Analyzing the Use of Strategies of Self-Management for High School Students with Disabilities

The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of self-management strategies for reducing the frequency of calling out behavior of three high school students in a juvenile correctional facility. The calling out behavior defined as speaking from one student to another without permission, yelling or speaking at the teacher without raising their hand and leaving one’s seat without the teacher’s permission. The researcher implemented non-concurrent single-case multiple baselines across participants ABA design. The self-management strategy taught the students to record the frequencies of their calling out behavior on the self-monitoring sheet. The results from this study indicated that all participants showed improvements in decreasing the frequencies of their inappropriate calling out behaviors during the self-monitoring phase. However, once the intervention was over, student behavior resumed to baseline levels. The implication of this study indicated that self-management strategy (self-monitoring) was a non-punitive method successfully used in a juvenile correctional setting

Estimation of polarization aberrations and its effect on the point spread function of the Thirty Meter Telescope

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) is a future generation telescope proposed to be located in Mauna Kea, Hawaii or in La Palma in the Canary Islands. The telescope will have a segmented primary and an inclined tertiary mirror. The segmentation of the primary mirror and the inclination in the tertiary mirror can introduce significant polarization aberrations. Typically, the polarization aberrations, introduced due to the mirror coating and the high incident angles cause small modifications to the Point Spread Function (PSF). Here, we perform the polarization ray tracing for TMT using the optical design software Zemax for different input polarizations for a point source (on-axis). We calculate the diattenuation and retardance aberration maps for all the three mirrors of TMT. The coating induced astigmatism obtained from the retardance of the primary and secondary mirror is found to be of the order of 0.048 radians, whereas, the polarization induced tilt by the retardance of the tertiary mirror is in the order of 0.29 radians. The Jones pupil maps are estimated at two of the instrument ports, Wide Field Optical Spectrograph (WFOS) and Narrow Field Infrared Adaptive Optics System (NFIRAOS).The Amplitude Response Matrix (ARM) estimated at the WFOS port show the presence of ghost PSF's. The magnitude of the ghost PSF components is of the order of 2.5 x 10^(-5) at 1μm at WFOS port. The ARM and the Point Spread Matrix (PSM) are estimated at the focus of the NFIRAOS instrument. The Stokes PSF is shown for horizontal and vertical polarization as inputs. The Huygen's point spread function obtained from Zemax shows the variations in FWHM for unpolarized and polarized inputs. These estimations would help in the design aspects of a high contrast imaging instrument for the TMT in the future

Gemini multi-conjugate adaptive optics system review II: Commissioning, operation and overall performance

The Gemini Multi-conjugate Adaptive Optics System - GeMS, a facility instrument mounted on the Gemini South telescope, delivers a uniform, near diffraction limited images at near infrared wavelengths (0.95 microns- 2.5 microns) over a field of view of 120 arc seconds. GeMS is the first sodium layer based multi laser guide star adaptive optics system used in astronomy. It uses five laser guide stars distributed on a 60 arc seconds square constellation to measure for atmospheric distortions and two deformable mirrors to compensate for it. In this paper, the second devoted to describe the GeMS project, we present the commissioning, overall performance and operational scheme of GeMS. Performance of each sub-system is derived from the commissioning results. The typical image quality, expressed in full with half maximum, Strehl ratios and variations over the field delivered by the system are then described. A discussion of the main contributor to performance limitation is carried-out. Finally, overheads and future system upgrades are described.Comment: 20 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Coating the 8-m Gemini telescopes with protected silver

ABSTRACT The Gemini telescopes were designed to be infrared-optimized. Among the features specified for optimal performance is the use of silver-based coatings on the mirrors. The feasibility study contracted by Gemini in 1994-1995 provided both techniques and recipes to apply these high-reflectivity and low-emissivity films. All this effort is now being implemented in our coating plants. At the time of the study, sputtering experiments showed that a reflectivity of 99.1% at 10µm was achievable. We have now produced bare and protected silver sputtered films in our coating plants and conducted environmental testing, both accelerated and in real-life conditions, to assess the durability. We have also already applied, for the first time ever, protected-silver coatings on the main optical elements (M1, M2 and M3) of an 8-m telescope. We report here the progress to date, the performance of the films, and our long-term plans for mirror coatings and maintenance

LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products

(Abridged) We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A vast array of science will be enabled by a single wide-deep-fast sky survey, and LSST will have unique survey capability in the faint time domain. The LSST design is driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system sited at Cerro Pach\'{o}n in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg$^2$ field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel camera. The standard observing sequence will consist of pairs of 15-second exposures in a given field, with two such visits in each pointing in a given night. With these repeats, the LSST system is capable of imaging about 10,000 square degrees of sky in a single filter in three nights. The typical 5$\sigma$ point-source depth in a single visit in $r$ will be $\sim 24.5$ (AB). The project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations by 2022. The survey area will be contained within 30,000 deg$^2$ with $\delta<+34.5^\circ$, and will be imaged multiple times in six bands, $ugrizy$, covering the wavelength range 320--1050 nm. About 90\% of the observing time will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will uniformly observe a 18,000 deg$^2$ region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the anticipated 10 years of operations, and yield a coadded map to $r\sim27.5$. The remaining 10\% of the observing time will be allocated to projects such as a Very Deep and Fast time domain survey. The goal is to make LSST data products, including a relational database of about 32 trillion observations of 40 billion objects, available to the public and scientists around the world.Comment: 57 pages, 32 color figures, version with high-resolution figures available from https://www.lsst.org/overvie

Interim 2017/18 influenza seasonal vaccine effectiveness: Combined results from five European studies

Between September 2017 and February 2018, influenza A(H1N1)pdm09, A(H3N2) and B viruses (mainly B/Yamagata, not included in 2017/18 trivalent vaccines) co-circulated in Europe. Interim results from five European studies indicate that, in all age groups, 2017/18 influenza vaccine effectiveness was 25 to 52% against any influenza, 55 to 68% against influenza A(H1N1)pdm09, -42 to 7% against influenza A(H3N2) and 36 to 54% against influenza B. 2017/18 influenza vaccine should be promoted where influenza still circulates