Assessment of the Angolan (CHERRT) Mobile Laboratory Curriculum for Disaster and Pandemic Response

Introduction: As of April 5, 2020, the World Health Organization reported over one million confirmed cases and more than 62,000 confirmed coronavirus (COVID-19) deaths affecting 204 countries/ regions. The lack of COVID-19 testing capacity threatens the ability of both the United States (US) and low middle income countries (LMIC) to respond to this growing threat, The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness through participant self-assessment of a rapid response team (RRT) mobile laboratory curriculumMethods: We conducted a pre and post survey for the purpose of a process improvement assessment in Angola, involving 32 individuals. The survey was performed before and after a 14-day training workshop held in Luanda, Angola, in December 2019. A paired t-test was used to identify any significant change on six 7-point Likert scale questions with α< 0.05 (95% confidence interval).Results: All six of the questions –  1) “I feel confident managing a real laboratory sample test for Ebola or other highly contagious sample;” 2) “I feel safe working in the lab environment during a real scenario;” 3) “I feel as if I can appropriately manage a potentially highly contagious laboratory sample;” 4)“I feel that I can interpret a positive or negative sample during a suspected contagious outbreak;” 5) “I understand basic Biobubble/mobile laboratory concepts and procedures;” and 6) “I understand polymerase chain reaction (PCR) principles” – showed statistical significant change pre and post training. Additionally, the final two questions – “I can more effectively perform my role/position because of the training I received during this course;” and “This training was valuable”  – received high scores on the Likert scale.Conclusion: This Angolan RRT mobile laboratory training curriculum provides the nation of Angola with the confidence to rapidly respond and test at the national level a highly infectious contagion in the region and perform on-scene diagnostics. This mobile RRT laboratory provides a mobile and rapid diagnostic resource when epidemic/pandemic resource allocation may need to be prioritized based on confirmed disease prevalence

Photoelectron spectra of anionic sodium clusters from time-dependent density-functional theory in real-time

We calculate the excitation energies of small neutral sodium clusters in the framework of time-dependent density-functional theory. In the presented calculations, we extract these energies from the power spectra of the dipole and quadrupole signals that result from a real-time and real-space propagation. For comparison with measured photoelectron spectra, we use the ionic configurations of the corresponding single-charged anions. Our calculations clearly improve on earlier results for photoelectron spectra obtained from static Kohn-Sham eigenvalues

Evaluation of the Free Energy of Two-Dimensional Yang-Mills Theory

The free energy in the weak-coupling phase of two-dimensional Yang-Mills theory on a sphere for SO(N) and Sp(N) is evaluated in the 1/N expansion using the techniques of Gross and Matytsin. Many features of Yang-Mills theory are universal among different gauge groups in the large N limit, but significant differences arise in subleading order in 1/N.Comment: 10 pages; no figures; LaTe

Analytical solution of the Gross-Neveu model at finite density

Recent numerical calculations have shown that the ground state of the Gross-Neveu model at finite density is a crystal. Guided by these results, we can now present the analytical solution to this problem in terms of elliptic functions. The scalar potential is the superpotential of the non-relativistic Lame Hamiltonian. This model can also serve as analytically solvable toy model for a relativistic superconductor in the Larkin-Ovchinnikov-Fulde-Ferrell phase.Comment: 5 pages, no figures, revtex; vs2: appendix with analytical proof of self-consistency adde

Reactions of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon radical cations with model biological nucleophiles

The determination of gas-phase reactivity of a series of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) with nucleophiles is directed at achieving isomer differentiation through ion-molecule reactions and collisionally activated decomposition spectra. A series of PAH isomers form gas-phase [adduci — H]+ ions with the reagent nucleophiles pyridine and N-methylimidazole. Collisionally activated decomposition spectra of the [adduct — H]+ ions of the pyridine/PAH systems are dominated by products formed by losses of C5H4N, C5H5N (presumably neutral pyridine), and C5H6N. Collisional activation of PAH/N-methylimidazole [adduct — H]+ ions causes analogous losses of C4H5N2, C4H6N2 (presumably neutral N-methylimidazole), and C4H7N2. The relative abundances of the ions that result from these losses are highly isomer specific for N-methylimidazole but less so for pyridine. Furthermore, PAH/N-methylimidazole [adduct — H]+ ions undergo a series of metastableion decompositions that also provide highly isomer-specific information. The C4H7N2 (from PAH/N-methylimidazole product ions) and C5H6N (from PAH/pyridine product ions) losses tend to increase with the ΔHf of the PAH radical cation. In addition, it is shown that the fragmentation patterns of these gas-phase PAH/nucleophile adducts are similar to fragmentation patterns of PAH/nucleoside adducts generated in solution, which suggests that the structures of products formed in gas-phase reactions are similar to those produced in solution