9,865 research outputs found
The Rangelands Initiative of the International Land Coalition: Connecting, mobilising, influencing for more secure access to land and resources in pastoral areas
Susceptibility Provision Enhances Effective De-escalation (SPEED): utilizing rapid phenotypic susceptibility testing in Gram-negative bloodstream infections and its potential clinical impact
Abstract
Objectives
We evaluated the performance and time to result for pathogen identification (ID) and antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) of the Accelerate Phenoâ„¢ system (AXDX) compared with standard of care (SOC) methods. We also assessed the hypothetical improvement in antibiotic utilization if AXDX had been implemented.
Methods
Clinical samples from patients with monomicrobial Gram-negative bacteraemia were tested and compared between AXDX and the SOC methods of the VERIGENE® and Bruker MALDI Biotyper® systems for ID and the VITEK® 2 system for AST. Additionally, charts were reviewed to calculate theoretical times to antibiotic de-escalation, escalation and active and optimal therapy
Results
ID mean time was 21 h for MALDI-TOF MS, 4.4 h for VERIGENE® and 3.7 h for AXDX. AST mean time was 35 h for VITEK® 2 and 9.0 h for AXDX. For ID, positive percentage agreement was 95.9% and negative percentage agreement was 99.9%. For AST, essential agreement was 94.5% and categorical agreement was 93.5%. If AXDX results had been available to inform patient care, 25% of patients could have been put on active therapy sooner, while 78% of patients who had therapy optimized during hospitalization could have had therapy optimized sooner. Additionally, AXDX could have reduced time to de-escalation (16 versus 31 h) and escalation (19 versus 31 h) compared with SOC.
Conclusions
By providing fast and reliable ID and AST results, AXDX has the potential to improve antimicrobial utilization and enhance antimicrobial stewardship
Constraints on supersymmetry with light third family from LHC data
We present a re-interpretation of the recent ATLAS limits on supersymmetry in
channels with jets (with and without b-tags) and missing energy, in the context
of light third family squarks, while the first two squark families are
inaccessible at the 7 TeV run of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In contrast
to interpretations in terms of the high-scale based constrained minimal
supersymmetric standard model (CMSSM), we primarily use the low-scale
parametrisation of the phenomenological MSSM (pMSSM), and translate the limits
in terms of physical masses of the third family squarks. Side by side, we also
investigate the limits in terms of high-scale scalar non-universality, both
with and without low-mass sleptons. Our conclusion is that the limits based on
0-lepton channels are not altered by the mass-scale of sleptons, and can be
considered more or less model-independent.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables. Version published in JHE
Fermion masses and mixings in gauge theories
The recent evidence for neutrino oscillations stimulate us to discuss again
the problem of fermion masses and mixings in gauge theories. In the standard
model, several forms for quark mass matrices are equivalent. They become
ansatze within most extensions of the standard model, where also relations
between quark and lepton sectors may hold. In a seesaw framework, these
relations can constrain the scale of heavy neutrino mass, which is often
related to the scale of intermediate or unification gauge symmetry. As a
consequence, two main scenarios arise. Hierarchies of masses and mixings may be
explained by broken horizontal symmetries.Comment: 25 pages, RevTex, no figures. Few misprints corrected and two
references adde
Cumulant ratios and their scaling functions for Ising systems in strip geometries
We calculate the fourth-order cumulant ratio (proposed by Binder) for the
two-dimensional Ising model in a strip geometry L x oo. The Density Matrix
Renormalization Group method enables us to consider typical open boundary
conditions up to L=200. Universal scaling functions of the cumulant ratio are
determined for strips with parallel as well as opposing surface fields.Comment: 4 pages, RevTex, one .eps figure; references added, format change
Organization of Multinational Activities and Ownership Structure
We develop a model in which multinational investors decide about the modes of organization, the locations of production, and the markets to be served. Foreign investments are driven by market-seeking and cost-reducing motives. We further assume that investors face costs of control that vary among sectors and increase in distance. The results show that (i) production intensive sectors are more likely to operate a foreign business independent of the investment motive, (ii) that distance may have a non-monotonous effect on the likelihood of horizontal investments, and (iii) that globalization, if understood as reducing distance, leads to more integration
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