333 research outputs found
Trends and risk factors for syphilis infection in Piedmont Region, Italy, 2002-2008
Background: This work aims to analyze trends of syphilis infections in the Piedmont Region (Italy) between
2002 and 2008, and to evaluate risk factors for infection.
Methods: Syphilis trends were described according to socio-demographic characteristics, sexual behavior,
condom use, number of partners and HIV infection. Independent risk factors for syphilis among men having
sex with men (MSM), men having sex with women (MSW), and women were identified through logistic
regression comparing cases with 12,773 negative patients.
Results: Between 2002 and 2008, 1,046 cases of syphilis were diagnosed, with peaks in 2004 and 2007. The
risk of a syphilis diagnosis was independently associated with being older than 24, having a low education
level, homosexual behavior, HIV self-reported infection (for MSM and MSW), number of partners (for MSW
and women) and non- consistent condom use (for women).
Conclusions: Recent outbreaks suggest that the attention to syphilis can’t be lowered. Screening, treatment
of cases and notification of partners should be reinforced and integrated with sexual health education and
counselling in high-risk environments. Surveillance data must be continuously collected
Flame pyrolysis synthesis of mixed oxides for glycerol steam reforming
Flame spray pyrolysis was used to produce nanosized Ni-based catalysts starting from different mixed oxides. LaNiO3 and CeNiO3 were used as base materials and the formulation was varied by mixing them or incorporating variable amounts of ZrO2 or SrO during the synthesis. The catalysts were tested for the steam reforming of glycerol. One of the key problems for this application is the resistance to deactivation by sintering and coking, which may be increased by (1) improving Ni dispersion through the production of a Ni-La or Ni-Ce mixed oxide precursor, and then reduced; (2) using an oxide as ZrO2, which established a strong interaction with Ni and possesses high thermal resistance; (3) decreasing the surface acidity of ZrO2 through a basic promoter/support, such as La2O3; and (4) adding a promoter/support with very high oxygen mobility such as CeO2. A further key feature is the use of a high temperature synthesis, such as flame spray pyrolysis, to improve the overall thermal resistance of the oxides. These strategies proved effective to obtain active and stable catalysts at least for 20 h on stream with very limited coke formation
Performance and costs of a rapid syphilis test in an urban population at high risk for sexually transmitted infections
Introduction. Rapid syphilis screening could facilitate caseidentification
in populations at high risk for sexually transmitted
infections (STI). The aim of this study was to compare the
performance and the cost-effectiveness of a rapid immunochromatography
syphilis test with a traditional ELISA screening test
in patients with suspected infectious syphilis or patients at high
risk for STI/syphilis.
Methods. Consecutive patients attending a STI clinic cosensually
underwent serological testing with two different tests. Sensitivity,
specificity, Positive Predictive Values, Negative Predictive Values
and effectiveness of the two tests were evaluated with respect to
definitive diagnosis.
Results. In our population, the immunochromatography essay
(Abbott Determine Syphilis TP) had a sensitivity of 95.0% (95%
CI 88.7-97.8) and a specificity of 97.7% (95% CI 94.7-99.0). The
ELISA test had a sensitivity of 95.0% (95% CI 88.8-97.9) and a
specificity of 97.2% (95% CI 94.1-98.7). The Positive Predictive
Value for ELISA was 94.1% (95% CI 87.6-97.3) and 95.0% (95%
CI 88.7-97.8) for the rapid test. The Negative Predictive Value was
97.7% (95% CI 94.7-99) for both ELISA and the rapid tests.
The cost-effectiveness analysis showed that the rapid test was less
expensive than ELISA (? 26.46 vs ? 40.57) and yielded a similar
number of right diagnoses.
Conclusions. The Abbott Determine Syphilis TP test is an accurate,
easy and inexpensive test that could facilitate the rapid detection
of syphilis in high-risk urban patients
Ultrafast valley relaxation dynamics in monolayer MoS2 probed by nonequilibrium optical techniques
We study the exciton valley relaxation dynamics in single-layer MoS2 by a combination of two nonequilibrium optical techniques: time-resolved Faraday rotation and time-resolved circular dichroism. The depolarization dynamics, measured at 77 K, exhibits a peculiar biexponential decay, characterized by two distinct time scales of 200 fs and 5 ps. The fast relaxation of the valley polarization is in good agreement with a model including the intervalley electron-hole Coulomb exchange as the dominating mechanism. The valley relaxation dynamics is further investigated as a function of temperature and photoinduced exciton density. We measure a strong exciton density dependence of the transient Faraday rotation signal. This indicates the key role of exciton-exciton interactions in MoS2 valley relaxation dynamics
Nonlinear interactions of dipolar excitons and polaritons in MoS2 bilayers
Nonlinear interactions between excitons strongly coupled to light are key for
accessing quantum many-body phenomena in polariton systems. Atomically-thin
two-dimensional semiconductors provide an attractive platform for strong
light-matter coupling owing to many controllable excitonic degrees of freedom.
Among these, the recently emerged exciton hybridization opens access to
unexplored excitonic species, with a promise of enhanced interactions. Here, we
employ hybridized interlayer excitons (hIX) in bilayer MoS2 to achieve highly
nonlinear excitonic and polaritonic effects. Such interlayer excitons possess
an out-of-plane electric dipole as well as an unusually large oscillator
strength allowing observation of dipolar polaritons(dipolaritons) in bilayers
in optical microcavities. Compared to excitons and polaritons in MoS2
monolayers, both hIX and dipolaritons exhibit about 8 times higher
nonlinearity, which is further strongly enhanced when hIX and intralayer
excitons, sharing the same valence band, are excited simultaneously. This gives
rise to a highly nonlinear regime which we describe theoretically by
introducing a concept of hole crowding. The presented insight into many-body
interactions provides new tools for accessing few-polariton quantum
correlations
Quantum ESPRESSO: a modular and open-source software project for quantum simulations of materials
Quantum ESPRESSO is an integrated suite of computer codes for
electronic-structure calculations and materials modeling, based on
density-functional theory, plane waves, and pseudopotentials (norm-conserving,
ultrasoft, and projector-augmented wave). Quantum ESPRESSO stands for "opEn
Source Package for Research in Electronic Structure, Simulation, and
Optimization". It is freely available to researchers around the world under the
terms of the GNU General Public License. Quantum ESPRESSO builds upon
newly-restructured electronic-structure codes that have been developed and
tested by some of the original authors of novel electronic-structure algorithms
and applied in the last twenty years by some of the leading materials modeling
groups worldwide. Innovation and efficiency are still its main focus, with
special attention paid to massively-parallel architectures, and a great effort
being devoted to user friendliness. Quantum ESPRESSO is evolving towards a
distribution of independent and inter-operable codes in the spirit of an
open-source project, where researchers active in the field of
electronic-structure calculations are encouraged to participate in the project
by contributing their own codes or by implementing their own ideas into
existing codes.Comment: 36 pages, 5 figures, resubmitted to J.Phys.: Condens. Matte
Gravitational Waves From Known Pulsars: Results From The Initial Detector Era
We present the results of searches for gravitational waves from a large selection of pulsars using data from the most recent science runs (S6, VSR2 and VSR4) of the initial generation of interferometric gravitational wave detectors LIGO (Laser Interferometric Gravitational-wave Observatory) and Virgo. We do not see evidence for gravitational wave emission from any of the targeted sources but produce upper limits on the emission amplitude. We highlight the results from seven young pulsars with large spin-down luminosities. We reach within a factor of five of the canonical spin-down limit for all seven of these, whilst for the Crab and Vela pulsars we further surpass their spin-down limits. We present new or updated limits for 172 other pulsars (including both young and millisecond pulsars). Now that the detectors are undergoing major upgrades, and, for completeness, we bring together all of the most up-to-date results from all pulsars searched for during the operations of the first-generation LIGO, Virgo and GEO600 detectors. This gives a total of 195 pulsars including the most recent results described in this paper.United States National Science FoundationScience and Technology Facilities Council of the United KingdomMax-Planck-SocietyState of Niedersachsen/GermanyAustralian Research CouncilInternational Science Linkages program of the Commonwealth of AustraliaCouncil of Scientific and Industrial Research of IndiaIstituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare of ItalySpanish Ministerio de Economia y CompetitividadConselleria d'Economia Hisenda i Innovacio of the Govern de les Illes BalearsNetherlands Organisation for Scientific ResearchPolish Ministry of Science and Higher EducationFOCUS Programme of Foundation for Polish ScienceRoyal SocietyScottish Funding CouncilScottish Universities Physics AllianceNational Aeronautics and Space AdministrationOTKA of HungaryLyon Institute of Origins (LIO)National Research Foundation of KoreaIndustry CanadaProvince of Ontario through the Ministry of Economic Development and InnovationNational Science and Engineering Research Council CanadaCarnegie TrustLeverhulme TrustDavid and Lucile Packard FoundationResearch CorporationAlfred P. Sloan FoundationAstronom
Performance of the CMS Cathode Strip Chambers with Cosmic Rays
The Cathode Strip Chambers (CSCs) constitute the primary muon tracking device
in the CMS endcaps. Their performance has been evaluated using data taken
during a cosmic ray run in fall 2008. Measured noise levels are low, with the
number of noisy channels well below 1%. Coordinate resolution was measured for
all types of chambers, and fall in the range 47 microns to 243 microns. The
efficiencies for local charged track triggers, for hit and for segments
reconstruction were measured, and are above 99%. The timing resolution per
layer is approximately 5 ns
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