Observation of Top Quark Production in Proton-Nucleus Collisions

Peer reviewe

Assessing the Efficacy of a 28-Day Comprehensive Online Prostate Cancer Patient Empowerment Program (PC-PEP) in Facilitating Engagement of Prostate Cancer Patients in Their Survivorship Care: A Qualitative Study

A 28-day Prostate Cancer-Patient Empowerment Program (PC-PEP) developed through patient engagement was successful at promoting mental and physical health. Thirty prostate cancer patients from Halifax, Canada participated in the 28-day PC-PEP intervention in early 2019. PC-PEP encompassed daily patient education and empowerment videos, prescribed physical activities (including pelvic floor exercises), a mostly plant-based diet, stress reduction techniques, intimacy education, social connection, and support. Quantitative exit surveys and semi-structured interviews (conducted in focus groups of ten) were used to assess perceived factors that facilitated or impeded adherence to the program. The program received high praise from the patients and was deemed extremely useful by the participating men, who rated it 9 out of 10. Patients expressed that the multifaceted, online, home-based nature of the program helped them adhere to it better than they would have had to a single or less comprehensive intervention. Feedback from the participants indicated that the program, when viewed as a whole, was perceived as greater than the sum of its individual parts. Furthermore, the program addressed various issues, including emotional vulnerability and distress, physical fitness, urinary incontinence, challenges in expressing emotions, perceived lack of control over healthcare decisions, emotional fragility, and hesitancy to discuss prostate cancer-related matters in social settings. Patients highly (9.6/10) endorsed integrating the program into the standard care regimen from the very beginning of diagnosis. However, challenges such as work commitments were noted. Patients’ high endorsement of PC-PEP suggests that its implementation into the standard of care from day one of diagnosis may be warranted

The conservation status of the world’s reptiles

Effective and targeted conservation action requires detailed information about species, their distribution, systematics and ecology as well as the distribution of threat processes which affect them. Knowledge of reptilian diversity remains surprisingly disparate, and innovative means of gaining rapid insight into the status of reptiles are needed in order to highlight urgent conservation cases and inform environmental policy with appropriate biodiversity information in a timely manner. We present the first ever global analysis of extinction risk in reptiles, based on a random representative sample of 1500 species (16% of all currently known species). To our knowledge, our results provide the first analysis of the global conservation status and distribution patterns of reptiles and the threats affecting them, highlighting conservation priorities and knowledge gaps which need to be addressed urgently to ensure the continued survival of the world’s reptiles. Nearly one in five reptilian species are threatened with extinction, with another one in five species classed as Data Deficient. The proportion of threatened reptile species is highest in freshwater environments, tropical regions and on oceanic islands, while data deficiency was highest in tropical areas, such as Central Africa and Southeast Asia, and among fossorial reptiles. Our results emphasise the need for research attention to be focussed on tropical areas which are experiencing the most dramatic rates of habitat loss, on fossorial reptiles for which there is a chronic lack of data, and on certain taxa such as snakes for which extinction risk may currently be underestimated due to lack of population information. Conservation actions specifically need to mitigate the effects of human-induced habitat loss and harvesting, which are the predominant threats to reptiles

Measurement of double charmonium production in e(+)e(-) annihilations at root s=10.6 GeV

We study e(+)e(-)-> J/psi c ($) over bar by measuring the invariant mass distribution recoiling against fully reconstructed J/psi decays, using 124 fb(-1) of data collected at a center-of-mass energy of 10.6 GeV with the BABAR detector. We observe signals for eta(c)(1S), chi(c0), and eta(c)(2S) in the recoil mass distribution, thus confirming previous measurements. We measure sigma(e(+)e(-)-> J/psi+c (c) over bar )B(c (c) over bar ->> 2 charged) to be 17.6 +/- 2.8(stat)(-2.1)(+1.5)(syst) fb, 10.3 +/- 2.5(stat)(-1.8)(+1.4)(syst) fb, and 16.4 +/- 3.7(stat)(-3.0)(+2.4)(syst) fb with c (c) over bar=eta(c)(1S), chi(c0), and eta(c)(2S), respectively. RI Peters, Klaus/C-2728-2008; de Groot, Nicolo/A-2675-2009; Patrignani, Claudia/C-5223-2009; Lista, Luca/C-5719-2008; Bellini, Fabio/D-1055-2009; Roe, Natalie/A-8798-2012; Neri, Nicola/G-3991-2012; Monge, Maria Roberta/G-9127-201