Leadership, social determinants of health and health equity: the case of Costa Rica

Costa Rica has long been a country of special interest in the Americas and in global health because of its good health. The United Nations Development Programme ranks countries according to their level of human development based on life expectancy, education and national income. Although Costa Rica is ranked at 63 and classified as 'High', in terms of health it belongs in the 'Very High' group. In 2018 mean life expectancy for the 'Very High' countries was 79.5, while in Costa Rica it was 80. In 2018, under five mortality was 8.8/1000 live births, lower than countries ranked in the 'Very High' human development group. Expected years of schooling in Costa Rica is 15.4, closer to the average, 16.4 years, of the 'Very High' human development group than the average of the 'High' group. The country is much healthier than would be predicted by its national income; rather, other features of society's development are likely to have played a key role in the development of good health. These include (i) the decision to cease investment in national defence, which freed up money to invest in health, education and the welfare of the population; (ii) the decision to create a universal health system financed by the State, employers and workers in the 1940s; and (iii) the educational system, that generated opportunities to lift important sectors of the population out of poverty, allowing them to have basic sanitary conditions that increase their possibilities to live longer and in better conditions. Despite these advances, inequalities in terms of income and social conditions persist, presenting challenges in the field of health, particularly for lower-income populations and those of African and indigenous descent. These inequalities must be addressed using decisions based on scientific evidence, a greater use of disaggregated data to reveal progress in addressing these inequalities, and with a broader articulation of the health sector with policies that act on the social determinants of health

Petrology of the Creignish Hills Pluton, Cape Breton Island, Nova Stotia

Mapping and petrologic studies of the Creignish Hills Pluton in the Bras d'Or Terrane of central Cape Breton Island have shown that the pluton consists mainly of tonalite-diorite and coarse-grained monzogranite units, with smaller areas of granodiorite-tonalite, granodiorite-monzogranite, and fine-grained monzogranite. Petrographic and chemical characteristics of the tonalite-diorite suggest that hornblende fractionation (± biotite accumulation) may have produced much of the observed variation in the unit, whereas feldspar fractionation was the dominant process producing variation within each of the other units. The tonalite-diorite unit is interpreted to be late Precambrian (ca. 560 Ma) in age like most other dioritic and tonalitic plutons in the Bras d'Or Terrane. It is probably not co-genetic with the intermediate and felsic units of the pluton. The latter may be of Early Ordovician age (ca. 495 Ma) on the basis of penological similarities of the coarse-gTained monzogranite unit to the Cape Smoky and Kellys Mountain monzogranites. Like other Bras d'Or Terrane plutons, the Creignish Hills Pluton probably formed in a continental margin volcanic arc setting during and after late Precambrian to Early Cambrian subduction. RÉSUMÉ Des travaux de cartographie et de pétrologie ont permis d'établir que le pluton de Creignish Hills (Lanière de Bras d'Or, centre de l'ile du Cap Breton) se compose surtout de tonalite-diorite et d'unités de monzogranite à grain grossier, avec des llots de granodiorite-tonalite, granodiorite-monzogranite et monzogranite à grain fin. Les caractéres de sa pérographie et de son chimisme suggèrent que le variation prisente au sein de la tonalite-diorite émane pour une grande part du fractionnement de la hornblende (± accumulation de biotite). En revanche, la variation observée dans chacune des autres unités provient surtout du fractionnement du feldspath. On interprète l'âge de l'unité de tonalite-diorite comme étant précambrien lardif (env. 560 Ma), âge qu'ont en commun la plupart des plutons dioritiques et tonalitiques au sein de la Lanière de Bras d'Or. Cette unitl n'est probablement pas cogenéique avec les unités intermédiaires et felsiques du pluton. Ces dernières pourraient remonter au début de l'Ordovicien (env. 495 Ma) si l’on se fie aux similitudes pétrologiques entre l'unité de monzogranite à grain grossier et les monzogranites de Cape Smoky et de Kellys Mountain. A l'instar des autres plutons de la Lanière de Bras d'Or, le pluton de Creignish Hills s'est probablement formé en contexte d'arc insulaire sur une marge continentale pendant et après la subduction tardiprécambrienne à éocambrienne. [Traduit par le journal

Leadership, social determinants of health and health equity: the case of Costa Rica

Costa Rica has long been a country of special interest in the Americas and in global health because of its good health. The United Nations Development Programme ranks countries according to their level of human development based on life expectancy, education and national income. Although Costa Rica is ranked at 63 and classified as 'High', in terms of health it belongs in the 'Very High' group. In 2018 mean life expectancy for the 'Very High' countries was 79.5, while in Costa Rica it was 80. In 2018, under five mortality was 8.8/1000 live births, lower than countries ranked in the 'Very High' human development group. Expected years of schooling in Costa Rica is 15.4, closer to the average, 16.4 years, of the 'Very High' human development group than the average of the 'High' group. The country is much healthier than would be predicted by its national income; rather, other features of society's development are likely to have played a key role in the development of good health. These include (i) the decision to cease investment in national defence, which freed up money to invest in health, education and the welfare of the population; (ii) the decision to create a universal health system financed by the State, employers and workers in the 1940s; and (iii) the educational system, that generated opportunities to lift important sectors of the population out of poverty, allowing them to have basic sanitary conditions that increase their possibilities to live longer and in better conditions. Despite these advances, inequalities in terms of income and social conditions persist, presenting challenges in the field of health, particularly for lower-income populations and those of African and indigenous descent. These inequalities must be addressed using decisions based on scientific evidence, a greater use of disaggregated data to reveal progress in addressing these inequalities, and with a broader articulation of the health sector with policies that act on the social determinants of health

Supersymmetry Protects the Primordial Baryon Asymmetry

It has been argued that any primordial B+L asymmetry existing at very high temperatures can be subsequently erased by anomalous electroweak effects. We argue that this is not necessarily the case in the supersymmetric standard model because, apart from B and/or L, there are, above a certain temperature $T_{SS}$, two other anomalous U(1) currents. As a consequence, anomalous electroweak effects are only able to partially transform a B+L excess into a generation of primordial sparticle (e.g. gaugino) density. This relaxes recent bounds on B,L-violating non-renormalizable couplings by several orders of magnitude. In particular, dimension-5 couplings inducing neutrino masses may be 4 orders of magnitude larger than in the non-supersymmetric case, allowing for neutrino masses of the order of 10 eV. These values are consistent with a MSW+see-saw explanation of the solar-neutrino data and also with possible neutrino oscillations measurable at accelerators. Cosmological bounds on other rare processes, such as neutron-antineutron oscillations get also relaxed by several orders of magnitude compared with previous estimates.Comment: (15 pages

Impact of dedicated women’s outreach workers (WOWs) on recruitment of women in ACTG clinical studies

Background: Despite efforts by the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) to enroll representative numbers of diverse women, participation in ACTG studies in the United States remains largely white and male. To address this gap in women’s participation in ACTG research, a one-year pilot study of dedicated women’s outreach workers (WOWs) was proposed. Objectives: included demonstrating that targeted recruitment efforts can expand community awareness of ACTG research and ensuring successful enrollment of women at the respective clinical research sites. Methods: The pilot study was conducted at two U.S. sites (Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and Emory Ponce de Leon Center in Atlanta, Georgia). The WOWs worked with site personnel to identify and reach out to women living with HIV and/or Hepatitis B or C at their respective sites and encourage them to join a clinical trial registry for those interested in participating in future clinical trials. Results: The Rutgers WOW approached 127 potential participants (of whom 100 joined the WOW registry) and screened 35 participants for open ACTG studies. The Emory WOW approached 120 participants, enrolling 86 into the WOW registry, and screened 51 potential participants for open ACTG studies during the WOW’s tenure. The majority of women screened at both sites were women of color. Conclusions: The WOW study team identified several lessons learned that can inform future efforts to engage women living with HIV in clinical research. First, success in engaging women is proportional to level of funding and institutional support. Second, there is a need for a more gender-inclusive scientific agenda as women are more likely to participate if studies address topics of interest to them. Third, meaningful engagement is a two-way street

Hypercharge and the Cosmological Baryon Asymmetry

Stringent bounds on baryon and lepton number violating interactions have been derived from the requirement that such interactions, together with electroweak instantons, do not destroy a cosmological baryon asymmetry produced at an extremely high temperature in the big bang. While these bounds apply in specific models, we find that they are generically evaded. In particular, the only requirement for a theory to avoid these bounds is that it contain charged particles which, during a certain cosmological epoch, carry a non-zero hypercharge asymmetry. Hypercharge neutrality of the universe then dictates that the remaining particles must carry a compensating hypercharge density, which is necessarily shared amongst them so as to give a baryon asymmetry. Hence the generation of a hypercharge density in a sector of the theory forces the universe to have a baryon asymmetry.Comment: 12 pages plus 1 Postscript figure available upon request. LBL 3482

The UTMOST pulsar timing programme I: overview and first results

We present an overview and the first results from a large-scale pulsar timing programme that is part of the UTMOST project at the refurbished Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Radio Telescope (MOST) near Canberra, Australia. We currently observe more than 400 mainly bright southern radio pulsars with up to daily cadences. For 205 (8 in binaries, 4 millisecond pulsars) we publish updated timing models, together with their flux densities, flux density variability, and pulse widths at 843 MHz, derived from observations spanning between 1.4 and 3 yr. In comparison with the ATNF pulsar catalogue, we improve the precision of the rotational and astrometric parameters for 123 pulsars, for 47 by at least an order of magnitude. The time spans between our measurements and those in the literature are up to 48 yr, which allows us to investigate their long-term spin-down history and to estimate proper motions for 60 pulsars, of which 24 are newly determined and most are major improvements. The results are consistent with interferometric measurements from the literature. A model with two Gaussian components centred at 139 and $463~\text{km} \: \text{s}^{-1}$ fits the transverse velocity distribution best. The pulse duty cycle distributions at 50 and 10 per cent maximum are best described by log-normal distributions with medians of 2.3 and 4.4 per cent, respectively. We discuss two pulsars that exhibit spin-down rate changes and drifting subpulses. Finally, we describe the autonomous observing system and the dynamic scheduler that has increased the observing efficiency by a factor of 2-3 in comparison with static scheduling.Comment: 31 pages, 14 figures, 6 tables, accepted for publication in MNRA

The first interferometric detections of Fast Radio Bursts

We present the first interferometric detections of Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), an enigmatic new class of astrophysical transient. In a 180-day survey of the Southern sky we discovered 3 FRBs at 843 MHz with the UTMOST array, as part of commissioning science during a major ongoing upgrade. The wide field of view of UTMOST ($\approx 9$ deg$^{2}$) is well suited to FRB searches. The primary beam is covered by 352 partially overlapping fan-beams, each of which is searched for FRBs in real time with pulse widths in the range 0.655 to 42 ms, and dispersion measures $\leq$2000 pc cm$^{-3}$. Detections of FRBs with the UTMOST array places a lower limit on their distances of $\approx 10^4$ km (limit of the telescope near-field) supporting the case for an astronomical origin. Repeating FRBs at UTMOST or an FRB detected simultaneously with the Parkes radio telescope and UTMOST, would allow a few arcsec localisation, thereby providing an excellent means of identifying FRB host galaxies, if present. Up to 100 hours of follow-up for each FRB has been carried out with the UTMOST, with no repeating bursts seen. From the detected position, we present 3$\sigma$ error ellipses of 15 arcsec x 8.4 deg on the sky for the point of origin for the FRBs. We estimate an all-sky FRB rate at 843 MHz above a fluence $\cal F_\mathrm{lim}$ of 11 Jy ms of $\sim 78$ events sky$^{-1}$ d$^{-1}$ at the 95 percent confidence level. The measured rate of FRBs at 843 MHz is of order two times higher than we had expected, scaling from the FRB rate at the Parkes radio telescope, assuming that FRBs have a flat spectral index and a uniform distribution in Euclidean space. We examine how this can be explained by FRBs having a steeper spectral index and/or a flatter log$N$-log$\mathcal{F}$ distribution than expected for a Euclidean Universe.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, 2 table

The UTMOST: A hybrid digital signal processor transforms the MOST

The Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope (MOST) is an 18,000 square meter radio telescope situated some 40 km from the city of Canberra, Australia. Its operating band (820-850 MHz) is now partly allocated to mobile phone communications, making radio astronomy challenging. We describe how the deployment of new digital receivers (RX boxes), Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based filterbanks and server-class computers equipped with 43 GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) has transformed MOST into a versatile new instrument (the UTMOST) for studying the dynamic radio sky on millisecond timescales, ideal for work on pulsars and Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs). The filterbanks, servers and their high-speed, low-latency network form part of a hybrid solution to the observatory's signal processing requirements. The emphasis on software and commodity off-the-shelf hardware has enabled rapid deployment through the re-use of proven 'software backends' for its signal processing. The new receivers have ten times the bandwidth of the original MOST and double the sampling of the line feed, which doubles the field of view. The UTMOST can simultaneously excise interference, make maps, coherently dedisperse pulsars, and perform real-time searches of coherent fan beams for dispersed single pulses. Although system performance is still sub-optimal, a pulsar timing and FRB search programme has commenced and the first UTMOST maps have been made. The telescope operates as a robotic facility, deciding how to efficiently target pulsars and how long to stay on source, via feedback from real-time pulsar folding. The regular timing of over 300 pulsars has resulted in the discovery of 7 pulsar glitches and 3 FRBs. The UTMOST demonstrates that if sufficient signal processing can be applied to the voltage streams it is possible to perform innovative radio science in hostile radio frequency environments.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure