Isolating electrons on superfluid helium

Electrons floating on the surface of superfluid helium have been suggested as promising mobile spin quantum bits (qubits). Transferring electrons extremely efficiently in a narrow channel structure with underlying gates has been demonstrated, showing no transfer error while clocking $10^9$ pixels in a 3-phase charge coupled device (CCD). While on average, one electron per channel was clocked, it is desirable to reliably obtain a single electron per channel. We have designed an electron turnstile consisting of a narrow (0.8$\mu$m) channel and narrow underlying gates (0.5$\mu$m) operating across seventy-eight parallel channels. Initially, we find that more than one electron can be held above the small gates. Underlying gates in the turnstile region allow us to repeatedly split these electron packets. Results show a plateau in the electron signal as a function of the applied gate voltages, indicating quantization of the number of electrons per pixel, simultaneously across the seventy-eight parallel channels

Strategi Penciptaan Pelayanan Kesehatan Dasar untuk Kemudahan Akses Penduduk Desa Miskin

Improving health care service access for the poor is a complex and challenging effort. Various health care facilities are often located in hardly accessible spots for the poor. This research seeks to develop policy options that can be used to create primary health care services became more accessible to the poor. A mobile facility-based health care service system or a service system which allows accessible health facility for the society, especially the poor, needs to be developed. This system needs regulation, institutional, human resources and financial support, and also good coordination among institutions which have related functions and duty on primary health care services

Extremely efficient clocked electron transfer on superfluid helium

Unprecedented transport efficiency is demonstrated for electrons on the surface of micron-scale superfluid helium filled channels by co-opting silicon processing technology to construct the equivalent of a charge-coupled device (CCD). Strong fringing fields lead to undetectably rare transfer failures after over a billion cycles in two dimensions. This extremely efficient transport is measured in 120 channels simultaneously with packets of up to 20 electrons, and down to singly occupied pixels. These results point the way towards the large scale transport of either computational qubits or electron spin qubits used for communications in a hybrid qubit system

Evaluating a community-based early childhood education and development program in Indonesia: study protocol for a pragmatic cluster randomized controlled trial with supplementary matched control group

BACKGROUND This paper presents the study protocol for a pragmatic cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) with a supplementary matched control group. The aim of the trial is to evaluate a community-based early education and development program launched by the Government of Indonesia. The program was developed in collaboration with the World Bank with a total budget of US$127.7 million, and targets an estimated 738,000 children aged 0 to 6 years living in approximately 6,000 poor communities. The aim of the program is to increase access to early childhood services with the secondary aim of improving school readiness. METHODS/DESIGN The study is being conducted across nine districts. The baseline survey contained 310 villages, of which 100 were originally allocated to the intervention arm, 20 originally allocated to a 9-month delay staggered start, 100 originally allocated to an 18-month delay staggered start and 90 allocated to a matched control group (no intervention). The study consists of two cohorts, one comprising children aged 12 to 23 months and the other comprising children aged 48 to 59 months at baseline. The data collection instruments include child observations and task/game-based assessments as well as a questionnaire suite, village head questionnaire, service level questionnaires, household questionnaire, and child caretaker questionnaire. The baseline survey was conducted from March to April 2009, midline was conducted from April to August 2010 and endline conducted early 2013. The resultant participation rates at both the district and village levels were 90%. At the child level, the participation rate was 99.92%. The retention rate at the child level at midline was 99.67%. DISCUSSION This protocol paper provides a detailed record of the trial design including a discussion regarding difficulties faced with compliance to the randomization, compliance to the dispersion schedule of community block grants, and procurement delays for baseline and midline data collections. Considering the execution of the program and the resultant threats to the study, we discuss our analytical plan and intentions for endline data collection. TRIALS REGISTRATION Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN76061874Menno Pradhan, Sally A Brinkman, Amanda Beatty, Amelia Maika, Elan Satriawan, Joppe de Ree and Amer Hasa

Temporal effects of maternal psychological distress on child mental health problems at ages 3, 5, 7 and 11: analysis from the UK Millennium Cohort Study

BACKGROUND:Psychological distress is common among women of childbearing age, and limited longitudinal research suggests prolonged exposure to maternal distress is linked to child mental health problems. Estimating effects of maternal distress over time is difficult due to potential influences of child mental health problems on maternal distress and time-varying confounding by family circumstances. METHODS:We analysed the UK Millennium Cohort Study, a nationally representative sample with data collected throughout childhood. Adopting a marginal structural modelling framework, we investigated effects of exposure to medium/high levels of maternal psychological distress (Kessler-6 score 8+) on child mental health problems (Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire borderline/abnormal behaviour cut-off) using maternal and child mental health data at 3, 5, 7 and 11 years, accounting for the influence of child mental health on subsequent maternal distress, and baseline and time-varying confounding. RESULTS:Prior and concurrent exposures to maternal distress were associated with higher levels of child mental health problems at ages 3, 5, 7 and 11 years. For example, elevated risks of child mental health problems at 11 years were associated with exposure to maternal distress from 3 years [risk ratio (RR) 1.27 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.08-1.49)] to 11 years [RR 2.15 (95% CI 1.89-2.45)]. Prolonged exposure to maternal distress at ages 3, 5, 7 and 11 resulted in an almost fivefold increased risk of child mental health problems. CONCLUSIONS:Prior, concurrent and, particularly, prolonged exposure to maternal distress raises risks for child mental health problems. Greater support for mothers experiencing distress is likely to benefit the mental health of their children.Steven Hope, Anna Pearce, Catherine Chittleborough, Jessica Deighton, Amelia Maika, Nadia Micali, Murthy Mittinty, Catherine Law and John Lync

The Specificity of Peptides Bound to Human Histocompatibility Leukocyte Antigen (HLA)-B27 Influences the Prevalence of Arthritis in HLA-B27 Transgenic Rats

Human histocompatibility leukocyte antigen B27 is highly associated with the rheumatic diseases termed spondyloarthropathies, but the mechanism is not known. B27 transgenic rats develop a spontaneous disease resembling the human spondyloarthropathies that includes arthritis and colitis. To investigate whether this disease requires the binding of specific peptides to B27, we made a minigene construct in which a peptide from influenza nucleoprotein, NP383-391 (SRYWAIRTR), which binds B27 with high affinity, is targeted directly to the ER by the signal peptide of the adenovirus E3/gp19 protein. Rats transgenic for this minigene, NP1, were made and bred with B27 rats. The production of the NP383-391 peptide in B27+NP1+ rats was confirmed immunologically and by mass spectrometry. The NP1 product displaced ∼90% of the 3H-Arg-labeled endogenous peptide fraction in B27+NP1+ spleen cells. Male B27+NP1+ rats had a significantly reduced prevalence of arthritis, compared with B27+NP− males or B27+ males with a control construct, NP2, whereas colitis was not significantly affected by the NP1 transgene. These findings support the hypothesis that B27-related arthritis requires binding of a specific peptide or set of peptides to B27, and they demonstrate a method for efficient transgenic targeting of peptides to the ER

Diversity of human copy number variation and multicopy genes

Copy number variants affect both disease and normal phenotypic variation, but those lying within heavily duplicated, highly identical sequence have been difficult to assay. By analyzing short-read mapping depth for 159 human genomes, we demonstrated accurate estimation of absolute copy number for duplications as small as 1.9 kilobase pairs, ranging from 0 to 48 copies. We identified 4.1 million singly unique nucleotide positions informative in distinguishing specific copies and used them to genotype the copy and content of specific paralogs within highly duplicated gene families. These data identify human-specific expansions in genes associated with brain development, reveal extensive population genetic diversity, and detect signatures consistent with gene conversion in the human species. Our approach makes ∼1000 genes accessible to genetic studies of disease association

Changes in socioeconomic inequality in Indonesian children's cognitive function from 2000 to 2007: a decomposition analysis

Background: Measuring social inequalities in health is common; however, research examining inequalities in child cognitive function is more limited. We investigated household expenditure-related inequality in children’s cognitive function in Indonesia in 2000 and 2007, the contributors to inequality in both time periods, and changes in the contributors to cognitive function inequalities between the periods. Methods: Data from the 2000 and 2007 round of the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) were used. Study participants were children aged 7–14 years (n = 6179 and n = 6680 in 2000 and 2007, respectively). The relative concentration index (RCI) was used to measure the magnitude of inequality. Contribution of various contributors to inequality was estimated by decomposing the concentration index in 2000 and 2007. Oaxaca-type decomposition was used to estimate changes in contributors to inequality between 2000 and 2007. Results: Expenditure inequality decreased by 45% from an RCI = 0.29 (95% CI 0.22 to 0.36) in 2000 to 0.16 (95% CI 0.13 to 0.20) in 2007 but the burden of poorer cognitive function was higher among the disadvantaged in both years. The largest contributors to inequality in child cognitive function were inequalities in per capita expenditure, use of improved sanitation and maternal high school attendance. Changes in maternal high school participation (27%), use of improved sanitation (25%) and per capita expenditures (18%) were largely responsible for the decreasing inequality in children’s cognitive function between 2000 and 2007. Conclusions: Government policy to increase basic education coverage for women along with economic growth may have influenced gains in children’s cognitive function and reductions in inequalities in Indonesia.Amelia Maika, Murthy N. Mittinty, Sally Brinkman, Sam Harper, Elan Satriawan, John W. Lync

СУЧАСНІ АСПЕКТИ МЕДИКО-СОЦІАЛЬНОЇ РЕАБІЛІТАЦІЇ ІНВАЛІДІВ - УЧАСНИКІВ АНТИТЕРОРИСТИЧНОЇ ОПЕРАЦІЇ

Purpose: to search the needs of ATO participants in medical and social rehabilitation measures at the main disabling pathology.Materials and Methods. The needs of ATO participants in medical and social rehabilitation measures are calculated on the basis of analysis of 3947 individual rehabilitation programs (IRP) developed by rehabilitation specialists of medical and social expert commissions in 19 regions of Ukraine with the main disabling pathology (after the consequences of trauma and somatic pathology). Methods: expert evaluations, statistical-mathematical, meta-analysis according to the data of medical and expert documentation and IPR, analytical and logical.Results. The obtained data testify to the availability of complex diverse needs of disabled patients-participants ATO in medical and social rehabilitation activities (medical, psychological, professional, social, technical means of rehabilitation, medical devices) the volume of which varies depending on the type of services, age, severity of disability, pathology.Conclusion. When forming individual programs of rehabilitation doctors of medical and social expert commission underestimate the role of services in professional, social, technical means of rehabilitation in removing limitation of life, improving the quality of life of the disabled, their social adaptation. This needs to be improved by the work of the medical and social expert commissions.Мета роботи – визначення потреб інвалідів-учасників АТО в заходах медико-соціальної реабілітації при основній інвалідизуючій патології.Матеріали та методи. Розрахована потреба інвалідів-учасників АТО в заходах медико-соціальної реабілітації на підставі аналізу 3947 індивідуальних програм реабілітації (ІПР), які розроблені реабілітологами медико-соціальних експертних комісій (МСЕК) 19 областей України при основній інвалідизуючій патології (наслідках бойових травм та соматичної патології). Використані методи: експертних оцінок, статистично-математичний, мета-аналіз за даними медико-експертної документації та ІПР, аналітико-логічний.Результати дослідження. Отримані дані свідчать про наявність комплексних різноманітних потреб інвалідів-учасників АТО в заходах медико-соціальної реабілітації (медичної, психологічної, професійно-трудової, соціальної, технічних засобах реабілітації та виробах медичного призначення), обсяг яких відрізняється в залежності від виду послуг, віку, важкості інвалідності, патології.Висновки. При формуванні ІПР має місце недооцінка ролі послуг з професійної, соціальної реабілітації, технічних засобів реабілітації в усуненні обмежень життєдіяльності, покращенні якості життя інвалідів, їх соціальної адаптації, що потребує удосконалення роботи МСЕК