Resilience dimensions in health system performance assessments, European Union

Objective: To explore the definition and operationalization of resilience in health system performance assessments in European Union countries. Methods: We conducted multiple empirical case study analyses. We identified relevant cases through a literature review from 2014 to 2023 using Google Scholar and through a snowball technique to retrieve additional information. We included only documents that explicitly mentioned resilience in health system performance assessments. We performed a content analysis to identify common patterns in defining resilience. Findings: The final sample consisted of six countries: Belgium, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Ireland and Italy. Each country adopted a distinct approach to conceptualizing resilience, with countries prioritizing specific aspects based on lessons learnt from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Some countries focused on maintaining essential health-care services and protecting vulnerable groups. Other countries prioritized management capacity, staff preparedness, digital health utilization and strengthening of primary health care. Content analysis revealed six resilience definitions derived from the key performance indicators: addressing unmet needs and maintaining outcomes; protecting vulnerable groups; acquiring and using resources; having trained and prepared staff in place; using digital health; and strengthening primary health care. Conclusion: Integration of resilience into the health profiles of European Union countries preceded its inclusion in national health system performance assessments, the latter of which became more prominent after the COVID-19 pandemic. Variations in interpretations within health system performance assessments reflect differences in indicators and policy responses

Interaction and coherence of a plasmon-exciton polariton condensate

Polaritons are quasiparticles arising from the strong coupling of electromagnetic waves in cavities and dipolar oscillations in a material medium. In this framework, localized surface plasmon in metallic nanoparticles defining optical nanocavities have attracted increasing interests in the last decade. This interest results from their sub-diffraction mode volume, which offers access to extremely high photonic densities by exploiting strong scattering cross-sections. However, high absorption losses in metals have hindered the observation of collective coherent phenomena, such as condensation. In this work we demonstrate the formation of a non-equilibrium room temperature plasmon-exciton-polariton condensate with a long range spatial coherence, extending a hundred of microns, well over the excitation area, by coupling Frenkel excitons in organic molecules to a multipolar mode in a lattice of plasmonic nanoparticles. Time-resolved experiments evidence the picosecond dynamics of the condensate and a sizeable blueshift, thus measuring for the first time the effect of polariton interactions in plasmonic cavities. Our results pave the way to the observation of room temperature superfluidity and novel nonlinear phenomena in plasmonic systems, challenging the common belief that absorption losses in metals prevent the realization of macroscopic quantum states.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figures, SI 7 pages, 5 figure

A Cross-correlation Study between IceCube Neutrino Events and the Fermi Unresolved Gamma-ray Sky

With the coincident detections of electromagnetic radiation together with gravitational waves (GW170817) or neutrinos (TXS 0506+056), the new era of multimessenger astrophysics has begun. Of particular interest are the searches for correlation between the high-energy astrophysical neutrinos detected by the IceCube Observatory and gamma-ray photons detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT). So far, only sources detected by the LAT have been considered in correlation with IceCube neutrinos, neglecting any emission from sources too faint to be resolved individually. Here, we present the first cross-correlation analysis considering the unresolved gamma-ray background (UGRB) and IceCube events. We perform a thorough sensitivity study and, given the lack of identified correlation, we place upper limits on the fraction of the observed neutrinos that would be produced in proton-proton (p-p) or proton-gamma (p-gamma) interactions from the population of sources contributing to the UGRB emission and dominating its spatial anisotropy (aka blazars). Our analysis suggests that, under the assumption that there is no intrinsic cutoff and/or hardening of the spectrum above Fermi-LAT energies, and that all gamma-rays from the unresolved blazars dominating the UGRB fluctuation field are produced by neutral pions from p-p (p-gamma) interactions, up to 60% (30%) of such population may contribute to the total neutrino events observed by IceCube. This translates into a O(1%) maximum contribution to the astrophysical high-energy neutrino flux observed by IceCube at 100 TeV.Comment: This version is submitted to Ap

Comparison between laser-induced nucleation of ZnS and CdS nanocrystals directly into polymer matrices

The nucleation of two kinds of crystalline nanoparticles, zinc sulfide (ZnS), and cadmium sulfide (CdS), is achieved directly into specific sites of polymer matrices after their irradiation with UV laser pulses. The starting samples consist of polymers doped with precursors of Zn or Cd thiolate that are proved to decompose after the absorption of UV light, resulting into the nanoparticles formation. The growth of the crystalline nanostructures is followed throughout the irradiation of the samples with successive incident pulses, by different methods, such as transmission electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, confocal microscopy, and X-ray diffraction. Special attention is paid to the difference of the formation pathways of the two kinds of nanoparticles studied, because the Cd thiolate precursor exhibits much higher absorption efficiency than the Zn thiolate one, at the applied UV wavelength. Indeed, CdS nanoparticles become evident after the very first incident UV pulses, whereas the formation of ZnS nanocrystals requires rather prolonged irradiation, always through a macroscopically nondestructive procedure for the polymer matrix. POLYM. COMPOS., 2010. © 2009 Society of Plastics Engineer

Macroscopic two-dimensional polariton condensates

We report a record-size, two-dimensional polariton condensate of a fraction of a millimeter radius free from the presence of an exciton reservoir. This macroscopically occupied state is formed by the ballistically expanding polariton flow that relaxes and condenses over a large area outside of the excitation spot. The density of this trap-free condensate is <1 polariton /μm2, reducing the phase noise induced by the interaction energy. Moreover, the backflow effect, recently predicted for the nonparabolic polariton dispersion, is observed here for the first time in the fast-expanding wave packet