The new automated daily mortality surveillance system

The experience reported in an earlier Eurosurveillance issue on a fast method to evaluate the impact of the 2003 heatwave on mortality in Portugal, generated a daily mortality surveillance system (VDM) that has been operating ever since jointly with the Portuguese Heat Health Watch Warning System. This work describes the VDM system and how it evolved to become an automated system operating year-round, and shows briefly its potential using mortality data from January 2006 to June 2009 collected by the system itself. The new system has important advantages such as: rapid information acquisition, completeness (the entire population is included), lightness (very little information is exchanged, date of death, age, sex, place of death registration). It allows rapid detection of impacts (within five days) and allows a quick preliminary quantification of impacts that usually took several years to be done. These characteristics make this system a powerful tool for public health action. The VDM system also represents an example of inter-institutional cooperation, bringing together organisations from two different ministries, Health and Justice, aiming at improving knowledge about the mortality in the population

Endogenous production of ghrelin and beneficial effects of its exogenous administration in monocrotaline-induced pulmonary hypertension

We investigated the endogenous production of ghrelin as well as cardiac and pulmonary vascular effects of its administration in a rat model of monocrotaline (MCT)-induced pulmonary hypertension (PH). Adult Wistar rats randomly received a subcutaneous injection of MCT (60 mg/kg) or an equal volume of vehicle. One week later, animals were randomly assigned to receive a subcutaneous injection of ghrelin (100 mug/kg bid for 2 wk) or saline. Four groups were analyzed: normal rats treated with ghrelin (n = 7), normal rats injected with saline (n = 7), MCT rats treated with ghrelin (n = 9), and MCT rats injected with saline (n = 9). At 22-25 days, right ( RV) and left ventricular (LV) pressures were measured, heart and lungs were weighted, and samples were collected for histological and molecular analysis. Endogenous production of ghrelin was almost abolished in normal rats treated with ghrelin. In MCT-treated animals, pulmonary expression of ghrelin was preserved, and RV myocardial expression was increased more than 20 times. In these animals, exogenous administration of ghrelin attenuated PH, RV hypertrophy, wall thickening of peripheral pulmonary arteries, and RV diastolic disturbances and ameliorated LV dysfunction, without affecting its endogenous production. In conclusion, decreased tissular expression of ghrelin in healthy animals but not in PH animals suggests a negative feedback in the former that is lost in the latter. A selective increase of ghrelin mRNA levels in the RV of animals with PH might indicate distinct regulation of its cardiac expression. Finally, ghrelin administration attenuated MCT-induced PH, pulmonary vascular remodeling, and RV hypertrophy, indicating that it may modulate PH

The Soft-Collinear Bootstrap: N=4 Yang-Mills Amplitudes at Six and Seven Loops

Infrared divergences in scattering amplitudes arise when a loop momentum $\ell$ becomes collinear with a massless external momentum $p$. In gauge theories, it is known that the L-loop logarithm of a planar amplitude has much softer infrared singularities than the L-loop amplitude itself. We argue that planar amplitudes in N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory enjoy softer than expected behavior as $\ell \parallel p$ already at the level of the integrand. Moreover, we conjecture that the four-point integrand can be uniquely determined, to any loop-order, by imposing the correct soft-behavior of the logarithm together with dual conformal invariance and dihedral symmetry. We use these simple criteria to determine explicit formulae for the four-point integrand through seven-loops, finding perfect agreement with previously known results through five-loops. As an input to this calculation we enumerate all four-point dual conformally invariant (DCI) integrands through seven-loops, an analysis which is aided by several graph-theoretic theorems we prove about general DCI integrands at arbitrary loop-order. The six- and seven-loop amplitudes receive non-zero contributions from 229 and 1873 individual DCI diagrams respectively.Comment: 27 pages, 48 figures, detailed results including PDF and Mathematica files available at http://goo.gl/qIKe8 v2: minor corrections v3: figure 7 corrected, Lemma 2 remove

Gauge-independent MS‾\overline{MS} renormalization in the 2HDM

We present a consistent renormalization scheme for the CP-conserving Two-Higgs-Doublet Model based on $\overline{MS}$ renormalization of the mixing angles and the soft-$Z_2$-symmetry-breaking scale $M_{sb}$ in the Higgs sector. This scheme requires to treat tadpoles fully consistently in all steps of the calculation in order to provide gauge-independent $S$-matrix elements. We show how bare physical parameters have to be defined and verify the gauge independence of physical quantities by explicit calculations in a general $R_{\xi}$-gauge. The procedure is straightforward and applicable to other models with extended Higgs sectors. In contrast to the proposed scheme, the $\overline{MS}$ renormalization of the mixing angles combined with popular on-shell renormalization schemes gives rise to gauge-dependent results already at the one-loop level. We present explicit results for electroweak NLO corrections to selected processes in the appropriately renormalized Two-Higgs-Doublet Model and in particular discuss their scale dependence.Comment: 52 pages, PDFLaTeX, PDF figures, JHEP version with Eq. (5.23) correcte

Circulation of Different Lineages of Dengue Virus 2, Genotype American/Asian in Brazil: Dynamics and Molecular and Phylogenetic Characterization

The American/Asian genotype of Dengue virus type 2 (DENV-2) was introduced into the Americas in the 80′s. Although there is no data showing when this genotype was first introduced into Brazil, it was first detected in Brazil in 1990. After which the virus spread throughout the country and major epidemics occurred in 1998, 2007/08 and 2010. In this study we sequenced 12 DENV-2 genomes obtained from serum samples of patients with dengue fever residing in São José do Rio Preto, São Paulo (SJRP/SP), Brazil, in 2008. The whole open reading frame or envelope sequences were used to perform phylogenetic, phylogeographic and evolutionary analyses. Isolates from SJRP/SP were grouped within one lineage (BR3) close to isolates from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Isolates from SJRP were probably introduced there at least in 2007, prior to its detection in the 2008 outbreak. DENV-2 circulation in Brazil is characterized by the introduction, displacement and circulation of three well-defined lineages in different times, most probably from the Caribbean. Thirty-seven unique amino acid substitutions were observed among the lineages, including seven amino acid differences in domains I to III of the envelope protein. Moreover, we dated here, for the first time, the introduction of American/Asian genotype into Brazil (lineage BR1) to 1988/89, followed by the introduction of lineages BR2 (1998–2000) and BR3 (2003–05). Our results show a delay between the introduction and detection of DENV-2 lineages in Brazil, reinforcing the importance and need for surveillance programs to detect and trace the evolution of these viruses. Additionally, Brazilian DENV-2 differed in genetic diversity, date of introduction and geographic origin and distribution in Brazil, and these are important factors for the evolution, dynamics and control of dengue.Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq Grant )Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São PauloFundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG grant

Quantum magnetism and criticality

Magnetic insulators have proved to be fertile ground for studying new types of quantum many body states, and I survey recent experimental and theoretical examples. The insights and methods transfer also to novel superconducting and metallic states. Of particular interest are critical quantum states, sometimes found at quantum phase transitions, which have gapless excitations with no particle- or wave-like interpretation, and control a significant portion of the finite temperature phase diagram. Remarkably, their theory is connected to holographic descriptions of Hawking radiation from black holes.Comment: 39 pages, 10 figures, review article for non-specialists; (v2) added clarifications and references; (v3) minor corrections; (v4) added footnote on hydrodynamic long-time tail

Electroweak corrections to W-boson pair production at the LHC

Vector-boson pair production ranks among the most important Standard-Model benchmark processes at the LHC, not only in view of on-going Higgs analyses. These processes may also help to gain a deeper understanding of the electroweak interaction in general, and to test the validity of the Standard Model at highest energies. In this work, the first calculation of the full one-loop electroweak corrections to on-shell W-boson pair production at hadron colliders is presented. We discuss the impact of the corrections on the total cross section as well as on relevant differential distributions. We observe that corrections due to photon-induced channels can be amazingly large at energies accessible at the LHC, while radiation of additional massive vector bosons does not influence the results significantly.Comment: 29 pages, 15 figures, 4 tables; some references and comments on \gamma\gamma -> WW added; matches version published in JHE