Survival analysis and iniquities in older Brazilians: a six year follow up survey in São Paulo, Brazil

Maria Lucia Lebrão is the Coordinator of the SABE study. Jair LF Santos and Yeda AO Duarte receive support from National Council of Research (CNPq). The SABE study is supported by The São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)

Nota Editorial

Homenagem ao Sociólogo Theotônio dos Santo

Mesoscopic spin confinement during acoustically induced transport

Long coherence lifetimes of electron spins transported using moving potential dots are shown to result from the mesoscopic confinement of the spin vector. The confinement dimensions required for spin control are governed by the characteristic spin-orbit length of the electron spins, which must be larger than the dimensions of the dot potential. We show that the coherence lifetime of the electron spins is independent of the local carrier densities within each potential dot and that the precession frequency, which is determined by the Dresselhaus contribution to the spin-orbit coupling, can be modified by varying the sample dimensions resulting in predictable changes in the spin-orbit length and, consequently, in the spin coherence lifetime.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

Three-body interactions with cold polar molecules

We show that polar molecules driven by microwave fields give naturally rise to strong three-body interactions, while the two-particle interaction can be independently controlled and even switched off. The derivation of these effective interaction potentials is based on a microscopic understanding of the underlying molecular physics, and follows from a well controlled and systematic expansion into many-body interaction terms. For molecules trapped in an optical lattice, we show that these interaction potentials give rise to Hubbard models with strong nearest-neighbor two-body and three-body interaction. As an illustration, we study the one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model with dominant three-body interaction and derive its phase diagram.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Influence of depression and interpersonal support on adherence to antiretroviral therapy among people living with HIV

BackgroundPoor adherence and under-utilization of antiretroviral therapy (ART) services have been major setbacks to achieving 95-95-95 policy goals in Sub-Saharan Africa. Social support and mental health challenges may serve as barriers to accessing and adhering to ART but are under-studied in low-income countries. The purpose of this study was to examine the association of interpersonal support and depression scores with adherence to ART among persons living with HIV (PLWH) in the Volta region of Ghana.MethodsWe conducted a cross-sectional survey among 181 PLWH 18 years or older who receive care at an ART clinic between November 2021 and March 2022. The questionnaire included a 6-item simplified ART adherence scale, the 20-item Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), and the 12-item Interpersonal Support Evaluation List-12 (ISEL-12). We first used a chi-squared or Fisher’s exact test to assess the association between these and additional demographic variables with ART adherence status. We then built a stepwise multivariable logistic regression model to explain ART adherence.ResultsART adherence was 34%. The threshold for depression was met by 23% of participants, but it was not significantly associated with adherence in multivariate analysis(p = 0.25). High social support was reported by 48.1%, and associated with adherence (p = 0.033, aOR = 3.45, 95% CI = 1.09–5.88). Other factors associated with adherence included in the multivariable model included not disclosing HIV status (p = 0.044, aOR = 2.17, 95% CI = 1.03–4.54) and not living in an urban area (p = 0.00037, aOR = 0.24, 95% CI = 0.11–0.52).ConclusionInterpersonal support, rural residence, and not disclosing HIV status were independent predictors of adherence to ART in the study area

Magnetism in Gd-W films

Vapor condensation techniques are useful to prepare magnetic alloys whose components have low or even negligible equilibrium mutual solubility. In this work, one of these techniques-sputtering-was used to obtain Gd(x)W(1-x) alloys whose magnetic properties were investigated as a function of the Gd atomic concentration x. Gadolinium and various Gd-based alloys are promising materials for magnetic refrigeration and this was one of the motivations for this study. The Gd(x)-W(1-x) films were sputter deposited from Gd and W targets with x ranging from 0 to 1 as determined by x-ray energy-dispersive spectroscopic analyses. X-ray diffraction patterns indicate that crystalline structures were formed at low and high Gd concentrations, while at intermediate concentrations, the films were amorphous. Magnetization measurements, performed as a function of temperature and with static and alternating applied fields, reveal a spin glasslike behavior in all the W-containing samples for temperatures below the freezing temperature T(f). For low and intermediate Gd concentrations, and for T>T(f), the films were paramagnetic, while a ferromagnetic phase was observed in the Gd-W alloy of the highest Gd content. The magnetocaloric effect was investigated from the magnetization isotherms M versus H, from which the isothermal magnetic entropy variation Delta S(M) as a function of T, for the removal of an applied field of 50 kOe, was determined. It was observed that the maximum value of Delta S(M) for each Delta S(M) versus T curve and the temperature at which these maxima occur, are strongly dependent on x. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.103

Multivariate statistical process control based on principal component analysis: implementation of framework in R

The interest in multivariate statistical process control (MSPC) has increased as the industrial processes have become more complex. This paper presents an industrial process involving a plastic part in which, due to the number of correlated variables, the inversion of the covariance matrix becomes impossible, and the classical MSPC cannot be used to identify physical aspects that explain the causes of variation or to increase the knowledge about the process behaviour. In order to solve this problem, a Multivariate Statistical Process Control based on Principal Component Analysis (MSPC-PCA) approach was used and an R code was developed to implement it according some commercial software used for this purpose, namely the ProMV (c) 2016 from ProSensus, Inc. (www.prosensus.ca). Based on used dataset, it was possible to illustrate the principles of MSPC-PCA. This work intends to illustrate the implementation of MSPC-PCA in R step by step, to help the user community of R to be able to perform it.FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia(UID/CEC/00319/2013

Detection of multipartite entanglement with two-body correlations

We show how to detect entanglement with criteria built from simple two-body correlation terms. Since many natural Hamiltonians are sums of such correlation terms, our ideas can be used to detect entanglement by energy measurement. Our criteria can straightforwardly be applied for detecting different forms of multipartite entanglement in familiar spin models in thermal equilibrium.Comment: 5 pages including 2 figures, LaTeX; for the proceedings of the DPG spring meeting, Berlin, March 200