Does publication bias inflate the apparent efficacy of psychological treatment for major depressive disorder? A systematic review and meta-analysis of US national institutes of health-funded trials

Background The efficacy of antidepressant medication has been shown empirically to be overestimated due to publication bias, but this has only been inferred statistically with regard to psychological treatment for depression. We assessed directly the extent of study publication bias in trials examining the efficacy of psychological treatment for depression. Methods and Findings We identified US National Institutes of Health grants awarded to fund randomized clinical trials comparing psychological treatment to control conditions or other treatments in patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder for the period 1972–2008, and we determined whether those grants led to publications. For studies that were not published, data were requested from investigators and included in the meta-analyses. Thirteen (23.6%) of the 55 funded grants that began trials did not result in publications, and two others never started. Among comparisons to control conditions, adding unpublished studies (Hedges’ g = 0.20; CI95% -0.11~0.51; k = 6) to published studies (g = 0.52; 0.37~0.68; k = 20) reduced the psychotherapy effect size point estimate (g = 0.39; 0.08~0.70) by 25%. Moreover, these findings may overestimate the "true" effect of psychological treatment for depression as outcome reporting bias could not be examined quantitatively. Conclusion The efficacy of psychological interventions for depression has been overestimated in the published literature, just as it has been for pharmacotherapy. Both are efficacious but not to the extent that the published literature would suggest. Funding agencies and journals should archive both original protocols and raw data from treatment trials to allow the detection and correction of outcome reporting bias. Clinicians, guidelines developers, and decision makers should be aware that the published literature overestimates the effects of the predominant treatments for depression

Recovery of semi-volatile organic compounds during sample preparation: Compilation for characterization of airborne particulate matter

Semi-volatile compounds present special analytical challenges not met by conventional methods for analysis of ambient particulate matter (PM). Accurate quantification of PM-associated organic compounds requires validation of the laboratory procedures for recovery over a wide volatility and polarity range. To meet these challenges, solutions of n-alkanes (nC{sub 12} to nC{sub 40}) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons PAHs (naphthalene to benzo[ghi]perylene) were reduced in volume from a solvent mixture (equal volumes of hexane, dichloromethane and methanol), to examine recovery after reduction in volume. When the extract solution volume reached 0.5 mL the solvent was entirely methanol, and the recovery averaged 60% for n-alkanes nC{sub 12} to nC{sub 25} and PAHs from naphthalene to chrysene. Recovery of higher MW compounds decreased with MW, because of their insolubility in methanol. When the walls of the flasks were washed with 1 mL of equal parts hexane and dichloromethane (to reconstruct the original solvent composition), the recovery of nC{sub 18} and higher MW compounds increased dramatically, up to 100% for nC{sub 22}-nC{sub 32} and then slowly decreasing with MW due to insolubility. To examine recovery during extraction of the components of the High Capacity Integrated Gas and Particle Sampler, the same standards were used to spike its denuders and filters. For XAD-4 coated denuders and filters, normalized recovery was > 95% after two extractions. Recovery from spiked quartz filters matched the recovery from the coated surfaces for alkanes nC{sub 18} and larger, and for fluoranthene and larger PAHs. Lower MW compounds evaporated from the quartz filter with the spiking solvent. This careful approach allowed quantification of organics by correcting for volatility- and solubility-related sample preparation losses. This method is illustrated for an ambient sample collected with this sampler during the Texas Air Quality Study 2000

Atmospheric Concentrations and Dry Deposition Rates of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) for Tampa Bay, Florida, USA

Sampling of 16 USEPA priority polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) at the Gandy Bridge monitoring site between May and August 2002 provided preliminary ambient air concentrations and dry deposition rates for Tampa Bay. The HiC-IOGAPS dramatically improved the recovery of lower molecular weight gas and particle PAHs, as evidenced by the recoveries of PAHs in back-up denuders and filter packs. Total PAH (gas+particle) concentrations ranged from 80 to 190 ng m−3. Concentrations of naphthalene, acenaphthene, fluorene, phenanthrene, fluoranthene, and pyrene were consistently higher than concentrations of the remaining 10 PAHs. Assuming an unidirectional flux of these compounds from air to water, the estimated total (gas+particle) dry deposition flux was 11.5 μg m−2 d−1, or 6.7 μg m−2 d−1 if naphthalene is excluded

Search for the lepton flavor violating τ→\tau \to 3μ\mu decay in proton-proton collisions at s\sqrt{s} = 13 TeV

International audienceA search for the lepton flavor violating $\tau \to$ 3$\mu$ decay is performed using proton-proton collision events at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC in 2017-2018, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 97.7 fb$^{-1}$. Tau leptons produced in both heavy-flavor hadron and W boson decays are exploited in the analysis. No evidence for the decay is observed. The results of this search are combined with an earlier null result based on data collected in 2016 to obtain a total integrated luminosity of 131 fb$^{-1}$. The observed (expected) upper limits on the branching fraction $\mathcal{B}$($\tau \to$ 3$\mu$) at confidence levels of 90 and 95% are 2.9$\times$10$^{-8}$ (2.4$\times$10$^{-8}$) and 3.6$\times$10$^{-8}$ (3.0$\times$10$^{-8}$), respectively

Elliptic anisotropy measurement of the f0_0(980) hadron in proton-lead collisions and evidence for its quark-antiquark composition

International audienceDespite the f$_0$(980) hadron having been discovered half a century ago, the question about its quark content has not been settled: it might be an ordinary quark-antiquark ($\mathrm{q\bar{q}}$) meson, a tetraquark ($\mathrm{q\bar{q}q\bar{q}}$) exotic state, a kaon-antikaon ($\mathrm{K\bar{K}}$) molecule, or a quark-antiquark-gluon ($\mathrm{q\bar{q}g}$) hybrid. This paper reports strong evidence that the f$_0$(980) state is an ordinary $\mathrm{q\bar{q}}$ meson, inferred from the scaling of elliptic anisotropies ($v_2$) with the number of constituent quarks ($n_\mathrm{q}$), as empirically established using conventional hadrons in relativistic heavy ion collisions. The f$_0$(980) state is reconstructed via its dominant decay channel f$_0$(980) $\to$$\pi^+\pi^-$, in proton-lead collisions recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC, and its $v_2$ is measured as a function of transverse momentum ($p_\mathrm{T}$). It is found that the $n_q$ = 2 ($\mathrm{q\bar{q}}$ state) hypothesis is favored over $n_q$ = 4 ($\mathrm{q\bar{q}q\bar{q}}$ or $\mathrm{K\bar{K}}$ states) by 7.7, 6.3, or 3.1 standard deviations in the $p_\mathrm{T}$$\lt$ 10, 8, or 6 GeV/$c$ ranges, respectively, and over $n_\mathrm{q}$ = 3 ($\mathrm{q\bar{q}g}$ hybrid state) by 3.5 standard deviations in the $p_\mathrm{T}$$\lt$ 8 GeV/$c$ range. This result represents the first determination of the quark content of the f$_0$(980) state, made possible by using a novel approach, and paves the way for similar studies of other exotic hadron candidates

Extracting the speed of sound in the strongly interacting matter created in ultrarelativistic lead-lead collisions at the LHC

International audienceUltrarelativistic nuclear collisions create a strongly interacting state of hot and dense quark-gluon matter that exhibits a remarkable collective flow behavior with minimal viscous dissipation. To gain deeper insights into its intrinsic nature and fundamental degrees of freedom, we extracted the speed of sound in this medium created using lead-lead (PbPb) collisions at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of 5.02 TeV. The data were recorded by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 0.607 nb$^{-1}$. The measurement is performed by studying the multiplicity dependence of the average transverse momentum of charged particles emitted in head-on PbPb collisions. Our findings reveal that the speed of sound in this matter is nearly half the speed of light, with a squared value of 0.241 $\pm$ 0.002 (stat) $\pm$ 0.016 (syst) in natural units. The effective medium temperature, estimated using the mean transverse momentum, is 219 $\pm$ 8 (syst) MeV. The measured squared speed of sound at this temperature aligns precisely with predictions from lattice quantum chromodynamic (QCD) calculations. This result provides a stringent constraint on the equation of state of the created medium and direct evidence for a deconfined QCD phase being attained in relativistic nuclear collisions