153 research outputs found
The Future Is Now: Legal Planning for Elders
Legal planning for elders focuses on protecting retirement income and finding ways to pay for long-term health care. Jennifer Eastman discusses estate and tax planning and planning for retirement income, Social Security issues, and asset preservation. She notes that protecting elder adults requires planning and advocating for (or against) policy changes that could adversely affect elders
Ask a Catbrarian: Marketing Library Services Using a Cat
This case study aims to describe how employees at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Undergraduate Library (UGL) utilized a cat mascot as part of a marketing campaign to promote awareness of library resources and services and to overcome undergraduate students’ library anxiety. The authors describe how the idea of a cat mascot emerged, how librarians determined campaign objectives, and the process they undertook for developing videos, social media posts, events and displays for the campaign. This article also describes how the campaign was able to build a sense of community not only among the large university library system but the entire campus community
Analytic Approximations for Transit Light Curve Observables, Uncertainties, and Covariances
The light curve of an exoplanetary transit can be used to estimate the
planetary radius and other parameters of interest. Because accurate parameter
estimation is a non-analytic and computationally intensive problem, it is often
useful to have analytic approximations for the parameters as well as their
uncertainties and covariances. Here we give such formulas, for the case of an
exoplanet transiting a star with a uniform brightness distribution. We also
assess the advantages of some relatively uncorrelated parameter sets for
fitting actual data. When limb darkening is significant, our parameter sets are
still useful, although our analytic formulas underpredict the covariances and
uncertainties.Comment: 33 pages, 14 figure
The Trialectics Of Transnational Migrant Women’s Literature In The Writing Of Edwidge Danticat And Julia Alvarez
While a considerable critical field has developed around US Latino writing, due to the historical, cultural and sociolinguistic barriers between the two nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, critical investigations of these migrant literatures are often not bridged, but rather isolated into respective Haitian-American and Dominican-American designations. My comparative, critical framework defines the interactions between gender, culture and the diverse spatial coordinates from the island of Hispaniola, the Atlantic and the United States. The carefully differentiated objects of study that I articulate in each chapter offer a desirable interdisciplinary orientation inclusive of gender theory as well as cultural studies. I examine three iterations of transnational women’s writing using work by renowned writers Edwidge Danticat (Haitian-American) and Julia Alvarez (Dominican-American). Chapter one focuses on an analysis of migrant women’s subjectivity in the Bildungsroman or coming of age novel. Chapter two investigates race and gender in novels that recreate historical events in the migrant homeland Chapter three links works of non-fiction with the author’s varying transnational social justice initiatives. Each chapter compares and contrasts the framing of transnational literature of the Caribbean-American with a specific interest in gender, culture and spatial coordinates from the island of Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), the Atlantic and the United States
HST/WFC3 Light Curve Confirms the Closest Exoplanet to Transit an M Dwarf is Terrestrial
Previous studies of the exoplanet LTT 1445Ac concluded that the light curve
from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) was consistent with both
grazing and non-grazing geometries. As a result, the radius and hence density
of the planet remained unknown. To resolve this ambiguity, we observed the LTT
1445 system for six spacecraft orbits of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) using
WFC3/UVIS imaging in spatial scan mode, including one partial transit of LTT
1445Ac. This imaging produces resolved light curves of each of the three stars
in the LTT 1445 system. We confirm that the planet transits LTT 1445A and that
LTT 1445C is the source of the rotational modulation seen in the TESS light
curve, and we refine the estimate of the dilution factor for the TESS data. We
perform a joint fit to the TESS and HST observations, finding that the transit
of LTT 1445Ac is not grazing with 97% confidence. We measure a planetary radius
of 1.10 R. Combined with previous radial velocity
observations, our analysis yields a planetary mass of M
and a planetary density of 5.6 g cm. LTT 1445Ac is an
Earth analog with respect to its mass and radius, albeit with a higher
instellation, and is therefore an exciting target for future atmospheric
studies.Comment: Submitted to AJ. 9 pages, 7 figures, 3 table
Optical Monitoring of the Broad-Line Radio Galaxy 3C390.3
We have undertaken a new ground-based monitoring campaign on the BLRG 3C390.3
to improve the measurement of the size of the BLR and to estimate the black
hole mass. Optical spectra and g-band images were observed in 2005 using the
2.4m telescope at MDM Observatory. Integrated emission-line flux variations
were measured for Ha, Hb, Hg, and for HeII4686, as well as g-band fluxes and
the optical AGN continuum at 5100A. The g-band fluxes and the AGN continuum
vary simultaneously within the uncertainties, tau=(0.2+-1.1)days. We find that
the emission-line variations are delayed with respect to the variable g-band
continuum by tau(Ha)=56.3(+2.4-6.6)days, tau(Hb)=44.3(+3.0_-3.3)days,
tau(Hg)=58.1(+4.3-6.1)days, and tau(HeII4686)=22.3(+6.5-3.8)days. The blue and
red peak in the double peaked line profiles, as well as the blue and red outer
profile wings, vary simultaneously within +-3 days. This provides strong
support for gravitationally bound orbital motion of the dominant part of the
line emitting gas. Combining the time delay of Ha and Hb and the separation of
the blue and red peak in the broad double-peaked profiles in their rms spectra,
we determine Mbh_vir=1.77(+0.29-0.31)x10^8Msol and using sigma_line of the rms
spectra Mbh_vir=2.60(+0.23-0.31)x10^8Msol for the central black hole of
3C390.3, respectively. Using the inclination angle of the line emitting region
the mass of the black hole amounts to Mbh=0.86(+0.19-0.18)x10^9 Msol
(peak-separation) and Mbh=1.26(+0.21-0.16)x10^9 Msol (sigma_line),
respectively. This result is consistent with the black hole masses indicated by
simple accretion disk models to describe the observed double-peaked profiles,
derived from the stellar dynamics of 3C390.3, and with the AGN
radius-luminosity relation. Thus, 3C390.3 as a radio-loud AGN with a low
Eddington ratio, Ledd/Lbol=0.02, follows the same AGN radius-luminosity
relation as radio-quiet AGN.Comment: accepted, scheduled for September 20, 2012, ApJ 75
KELT-1b: A Strongly Irradiated, Highly Inflated, Short Period, 27 Jupiter-mass Companion Transiting a mid-F Star
We present the discovery of KELT-1b, the first transiting low-mass companion
from the wide-field Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope-North (KELT-North)
survey. The V=10.7 primary is a mildly evolved, solar-metallicity, mid-F star.
The companion is a low-mass brown dwarf or super-massive planet with mass of
27.23+/-0.50 MJ and radius of 1.110+0.037-0.024 RJ, on a very short period
(P=1.21750007) circular orbit. KELT-1b receives a large amount of stellar
insolation, with an equilibrium temperature assuming zero albedo and perfect
redistribution of 2422 K. Upper limits on the secondary eclipse depth indicate
that either the companion must have a non-zero albedo, or it must experience
some energy redistribution. Comparison with standard evolutionary models for
brown dwarfs suggests that the radius of KELT-1b is significantly inflated.
Adaptive optics imaging reveals a candidate stellar companion to KELT-1, which
is consistent with an M dwarf if bound. The projected spin-orbit alignment
angle is consistent with zero stellar obliquity, and the vsini of the primary
is consistent with tidal synchronization. Given the extreme parameters of the
KELT-1 system, we expect it to provide an important testbed for theories of the
emplacement and evolution of short-period companions, and theories of tidal
dissipation and irradiated brown dwarf atmospheres.Comment: 30 pages, 19 figures. Submitted to Ap
Novel verbal fluency scores and structural brain imaging for prediction of cognitive outcome in mild cognitive impairment
AbstractIntroductionThe objective of this study was to assess the utility of novel verbal fluency scores for predicting conversion from mild cognitive impairment (MCI) to clinical Alzheimer's disease (AD).MethodVerbal fluency lists (animals, vegetables, F, A, and S) from 107 MCI patients and 51 cognitively normal controls were transcribed into electronic text files and automatically scored with traditional raw scores and five types of novel scores computed using methods from machine learning and natural language processing. Additional scores were derived from structural MRI scans: region of interest measures of hippocampal and ventricular volumes and gray matter scores derived from performing ICA on measures of cortical thickness. Over 4 years of follow-up, 24 MCI patients converted to AD. Using conversion as the outcome variable, ensemble classifiers were constructed by training classifiers on the individual groups of scores and then entering predictions from the primary classifiers into regularized logistic regression models. Receiver operating characteristic curves were plotted, and the area under the curve (AUC) was measured for classifiers trained with five groups of available variables.ResultsClassifiers trained with novel scores outperformed those trained with raw scores (AUC 0.872 vs 0.735; P < .05 by DeLong test). Addition of structural brain measurements did not improve performance based on novel scores alone.ConclusionThe brevity and cost profile of verbal fluency tasks recommends their use for clinical decision making. The word lists generated are a rich source of information for predicting outcomes in MCI. Further work is needed to assess the utility of verbal fluency for early AD
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