Revisiting the Temperature of the Diffuse ISM with CHESS Sounding Rocket Observations

Measuring the temperature and abundance patterns of clouds in the interstellar medium (ISM) provides an observational basis for models of the physical conditions within the clouds, which play an important role in studies of star and planet formation. The Colorado High-resolution Echelle Stellar Spectrograph (CHESS) is a far ultraviolet rocket-borne instrument designed to study the atomic-to-molecular transitions within diffuse molecular and translucent cloud regions. The final two flights of the instrument observed $\beta^{1}$ Scorpii ($\beta$ Sco) and $\gamma$ Arae. We present flight results of interstellar molecular hydrogen (H$_{\rm 2}$) excitation on the sightlines, including measurements of the column densities and temperatures. These results are compared to previous values that were measured using the damping wings of low J$^{\prime \prime}$ H$_{\rm 2}$ absorption features (Savage et al. 1977). For $\beta$ Sco, we find that the derived column density of the J$^{\prime \prime}$ = 1 rotational level differs by a factor of 2-3 when compared to the previous observations. We discuss the discrepancies between the two measurements and show that the source of the difference is due to the opacity of higher rotational levels contributing to the J$^{\prime \prime}$ = 1 absorption wing, increasing the inferred column density in the previous work. We extend this analysis to 9 $Copernicus$ and 13 $FUSE$ spectra to explore the interdependence of the column densities of different rotational levels and how the H$_{\rm 2}$ kinetic temperature is influenced by these relationships. We find a revised average gas kinetic temperature of the diffuse molecular ISM of T$_{01}$ = 68 $\pm$ 13 K, 12% lower than the value found previously.Comment: 20 pages, 10 Figures, Accepted in Ap

Income effects of Federal Reserve liquidity facilities

One of the chief actions taken by the Federal Reserve in response to the financial crisis was the introduction or expansion of facilities designed to provide liquidity to the funding markets. A study of the programs suggests that the liquidity facilities generated $20 billion in interest and fee income between August 2007 and December 2009, or$13 billion after taking into account the estimated $7 billion cost of funds. Moreover, the Fed took important steps to limit the credit exposure it incurred in connection with the facilities.Federal Reserve System ; Liquidity (Economics) ; Bank liquidity ; Treasury bills ; Federal Reserve banks - Profits

Implementation of a Structured Discharge Checklist for Children Admitted to the Hospital with Acute Asthma

Abstract Problem: The transition process from a hospital setting to home is critical for pediatric patients and their families. However, there is no standardized process to ensure asthma discharge orders and asthma action plans are printed at the time of discharge Methods: This observational quality improvement project utilized a pre-and-postimplementation of the Kamishibai Card (K-Card) process for pediatric discharge checklist compliance in an inpatient pediatric general medicine unit. This project used a sample of all children aged 2 years to 21 years with an asthma diagnosis admitted to the inpatient general medicine pediatric unit. This project included an education phase and an implementation phase. The QI project was performed using a plan-do-act study method to assess barriers during the implementation phase. Results: A total of 58 patients were included in the quality improvement project (40) patients pre-implementation phase and 18 patients- post-implementation. During the pre-implementation phase, there was a home management plan of care compliance rate of 95% with November 2022 having the lowest rate of compliance at 83%. After the implementation of the K-card tool, there was an overall home management plan of care compliance rate of 89%. The result of the two-tailed paired samples t-test was not significant based on an alpha value of .05, t (3) = -0.29, p = .790. Implications for Practice: K-cards may help in enhancing home management plan of care in the pediatric population with asthma by auditing the necessary discharge components set in place by the Joint Commissions Childhood Asthma Care Measure -3 (CAC-3). K-Card audit reports may be used to identify barriers to proper discharge and develop new standardized workflow strategies

Functional correlation bounds and deterministic homogenisation of fast-slow systems

We give elementary and explicit sufficient conditions (in particular, a functional correlation bound) for deterministic homogenisation (convergence to a stochastic differential equation) for discrete-time fast-slow systems of the form $$x_{k+1} = x_k + n^{-1}a_n(x_k,y_k) + n^{-1/2}b_n(x_k,y_k), \quad y_{k+1}=T_n y_k.$$ We then prove that these sufficient conditions are satisfied by various examples of nonuniformly hyperbolic dynamical systems $T_n$.Comment: 28 pages, comments welcom

Not all jellyfish are equal: isotopic evidence for inter- and intraspecific variation in jellyfish trophic ecology

Jellyfish are highly topical within studies of pelagic food-webs and there is a growing realisation that their role is more complex than once thought. Efforts being made to include jellyfish within fisheries and ecosystem models are an important step forward, but our present understanding of their underlying trophic ecology can lead to their oversimplification in these models. Gelatinous zooplankton represent a polyphyletic assemblage spanning >2,000 species that inhabit coastal seas to the deep-ocean and employ a wide variety of foraging strategies. Despite this diversity, many contemporary modelling approaches include jellyfish as a single functional group feeding at one or two trophic levels at most. Recent reviews have drawn attention to this issue and highlighted the need for improved communication between biologists and theoreticians if this problem is to be overcome. We used stable isotopes to investigate the trophic ecology of three co-occurring scyphozoan jellyfish species (Aurelia aurita, Cyanea lamarckii and C. capillata) within a temperate, coastal food-web in the NE Atlantic. Using information on individual size, time of year and δ 13 C and δ 15 N stable isotope values, we examined: (1) whether all jellyfish could be considered as a single functional group, or showed distinct inter-specific differences in trophic ecology; (2) Were size-based shifts in trophic position, found previously in A. aurita, a common trait across species?; (3) When considered collectively, did the trophic position of three sympatric species remain constant over time? Differences in δ 15 N (trophic position) were evident between all three species, with size-based and temporal shifts in δ 15 N apparent in A. aurita and C. capillata. The isotopic niche width for all species combined increased throughout the season, reflecting temporal shifts in trophic position and seasonal succession in these gelatinous species. Taken together, these findings support previous assertions that jellyfish require more robust inclusion in marine fisheries or ecosystem models

Quality space computations for consciousness

The quality space hypothesis about conscious experience proposes that conscious sensory states are experienced in relation to other possible sensory states. For instance, the colour red is experienced as being more like orange, and less like green or blue. Recent empirical findings suggest that subjective similarity space can be explained in terms of similarities in neural activation patterns. Here, we consider how localist, workspace, and higher-order theories of consciousness can accommodate claims about the qualitative character of experience and functionally support a quality space. We review existing empirical evidence for each of these positions, and highlight novel experimental tools, such as altering local activation spaces via brain stimulation or behavioural training, that can distinguish these accounts

A discriminative model for understanding natural language route directions

To be useful teammates to human partners, robots must be able to follow spoken instructions given in natural language. However, determining the correct sequence of actions in response to a set of spoken instructions is a complex decision-making problem. There is a "semantic gap" between the high-level symbolic models of the world that people use, and the low-level models of geometry, state dynamics, and perceptions that robots use. In this paper, we show how this gap can be bridged by inferring the best sequence of actions from a linguistic description and environmental features. This work improves upon previous work in three ways. First, by using a conditional random field (CRF), we learn the relative weight of environmental and linguistic features, enabling the system to learn the meanings of words and reducing the modeling effort in learning how to follow commands. Second, a number of long-range features are added, which help the system to use additional structure in the problem. Finally, given a natural language command, we infer both the referred path and landmark directly, thereby requiring the algorithm to pick a landmark by which it should navigate. The CRF is demonstrated to have 15% error on a held-out dataset, when compared with 39% error for a Markov random field (MRF). Finally, by analyzing the additional annotations necessary for this work, we find that natural language route directions map sequentially onto the corresponding path and landmarks 99.6% of the time. In addition, the size of the referred landmark varies from 0m[superscript 2] to 1964m[superscript 2] and the length of the referred path varies from 0m to 40.83m.United States. Office of Naval Research (MURIs N00014-07-1-0749