The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

Approximations to geolocation of disaster related tweets

The use of tweets as information aid during disasters has been limited by the lack of location information in majority of the tweets. This study created two algorithms to approximate tweet location based on the text content of the tweets. The first algorithm used machine learning algorithms to predict the distance of a tweet from the eye of the typhoon and the disaster affected area. The second algorithm employed semantic modeling and comparison to predict the location of a tweet as latitude-longitude coordinate. The results of these studies show that temporal factors are important in creating more accurate location approximation models. Models that predict a tweet\u27s relative distance to the affected area have also been shown to be more effective than models that predict relative distance to the eye of the typhoon

Towards Location Approximation of Typhoon Related Discourse: On Region Definition and Temporal Segmentation

Tweets have augmented disaster information in variety of ways. Different tools employ tweets as a data source to aid in disaster event detection, knowledge extraction and situational awareness. A constant problem faced by these efforts, however, is the lack of geospatial information in majority of tweets leaving only less than 1% of tweets useful for data mining. Though studies have devised methods to approximate the location of non-geotagged tweets, applying these same methods on disaster tweets may not be the optimal choice given that disaster tweets contain domain specific characteristics. A model for approximating the location of disaster tweets must take into account how human discourse changes as the typhoon progresses, and therefore, how tweet content is affected by the location of the eye of the typhoon and the disaster affected areas. This study seeks to find the geospatial characteristics of disaster tweets in relation to typhoon relevant locations and to present initial models for predicting disaster related tweet locations through region definition relative to disaster relevant locations such as the disaster affected area and the eye of the typhoon. The first explores characteristics and relationships between the path of the typhoon, the location of the affected area and the location of the tweets pertaining to the typhoon. The second part presents two new disaster relative region definition schemes, namely: regions defined based on relative distance to the disaster affected area and regions defined based on relative distance to the eye of the typhoon. Tweets can then be geotagged to these defined regions. Based on the results, the location of the disaster related tweets are significantly related to both the location of the typhoon and an identified affected area. Furthermore, models that predict location relative to the disaster area outperform models that predict location relative to the eye of the typhoon both in accuracy and error distance. The results also show that for geospatial modeling, there is a need to consider creating models for each specific and smaller timespan instead of a single model for the whole coorpus to increase accuracy and lower error distance

Estimating parameters for a dynamical dengue model using genetic algorithms

Dynamical models are a mathematical framework for understanding the spread of a disease using various epidemiological parameters. However, in data-scarce regions like the Philippines, local estimates of epidemiological parameters are difficult to obtain because methods to obtain these values are costly or inaccessible. In this paper, we employ genetic algorithms trained with novel fitness functions as a low-cost, data-driven method to estimate parameters for dengue incidence in the Western Visayas Region of the Philippines (2011-2016). Initial results show good ht between monthly historical values and model outputs using parameter estimates, with a best Pearson correlation of 0.86 and normalized error of 0.65 over the selected 72-month period. Furthermore, we demonstrate a quality assessment procedure for selecting biologically feasible and numerically stable parameter estimates. Implications of our findings are discussed in both epidemiological and computational contexts, highlighting their application in FASSSTER, an integrated syndromic surveillance system for infectious diseases in the Philippines

Agent-Based Modeling Approach in Understanding Behavior During Disasters: Measuring Response and Rescue in eBayanihan Disaster Management Platform Authors Authors and affiliations

Development of a disaster management system is as complex as the environment it mimics. In 2015, the eBayanihan disaster management platform was launched in Metro Manila, Philippines. It is designed to be an integrated multidimensional and multi-platform system that can be used in managing the flow of information during disaster events. Since its development, usage of the system varies depending on the agent who uses the system and which area is affected by what type of disaster. As a complex problem, behavior of disaster agents, such as official responders, volunteers, regular citizens, is best understood if the system can capture, model, and visualize behavior over time. This study presents the development and implementation of an agent-based approach in understanding disaster response and rescue by automatically capturing agent behavior in the eBayanihan Disaster Management Platform. All user activities are logged and converted into behavior matrices that can be saved and imported into the Organizational Risk Analyzer (ORA) tool. ORA is used to generate the agent-based model which can be viewed in the eBayanihan platform. Actual behavior (ABehM) is compared against perceived (PBM) and expected behavior (EBM) during rescue and response. Results show that EBM networks are fully connected while PBM during rescue and response are granular and vast. Both however show centrality at the provincial and municipal level. ABehM on the other hand shows concentration only at the municipal level with more interactions with ordinary volunteers and citizens

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least 4 m. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the 6.5 m James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 yr, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit

Global economic burden of unmet surgical need for appendicitis

Background There is a substantial gap in provision of adequate surgical care in many low- and middle-income countries. This study aimed to identify the economic burden of unmet surgical need for the common condition of appendicitis. Methods Data on the incidence of appendicitis from 170 countries and two different approaches were used to estimate numbers of patients who do not receive surgery: as a fixed proportion of the total unmet surgical need per country (approach 1); and based on country income status (approach 2). Indirect costs with current levels of access and local quality, and those if quality were at the standards of high-income countries, were estimated. A human capital approach was applied, focusing on the economic burden resulting from premature death and absenteeism. Results Excess mortality was 4185 per 100 000 cases of appendicitis using approach 1 and 3448 per 100 000 using approach 2. The economic burden of continuing current levels of access and local quality was US $92 492 million using approach 1 and$73 141 million using approach 2. The economic burden of not providing surgical care to the standards of high-income countries was $95 004 million using approach 1 and$75 666 million using approach 2. The largest share of these costs resulted from premature death (97.7 per cent) and lack of access (97.0 per cent) in contrast to lack of quality. Conclusion For a comparatively non-complex emergency condition such as appendicitis, increasing access to care should be prioritized. Although improving quality of care should not be neglected, increasing provision of care at current standards could reduce societal costs substantially

Global economic burden of unmet surgical need for appendicitis

Background There is a substantial gap in provision of adequate surgical care in many low- and middle-income countries. This study aimed to identify the economic burden of unmet surgical need for the common condition of appendicitis. Methods Data on the incidence of appendicitis from 170 countries and two different approaches were used to estimate numbers of patients who do not receive surgery: as a fixed proportion of the total unmet surgical need per country (approach 1); and based on country income status (approach 2). Indirect costs with current levels of access and local quality, and those if quality were at the standards of high-income countries, were estimated. A human capital approach was applied, focusing on the economic burden resulting from premature death and absenteeism. Results Excess mortality was 4185 per 100 000 cases of appendicitis using approach 1 and 3448 per 100 000 using approach 2. The economic burden of continuing current levels of access and local quality was US $92 492 million using approach 1 and$73 141 million using approach 2. The economic burden of not providing surgical care to the standards of high-income countries was $95 004 million using approach 1 and$75 666 million using approach 2. The largest share of these costs resulted from premature death (97.7 per cent) and lack of access (97.0 per cent) in contrast to lack of quality. Conclusion For a comparatively non-complex emergency condition such as appendicitis, increasing access to care should be prioritized. Although improving quality of care should not be neglected, increasing provision of care at current standards could reduce societal costs substantially