at the position of the UCHVCs revealed six blue, diffuse counterparts with a morphology consistent with a faint dwarf galaxy beyond the Local Group. Optical spectroscopy of all six candidate dwarf counterparts show that five have an H$\alpha$-derived velocity consistent with the coincident HI cloud, confirming their association, the sixth diffuse counterpart is likely a background object. The size and luminosity of the UCHVC dwarfs is consistent with other known Local Volume dwarf irregular galaxies. The gas fraction ($M_{HI}/M_{star}$) of the five dwarfs are generally consistent with that of dwarf irregular galaxies in the Local Volume, although ALFALFA-Dw1 (associated with ALFALFA UCHVC HVC274.68+74.70$-$123) has a very high $M_{HI}/M_{star}$$\sim$40. Despite the heterogenous nature of our search, we demonstrate that the current dwarf companions to UCHVCs are at the edge of detectability due to their low surface brightness, and that deeper searches are likely to find more stellar systems. If more sensitive searches do not reveal further stellar counterparts to UCHVCs, then the dearth of such systems around the Local Group may be in conflict with $\Lambda$CDM simulations.Comment: 18 pages, 4 tables, 4 figures, ApJ Accepte

NGC 2419 -- Another Remnant of Accretion by the Milky Way

We isolate a sample of 43 upper RGB stars in the extreme outer halo Galactic globular cluster NGC 2419 from two Keck/DEIMOS slitmasks. The probability that there is more than one contaminating halo field star in this sample is extremely low. Analysis of moderate resolution spectra of these cluster members, as well as of our Keck/HIRES high resolution spectra of a subsample of them, demonstrates that there is a small but real spread in Ca abundance of ~ 0.2 dex within this massive metal-poor globular cluster. This provides additional support to earlier suggestions that NGC 2419 is the remnant of a dwarf galaxy accreted long ago by the Milky Way.Comment: Accepted to the Astrophysical Journa

Line Profiles from Discrete Kinematic Data

We develop a method to extract the shape information of line profiles from discrete kinematic data. The Gauss-Hermite expansion, which is widely used to describe the line of sight velocity distributions extracted from absorption spectra of elliptical galaxies, is not readily applicable to samples of discrete stellar velocity measurements, accompanied by individual measurement errors and probabilities of membership. We introduce two parameter families of probability distributions describing symmetric and asymmetric distortions of the line profiles from Gaussianity. These are used as the basis of a maximum likelihood estimator to quantify the shape of the line profiles. Tests show that the method outperforms a Gauss-Hermite expansion for discrete data, with a lower limit for the relative gain of approx 2 for sample sizes N approx 800. To ensure that our methods can give reliable descriptions of the shape, we develop an efficient test to assess the statistical quality of the obtained fit. As an application, we turn our attention to the discrete velocity datasets of the dwarf spheroidals of the Milky Way. In Sculptor, Carina and Sextans the symmetric deviations are consistent with velocity distributions more peaked than Gaussian. In Fornax, instead, there is an evolution in the symmetric deviations of the line profile from a peakier to more flat-topped distribution on moving outwards. These results suggest a radially biased orbital structure for the outer parts of Sculptor, Carina and Sextans. On the other hand, tangential anisotropy is favoured in Fornax. This is all consistent with a picture in which Fornax may have had a different evolutionary history to Sculptor, Carina and Sextans.Comment: MNRAS, accepted for publication, minor change

Spectroscopic Discovery of the Supernova 2003dh Associated with GRB 030329

We present early observations of the afterglow of the Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) 030329 and the spectroscopic discovery of its associated supernova SN 2003dh. We obtained spectra of the afterglow of GRB 030329 each night from March 30.12 (0.6 days after the burst) to April 8.13 (UT) (9.6 days after the burst). The spectra cover a wavelength range of 350 nm to 850 nm. The early spectra consist of a power-law continuum (F_nu ~ nu^{-0.9}) with narrow emission lines originating from HII regions in the host galaxy, indicating a low redshift of z=0.1687. However, our spectra taken after 2003 Apr. 5 show broad peaks in flux characteristic of a supernova. Correcting for the afterglow emission, we find the spectrum of the supernova is remarkably similar to the type Ic `hypernova' SN 1998bw. While the presence of supernovae have been inferred from the light curves and colors of GRB afterglows in the past, this is the first direct, spectroscopic confirmation that a subset of classical gamma-ray bursts originate from supernovae.Comment: published by ApJ Letters; additional material avilable at http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/cfa/oir/Research/GRB