Mass and motion of globulettes in the Rosette Nebula

We have investigated tiny molecular clumps in the Rosette Nebula. Radio observations were made of molecular line emission from 16 globulettes identified in a previous optical survey. In addtion, we collected images in the NIR broad-band JHKs and narrow-band Paschen beta and H2. Ten objects, for which we collected information from several transitions in 12CO and 13CO were modelled using a spherically symmetric model. The best fit to observed line ratios and intensities was obtained by assuming a model composed of a cool and dense centre and warm and dense surface layer. The average masses derived range from about 50 to 500 Jupiter masses, which is similar to earlier estimates based on extinction measures. The globulettes selected are dense, with very thin layers of fluorescent H2 emission. The NIR data shows that several globulettes are very opaque and contain dense cores. Because of the high density encountered already at the surface, the rims become thin, as evidenced by our P beta images. We conclude that the entire complex of shells, elephant trunks, and globulettes in the northern part of the nebula is expanding with nearly the same velocity of ~22 km/s, and with a very small spread in velocity among the globulettes. Some globulettes are in the process of detaching from elephant trunks and shells, while other more isolated objects must have detached long ago and are lagging behind in the general expansion of the molecular shell. The suggestion that some globulettes might collapse to form planetary-mass objects or brown dwarfs is strengthened by our finding of dense cores in several objects.Comment: 15 pages, 15 figures Astronomy and Astrophysics 201

Pediatric Hearing Device Management: Professional Practices for Monitoring Aided Audibility

Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore professional practices for monitoring aided audibility for children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH). Design: A cross-sectional survey design was used to identify providers’ self-reported practice patterns for monitoring aided audibility for children who use hearing aids, cochlear implants, and bone-conduction hearing aids. Three surveys were used. Study Sample: Practicing audiologists, speech-language pathologists, and deaf educators providing services to children birth to six years of age who use hearing technology were recruited to participate. A total of 184 surveys were included in the analysis (96 hearing aid; 47 cochlear implant; 41 bone conduction hearing aid). Results: Practice gaps were identified, including infrequent use of parent questionnaires to explore how children are hearing at home and in other environments, lack of loaner equipment for some children when hearing devices were being repaired, and inconsistent monitoring of data logging to identify challenges with hearing aid use. Conclusions: Children who are DHH and their parents rely on professionals to provide evidence-based practices. This study revealed practice gaps related to monitoring audibility, suggesting opportunities for training to address provider confidence and consistent implementation of monitoring practices

A Review of Internet Resources Related to Spoken Language Intervention for Spanish-Speaking Parents of Children who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

Objective: The purpose of this study was to identify website information related to hearing loss, hearing technology, and spoken language development available to Spanish-speaking parents of children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH). Design: An exploratory, descriptive design was used to determine the presence or absence of parent education information on a variety of websites. Study Sample: The study explored Internet resources provided by national, state, and parent support organizations in the United States. Results: A total of 53 organization websites were identified that had information for parents of DHH children learning spoken language, eight of which were international. Fifteen content areas were reviewed for each website. Of the 53 websites, 25 had information in Spanish. Conclusions: Results of the current study revealed website resources are often fragmented and less in depth for Spanish speaking parents with children who are DHH learning spoken language

Parent Challenges, Perspectives and Experiences Caring for Children Who are Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing With Other Disabilities: A Comprehensive Review

Objective: The purpose of this literature review was to explore parent challenges in caring for children who are deaf or hard of hearing with other disabilities and discuss implications for audiologists related to supporting families. Design: A comprehensive literature review was conducted, and through qualitative analysis, emergent themes were identified, and a narrative summary generated. Study sample: Nine research studies were included in this review. Combined, these studies reflect a sample of 111 children, 23 families and 41 parents. Results: Three broad themes were identified, and include parent-reported challenges related to family, professional and child variables. Sub-themes were identified within each broad theme to further describe parent experiences, such as challenges related to decision-making and planning, interprofessional collaboration, and child communication and behaviours. Conclusions: Parents of children with hearing loss and additional disabilities face unique challenges related to family, professional and child variables that could impact how they manage their child’s hearing care

Symmetry breaking in driven and strongly damped pendulum

We examine the conditions for appearance of symmetry breaking bifurcation in damped and periodically driven pendulum in the case of strong damping. We show that symmetry breaking, unlike other nonlinear phenomena, can exist at high dissipation. We prove that symmetry breaking phases exist between phases of symmetric normal and symmetric inverted oscillations. We find that symmetry broken solutions occupy a sufficiently smaller region of pendulum's parameter space in comparison to the statements made in earlier considerations [McDonald and Plischke, Phys. Rev. B 27 (1983) 201]. Our research on symmetry breaking in a strongly damped pendulum is relevant to an understanding of phenomena of dynamic symmetry breaking and rectification in a pure ac driven semiconductor superlattices.Comment: 11 pages, 4 color figures, RevTeX

Labelling and clinical performance of human leukocytes labelled with 99m Tc-HMPAO using leukokit® with gelofusine versus leukokit® with HES as sedimentation agent

The scintigraphy with radiolabelled autologous leukocytes (WBCs) is considered the gold-standard technique for imaging infections. Leukokit (R) is a commercially available, disposable, sterile kit for labelling WBCs ex vivo. In this kit, WBCs isolation from red blood cells (RBCs) was performed using poly(O-2-hydroxyethyl)starch (HES) as the RBCs sedimentation agent. Due to its poor availability, HES has been recently replaced by Gelofusine as the RBC sedimentation agent. The aim of this study was to compare the labelling efficiency and the diagnostic accuracy of WBCs labelled with Leukokit (R) with HES vs Leukokit (R) with Gelofusine. WBCs were isolated using HES or Gelofusine for 45minutes and then purified from platelets (PLTs) and labelled with 1.1 +/- 0.3 GBq of freshly prepared Tc-99m- HMPAO. The following parameters were evaluated: the number and type of recovered WBCs, RBCs contamination, PLTs contamination, vitality of neutrophils, and chemotactic properties of neutrophils. Clinical comparison was performed between 80 patients (33 males; age 67.5 +/- 14.2) injected with Tc-99m-HMPAO-WBCs, using HES as the sedimentation agent, and 92 patients (38 males; age 68.2 +/- 12.8) injected with Tc-99m-HMPAO-WBCs using Gelofusine as the sedimentation agent. Patients were affected by prosthetic joint infections, peripheral bone osteomyelitis, or vascular graft infection. We compared radiolabelling efficiency (LE), final recovery yield (RY), and diagnostic outcome based on microbiology or 2-year follow-up. Results showed that HES provides the lowest RBCs and PLTs contamination, but Gelofusine provides the highest WBC recovery. Both agents did not influence the chemotactic properties of WBCs, and no differences were found in terms of LE and RY. Sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy were also not significantly different for WBCs labelled with both agents (diagnostic accuracy 90.9%, CI = 74.9-96.1 vs 98.3%, CI = 90.8-100, for HES and Gelofusine, respectively). In conclusion, Gelofusine can be considered a suitable alternative of HES for WBCs separation and labelling

Pediatric Amplification Management: Parent Experiences Monitoring Children’s Aided Hearing

Objective: Investigate parents’ experiences monitoring aided hearing for children who use hearing aids, bone conduction hearing aids, and cochlear implants. Design: A cross-sectional survey design, using three survey instruments, was used to collect parent data. Study Sample: A total of 178 parents of children birth to six years were included in the analysis (81 hearing aid; 61 cochlear implant; 36 bone conduction hearing aid). Results: Surveys explored hearing device use and monitoring. Variability was found for hearing aid use, and many parents reported being unaware if their child’s device has data logging capability. Parents varied widely in how often they check hearing device function, and approximately half did not have access to loaner hearing devices when repairs were required. Variance was observed in how often professionals explore how children are hearing at home through use of parent-report questionnaires, and related to audiology-specific services aimed at monitoring and maintaining audibility during routine appointments (e.g., checking program settings when new earmolds are received, frequency of earmold replacement, checking datalogging). Conclusion: This study revealed variability in hearing device use, and monitoring for audibility by professionals and parents. Implications from this study suggest parent-professional parternships would benefit from better understanding of barriers/facilitators for parent learning and implementation of key monitoring tasks

Ontology-based negotiation and enforcement of privacy constraints in collaborative knowledge discovery

Many people could benefit from collecting and analyzing their own personal digital data, but most do not possess the necessary expertise to do so. Remote collaboration with knowledge discovery experts who do possess this expertise is a possible solution to this conundrum but raises a number of issues of its own, one of which is preserving the data owner's privacy. It is up to the data owner to decide how much data to share with a data analyst, but withholding too much will make the analyst unable to help the data owner effectively, so it is necessary to find a trade-off between these two conflicting interests. We propose a solution whereby the data requirements imposed by analysis tasks and the access restrictions imposed by privacy constraints are encoded formally using an ontology, enabling automatic detection of conflicts. Once a conflict has been identified, the data owner and the data analyst can negotiate a resolution, possibly by transforming the data using a method that makes it no longer sensitive from the data owner's perspective while sufficiently preserving its utility from the data analyst's perspective. Using such an ontology, data owners and data analysts tap into a knowledge base of privacy-preserving data transformations, each with known effects on the utility of the transformed data for analysis. This makes it easier to find an acceptable trade-off between privacy and utility in future collaborations

Inclusive One Jet Production With Multiple Interactions in the Regge Limit of pQCD

DIS on a two nucleon system in the regge limit is considered. In this framework a review is given of a pQCD approach for the computation of the corrections to the inclusive one jet production cross section at finite number of colors and discuss the general results.Comment: 4 pages, latex, aicproc format, Contribution to the proceedings of "Diffraction 2008", 9-14 Sep. 2008, La Londe-les-Maures, Franc