Barriers to better care for people with AIDS in developing countries

Access to good quality antiretroviral treatment has transformed the prognosis for people with AIDS in the developed world. Although it is feasible and desirable to deliver antiretroviral drugs in resource poor settings,few of the 95% of people with HIV and AIDS who live in developing countries receive them. The World Health Organization has launched a programme to deliver antiretroviral drugs to three million people with AIDS in the developing world by 2005, the “3 by 5” initiative. We identify some of the challenges faced by the initiative, focusing on delivery of care

Les femmes africaines face à l'épidémie de sida

En Afrique, les femmes sont plus nombreuses que les hommes à être infectées par le virus du sida. Plus vulnérables biologiquement, elles n’ont pas toujours la capacité de négocier qui leur permettrait d’insister sur l’utilisation de préservatifs ou sur la fidélité de leur partenaire. Prévention et dépistage, encore rares, leur sont cependant plus accessibles qu’aux hommes grâce aux consultations prénatales. Mais, si elles apprennent qu’elles sont infectées, leur fragilité socio-économique, la peur de l’opprobre et la pression de procréation qu’elles subissent, conduisent trois femmes sur quatre à taire leur séropositivité. Paradoxalement, elles bénéficient pourtant plus souvent que les hommes des traitements

Relativistic calculations of pionic and kaonic atoms hyperfine structure

We present the relativistic calculation of the hyperfine structure in pionic and kaonic atoms. A perturbation method has been applied to the Klein-Gordon equation to take into account the relativistic corrections. The perturbation operator has been obtained \textit{via} a multipole expansion of the nuclear electromagnetic potential. The hyperfine structure of pionic and kaonic atoms provide an additional term in the quantum electrodynamics calculation of the energy transition of these systems. Such a correction is required for a recent measurement of the pion mass

Dielectronic Resonance Method for Measuring Isotope Shifts

Longstanding problems in the comparison of very accurate hyperfine-shift measurements to theory were partly overcome by precise measurements on few-electron highly-charged ions. Still the agreement between theory and experiment is unsatisfactory. In this paper, we present a radically new way of precisely measuring hyperfine shifts, and demonstrate its effectiveness in the case of the hyperfine shift of $4s\_{1/2}$ and $4p\_{1/2}$ in $^{207}\mathrm{Pb}^{53+}$. It is based on the precise detection of dielectronic resonances that occur in electron-ion recombination at very low energy. This allows us to determine the hyperfine constant to around 0.6 meV accuracy which is on the order of 10%

Tensorial form and matrix elements of the relativistic nuclear recoil operator

Within the lowest-order relativistic approximation ($\sim v^2/c^2$) and to first order in $m_e/M$, the tensorial form of the relativistic corrections of the nuclear recoil Hamiltonian is derived, opening interesting perspectives for calculating isotope shifts in the multiconfiguration Dirac-Hartree-Fock framework. Their calculation is illustrated for selected Li-, B- and C-like ions. The present work underlines the fact that the relativistic corrections to the nuclear recoil are definitively necessary for getting reliable isotope shift values.Comment: 22 pages, no figures, submitted to J. Phys.

Theory of Hyperfine Anomalies in Muonic Atoms

Negative muon spin precession experiments by Yamazaki, et al. have found giant hyperfine anomalies in muonic atoms ranging from a few percent up to 36%. In order to understand their results, we present Breit interaction calculations based on atomic self-consistent unrestricted Dirac-Fock solutions which explicitly include all electrons and the negative muon. The Breit interaction results (including the relativistic correction for the bound muon g-factor), vary from near zero for ..mu../sup -/ O/N to -5% for ..mu../sup -/Pd/Rh; this latter is much larger than the calculated muonic or nuclear Bohr-Weisskopf anomalies and much smaller than the 36% measured value. For ..mu../sup -/Ni/Co we find a calculated range of results (depending on assumed electronic configurations) of -2.3 to -2.7% in excellent agreement with recent measurements of the Yamazaki group. This excellent agreement in ..mu../sup -/Ni/Co provides strong support for the earlier suggestions that the discrepancy in the case of ..mu../sup -/Pd/Rh is due to experimental factors

Magnetic state of plutonium ion in metallic Pu and its compounds

By LDA+U method with spin-orbit coupling (LDA+U+SO) the magnetic state and electronic structure have been investigated for plutonium in \delta and \alpha phases and for Pu compounds: PuN, PuCoGa5, PuRh2, PuSi2, PuTe, and PuSb. For metallic plutonium in both phases in agreement with experiment a nonmagnetic ground state was found with Pu ions in f^6 configuration with zero values of spin, orbital, and total moments. This result is determined by a strong spin-orbit coupling in 5f shell that gives in LDA calculation a pronounced splitting of 5f states on f^{5/2} and f^{7/2} subbands. A Fermi level is in a pseudogap between them, so that f^{5/2} subshell is already nearly completely filled with six electrons before Coulomb correlation effects were taken into account. The competition between spin-orbit coupling and exchange (Hund) interaction (favoring magnetic ground state) in 5f shell is so delicately balanced, that a small increase (less than 15%) of exchange interaction parameter value from J_H=0.48eV obtained in constrain LDA calculation would result in a magnetic ground state with nonzero spin and orbital moment values. For Pu compounds investigated in the present work, predominantly f^6 configuration with nonzero magnetic moments was found in PuCoGa5, PuSi2, and PuTe, while PuN, PuRh2, and PuSb have f^5 configuration with sizeable magnetic moment values. Whereas pure jj coupling scheme was found to be valid for metallic plutonium, intermediate coupling scheme is needed to describe 5f shell in Pu compounds. The results of our calculations show that both spin-orbit coupling and exchange interaction terms in the Hamiltonian must be treated in a general matrix form for Pu and its compounds.Comment: 20 pages, LaTeX; changed discussion on reference pape