Epidemiology of gastrostomy insertion for children and adolescents with intellectual disability

The largest group of recipients of pediatric gastrostomy have neurological impairment with intellectual disability (ID). This study investigated trends in first gastrostomy insertion according to markers of disadvantage and ID etiology. Linked administrative and health data collected over a 32-year study period (1983–2014) for children with ID born between 1983 and 2009 in Western Australia were examined. The annual incidence rate change over calendar year was calculated for all children and according to socioeconomic status, geographical remoteness, and Aboriginality. The most likely causes of ID were identified using available diagnosis codes in the linked data set. Of 11,729 children with ID, 325 (2.8%) received a first gastrostomy within the study period. The incidence rate was highest in the 0–2 age group and there was an increasing incidence trend with calendar time for each age group under 6 years of age. This rate change was greatest in children from the lowest socioeconomic status quintile, who lived in regional/remote areas or who were Aboriginal. The two largest identified groups of ID were genetically caused syndromes (15.1%) and neonatal encephalopathy (14.8%). Conclusion: Gastrostomy is increasingly used in multiple neurological conditions associated with ID, with no apparent accessibility barriers in terms of socioeconomic status, remoteness, or Aboriginality.What is Known:• The use of gastrostomy insertion in pediatrics is increasing and the most common recipients during childhood have neurological impairment, most of whom also have intellectual disability (ID).What is New:• Nearly 3% of children with ID had gastrostomy insertion performed, with the highest incidence in children under 3 years of age.• Gastrostomy use across different social groups was equitable in the Australian setting

The Detectability of Departures from the Inflationary Consistency Equation

We study the detectability, given CMB polarization maps, of departures from the inflationary consistency equation, r \equiv T/S \simeq -5 n_T, where T and S are the tensor and scalar contributions to the quadrupole variance, respectively. The consistency equation holds if inflation is driven by a slowly-rolling scalar field. Departures can be caused by: 1) higher-order terms in the expansion in slow-roll parameters, 2) quantum loop corrections or 3) multiple fields. Higher-order corrections in the first two slow-roll parameters are undetectably small. Loop corrections are detectable if they are nearly maximal and r \ga 0.1. Large departures (|\Delta n_T| \ga 0.1) can be seen if r \ga 0.001. High angular resolution can be important for detecting non-zero r+5n_T, even when not important for detecting non-zero r.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, submitted to PR

Site nitrogen action plans (SNAPs) for native woodland sites in Wales

Report to Snowdonia National Park Authority. Air pollution by ammonia and other nitrogen (N) compounds causes damage to habitats and wildlife, especially to sensitive lower plant communities such as lichens and mosses. The SNAPs project investigated the sources of N pollution at five woodland sites in Wales, and assessed how pollution levels and their effects on the woodland could be mitigated. The main source of ammonia at the sites studied was low-intensity beef and sheep farming. While some ammonia disperses over large distances, large amounts of ammonia from a given source are deposited within a few hundred metres, so nearby sources are important. Action is needed to limit regional and international flows of air pollution, but considerable improvements could be made by reducing the emissions from nearby sources of ammonia. The most useful measures are covering slurry stores; hard standing at feeding stations; and injecting slurry into the soil rather than broadcasting onto the ground surface. Some conservation sites are very large, and if particularly sensitive areas can be identified within sites, this could help identify off-site mitigation measures, which can be applied to sources nearest the sensitive area. For woodlands, on-site measures have only limited potential for reducing the ecological impacts of nitrogen pollution. Nitrogen generally increases plant growth and litter production, causing more shading of the ground surface. These effects can be reduced in woodlands by increasing scrub clearance, or grazing. However, these measures may have other effects on the site, and remove very little nitrogen from the system, meaning that it continues to accumulate in the vegetation and soil. Ultimately, nitrogen-sensitive features within woodland sites can only be safeguarded if nitrogen emissions decrease both locally and regionally

WMAP constraints on inflationary models with global defects

We use the cosmic microwave background angular power spectra to place upper limits on the degree to which global defects may have aided cosmic structure formation. We explore this under the inflationary paradigm, but with the addition of textures resulting from the breaking of a global O(4) symmetry during the early stages of the Universe. As a measure of their contribution, we use the fraction of the temperature power spectrum that is attributed to the defects at a multipole of 10. However, we find a parameter degeneracy enabling a fit to the first-year WMAP data to be made even with a significant defect fraction. This degeneracy involves the baryon fraction and the Hubble constant, plus the normalization and tilt of the primordial power spectrum. Hence, constraints on these cosmological parameters are weakened. Combining the WMAP data with a constraint on the physical baryon fraction from big bang nucleosynthesis calculations and high-redshift deuterium abundance, limits the extent of the degeneracy and gives an upper bound on the defect fraction of 0.13 (95% confidence).Comment: 10pp LaTeX/RevTeX, 6 eps figs; matches accepted versio

Atmospheric ammonia assessments on six designated sites in Northern Ireland. Report 2: June 2020 – May 2022

Prepared between the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA). Atmospheric ammonia (NH3) gas concentrations were monitored on six designated sites of international and national importance (Special Areas of Conservation, SAC and Areas of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI)) across Northern Ireland, to assess threats from atmospheric nitrogen inputs. A total of 37 NH3 monitoring points were established, with between 4 and 9 monitoring points on each of the six designated sites, depending on the size and complexity of each site. Monitoring was carried out at monthly intervals, with continuous time-integrated measurements made with passive UKCEH ALPHA® samplers. This report presents monthly NH3 measurements from two complete years of monitoring, between June 2020 and May 2022. Monthly measurements were aggregated to estimate annual average concentrations for the assessment of critical levels exceedance (annual thresholds). The monthly monitoring periods also enabled the construction of seasonal profiles across the sites, which is helpful for identifying peak emission periods as well as likely source types (for example, slurry spreading activities during spring

Dark Energy and Gravity

I review the problem of dark energy focusing on the cosmological constant as the candidate and discuss its implications for the nature of gravity. Part 1 briefly overviews the currently popular `concordance cosmology' and summarises the evidence for dark energy. It also provides the observational and theoretical arguments in favour of the cosmological constant as the candidate and emphasises why no other approach really solves the conceptual problems usually attributed to the cosmological constant. Part 2 describes some of the approaches to understand the nature of the cosmological constant and attempts to extract the key ingredients which must be present in any viable solution. I argue that (i)the cosmological constant problem cannot be satisfactorily solved until gravitational action is made invariant under the shift of the matter lagrangian by a constant and (ii) this cannot happen if the metric is the dynamical variable. Hence the cosmological constant problem essentially has to do with our (mis)understanding of the nature of gravity. Part 3 discusses an alternative perspective on gravity in which the action is explicitly invariant under the above transformation. Extremizing this action leads to an equation determining the background geometry which gives Einstein's theory at the lowest order with Lanczos-Lovelock type corrections. (Condensed abstract).Comment: Invited Review for a special Gen.Rel.Grav. issue on Dark Energy, edited by G.F.R.Ellis, R.Maartens and H.Nicolai; revtex; 22 pages; 2 figure

The treatment of polycythaemia vera: an update in the JAK2 era

The clinical course of polycythaemia vera is marked by a high incidence of thrombotic complications, which represent the main cause of morbidity and mortality. Major predictors of vascular events are increasing age and previous thrombosis. Myelosuppressive drugs can reduce the rate of thrombosis, but there is concern that their use raises the risk of transformation into acute leukaemia. To tackle this dilemma, a risk-oriented management strategy is recommended. Low-risk patients should be treated with phlebotomy and low-dose aspirin. Cytotoxic therapy is indicated in high-risk patients, with the drug of choice being hydroxyurea because its leukaemogenicity is low. The recent discovery of JAK2 V617F mutation in the vast majority of polycythaemia vera patients opens new avenues for the treatment of this disease. Novel therapeutic options theoretically devoid of leukaemic risk, such as alpha-interferon and imatinib, affect JAK2 expression in some patients. Nevertheless, these drugs require further clinical experience and, for the time being, should be reserved for selected cases

Active Brownian Particles. From Individual to Collective Stochastic Dynamics

We review theoretical models of individual motility as well as collective dynamics and pattern formation of active particles. We focus on simple models of active dynamics with a particular emphasis on nonlinear and stochastic dynamics of such self-propelled entities in the framework of statistical mechanics. Examples of such active units in complex physico-chemical and biological systems are chemically powered nano-rods, localized patterns in reaction-diffusion system, motile cells or macroscopic animals. Based on the description of individual motion of point-like active particles by stochastic differential equations, we discuss different velocity-dependent friction functions, the impact of various types of fluctuations and calculate characteristic observables such as stationary velocity distributions or diffusion coefficients. Finally, we consider not only the free and confined individual active dynamics but also different types of interaction between active particles. The resulting collective dynamical behavior of large assemblies and aggregates of active units is discussed and an overview over some recent results on spatiotemporal pattern formation in such systems is given.Comment: 161 pages, Review, Eur Phys J Special-Topics, accepte

The PHENIX Experiment at RHIC

The physics emphases of the PHENIX collaboration and the design and current status of the PHENIX detector are discussed. The plan of the collaboration for making the most effective use of the available luminosity in the first years of RHIC operation is also presented.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. Further details of the PHENIX physics program available at http://www.rhic.bnl.gov/phenix

Brane inflation revisited after WMAP five-year results

In this paper, we revisit brane inflation models with the WMAP five-year results. The WMAP five-year data favor a red-tilted power spectrum of primordial fluctuations at the level of two standard deviations, which is the same as the WMAP three-year result qualitatively, but quantitatively the spectral index is slightly greater than the three-year value. This result can bring impacts on brane inflation models. According to the WMAP five-year data, we find that the KKLMMT model can survive at the level of one standard deviation, and the fine-tuning of the parameter $\beta$ can be alleviated to a certain extent at the level of two standard deviations.Comment: 23 pages, 11 figure