Postoperative gynecologic oncology admissions to intensive care unit in the tertiary care center: an eight-year retrospective study

Objectives: The purpose of the study was to analyze the cohort of gynecologic oncology patients admitted to intensive care unit (ICU). Material and methods: We conducted a retrospective study including all ICU postoperative admissions related to adult female patients with gynecological malignancies diagnosis treated in the tertiary care center between Jan 1, 2007, and Dec 31, 2014. Results: A total of 666 women were admitted to ICU. It accounted for 2 % of all tertiary care center gynecology admissions. The mean age was 62.4 ± 12.7 years, and the mean length of stay was 8.9 ± 9.6 days. One hundred seventeen women (17.5%) required mechanical ventilation, and 220 women (33%) vasoactive drug infusion. The most common malignancy in the observed cohort of patients was ovarian cancer 326 (48.9%), followed by endometrial cancer 206 (30.9%). The patients with respiratory or circulatory insufficiency were older (mean age 64.9 ± 11.8 vs 60.8 ± 13; p < 0.001) and had longer mean ICU stay (13.1 ± 13.9 vs 6.3 ± 3.5 days; p < 0.001). We found a decrease in ICU admissions of patients without respiratory and circulatory failure after elective major surgery (Spearman: r = –1, p = 0.017). We report 21 patients’ deaths (3.1% in the cohort; 0.06% of all admissions). Conclusions: Ovarian cancer patients were the largest group in the study, representing almost half of ICU admissions in the gynecology oncologic population. Older age was the risk factor of respiratory and circulatory insufficiency. Availability of intermediate care facilities could reduce ICU admissions after major surgery

Advantages of Al based GEM detector aimed at plasma soft-semi hard X-ray radiation imaging

Development of gaseous detectors, more specifically Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) based detectors, for application at tokamak plasma radiation monitoring/imaging in Soft−Semi Hard X-ray (S−SH) region is an ongoing research activity aiming to deliver valuable information on plasma shape, magnetic configuration, non-axisymmetry phenomena of the plasma, etc. Wide radiation range and brightness of plasma radiation impose some restrictions on choice of materials in the detecting chamber, as their interaction with the incident radiation may disrupt original signals. This work proposes usage of aluminum as GEM foils electrodes for the first time. The detector based on these foils was constructed and examined. The operational characteristics and spectral capabilities of such detector were compared with the ones based on the standard (commonly used) copper GEM foils. The laboratory tests were performed using X-ray tube and 55Fe sources to examine detectors’ capabilities in energy-resolved imaging. Additionally, simulations of origin and number of the generated electrons, which determine the detector signal, were performed for Al and Cu GEM foils for a wide energy range of incident photons. The experimental and modelling data demonstrated that Cu based GEM detector produces higher parasitic signal than Al one necessitating total elimination of copper from detector’s chamber

Zero-Suppression Trigger Mode for GEM detector measurement system

A novel approach to a trigger mode in the GasElectron Multiplier (GEM) detector readout system is presented.The system is already installed at WEST tokamak. The articlebriefly describes the architecture of the GEM detector and themeasurement system. Currently the system can work in twotrigger modes: Global Trigger and Local Trigger. All trigger processingblocks are parts of the Charge Signal Sequencer modulewhich is responsible for transferring data to the PC. Therefore,the article presents structure of the Sequencer with details aboutbasic blocks, theirs functionality and output data configuration.The Sequencer with the trigger algorithms is implemented inan FPGA chip from Xilinx. Global Trigger, which is a defaultmode for the system, is not efficient and has limitations due tostoring much data without any information. Local trigger whichis under tests, removes data redundancy and is constructed tosend only valid data, but the rest of the software, especially on thePC side, is still under development. Therefore authors proposethe trigger mode which combines functionality of two existingmodes. The proposed trigger, called Zero Suppression Trigger, iscompatible with the existing interfaces of the PC software, butis also capable to verify and filter incoming signals and transferonly recognized events. The results of the implementation andsimulation are presented

Soft X-ray diagnostic system upgrades and data quality monitoring features for tokamak usage

The validation of the measurements quality after on-site diagnostic system installation is necessary in order to provide reliable data and output results. This topic is often neglected or not discussed in detail regarding measurement systems. In the paper recently installed system for soft X-ray measurements is described in introduction. The system is based on multichannel GEM detector and the data is collected and sent in special format to PC unit for further postprocessing. The unique feature of the system is the ability to compute final data based on raw data only. The raw data is selected upon algorithms by FPGA units. The FPGAs are connected to the analog front-end of the system and able to register all of the signals and collect the useful data. The interface used for data streaming is PCIe Gen2 x4 for each FPGA, therefore high throughput of the system is ensured. The paper then discusses the properties of the installation environment of the system and basic functionality mode. New features are described, both in theoretical and practical approach. New modes correspond to the data quality monitoring features implemented for the system, that provide extra information to the postprocessing stage and final algorithms. In the article is described also additional mode to perform hardware simulation of signals in a tokamak-like environment using FPGAs. The summary describes the implemented features of the data quality monitoring features and additional modes of the system

Ultra-Rare Mutation in Long-Range Enhancer Predisposes to Thyroid Carcinoma with High Penetrance

Peer reviewe

Multidifferential study of identified charged hadron distributions in ZZ-tagged jets in proton-proton collisions at s=\sqrt{s}=13 TeV

Jet fragmentation functions are measured for the first time in proton-proton collisions for charged pions, kaons, and protons within jets recoiling against a $Z$ boson. The charged-hadron distributions are studied longitudinally and transversely to the jet direction for jets with transverse momentum 20 $< p_{\textrm{T}} < 100$ GeV and in the pseudorapidity range $2.5 < \eta < 4$. The data sample was collected with the LHCb experiment at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.64 fb$^{-1}$. Triple differential distributions as a function of the hadron longitudinal momentum fraction, hadron transverse momentum, and jet transverse momentum are also measured for the first time. This helps constrain transverse-momentum-dependent fragmentation functions. Differences in the shapes and magnitudes of the measured distributions for the different hadron species provide insights into the hadronization process for jets predominantly initiated by light quarks.Comment: All figures and tables, along with machine-readable versions and any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-013.html (LHCb public pages

Study of the B−→Λc+Λˉc−K−B^{-} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} \bar{\Lambda}_{c}^{-} K^{-} decay

The decay $B^{-} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} \bar{\Lambda}_{c}^{-} K^{-}$ is studied in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5 $\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ collected by the LHCb experiment. In the $\Lambda_{c}^+ K^{-}$ system, the $\Xi_{c}(2930)^{0}$ state observed at the BaBar and Belle experiments is resolved into two narrower states, $\Xi_{c}(2923)^{0}$ and $\Xi_{c}(2939)^{0}$, whose masses and widths are measured to be $$m(\Xi_{c}(2923)^{0}) = 2924.5 \pm 0.4 \pm 1.1 \,\mathrm{MeV}, \\ m(\Xi_{c}(2939)^{0}) = 2938.5 \pm 0.9 \pm 2.3 \,\mathrm{MeV}, \\ \Gamma(\Xi_{c}(2923)^{0}) = \phantom{000}4.8 \pm 0.9 \pm 1.5 \,\mathrm{MeV},\\ \Gamma(\Xi_{c}(2939)^{0}) = \phantom{00}11.0 \pm 1.9 \pm 7.5 \,\mathrm{MeV},$$ where the first uncertainties are statistical and the second systematic. The results are consistent with a previous LHCb measurement using a prompt $\Lambda_{c}^{+} K^{-}$ sample. Evidence of a new $\Xi_{c}(2880)^{0}$ state is found with a local significance of $3.8\,\sigma$, whose mass and width are measured to be $2881.8 \pm 3.1 \pm 8.5\,\mathrm{MeV}$ and $12.4 \pm 5.3 \pm 5.8 \,\mathrm{MeV}$, respectively. In addition, evidence of a new decay mode $\Xi_{c}(2790)^{0} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} K^{-}$ is found with a significance of $3.7\,\sigma$. The relative branching fraction of $B^{-} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} \bar{\Lambda}_{c}^{-} K^{-}$ with respect to the $B^{-} \to D^{+} D^{-} K^{-}$ decay is measured to be $2.36 \pm 0.11 \pm 0.22 \pm 0.25$, where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second systematic and the third originates from the branching fractions of charm hadron decays.Comment: All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-028.html (LHCb public pages

Measurement of the ratios of branching fractions R(D∗)\mathcal{R}(D^{*}) and R(D0)\mathcal{R}(D^{0})

The ratios of branching fractions $\mathcal{R}(D^{*})\equiv\mathcal{B}(\bar{B}\to D^{*}\tau^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\tau})/\mathcal{B}(\bar{B}\to D^{*}\mu^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\mu})$ and $\mathcal{R}(D^{0})\equiv\mathcal{B}(B^{-}\to D^{0}\tau^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\tau})/\mathcal{B}(B^{-}\to D^{0}\mu^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\mu})$ are measured, assuming isospin symmetry, using a sample of proton-proton collision data corresponding to 3.0 fb${ }^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity recorded by the LHCb experiment during 2011 and 2012. The tau lepton is identified in the decay mode $\tau^{-}\to\mu^{-}\nu_{\tau}\bar{\nu}_{\mu}$. The measured values are $\mathcal{R}(D^{*})=0.281\pm0.018\pm0.024$ and $\mathcal{R}(D^{0})=0.441\pm0.060\pm0.066$, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic. The correlation between these measurements is $\rho=-0.43$. Results are consistent with the current average of these quantities and are at a combined 1.9 standard deviations from the predictions based on lepton flavor universality in the Standard Model.Comment: All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-039.html (LHCb public pages

Identification of genetic variants associated with Huntington's disease progression: a genome-wide association study

Background Huntington's disease is caused by a CAG repeat expansion in the huntingtin gene, HTT. Age at onset has been used as a quantitative phenotype in genetic analysis looking for Huntington's disease modifiers, but is hard to define and not always available. Therefore, we aimed to generate a novel measure of disease progression and to identify genetic markers associated with this progression measure. Methods We generated a progression score on the basis of principal component analysis of prospectively acquired longitudinal changes in motor, cognitive, and imaging measures in the 218 indivduals in the TRACK-HD cohort of Huntington's disease gene mutation carriers (data collected 2008–11). We generated a parallel progression score using data from 1773 previously genotyped participants from the European Huntington's Disease Network REGISTRY study of Huntington's disease mutation carriers (data collected 2003–13). We did a genome-wide association analyses in terms of progression for 216 TRACK-HD participants and 1773 REGISTRY participants, then a meta-analysis of these results was undertaken. Findings Longitudinal motor, cognitive, and imaging scores were correlated with each other in TRACK-HD participants, justifying use of a single, cross-domain measure of disease progression in both studies. The TRACK-HD and REGISTRY progression measures were correlated with each other (r=0·674), and with age at onset (TRACK-HD, r=0·315; REGISTRY, r=0·234). The meta-analysis of progression in TRACK-HD and REGISTRY gave a genome-wide significant signal (p=1·12 × 10−10) on chromosome 5 spanning three genes: MSH3, DHFR, and MTRNR2L2. The genes in this locus were associated with progression in TRACK-HD (MSH3 p=2·94 × 10−8 DHFR p=8·37 × 10−7 MTRNR2L2 p=2·15 × 10−9) and to a lesser extent in REGISTRY (MSH3 p=9·36 × 10−4 DHFR p=8·45 × 10−4 MTRNR2L2 p=1·20 × 10−3). The lead single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in TRACK-HD (rs557874766) was genome-wide significant in the meta-analysis (p=1·58 × 10−8), and encodes an aminoacid change (Pro67Ala) in MSH3. In TRACK-HD, each copy of the minor allele at this SNP was associated with a 0·4 units per year (95% CI 0·16–0·66) reduction in the rate of change of the Unified Huntington's Disease Rating Scale (UHDRS) Total Motor Score, and a reduction of 0·12 units per year (95% CI 0·06–0·18) in the rate of change of UHDRS Total Functional Capacity score. These associations remained significant after adjusting for age of onset. Interpretation The multidomain progression measure in TRACK-HD was associated with a functional variant that was genome-wide significant in our meta-analysis. The association in only 216 participants implies that the progression measure is a sensitive reflection of disease burden, that the effect size at this locus is large, or both. Knockout of Msh3 reduces somatic expansion in Huntington's disease mouse models, suggesting this mechanism as an area for future therapeutic investigation