Children with severe malnutrition: can those at highest risk of death be identified with the WHO protocol?

Background With strict adherence to international recommended treatment guidelines, the case fatality for severe malnutrition ought to be less than 5%. In African hospitals, fatality rates of 20% are common and are often attributed to poor training and faulty case management. Improving outcome will depend upon the identification of those at greatest risk and targeting limited health resources. We retrospectively examined the major risk factors associated with early (<48 h) and late in-hospital death in children with severe malnutrition with the aim of identifying admission features that could distinguish a high-risk group in relation to the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. Methods and Findings Of 920 children in the study, 176 (19%) died, with 59 (33%) deaths occurring within 48 h of admission. Bacteraemia complicated 27% of all deaths: 52% died before 48 h despite 85% in vitro antibiotic susceptibility of cultured organisms. The sensitivity, specificity, and likelihood ratio of the WHO-recommended “danger signs” (lethargy, hypothermia, or hypoglycaemia) to predict early mortality was 52%, 84%, and 3.4% (95% confidence interval [CI] = 2.2 to 5.1), respectively. In addition, four bedside features were associated with early case fatality: bradycardia, capillary refill time greater than 2 s, weak pulse volume, and impaired consciousness level; the presence of two or more features was associated with an odds ratio of 9.6 (95% CI = 4.8 to 19) for early fatality (p < 0.0001). Conversely, the group of children without any of these seven features, or signs of dehydration, severe acidosis, or electrolyte derangements, had a low fatality (7%). Conclusions Formal assessment of these features as emergency signs to improve triage and to rationalize manpower resources toward the high-risk groups is required. In addition, basic clinical research is necessary to identify and test appropriate supportive treatments

Structure of adsorbed organometallic rhodium: model single atom catalysts

We have determined the structure of a complex rhodium carbonyl chloride [Rh(CO)(2)Cl] molecule adsorbed on the TiO2 (110) surface by the normal incidence x-ray standing wave technique. The data show that the technique is applicable to reducible oxide systems and that the dominant adsorbed species is undissociated with Rh binding atop bridging oxygen and to the Cl found close to the fivefold coordinated Ti ions in the surface. A minority geminal dicarboryl species, where Rh-Cl bond scission has occurred, is found bridging the bridging oxygen ions forming a high-symmetry site

The Strong Levinson Theorem for the Dirac Equation

We consider the Dirac equation in one space dimension in the presence of a symmetric potential well. We connect the scattering phase shifts at E=+m and E=-m to the number of states that have left the positive energy continuum or joined the negative energy continuum respectively as the potential is turned on from zero.Comment: Submitted to Physical Review Letter

Completeness of the Coulomb scattering wave functions

Completeness of the eigenfunctions of a self-adjoint Hamiltonian, which is the basic ingredient of quantum mechanics, plays an important role in nuclear reaction and nuclear structure theory. However, until now, there was no a formal proof of the completeness of the eigenfunctions of the two-body Hamiltonian with the Coulomb interaction. Here we present the first formal proof of the completeness of the two-body Coulomb scattering wave functions for repulsive unscreened Coulomb potential. To prove the completeness we use the Newton's method [R. Newton, J. Math Phys., 1, 319 (1960)]. The proof allows us to claim that the eigenfunctions of the two-body Hamiltonian with the potential given by the sum of the repulsive Coulomb plus short-range (nuclear) potentials also form a complete set. It also allows one to extend the Berggren's approach of modification of the complete set of the eigenfunctions by including the resonances for charged particles. We also demonstrate that the resonant Gamow functions with the Coulomb tail can be regularized using Zel'dovich's regularization method.Comment: 12 pages and 1 figur

An improved sum-product estimate for general finite fields

This paper improves on a sum-product estimate obtained by Katz and Shen for subsets of a finite field whose order is not prime

Levinson's Theorem for Non-local Interactions in Two Dimensions

In the light of the Sturm-Liouville theorem, the Levinson theorem for the Schr\"{o}dinger equation with both local and non-local cylindrically symmetric potentials is studied. It is proved that the two-dimensional Levinson theorem holds for the case with both local and non-local cylindrically symmetric cutoff potentials, which is not necessarily separable. In addition, the problems related to the positive-energy bound states and the physically redundant state are also discussed in this paper.Comment: Latex 11 pages, no figure, submitted to J. Phys. A Email: [email protected], [email protected]

Levinson's theorem for the Schr\"{o}dinger equation in two dimensions

Levinson's theorem for the Schr\"{o}dinger equation with a cylindrically symmetric potential in two dimensions is re-established by the Sturm-Liouville theorem. The critical case, where the Schr\"{o}dinger equation has a finite zero-energy solution, is analyzed in detail. It is shown that, in comparison with Levinson's theorem in non-critical case, the half bound state for $P$ wave, in which the wave function for the zero-energy solution does not decay fast enough at infinity to be square integrable, will cause the phase shift of $P$ wave at zero energy to increase an additional $\pi$.Comment: Latex 11 pages, no figure and accepted by P.R.A (in August); Email: [email protected], [email protected]

Operational amplifiers revisited for low field magnetic resonance relaxation time measurement electronics

Advances in permanent magnet technology has seen more reports of sensor applications of low field magnetic resonance. Whilst most are either in the 10–20 MHz range or in the earth’s field, measurements at below 1 MHz are beginning to become more widespread. This range is below the need for careful radio frequency electronics design but above the audio domain and represents an interesting cross over. Many commercial spectrometers do not include the pulse power amplifier, duplexer and preamplifier as these depend on the frequency range used. In this work we demonstrate that, with the current specifications of the humble operational amplifier, the most simple form of an inverting design using only two resistors and decoupling, can effectively provide this ‘front end’ electronics. The low powers used mean crossed Ge diodes provide an excellent duplexer and it is suitable for battery powered applications

Generalized L\"uscher Formula in Multi-channel Baryon-Meson Scattering

L\"uscher's formula relates the elastic scattering phase shifts to the two-particle energy levels in a finite cubic box. The original formula was obtained for elastic scattering of two massive spinless particles in the center of mass frame. In this paper, we consider the case for the scattering of a spin 1/2 particle with a spinless particle in multi-channel scattering. A generalized relation between the energy of two particle system and the scattering matrix elements is established. We first obtain this relation using quantum-mechanics in both center-of-mass frame and in a general moving frame. The result is then generalized to quantum field theory using methods outlined in Ref. \cite{Hansen:2012tf}. We verify that the results obtained using both methods are equivalent up to terms that are exponentially suppressed in the box size.Comment: One reference adde

Terminal velocity and drag reduction measurements on superhydrophobic spheres

Super water-repellent surfaces occur naturally on plants and aquatic insects and are created in the laboratory by combining micro- or nanoscale surface topographic features with hydrophobic surface chemistry. When such types of water-repellent surfaces are submerged they can retain a film of air (a plastron). In this work, we report measurements of the terminal velocity of solid acrylic spheres with various surface treatments settling under the action of gravity in water. We observed increases in terminal velocity corresponding to drag reduction of between 5% and 15% for superhydrophobic surfaces that carry plastrons