Infectious complications of abortion

This article reviews the infectious complications of abortion (both spontaneous and induced) and the management of this condition. The key points are: (1) Making abortion illegal does not reduce its incidence or prevalence; rather, it only makes abortions unsafe, increasing the likelihood of infectious complications. (2) Timely recognition of developing sepsis in the pregnant patient is critical. This requires constant vigilance and a high index of suspicion. (3) Rapid intravenous administration of broad-spectrum antibiotics targeted to the likely intrauterine source of infection as soon as sepsis is diagnosed is critical to prevent severe sepsis, septic shock, and multisystem organ failure. (4) The mainstay of treatment is prompt evacuation of any residual products of conception from within the uterine cavity under broad-spectrum antibiotic cover targeting the likely intrauterine source of infection. (5) Prompt engagement of specialists in both critical care and obstetrics-gynecology is necessary to optimize outcomes in patients with septic abortion

Impact of a double catastrophe, war and COVID-19, on health service utilization of a tertiary care hospital in Tigray: An interrupted time-series study

BACKGROUND: In developing nations with fragile healthcare systems, the effect of war is likely to be much worse than it would be in more developed countries. The presence of COVID-19 will also likely exacerbate the war\u27s impact. This study set out to determine the effect of armed conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic on health service utilization at Ayder Comprehensive Specialized Hospital, in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. METHODS: An interrupted time-series study design was used to analyze patient visits over forty-eight consecutive months (from July 2017 to June 2021) at inpatient, outpatient, and emergency departments. Data were analyzed using segmented regression analysis with a defined outcome of level and trend changes in the number of patient visits. In addition, negative binomial regression analysis was also used to estimate the impact of both COVID-19 and the war on patient flow. RESULTS: There were 59,935 admissions, 876,533 outpatient visits, and 127,872 emergency room visits. The effect of COVID-19 was seen as soon as the Tigray regional government imposed comprehensive restrictions. Immediately after COVID-19 appeared, all the service areas exhibited a significant monthly drop in visits; [-35.6% (95% CI: -48.2%, -23.1%)] for inpatient, [-60.6% (95% CI: -71.6%, -49.5%)] for outpatient, and [-44.1% (95% CI: -59.5%, -28.7%)] for emergency department visits. The impact of the war became apparent after a lag time of one month. Controlling the effects of time and COVID-19, the war led to a significant fall in inpatient visits [-44.3% (95% CI: -67.2%, -21.5%)], outpatients [-52.1% (95% CI: -82.7%, -21.5%)], and emergency-room attendances [-45.0% (95% CI: -74.8%, -15.2%)]. An upward trend in outpatient flow was observed after the war [1,219.4 (95% CI: 326.1, 2,112.8)]. CONCLUSIONS: The present study has clearly indicated that the war and COVID-19 have led to a large reduction in admissions, outpatient attendance, and emergency department visits. The evidence from this study suggests that due to this double catastrophe, thousands of patients could not gain access to healthcare, with probable negative consequences. Governments and organizations should implement measures to buttress the healthcare system to maintain pre-war status of service

Temporal variability and statistics of the Strehl ratio in adaptive-optics images

We have investigated the temporal variability and statistics of the "instantaneous" Strehl ratio. The observations were carried out with the 3.63-m AEOS telescope equipped with a high-order adaptive optics system. In this paper Strehl ratio is defined as the peak intensity of a single short exposure. We have also studied the behaviour of the phase variance computed on the reconstructed wavefronts. We tested the Marechal approximation and used it to explain the observed negative skewness of the Strehl ratio distribution. The estimate of the phase variance is shown to fit a three-parameter Gamma distribution model. We show that simple scaling of the reconstructed wavefronts has a large impact on the shape of the Strehl ratio distribution.Comment: submitted to PAS

The local FIR Galaxy Colour-Luminosity distribution: A reference for BLAST, and Herschel/SPIRE sub-mm surveys

We measure the local galaxy far-infrared (FIR) 60-to-100 um colour-luminosity distribution using an all-sky IRAS survey. This distribution is an important reference for the next generation of FIR--submillimetre surveys that have and will conduct deep extra-galactic surveys at 250--500 um. With the peak in dust-obscured star-forming activity leading to present-day giant ellipticals now believed to occur in sub-mm galaxies near z~2.5, these new FIR--submillimetre surveys will directly sample the SEDs of these distant objects at rest-frame FIR wavelengths similar to those at which local galaxies were observed by IRAS. We have taken care to correct for temperature bias and evolution effects in our IRAS 60 um-selected sample. We verify that our colour-luminosity distribution is consistent with measurements of the local FIR luminosity function, before applying it to the higher-redshift Universe. We compare our colour-luminosity correlation with recent dust-temperature measurements of sub-mm galaxies and find evidence for pure luminosity evolution of the form (1+z)^3. This distribution will be useful for the development of evolutionary models for BLAST and SPIRE surveys as it provides a statistical distribution of rest-frame dust temperatures for galaxies as a function of luminosity.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures. MNRAS in press. This revision matches final published version. Fixes typos in footnote 1 and equation 8. Minor modifications to text and references. Final results unchange

Implementing Primordial Binaries in Simulations of Star Cluster Formation with a Hybrid MHD and Direct N-Body Method

The fraction of stars in binary systems within star clusters is important for their evolution, but what proportion of binaries form by dynamical processes after initial stellar accretion remains unknown. In previous work, we showed that dynamical interactions alone produced too few low-mass binaries compared to observations. We therefore implement an initial population of binaries in the coupled MHD and direct N-body star cluster formation code Torch. We compare simulations with, and without, initial binary populations and follow the dynamical evolution of the binary population in both sets of simulations, finding that both dynamical formation and destruction of binaries take place. Even in the first few million years of star formation, we find that an initial population of binaries is needed at all masses to reproduce observed binary fractions for binaries with mass ratios above the $q \geq 0.1$ detection limit. Our simulations also indicate that dynamical interactions in the presence of gas during cluster formation modify the initial distributions towards binaries with smaller primary masses, larger mass ratios, smaller semi-major axes and larger eccentricities. Systems formed dynamically do not have the same properties as the initial systems, and systems formed dynamically in the presence of an initial population of binaries differ from those formed in simulations with single stars only. Dynamical interactions during the earliest stages of star cluster formation are important for determining the properties of binary star systems.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figures, submitted to MNRAS and edited to address positive referee's repor

Emission-Line Diagnostics of the Central Engines of Weak-Line Radio Galaxies

A handful of well-studied Weak-Line Radio Galaxies (WLRGs) have been traditionally classified as Low Ionization Nuclear Emission-line Regions (LINERs), suggesting that these two groups of AGNs might be related. In this paper, we present new optical emission-line measurements for twenty Weak-Line Radio Galaxies which we supplement with measurements for an additional four from the literature. Classifying these objects by their emission-line ratios, we find that 50% of the objects are robustly classified as LINERs while an additional 25% are likely to be LINERs. Photoionization calculations show that the Spectral Energy Distribution of the well-studied WLRG 3C 270 (NGC 4261) is able to produce the observed emission-line ratios, but only if the UV emission seen by the narrow emission-line gas is significantly higher than that observed, implying A_V = 2.5-4.2 magnitudes along our line of sight to the nucleus. From the photoionization calculations, we find that the emission-line gas must have an ionization parameter between 10^-3.5 and 10^-4.0 and a wide range in hydrogen density (10^2-10^6 cm^-3) to reproduce the measured emission-line ratios, similar to the properties inferred for the emission-line gas in LINERs. Thus, we find that properties of the emission-line gas as well as the underlying excitation mechanism are indeed similar in LINERs and WLRGs. By extension, the central engines of accretion-powered LINERs and WLRGs, which do host an accreting black hole, may be qualitatively similar.Comment: 28 pages, 5 tables, 3 figures, accepted to Ap

A Monte Carlo Approach to Evolution of the Far-Infrared Luminosity Function with BLAST

We constrain the evolution of the rest-frame far-infrared (FIR) luminosity function out to high redshift, by combining several pieces of complementary information provided by the deep Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Submillimeter Telescope surveys at 250, 350 and 500 micron, as well as other FIR and millimetre data. Unlike most other phenomenological models, we characterise the uncertainties in our fitted parameters using Monte Carlo Markov Chains. We use a bivariate local luminosity function that depends only on FIR luminosity and 60-to-100 micron colour, along with a single library of galaxy spectral energy distributions indexed by colour, and apply simple luminosity and density evolution. We use the surface density of sources, Cosmic Infrared Background (CIB) measurements and redshift distributions of bright sources, for which identifications have been made, to constrain this model. The precise evolution of the FIR luminosity function across this crucial range has eluded studies at longer wavelengths (e.g., using SCUBA and MAMBO) and at shorter wavelengths (e.g., Spitzer), and should provide a key piece of information required for the study of galaxy evolution. Our adoption of Monte Carlo methods enables us not only to find the best-fit evolution model, but also to explore correlations between the fitted parameters. Our model-fitting approach allows us to focus on sources of tension coming from the combination of data-sets. We specifically find that our choice of parameterisation has difficulty fitting the combination of CIB measurements and redshift distribution of sources near 1 mm. Existing and future data sets will be able to dramatically improve the fits, as well as break strong degeneracies among the models. [abridged]Comment: 20 pages, 14 figures, accepted to MNRA

Towards a Criminology of the Domestic

Criminology has paid insufficient attention to the ‘domestic’ arena, as a locale that is being reconfigured through technological and social developments in ways that require us to reconsider offending and victimisation. This article addresses this lacuna. We take up Campbell's (2016) challenge that criminology needs to develop more sophisticated models of place and space, particularly in relation to changing patterns of consumption and leisure activity and the opportunities to offend in relation to these from within the domestic arena

Mechanism for microbial population collapse in a fluctuating resource environment.

Managing trade-offs through gene regulation is believed to confer resilience to a microbial community in a fluctuating resource environment. To investigate this hypothesis, we imposed a fluctuating environment that required the sulfate-reduce

Search for squarks and gluinos in events with isolated leptons, jets and missing transverse momentum at s√=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The results of a search for supersymmetry in final states containing at least one isolated lepton (electron or muon), jets and large missing transverse momentum with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider are reported. The search is based on proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy s√=8 TeV collected in 2012, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20 fb−1. No significant excess above the Standard Model expectation is observed. Limits are set on supersymmetric particle masses for various supersymmetric models. Depending on the model, the search excludes gluino masses up to 1.32 TeV and squark masses up to 840 GeV. Limits are also set on the parameters of a minimal universal extra dimension model, excluding a compactification radius of 1/R c = 950 GeV for a cut-off scale times radius (ΛR c) of approximately 30