Using national electronic health care registries for comparing the risk of psychiatric re-hospitalisation in six European countries: Opportunities and limitations

Psychiatric re-hospitalisation rates have been of longstanding interest as health care quality metric for planners and policy makers, but are criticized for not being comparable across hospitals and countries due to measurement unclarities. The objectives of the present study were to explore the interoperability of national electronic routine health care registries of six European countries (Austria, Finland, Italy, Norway, Romania, Slovenia) and, by using variables found to be comparable, to calculate and compare re-hospitalisation rates and the associated risk factors. A "Methods Toolkit" was developed for exploring the interoperability of registry data and protocol led pilot studies were carried out. Problems encountered in this process are described. Using restricted but comparable data sets, up to twofold differences in psychiatric re-hospitalisation rates were found between countries for both a 30- and 365-day follow-up period. Cumulative incidence curves revealed noteworthy additional differences. Health system characteristics are discussed as potential causes for the differences. Multi-level logistic regression analyses showed that younger age and a diagnosis of schizophrenia/mania/bipolar disorder consistently increased the probability of psychiatric re-hospitalisation across countries. It is concluded that the advantage of having large unselected study populations of national electronic health care registries needs to be balanced against the considerable efforts to examine the interoperability of databases in cross-country comparisons

Organogels from Diketopyrrolopyrrole Copolymer Ionene/Polythiophene Blends Exhibit Ground-State Single Electron Transfer in the Solid State

Acceptor copolymers with low lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) energy levels are key materials for organic electronics. In the present work, quaternization of pyridine-flanked diketopyrrolopyrrole (PyDPPPy) is used to lower the LUMO energy level of the resulting monomer (MePyDPPPy) by as much as 0.7 eV. The drastically changed electronic properties of MePyDPPPy hinder a second methylation step even in an excess of trimethyloxonium tetrafluoroborate and thereby give access to the asymmetric functionalization of N-heterocycle-flanked DPP building blocks. The corresponding n-type polymeric ionene PMePyDPPPyT2 with bithiophene as comonomer forms thixotropic organogels with the p-type polythiophene P(g42T-TT), indicative of specific cross-interactions between this couple of copolymers. Gelation of polymer blend solutions, which is absent for other couples of p-type/ n-type polymers, is of general interest for (co)processing and orientation of different electronic polymers simultaneously into films or filaments. Detailed optical and electronic characterization reveals that films processed from organogels exhibit ground-state electron transfer (GSET) enabled by suitably positioned highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and LUMO energy levels of P(g42T-TT) (-4.07 eV) and PMePyDPPPyT2 (-4.20 eV), respectively. Furthermore, molecular interactions related to gelation and GSET do not appear to significantly influence the morphology of the polymer blend films

Energy calibration and resolution of the CMS electromagnetic calorimeter in pp collisions at s\sqrt{s} = 7 TeV

The energy calibration and resolution of the electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL) of the CMS detector have been determined using proton-proton collision data from LHC operation in 2010 and 2011 at a centre-of-mass energy of sqrt(s)=7 TeV with integrated luminosities of about 5 inverse femtobarns. Crucial aspects of detector operation, such as the environmental stability, alignment, and synchronization, are presented. The in-situ calibration procedures are discussed in detail and include the maintenance of the calibration in the challenging radiation environment inside the CMS detector. The energy resolution for electrons from Z-boson decays is better than 2% in the central region of the ECAL barrel (for pseudorapidity abs(eta)<0.8) and is 2-5% elsewhere. The derived energy resolution for photons from 125 GeV Higgs boson decays varies across the barrel from 1.1% to 2.6% and from 2.2% to 5% in the entraps. The calibration of the absolute energy is determined from Z to e+e- decays to a precision of 0.4% in the barrel and 0.8% in the endcaps

Search for long-lived particles in events with photons and missing energy in proton\u2013proton collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV

Results are presented from a search for long-lived neutralinos decaying into a photon and an invisible particle, a signature associated with gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking in supersymmetric models. The analysis is based on a 4.9 inverse femtobarn sample of proton-proton collisions at 1as = 7 TeV, collected with the CMS detector at the LHC. The missing transverse energy and the time of arrival of the photon at the electromagnetic calorimeter are used to search for an excess of events over the expected background. No significant excess is observed, and lower limits at the 95% confidence level are obtained on the mass of the lightest neutralino, m(neutralino) > 220 GeV (for c tau 6000 mm (for m(neutralino) < 150 GeV)

Search for heavy resonances in the W/Z-tagged dijet mass spectrum in pp collisions at 7 TeV

A search has been made for massive resonances decaying into a quark and a vector boson, qW or qZ, or a pair of vector bosons, WW, WZ, or ZZ, where each vector boson decays to hadronic final states. This search is based on a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb 121 of proton\u2013proton collisions collected in the CMS experiment at the LHC in 2011 at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV. For sufficiently heavy resonances the decay products of each vector boson are merged into a single jet, and the event effectively has a dijet topology. The background from QCD dijet events is reduced using recently developed techniques that resolve jet substructure. A 95% CL lower limit is set on the mass of excited quark resonances decaying into qW (qZ) at 2.38 TeV (2.15 TeV) and upper limits are set on the cross section for resonances decaying to qW, qZ, WW, WZ, or ZZ final states