1,942 research outputs found
When size really does matter - providing PrEP across Queensland
Background: Providing universal access to PrEP across Queensland, the 2nd largest and 3rd most populous state in Australia has provided unique challenges. Queensland has 22.5% of Australia’s total land area, compared to the 14.4% of New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania combined. Queensland is also less centralised with 50% of the population living outside the state capital and 25% outside of the south eastern region. Notably, this population distribution is reflected in HIV diagnoses with 24% of new diagnoses in 2015 coming from Health Service Areas outside of the south east.
Method: The unique service models, buildings, personalities, communities and clinical capacity of regional services has required bespoke solutions to implement QPrEPd in these sites. Many sites have not taken part in clinical trials before and required additional support. Additionally, the barriers to access found in more conservative services and communities has required the implementation team to advocate and educate for universal PrEP provision. Protocol modification has enabled nurses to manage ongoing PrEP provision in services with limited medical officer support.
Results: Eleven study sites are outside of the south east corner; 7 public sexual health services, 3 general practices in Cairns and one Aboriginal Medical Service in Toowoomba. These sites have enrolled 18.5% of the all participants. The remaining 11 sites in the south east corner are include 5 general practices, including one run through a community based organisation, 5 public sexual health clinics and one private hospital. Overall, nearly 63% of the participants have enrolled at general practice sites.
Conclusions: While this project has provided access to PrEP throughout much of Queensland, gaps remain. The key limitation in regional areas where there is no public sexual health service is the lack of S100 prescribing general practitioners. In order to expand access other service delivery models are being explored
Scintillation and charge extraction from the tracks of energetic electrons in superfluid helium-4
An energetic electron passing through liquid helium causes ionization along
its track. The ionized electrons quickly recombine with the resulting positive
ions, which leads to the production of prompt scintillation light. By applying
appropriate electric fields, some of the ionized electrons can be separated
from their parent ions. The fraction of the ionized electrons extracted in a
given applied field depends on the separation distance between the electrons
and the ions. We report the determination of the mean electron-ion separation
distance for charge pairs produced along the tracks of beta particles in
superfluid helium at 1.5 K by studying the quenching of the scintillation light
under applied electric fields. Knowledge of this mean separation parameter will
aid in the design of particle detectors that use superfluid helium as a target
material.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure
Magnetic trapping of ultracold neutrons
Three-dimensional magnetic confinement of neutrons is reported. Neutrons are
loaded into an Ioffe-type superconducting magnetic trap through inelastic
scattering of cold neutrons with 4He. Scattered neutrons with sufficiently low
energy and in the appropriate spin state are confined by the magnetic field
until they decay. The electron resulting from neutron decay produces
scintillations in the liquid helium bath that results in a pulse of extreme
ultraviolet light. This light is frequency downconverted to the visible and
detected. Results are presented in which 500 +/- 155 neutrons are magnetically
trapped in each loading cycle, consistent with theoretical predictions. The
lifetime of the observed signal, 660 s +290/-170 s, is consistent with the
neutron beta-decay lifetime.Comment: 17 pages, 18 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review
Quantum computation with trapped polar molecules
We propose a novel physical realization of a quantum computer. The qubits are
electric dipole moments of ultracold diatomic molecules, oriented along or
against an external electric field. Individual molecules are held in a 1-D trap
array, with an electric field gradient allowing spectroscopic addressing of
each site. Bits are coupled via the electric dipole-dipole interaction. Using
technologies similar to those already demonstrated, this design can plausibly
lead to a quantum computer with qubits, which can perform CNOT gates in the anticipated decoherence time of s.Comment: 4 pages, RevTeX 4, 2 figures. Edited for length and converted to
RevTeX, but no substantial changes from earlier pdf versio
Transit Timing and Duration Variations for the Discovery and Characterization of Exoplanets
Transiting exoplanets in multi-planet systems have non-Keplerian orbits which
can cause the times and durations of transits to vary. The theory and
observations of transit timing variations (TTV) and transit duration variations
(TDV) are reviewed. Since the last review, the Kepler spacecraft has detected
several hundred perturbed planets. In a few cases, these data have been used to
discover additional planets, similar to the historical discovery of Neptune in
our own Solar System. However, the more impactful aspect of TTV and TDV studies
has been characterization of planetary systems in which multiple planets
transit. After addressing the equations of motion and parameter scalings, the
main dynamical mechanisms for TTV and TDV are described, with citations to the
observational literature for real examples. We describe parameter constraints,
particularly the origin of the mass/eccentricity degeneracy and how it is
overcome by the high-frequency component of the signal. On the observational
side, derivation of timing precision and introduction to the timing diagram are
given. Science results are reviewed, with an emphasis on mass measurements of
transiting sub-Neptunes and super-Earths, from which bulk compositions may be
inferred.Comment: Revised version. Invited review submitted to 'Handbook of
Exoplanets,' Exoplanet Discovery Methods section, Springer Reference Works,
Juan Antonio Belmonte and Hans Deeg, Eds. TeX and figures may be found at
https://github.com/ericagol/TTV_revie
Search for lepton-flavor violation at HERA
A search for lepton-flavor-violating interactions and has been performed with the ZEUS detector using the entire HERA I
data sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 130 pb^{-1}. The data
were taken at center-of-mass energies, , of 300 and 318 GeV. No
evidence of lepton-flavor violation was found, and constraints were derived on
leptoquarks (LQs) that could mediate such interactions. For LQ masses below
, limits were set on , where
is the coupling of the LQ to an electron and a
first-generation quark , and is the branching ratio of
the LQ to the final-state lepton ( or ) and a quark . For
LQ masses much larger than , limits were set on the four-fermion
interaction term for LQs that couple to an electron and a quark
and to a lepton and a quark , where and are
quark generation indices. Some of the limits are also applicable to
lepton-flavor-violating processes mediated by squarks in -Parity-violating
supersymmetric models. In some cases, especially when a higher-generation quark
is involved and for the process , the ZEUS limits are the most
stringent to date.Comment: 37 pages, 10 figures, Accepted by EPJC. References and 1 figure (Fig.
6) adde
Beauty photoproduction measured using decays into muons in dijet events in ep collisions at =318 GeV
The photoproduction of beauty quarks in events with two jets and a muon has
been measured with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of
110 pb. The fraction of jets containing b quarks was extracted from the
transverse momentum distribution of the muon relative to the closest jet.
Differential cross sections for beauty production as a function of the
transverse momentum and pseudorapidity of the muon, of the associated jet and
of , the fraction of the photon's momentum participating in
the hard process, are compared with MC models and QCD predictions made at
next-to-leading order. The latter give a good description of the data.Comment: 32 pages, 6 tables, 7 figures Table 6 and Figure 7 revised September
200
An NLO QCD analysis of inclusive cross-section and jet-production data from the ZEUS experiment
The ZEUS inclusive differential cross-section data from HERA, for charged and
neutral current processes taken with e+ and e- beams, together with
differential cross-section data on inclusive jet production in e+ p scattering
and dijet production in \gamma p scattering, have been used in a new NLO QCD
analysis to extract the parton distribution functions of the proton. The input
of jet data constrains the gluon and allows an accurate extraction of
\alpha_s(M_Z) at NLO;
\alpha_s(M_Z) = 0.1183 \pm 0.0028(exp.) \pm 0.0008(model)
An additional uncertainty from the choice of scales is estimated as \pm
0.005. This is the first extraction of \alpha_s(M_Z) from HERA data alone.Comment: 37 pages, 14 figures, to be submitted to EPJC. PDFs available at
http://durpdg.dur.ac.uk/hepdata in LHAPDFv
The dependence of dijet production on photon virtuality in ep collisions at HERA
The dependence of dijet production on the virtuality of the exchanged photon,
Q^2, has been studied by measuring dijet cross sections in the range 0 < Q^2 <
2000 GeV^2 with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of
38.6 pb^-1.
Dijet cross sections were measured for jets with transverse energy E_T^jet >
7.5 and 6.5 GeV and pseudorapidities in the photon-proton centre-of-mass frame
in the range -3 < eta^jet <0. The variable xg^obs, a measure of the photon
momentum entering the hard process, was used to enhance the sensitivity of the
measurement to the photon structure. The Q^2 dependence of the ratio of low- to
high-xg^obs events was measured.
Next-to-leading-order QCD predictions were found to generally underestimate
the low-xg^obs contribution relative to that at high xg^obs. Monte Carlo models
based on leading-logarithmic parton-showers, using a partonic structure for the
photon which falls smoothly with increasing Q^2, provide a qualitative
description of the data.Comment: 35 pages, 6 eps figures, submitted to Eur.Phys.J.
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