1,177 research outputs found
Our Parents, Ourselves: Health Care for an Aging Population; A Report of the Dartmouth Atlas Project
The new Dartmouth Atlas, funded by The John A. Hartford Foundation, is a report card that analyzes Medicare data to show us where the United States is making progress in patient-centered, evidence-based care for Medicare beneficiaries and where improvement is still needed. It also offers insight into regional variations in care.Filling in the gaps in our knowledge about the state of care across the country will help health care providers, health systems, and patients and families work together to improve care for all older adults.This Dartmouth Atlas report looks at a number of measures from Medicare data, including:The number of days older adults spend in contact with the health care system;Use of high-risk medications;Cancer screening rates (and how they compare with recommendations);30-day hospital readmission rates;Annual Wellness Visit (AWV) rates;Late hospice referral; andThe number of days spent in intensive care.The report also offers a historical look at key practices, comparing data from 2003-05 and 2012
Microlensing of Globular Clusters as a Probe of Galactic Structure
The spatial distribution of compact dark matter in our Galaxy can be
determined in a few years of monitoring Galactic globular clusters for
microlensing. Globular clusters are the only dense fields of stars distributed
throughout the three-dimensional halo and hence are uniquely suited to probe
its structure. The microlensing optical depths towards different clusters have
varying contributions from the thin disk, thick disk, bulge, and halo of the
Galaxy. Although measuring individual optical depths to all the clusters is a
daunting task, we show that interesting Galactic structure information can be
extracted with as few as -- events in total for the entire globular
cluster system (observable with 2--5 years of monitoring). The globular cluster
microlensing is particularly sensitive to the core radius of the halo mass
distribution and to the scale length, surface mass density, and radial scale
height variations of the thin disk.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figure. Submitted to ApJ Letters. Uses aastex macro
Prompt optical observations of GRB050319 with the Swift UVOT
The UVOT telescope on the Swift observatory has detected optical afterglow
emission from GRB 050319. The flux declines with a power law slope of alpha =
-0.57 between the start of observations some 230 seconds after the burst onset
(90s after the burst trigger) until it faded below the sensitivity threshold of
the instrument after ~5 x 10^4s. There is no evidence for the rapidly declining
component in the early light curve that is seen at the same time in the X-ray
band. The afterglow is not detected in UVOT shortward of the B-band, suggesting
a redshift of about 3.5. The optical V-band emission lies on the extension of
the X-ray spectrum, with an optical to X-ray slope of beta = -0.8. The
relatively flat decay rate of the burst suggests that the central engine
continues to inject energy into the fireball for as long as a few x 10^4s after
the burst.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures, accepted by Ap
Recommended from our members
Diffuse and fugitive emission dose assessment on the Hanford Site
On February 3, 1993, the US Department of Energy, Richland Operations Office (RL), received a Compliance Order and Information Request from the Director of the Air and Toxics Division of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Region 10. The Compliance Order requires RL to (1) evaluate all radionuclide emission points at the Hanford Site to determine which are subject to continuous emission measurement requirements in 40 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 61, Subpart H, and (2) continuously measure radionuclide emissions in accordance with 40 CFR 61.93. The Information Request requires RL to provide a written Compliance Plan to meet the requirements of the Compliance Order. The RL Compliance Plan included as one of its milestones the requirement to develop a Federal Facility Compliance Agreement (FFCA). An FFCA was negotiated between RL and the EPA, Region 10, and was entered into on February 7, 1994. One of the milestones was to provide EPA, Region 10, with a copy of the Federal Clean Air Act Title V operating air permit application and Air Emission Inventory (AEI) concurrent with its submission to the Washington State Department of Ecology. The AEI will include an assessment of the diffuse and fugitive emissions from the Hanford Site. This assessment does not identify any diffuse or fugitive emission source that would cause an effective dose equivalent greater than 0.1 mrem/yr
The X-ray emission lines in GRB afterglows: the evidence for the two-component jet model
Recently, X-ray emission lines have been observed in X-ray afterglows of
several -ray bursts. It is a major breakthrough for understanding the
nature of the progenitors. It is proposed that the X-ray emission lines can be
well explained by the Geometry-Dominated models, but in these models the
illuminating angle is much larger than that of the collimated jet of the
-ray bursts(GRBs). For GRB 011211, we obtain the illuminating angle is
about , while the angle of GRB jet is only ,
so we propose that the outflow of the GRBs with emission lines should have two
distinct components. The wide component illuminates the reprocessing material,
and produces the emission lines, while the narrow one produces the -ray
bursts. The observations show that the energy for producing the emission lines
is higher than that of the GRBs. In this case, when the wide component
dominates the afterglows, a bump will appear in the GRBs afterglows. For GRB
011211, the emergence time of the bump is less than 0.05 days after the GRB, it
is obviously too early for the observation to catch it. With the presence of
the X-ray emission lines there should also be a bright emission component
between the UV and the soft X-rays. These features can be tested by the
satellite in the near future.Comment: 10 pags, 1 figure, ChJAA in pres
Reionization: Characteristic Scales, Topology and Observability
Recently the numerical simulations of the process of reionization of the
universe at z>6 have made a qualitative leap forward, reaching sufficient sizes
and dynamic range to determine the characteristic scales of this process. This
allowed making the first realistic predictions for a variety of observational
signatures. We discuss recent results from large-scale radiative transfer and
structure formation simulations on the observability of high-redshift Ly-alpha
sources. We also briefly discuss the dependence of the characteristic scales
and topology of the ionized and neutral patches on the reionization parameters.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures (4 in color), to appear in Astronomy and Space
Science special issue "Space Astronomy: The UV window to the Universe",
proceedings of 1st NUVA Conference ``Space Astronomy: The UV window to the
Universe'' in El Escorial (Spain
Emission-Line Galaxies from the Hubble Space Telescope Probing Evolution and Reionization Spectroscopically (PEARS) Grism Survey. II: The Complete Sample
We present a full analysis of the Probing Evolution And Reionization
Spectroscopically (PEARS) slitess grism spectroscopic data obtained with the
Advanced Camera for Surveys on HST. PEARS covers fields within both the Great
Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS) North and South fields, making it
ideal as a random survey of galaxies, as well as the availability of a wide
variety of ancillary observations to support the spectroscopic results. Using
the PEARS data we are able to identify star forming galaxies within the
redshift volume 0< z<1.5. Star forming regions in the PEARS survey are
pinpointed independently of the host galaxy. This method allows us to detect
the presence of multiple emission line regions (ELRs) within a single galaxy.
1162 Ha, [OIII] and/or [OII] emission lines have been identified in the PEARS
sample of ~906 galaxies down to a limiting flux of ~1e-18 erg/s/cm^2. The ELRs
have also been compared to the properties of the host galaxy, including
morphology, luminosity, and mass. From this analysis we find three key results:
1) The computed line luminosities show evidence of a flattening in the
luminosity function with increasing redshift; 2) The star forming systems show
evidence of disturbed morphologies, with star formation occurring predominantly
within one effective (half-light) radius. However, the morphologies show no
correlation with host stellar mass; and 3) The number density of star forming
galaxies with M_* > 1e9} M_sun decreases by an order of magnitude at z<0.5
relative to the number at 0.5<z<0.9 in support of the argument for galaxy
downsizing.Comment: Submitted. 48 pages. 19 figures. Accepted to Ap
- …