417 research outputs found
The effect of the annealing temperature on the local distortion of LaCaMnO thin films
Mn -edge fluorescence data are presented for thin film samples (3000~\AA)
of Colossal Magnetoresistive (CMR) LaCaMnO: as-deposited,
and post-annealed at 1000 K and 1200 K. The local distortion is analyzed in
terms of three contributions: static, phonon, and an extra,
temperature-dependent, polaron term. The polaron distortion is very small for
the as-deposited sample and increases with the annealing temperature. In
contrast, the static distortion in the samples decreases with the annealing
temperature. Although the local structure of the as-deposited sample shows very
little temperature dependence, the change in resistivity with temperature is
the largest of these three thin film samples. The as-deposited sample also has
the highest magnetoresistance (MR), which indicates some other mechanism may
also contribute to the transport properties of CMR samples. We also discuss the
relationship between local distortion and the magnetization of the sample.Comment: 11 pages of Preprint format, 8 figures in one tar fil
Time trends in access to smoking cessation support for people with depression or severe mental illness: a cohort study in English primary care
Objectives: To investigate delivery of smoking cessation interventions, recorded quit attempts and successful quitting rates within primary care in smokers with depression or severe mental illness (SMI) compared with those without.
Design: Longitudinal cohort study using primary healthcare records.
Setting: English primary care.
Participants: 882 849 patients registered with participating practices recorded as current smokers during 2007–2014, including three groups: (1) 13 078 with SMI, (2) 55 630 with no SMI but recent depression and (3) 814 141 with no SMI nor recent depression.
Outcomes: Recorded advice to quit smoking, referrals to smoking cessation services, prescriptions for smoking cessation medication, recorded quit attempts and changes of smoking status.
Results: The majority (>70%) of smokers had recorded smoking cessation advice. This was consistently higher in those with SMI than the other cohorts of patients, although the gap greatly reduced in more recent years. Increases in smoking cessation advice over time were not accompanied by increases in recorded attempts to quit or changes of smoking status. Overall nicotine replacement therapy prescribing by general practitioners (GPs) was higher in those with SMI (10.1%) and depression (8.7%) than those without (5.9%), but a downward time trend was observed in all groups. Bupropion and varenicline prescribing was very low and lower for those with SMI. Few smokers (<5%) had referrals to stop smoking services, though this increased over time, but no significant differences were observed between those with and without mental health problems.
Conclusions: There was no evidence of consistent inequalities in access to GP-delivered smoking cessation interventions for people with mental health conditions. Smoking cessation advice was widely reported as taking place in all groups. In order to address the widening gap in smoking prevalence in those with poor mental health compared with those without, the emphasis should be on addressing the quality of advice and support given
Burden of lymphedema in long-term breast cancer survivors by race and age
Background: Risk assessment for breast cancer–related lymphedema has emphasized upper-limb symptoms and treatment-related risk factors. This article examined breast cancer–related lymphedema after surgery, overall and in association with broader demographic and clinical features. Methods: The Carolina Breast Cancer Study phase 3 followed participants for breast cancer–related lymphedema from baseline (on average, 5 months after breast cancer diagnosis) to 7 years after diagnosis. Among 2645 participants, 552 self-reported lymphedema cases were identified. Time-to-lymphedema curves and inverse probability weighted conditional Cox proportional hazards model were used to evaluate whether demographics and clinical features were associated with breast cancer–related lymphedema. Results: Point prevalence of breast cancer–related lymphedema was 6.8% at baseline, and 19.9% and 23.8% at 2 and 7 years after diagnosis, respectively. Most cases had lymphedema in the arm (88%-93%), whereas 14% to 27% presented in the trunk and/or breast. Beginning approximately 10 months after diagnosis, younger Black women had the highest risk of breast cancer–related lymphedema and older non-Black women had the lowest risk. Positive lymph node status, larger tumor size (>5 cm), and estrogen receptor–negative breast cancer, as well as established risk factors such as higher body mass index, removal of more than five lymph nodes, mastectomy, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, were significantly associated with increased hazard (1.5- to 3.5-fold) of lymphedema. Conclusions: Findings highlight that hazard of breast cancer–related lymphedema differs by demographic characteristics and clinical features. These factors could be used to identify those at greatest need of lymphedema prevention and early intervention. Lay summary: In this study, the aim was to investigate breast cancer–related lymphedema (BCRL) burden. This study found that risk of BCRL differs by race, age, and other characteristics
Optical absorption and thermoluminescence studies in 100MeV swift heavy ion irradiated CaF2 crystals
D* Production in Deep Inelastic Scattering at HERA
This paper presents measurements of D^{*\pm} production in deep inelastic
scattering from collisions between 27.5 GeV positrons and 820 GeV protons. The
data have been taken with the ZEUS detector at HERA. The decay channel
(+ c.c.) has been used in the study. The
cross section for inclusive D^{*\pm} production with
and is 5.3 \pms 1.0 \pms 0.8 nb in the kinematic region
{ GeV and }. Differential cross
sections as functions of p_T(D^{*\pm}), and are
compared with next-to-leading order QCD calculations based on the photon-gluon
fusion production mechanism. After an extrapolation of the cross section to the
full kinematic region in p_T(D^{*\pm}) and (D^{*\pm}), the charm
contribution to the proton structure function is
determined for Bjorken between 2 10 and 5 10.Comment: 17 pages including 4 figure
Observation of Scaling Violations in Scaled Momentum Distributions at HERA
Charged particle production has been measured in deep inelastic scattering
(DIS) events over a large range of and using the ZEUS detector. The
evolution of the scaled momentum, , with in the range 10 to 1280
, has been investigated in the current fragmentation region of the Breit
frame. The results show clear evidence, in a single experiment, for scaling
violations in scaled momenta as a function of .Comment: 21 pages including 4 figures, to be published in Physics Letters B.
Two references adde
Author Correction: A chickpea genetic variation map based on the sequencing of 3,366 genomes
In Extended Data Fig. 1 of this Article, the labels ‘Market class’ and ‘Biological status’ were inadvertently swapped. In the corresponding figure legend, “Track 1: Biological status; Track 2: Market class;” should have been “Track 1: Market class; Track 2: Biological status;”. The original Article has been corrected online
Common variants near MC4R are associated with fat mass, weight and risk of obesity.
To identify common variants influencing body mass index (BMI), we analyzed genome-wide association data from 16,876 individuals of European descent. After previously reported variants in FTO, the strongest association signal (rs17782313, P = 2.9 x 10(-6)) mapped 188 kb downstream of MC4R (melanocortin-4 receptor), mutations of which are the leading cause of monogenic severe childhood-onset obesity. We confirmed the BMI association in 60,352 adults (per-allele effect = 0.05 Z-score units; P = 2.8 x 10(-15)) and 5,988 children aged 7-11 (0.13 Z-score units; P = 1.5 x 10(-8)). In case-control analyses (n = 10,583), the odds for severe childhood obesity reached 1.30 (P = 8.0 x 10(-11)). Furthermore, we observed overtransmission of the risk allele to obese offspring in 660 families (P (pedigree disequilibrium test average; PDT-avg) = 2.4 x 10(-4)). The SNP location and patterns of phenotypic associations are consistent with effects mediated through altered MC4R function. Our findings establish that common variants near MC4R influence fat mass, weight and obesity risk at the population level and reinforce the need for large-scale data integration to identify variants influencing continuous biomedical traits
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