Knowledge and attitudes about tetanus and rabies: a population-based survey from Karachi, Pakistan

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate public knowledge regarding predisposing factors, fatality and prevention of Tetanus and Rabies and attitudes toward vaccination and post-exposure prophylaxis. METHODS: A population-based, cross-sectional survey was conducted in all the 18 towns of Karachi, the largest metropolitan city of Pakistan, from December 2007 to January 2008. Men and women of more than 18 years of age were included in the study which used a self-reporting questionarre as its tool. RESULTS: There were 1201 people interviewed by the study. The majority of respondents had known or heard about Tetanus (n = 973; 81%) and rabies (n = 699; 58%). There were 29 (2.5%) reported dog bites on the subjects themselves and 218(18%) respondents reported dog bites among their family members during the preceeding one year. Only three (11%) of these dog bite victims received some kind of vaccine or post-exposure prophylaxis. The majority of the participants were not aware of the fatality of these diseases and the importance of vaccination and post-exposure prophylaxis. Of the total respondents, 563 (47%) reported an injury or wound during the preceeding one year. Of them, 426 (76%) received a Tetanus injection. Out of the total study population, 1019 (85%) respondents did not know that Tetanus could be a fatal disease, and 844 (70%) did not know that Tetanus could affect and kill newborns. Literate people and males were more likely to have adequate knowledge on multivariate analysis. CONCLUSION: Minor injuries and dog bites are a common occurrence in Karachi. Only a small proportion of these patients received post-exposure treatment. Most of the participants were not aware of the fatality of these diseases and the importance and affordability of vaccination in case of dog bites and minor trauma

Plasma accelerator-based ultrabright x-ray beams from ultrabright electron beams

We provide a pathway to compact ultrabright light sources, based on ultrabright, high energy electron beams emerging from a combination of plasma Wakefield acceleration and plasma photocathodes. While plasma acceleration is known to produce accelerating fields three or four orders of magnitude larger than conventional accelerators, the plasma photocathode allows production of electron beams three or four orders of magnitude brighter than conventional, and thus is suitable to unleash the full potential of plasma accelerators. In particular, this is the case for various types of light sources, which profit enormously from an increased electron beam brightness. Building on the recent first experimental demonstration of the plasma photocathode, in this work we discuss the prospects of plasma photocathodes for key photon source approaches such as x-ray free-electron lasers, betatron radiation, ion-channel lasers and inverse Compton scattering

Nanoconfined 2LiBH4eMgH2eTiCl3 in carbon aerogel scaffold for reversible hydrogen storage

Nanoconfinement of 2LiBH4–MgH2–TiCl3 in resorcinol–formaldehyde carbon aerogel scaffold (RF–CAS) for reversible hydrogen storage applications is proposed. RF–CAS is encapsulated with approximately 1.6 wt. % TiCl3 by solution impregnation technique, and it is further nanoconfined with bulk 2LiBH4–MgH2 via melt infiltration. Faster dehydrogenation kinetics is obtained after TiCl3 impregnation, for example, nanoconfined 2LiBH4–MgH2–TiCl3 requires ∼1 and 4.5 h, respectively, to release 95% of the total hydrogen content during the 1st and 2nd cycles, while nanoconfined 2LiBH4–MgH2 (∼2.5 and 7 h, respectively) and bulk material (∼23 and 22 h, respectively) take considerably longer. Moreover, 95–98.6% of the theoretical H2 storage capacity (3.6–3.75 wt. % H2) is reproduced after four hydrogen release and uptake cycles of the nanoconfined 2LiBH4–MgH2–TiCl3. The reversibility of this hydrogen storage material is confirmed by the formation of LiBH4 and MgH2 after rehydrogenation using FTIR and SR-PXD techniques, respectively.Fil: Gosalawit Utke, Rapee. Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht; Alemania. Suranaree University of Technology; TailandiaFil: Milanese, Chiara. Università degli studi di Pavia; ItaliaFil: Javadian, Payam. University Aarhus; DinamarcaFil: Jepsen, Julian. Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht; AlemaniaFil: Laipple, Daniel. Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht; AlemaniaFil: Karmi, Fahim. Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht; AlemaniaFil: Puszkiel, Julián Atilio. Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht; Alemania. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Jensen, Torben R.. University Aarhus; DinamarcaFil: Marini, Amedeo. Università degli studi di Pavia; ItaliaFil: Klassen, Thomas. Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht; AlemaniaFil: Dornheim, Martin. Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht; Alemani

Benchmarking Arabic AI with Large Language Models

With large Foundation Models (FMs), language technologies (AI in general) are entering a new paradigm: eliminating the need for developing large-scale task-specific datasets and supporting a variety of tasks through set-ups ranging from zero-shot to few-shot learning. However, understanding FMs capabilities requires a systematic benchmarking effort by comparing FMs performance with the state-of-the-art (SOTA) task-specific models. With that goal, past work focused on the English language and included a few efforts with multiple languages. Our study contributes to ongoing research by evaluating FMs performance for standard Arabic NLP and Speech processing, including a range of tasks from sequence tagging to content classification across diverse domains. We start with zero-shot learning using GPT-3.5-turbo, Whisper, and USM, addressing 33 unique tasks using 59 publicly available datasets resulting in 96 test setups. For a few tasks, FMs performs on par or exceeds the performance of the SOTA models but for the majority it under-performs. Given the importance of prompt for the FMs performance, we discuss our prompt strategies in detail and elaborate on our findings. Our future work on Arabic AI will explore few-shot prompting, expand the range of tasks, and investigate additional open-source models.Comment: Foundation Models, Large Language Models, Arabic NLP, Arabic Speech, Arabic AI, , CHatGPT Evaluation, USM Evaluation, Whisper Evaluatio

Association of Interprofessional Discharge Planning Using an Electronic Health Record Tool With Hospital Length of Stay Among Patients with Multimorbidity: A Nonrandomized Controlled Trial

Whether interprofessional collaboration is effective and safe in decreasing hospital length of stay remains controversial.; To evaluate the outcomes and safety associated with an electronic interprofessional-led discharge planning tool vs standard discharge planning to safely reduce length of stay among medical inpatients with multimorbidity.; This multicenter prospective nonrandomized controlled trial used interrupted time series analysis to examine medical acute hospitalizations at 82 hospitals in Switzerland. It was conducted from February 2017 through January 2019. Data analysis was conducted from March 2021 to July 2022.; After a 12-month preintervention phase (February 2017 through January 2018), an electronic interprofessional-led discharge planning tool was implemented in February 2018 in 7 intervention hospitals in addition to standard discharge planning.; Mixed-effects segmented regression analyses were used to compare monthly changes in trends of length of stay, hospital readmission, in-hospital mortality, and facility discharge after the implementation of the tool with changes in trends among control hospitals.; There were 54 695 hospitalizations at intervention hospitals, with 27 219 in the preintervention period (median [IQR] age, 72 [59-82] years; 14 400 [52.9%] men) and 27 476 in the intervention phase (median [IQR] age, 72 [59-82] years; 14 448 [52.6%] men) and 438 791 at control hospitals, with 216 261 in the preintervention period (median [IQR] age, 74 [60-83] years; 109 770 [50.8%] men) and 222 530 in the intervention phase (median [IQR] age, 74 [60-83] years; 113 053 [50.8%] men). The mean (SD) length of stay in the preintervention phase was 7.6 (7.1) days for intervention hospitals and 7.5 (7.4) days for control hospitals. During the preintervention phase, population-averaged length of stay decreased by -0.344 hr/mo (95% CI, -0.599 to -0.090 hr/mo) in control hospitals; however, no change in trend was observed among intervention hospitals (-0.034 hr/mo; 95% CI, -0.646 to 0.714 hr/mo; difference in slopes, P = .09). Over the intervention phase (February 2018 through January 2019), length of stay remained unchanged in control hospitals (slope, -0.011 hr/mo; 95% CI, -0.281 to 0.260 hr/mo; change in slope, P = .03), but decreased steadily among intervention hospitals by -0.879 hr/mo (95% CI, -1.607 to -0.150 hr/mo; change in slope, P = .04, difference in slopes, P = .03). Safety analyses showed no change in trends of hospital readmission, in-hospital mortality, or facility discharge over the whole study time.; In this nonrandomized controlled trial, the implementation of an electronic interprofessional-led discharge planning tool was associated with a decline in length of stay without an increase in hospital readmission, in-hospital mortality, or facility discharge.; isrctn.org Identifier: ISRCTN83274049

Plasma-photonic spatiotemporal synchronization of relativistic electron and laser beams

Modern particle accelerators and their applications increasingly rely on precisely coordinated interactions of intense charged particle and laser beams. Femtosecond-scale synchronization alongside micrometre-scale spatial precision are essential e.g. for pump-probe experiments, seeding and diagnostics of advanced light sources and for plasma-based accelerators. State-of-the-art temporal or spatial diagnostics typically operate with low-intensity beams to avoid material damage at high intensity. As such, we present a plasma-based approach, which allows measurement of both temporal and spatial overlap of high-intensity beams directly at their interaction point. It exploits amplification of plasma afterglow arising from the passage of an electron beam through a laser-generated plasma filament. The corresponding photon yield carries the spatiotemporal signature of the femtosecond-scale dynamics, yet can be observed as a visible light signal on microsecond-millimetre scales

The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment

The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) has been in operation since July 2014. This paper describes the second data release from this phase, and the fourteenth from SDSS overall (making this, Data Release Fourteen or DR14). This release makes public data taken by SDSS-IV in its first two years of operation (July 2014-2016). Like all previous SDSS releases, DR14 is cumulative, including the most recent reductions and calibrations of all data taken by SDSS since the first phase began operations in 2000. New in DR14 is the first public release of data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS); the first data from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE-2), including stellar parameter estimates from an innovative data driven machine learning algorithm known as "The Cannon"; and almost twice as many data cubes from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey as were in the previous release (N = 2812 in total). This paper describes the location and format of the publicly available data from SDSS-IV surveys. We provide references to the important technical papers describing how these data have been taken (both targeting and observation details) and processed for scientific use. The SDSS website (www.sdss.org) has been updated for this release, and provides links to data downloads, as well as tutorials and examples of data use. SDSS-IV is planning to continue to collect astronomical data until 2020, and will be followed by SDSS-V.Comment: SDSS-IV collaboration alphabetical author data release paper. DR14 happened on 31st July 2017. 19 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by ApJS on 28th Nov 2017 (this is the "post-print" and "post-proofs" version; minor corrections only from v1, and most of errors found in proofs corrected

Antimicrobial resistance among migrants in Europe: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Rates of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) are rising globally and there is concern that increased migration is contributing to the burden of antibiotic resistance in Europe. However, the effect of migration on the burden of AMR in Europe has not yet been comprehensively examined. Therefore, we did a systematic review and meta-analysis to identify and synthesise data for AMR carriage or infection in migrants to Europe to examine differences in patterns of AMR across migrant groups and in different settings. METHODS: For this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched MEDLINE, Embase, PubMed, and Scopus with no language restrictions from Jan 1, 2000, to Jan 18, 2017, for primary data from observational studies reporting antibacterial resistance in common bacterial pathogens among migrants to 21 European Union-15 and European Economic Area countries. To be eligible for inclusion, studies had to report data on carriage or infection with laboratory-confirmed antibiotic-resistant organisms in migrant populations. We extracted data from eligible studies and assessed quality using piloted, standardised forms. We did not examine drug resistance in tuberculosis and excluded articles solely reporting on this parameter. We also excluded articles in which migrant status was determined by ethnicity, country of birth of participants' parents, or was not defined, and articles in which data were not disaggregated by migrant status. Outcomes were carriage of or infection with antibiotic-resistant organisms. We used random-effects models to calculate the pooled prevalence of each outcome. The study protocol is registered with PROSPERO, number CRD42016043681. FINDINGS: We identified 2274 articles, of which 23 observational studies reporting on antibiotic resistance in 2319 migrants were included. The pooled prevalence of any AMR carriage or AMR infection in migrants was 25·4% (95% CI 19·1-31·8; I2 =98%), including meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (7·8%, 4·8-10·7; I2 =92%) and antibiotic-resistant Gram-negative bacteria (27·2%, 17·6-36·8; I2 =94%). The pooled prevalence of any AMR carriage or infection was higher in refugees and asylum seekers (33·0%, 18·3-47·6; I2 =98%) than in other migrant groups (6·6%, 1·8-11·3; I2 =92%). The pooled prevalence of antibiotic-resistant organisms was slightly higher in high-migrant community settings (33·1%, 11·1-55·1; I2 =96%) than in migrants in hospitals (24·3%, 16·1-32·6; I2 =98%). We did not find evidence of high rates of transmission of AMR from migrant to host populations. INTERPRETATION: Migrants are exposed to conditions favouring the emergence of drug resistance during transit and in host countries in Europe. Increased antibiotic resistance among refugees and asylum seekers and in high-migrant community settings (such as refugee camps and detention facilities) highlights the need for improved living conditions, access to health care, and initiatives to facilitate detection of and appropriate high-quality treatment for antibiotic-resistant infections during transit and in host countries. Protocols for the prevention and control of infection and for antibiotic surveillance need to be integrated in all aspects of health care, which should be accessible for all migrant groups, and should target determinants of AMR before, during, and after migration. FUNDING: UK National Institute for Health Research Imperial Biomedical Research Centre, Imperial College Healthcare Charity, the Wellcome Trust, and UK National Institute for Health Research Health Protection Research Unit in Healthcare-associated Infections and Antimictobial Resistance at Imperial College London

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

Search for supersymmetry in events with b-quark jets and missing transverse energy in pp collisions at 7 TeV

Results are presented from a search for physics beyond the standard model based on events with large missing transverse energy, at least three jets, and at least one, two, or three b-quark jets. The study is performed using a sample of proton-proton collision data collected at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the CMS detector at the LHC in 2011. The integrated luminosity of the sample is 4.98 inverse femtobarns. The observed number of events is found to be consistent with the standard model expectation, which is evaluated using control samples in the data. The results are used to constrain cross sections for the production of supersymmetric particles decaying to b-quark-enriched final states in the context of simplified model spectra.Comment: Submitted to Physical Review