Unexpectedly high burden of rotavirus gastroenteritis in very young infants

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The highest incidence of rotavirus gastroenteritis has generally been reported in children 6-24 months of age. Young infants are thought to be partially protected by maternal antibodies acquired transplacentally or via breast milk. The purpose of our study was to assess the age distribution of children with confirmed community-acquired rotavirus gastroenteritis presenting to an urban referral hospital.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Children presenting to The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia with acute gastroenteritis have been monitored for the presence of rotavirus antigen in the stool by ELISA (followed by genotyping if ELISA-positive) since the 1994-95 epidemic season.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Over the last 12 rotavirus seasons prior to the introduction of the pentavalent rotavirus vaccine in 2006, stool specimens from 1646 patients tested positive for community-acquired rotavirus infection. Gender or age was not recorded in 6 and 5 cases, respectively. Overall, 58% of the cases occurred in boys. G1 was the predominant VP7 serotype, accounting for 72% of cases. The median (IQR) age was 11 (5-21) months. A total of 790 (48%) cases occurred in children outside the commonly quoted peak age range, with 27% in infants <6 months of age and 21% in children >24 months of age. A total of 220 (13%) cases occurred during the first 3 months of life, and the highest number of episodes per month of age [97 (6%)] was observed during the second month of life.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The incidence of community-acquired rotavirus gastroenteritis monitored over 12 seasons in the prevaccine era at a major university hospital was nearly constant for each month of age during the first year of life, revealing an unexpectedly high incidence of symptomatic rotavirus disease in infants <3 months old. A sizeable fraction of cases occurred in children too young to have been vaccinated according to current recommendations.</p

The Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) - 2018 Summary Report

The Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) is a TeV-scale high-luminosity linear $e^+e^-$ collider under development at CERN. Following the CLIC conceptual design published in 2012, this report provides an overview of the CLIC project, its current status, and future developments. It presents the CLIC physics potential and reports on design, technology, and implementation aspects of the accelerator and the detector. CLIC is foreseen to be built and operated in stages, at centre-of-mass energies of 380 GeV, 1.5 TeV and 3 TeV, respectively. CLIC uses a two-beam acceleration scheme, in which 12 GHz accelerating structures are powered via a high-current drive beam. For the first stage, an alternative with X-band klystron powering is also considered. CLIC accelerator optimisation, technical developments and system tests have resulted in an increased energy efficiency (power around 170 MW) for the 380 GeV stage, together with a reduced cost estimate at the level of 6 billion CHF. The detector concept has been refined using improved software tools. Significant progress has been made on detector technology developments for the tracking and calorimetry systems. A wide range of CLIC physics studies has been conducted, both through full detector simulations and parametric studies, together providing a broad overview of the CLIC physics potential. Each of the three energy stages adds cornerstones of the full CLIC physics programme, such as Higgs width and couplings, top-quark properties, Higgs self-coupling, direct searches, and many precision electroweak measurements. The interpretation of the combined results gives crucial and accurate insight into new physics, largely complementary to LHC and HL-LHC. The construction of the first CLIC energy stage could start by 2026. First beams would be available by 2035, marking the beginning of a broad CLIC physics programme spanning 25-30 years

Mechanical and microstructural testing of wire and arc additively manufactured sheet material

Wire and arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) is a method of 3D printing that enables large elements to be built, with reasonable printing times and costs. There are, however, uncertainties relating to the structural performance of WAAM material, including the basic mechanical properties, the degree of anisotropy, the influence of the as-built geometry and the variability in response. Towards addressing this knowledge gap, a comprehensive series of tensile tests on WAAM stainless steel was conducted; the results are presented herein. As-built and machined coupons were tested to investigate the influence of the geometrical irregularity on the stress-strain characteristics, while material anisotropy was explored by testing coupons produced at different angles to the printing orientation. Non-contact measurement techniques were employed to determine the geometric properties and deformation fields of the specimens, while sophisticated analysis methods were used for post processing the test data. The material response revealed a significant degree of anisotropy, explained by the existence of a strong crystallographic texture, uncovered by means of electron backscatter diffraction. Finally, the effective mechanical properties of the as-built material were shown to be strongly dependent on the geometric variability; simple geometric measures were therefore developed to characterise the key aspects of the observed behaviour