Health Professions and Cooperative Extension: An Emerging Partnership

This article reports on the effectiveness of the project Health Professions and Cooperative Extension: An Emerging Partnership in providing community-based learning experiences for health professions students and in enhancing efforts of Extension. The grant project was awarded to seven health professions students in four states. Evaluation of final student reports and interviews of administrators, specialists, and county agents were conducted to determine the extent of service-learning benefits to the student, partnership development in communities, and benefits to Extension. Despite the challenges to implementing this project for the first time, students, communities, and Extension benefited greatly

Semi-Classical Description of Antiproton Capture on Atomic Helium

A semi-classical, many-body atomic model incorporating a momentum-dependent Heisenberg core to stabilize atomic electrons is used to study antiproton capture on Helium. Details of the antiproton collisions leading to eventual capture are presented, including the energy and angular momentum states of incident antiprotons which result in capture via single or double electron ionization, i.e. into [He$^{++}\,\bar p$ or He$^{+}\,\bar p$], and the distribution of energy and angular momentum states following the Auger cascade. These final states are discussed in light of recently reported, anomalously long-lived antiproton states observed in liquid He.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures may be obtained from authors, Revte

Flux Tube Zero-Point Motion, Hadronic Charge Radii, and Hybrid Meson Production Cross Sections

Flux tube zero-point motion produces quark displacements transverse to the flux tube which make significant contributions to hadronic charge radii. In heavy quark systems, these contributions can be related by Bjorken's sum rule to the rates for semileptonic decay to hybrid mesons. This connection can be generalized to other leptoproduction processes, where transverse contributions to elastic form factor slopes are related to the cross sections for the production of the associated hybrid states. I identify the flux tube overlap integral responsible for these effects as the strong QCD analogue of the Sudakov form factor of perturbative QCD.Comment: 16 pages, revised to clarify some points and to improve and correct the notation for the flux tube wave function

Physical and chemical mechanisms involved in adhesion of orthodontic bonding composites: in vitro evaluations

BackgroundBond strength of orthodontic composite is strongly influenced by molecular and structural mechanisms. Aim of this in vitro study was to compare bond strength of light-cure orthodontic composites by measuring debonding forces and evaluating locations of bond failure. Investigations on chemical compositions clarified adhesive behaviors and abilities, exploring effects of ageing processes in this junction materials.MethodsTwelve enamel discs, from human premolars, were randomly coupled to one orthodontic adhesive system (Transbond XT (TM) 3 M UNITEK, USA, Light-Cure Orthodontic Paste, LEONE, Italy and Bisco Ortho Bracket Paste LC, BISCO, Illinois) and underwent to Shear Bond Strength test. Metallic brackets were bonded to twenty-seven human premolar, with one of the adhesive systems, to quantify, at FE-SEM magnifications, after debonding, the residual material on enamel and bracket base surfaces. Raman Spectroscopy analysis was performed on eight discs of each composites to investigate on chemical compositions, before and after accelerated aging procedures in human saliva and sugary drink.ResultsOrthodontic adhesive systems showed similar strength of adhesion to enamel. The breakage of adhesive-adherent bond occurs in TXT at enamel-adhesive interface while in Bisco and Leone at adhesive-bracket interface. Accelerated in vitro aging demonstrated good physical-chemical stability for all composites, Bisco only, was weakly contaminated with respect to the other materials.ConclusionA similar, clinically adequate and acceptable bond strength to enamel for debonding maneuvers was recorded in all orthodontic adhesive systems under examination. No significant chemical alterations are recorded, even in highly critical situations, not altering the initial mechanical properties of materials

Preliminary Results from Recent Measurements of the Antiprotonic Helium Hyperfine Structure

We report on preliminary results from a systematic study of the hyperfine (HF) structure of antiprotonic helium. This precise measurement which was commenced in 2006, has now been completed. Our initial analysis shows no apparent density or power dependence and therefore the results can be averaged. The statistical error of the observable M1 transitions is a factor of 60 smaller than that of three body quantum electrodynamic (QED) calculations, while their difference has been resolved to a precision comparable to theory (a factor of 10 better than our first measurement). This difference is sensitive to the antiproton magnetic moment and agreement between theory and experiment would lead to an increased precision of this parameter, thus providing a test of CPT invariance.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Brief report: active HIV case finding in the city of Kigali, Rwanda: assessment of voluntary assisted partner notification modalities to detect undiagnosed HIV infections

BACKGROUND: Voluntary assisted partner notification (VAPN) services that use contract, provider, or dual referral modalities may be efficient to identify individuals with undiagnosed HIV infection. We aimed to assess the relative effectiveness of VAPN modalities in identifying undiagnosed HIV infections. SETTING: VAPN was piloted in 23 health facilities in Kigali, Rwanda. METHODS: We identified individuals with a new HIV diagnosis before antiretroviral therapy initiation or individuals on antiretroviral therapy (index cases), who reported having had sexual partners with unknown HIV status, to assess the association between referral modalities and the odds of identifying HIV-positive partners using a Bayesian hierarchical logistic regression model. We adjusted our model for important factors identified through a Bayesian variable selection. RESULTS: Between October 2018 and December 2019, 6336 index cases were recruited, leading to the testing of 7690 partners. HIV positivity rate was 7.1% (546/7690). We found no association between the different referral modalities and the odds of identifying HIV-positive partners. Notified partners of male individuals (adjusted odds ratio 1.84; 95% credible interval: 1.50 to 2.28) and index cases with a new HIV diagnosis (adjusted odds ratio 1.82; 95% credible interval: 1.45 to 2.30) were more likely to be infected with HIV. CONCLUSION: All 3 VAPN modalities were comparable in identifying partners with HIV. Male individuals and newly diagnosed index cases were more likely to have partners with HIV. HIV-positive yield from index testing was higher than the national average and should be scaled up to reach the first UNAIDS-95 target by 2030

A Simple Empirically Motivated Template for the Unresolved Thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effect

We develop a model for the power spectrum of unresolved clusters of galaxies arising from the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (tSZ) effect. The model is based on a'universal' gas pressure profile constrained by X-ray observations and includes a parameter to describe departures from self-similar evolution. The model is consistent with recent Planck observations of the tSZ effect for X-ray clusters with redshifts z<1 and reproduces the low amplitude for the tSZ inferred from recent ground based observations. By adjusting two free parameters, we are able to reproduce the tSZ power spectra from recent numerical simulations to an accuracy that is well within theoretical uncertainties. Our model provides a simple, empirically motivated tSZ template that may be useful for the analysis of new experiments such as Planck.Comment: 6 pages 4 figure

Comprehensive and integrated district health systems strengthening: the Rwanda Population Health Implementation and Training (PHIT) Partnership

Background: Nationally, health in Rwanda has been improving since 2000, with considerable improvement since 2005. Despite improvements, rural areas continue to lag behind urban sectors with regard to key health outcomes. Partners In Health (PIH) has been supporting the Rwanda Ministry of Health (MOH) in two rural districts in Rwanda since 2005. Since 2009, the MOH and PIH have spearheaded a health systems strengthening (HSS) intervention in these districts as part of the Rwanda Population Health Implementation and Training (PHIT) Partnership. The partnership is guided by the belief that HSS interventions should be comprehensive, integrated, responsive to local conditions, and address health care access, cost, and quality. The PHIT Partnership represents a collaboration between the MOH and PIH, with support from the National University of Rwanda School of Public Health, the National Institute of Statistics, Harvard Medical School, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Description of intervention The PHIT Partnership’s health systems support aligns with the World Health Organization’s six health systems building blocks. HSS activities focus across all levels of the health system — community, health center, hospital, and district leadership — to improve health care access, quality, delivery, and health outcomes. Interventions are concentrated on three main areas: targeted support for health facilities, quality improvement initiatives, and a strengthened network of community health workers. Evaluation design The impact of activities will be assessed using population-level outcomes data collected through oversampling of the demographic and health survey (DHS) in the intervention districts. The overall impact evaluation is complemented by an analysis of trends in facility health care utilization. A comprehensive costing project captures the total expenditures and financial inputs of the health care system to determine the cost of systems improvement. Targeted evaluations and operational research pieces focus on specific programmatic components, supported by partnership-supported work to build in-country research capacity. Discussion Building on early successes, the work of the Rwanda PHIT Partnership approach to HSS has already seen noticeable increases in facility capacity and quality of care. The rigorous planned evaluation of the Partnership’s HSS activities will contribute to global knowledge about intervention methodology, cost, and population health impact

How COVID-19 has fundamentally changed clinical research in global health

COVID-19 has had negative repercussions on the entire global population. Despite there being a common goal that should have unified resources and efforts, there have been an overwhelmingly large number of clinical trials that have been registered that are of questionable methodological quality. As the final paper of this Series, we discuss how the medical research community has responded to COVID-19. We recognise the incredible pressure that this pandemic has put on researchers, regulators, and policy makers, all of whom were doing their best to move quickly but safely in a time of tremendous uncertainty. However, the research community\u27s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has prominently highlighted many fundamental issues that exist in clinical trial research under the current system and its incentive structures. The COVID-19 pandemic has not only re-emphasised the importance of well designed randomised clinical trials but also highlighted the need for large-scale clinical trials structured according to a master protocol in a coordinated and collaborative manner. There is also a need for structures and incentives to enable faster data sharing of anonymised datasets, and a need to provide similar opportunities to those in high-income countries for clinical trial research in low-resource regions where clinical trial research receives considerably less research funding

Photo-- and Electroproduction of JPC=1−+J^{PC}=1^{-+} exotics

We estimate the kinematic dependence of the exclusive photo-- and electroproduction of $J^{PC}=1^{-+}$ exotic mesons due to $\pi$ exchange. We show that the kinematic dependence is largely independent of the exotic meson form factor, which is explicitly derived for a $1^{-+}$ isovector hybrid meson in the flux-tube model of Isgur and Paton. The relevance to experiments currently planned at Jefferson Lab is indicated.Comment: 15 pages, latex, epsf, 8 postscript figure