Effect of socioeconomic disadvantage, remoteness and Indigenous status on hospital usage for Western Australian preterm infants under 12 months of age: a population-based data linkage study

Objectives: Our primary objective was to determine the incidence of hospital admission and emergency department presentation in Indigenous and non- Indigenous preterm infants aged postdischarge from birth admission to 11 months in Western Australia. Secondary objectives were to assess incidence in the poorest infants from remote areas and to determine the primary causes of hospital usage in preterm infants. Design: Prospective population-based linked data set. Setting and participants: All preterm babies born in Western Australia during 2010 and 2011. Main outcome measures: All-cause hospitalisations and emergency department presentations. Results: There were 6.9% (4211/61 254) preterm infants, 13.1% (433/3311) Indigenous preterm infants and 6.5% (3778/57 943) non-Indigenous preterm infants born in Western Australia. Indigenous preterm infants had a higher incidence of hospital admission (adjusted incident rate ratio (aIRR) 1.24, 95% CI 1.08 to 1.42) and emergency department presentation (aIRR 1.71, 95% CI 1.44 to 2.02) compared with non-Indigenous preterm infants. The most disadvantaged preterm infants (7.8/1000 person days) had a greater incidence of emergency presentation compared with the most advantaged infants (3.1/1000 person days) (aIRR 1.61, 95% CI 1.30 to 2.00). The most remote preterm infants (7.8/1000 person days) had a greater incidence of emergency presentation compared with the least remote preterm infants (3.0/1000 person days; aIRR 1.82, 95% CI 1.49 to 2.22). Conclusions: In Western Australia, preterm infants have high hospital usage in their first year of life. Infants living in disadvantaged areas, remote area infants and Indigenous infants are at increased risk. Our data highlight the need for improved postdischarge care for preterm infants

The effect of concurrent infections with Pasteurella multocida and Ascaridia galli on free range chickens

Pasteurella multocida and Ascaridia galli are observed with high prevalences in free range chickens in Denmark, but the impact is unknown. A study was carried out to examine the interaction between A. galli and P. multocida in chickens and the impact on production. Five groups, each with 20 18-week-old Lohmann Brown chickens were infected. Group I was orally infected with 1000 +/- 50 embryonated A. galli eggs. Group 2 received 10(4) cfu p. multocida intratracheally. Group 3 was infected with A. galli and subsequently with P. multocida. Group 4 was infected with P. multocida followed by A. galli. Group 5 was the control. The study ran for I I weeks where clinical manifestations, weight gain and egg production were recorded. Excretion of P. multocida was determined on individual basis and blood smears were made for differential counts. At the end of the study pathological lesions and the number of adult worms, larvae and eggs in the faeces were recorded. The birds were more severely affected when infected with both pathogens compared to single infections with A. galli or P. multocida, respectively. A lower weight gain and egg production was observed with dual infections. A. galli infection followed by a secondary P. multocida infection resulted in more birds with pathological lesions and continued P. multocida excretion. In conclusion a negative interaction between A. galli and R multocida was observed and it is postulated that free range chickens are at higher risk of being subjected to outbreaks of fowl cholera when they are infected with A. galli

ETHICS OF MANDATORY PREMARITAL HIV TESTING IN AFRICA: THE CASE OF GOMA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

Despite decades of prevention efforts, millions of persons worldwide continue to become infected by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) every year. This urgent problem of global epidemic control has recently lead to significant changes in HIV testing policies. Provider-initiated approaches to HIV testing have been embraced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization, such as those that routinely inform persons that they will be tested for HIV unless they explicitly refuse (‘opt out’). While these policies appear to increase uptake of testing, they raise a number of ethical concerns that have been debated in journals and at international AIDS conferences. However, one special form of ‘provider-initiated’ testing is being practiced and promoted in various parts of the world, and has advocates within international health agencies, but has received little attention in the bioethical literature: mandatory premarital HIV testing. This article analyses some of the key ethical issues related to mandatory premarital HIV testing in resource-poor settings with generalized HIV epidemics. We will first briefly mention some mandatory HIV premarital testing proposals, policies and practices worldwide, and offer a number of conceptual and factual distinctions to help distinguish different types of mandatory testing policies. Using premarital testing in Goma (Democratic Republic of Congo) as a point of departure, we will use influential public health ethics principles to evaluate different forms of mandatory testing. We conclude by making concrete recommendations concerning the place of mandatory premarital testing in the struggle against HIV/AIDS

Measurement of the J/Psi Production Cross Section in 920 GeV/c Fixed-Target Proton-Nucleus Interactions

The mid-rapidity (dsigma_(pN)/dy at y=0) and total sigma_(pN) production cross sections of J/Psi mesons are measured in proton-nucleus interactions. Data collected by the HERA-B experiment in interactions of 920 GeV/c protons with carbon, titanium and tungsten targets are used for this analysis. The J/Psi mesons are reconstructed by their decay into lepton pairs. The total production cross section obtained is sigma_(pN)(J/Psi) = 663 +- 74 +- 46 nb/nucleon. In addition, our result is compared with previous measurements

An Integrated TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource to Drive High-Quality Survival Outcome Analytics

For a decade, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) program collected clinicopathologic annotation data along with multi-platform molecular profiles of more than 11,000 human tumors across 33 different cancer types. TCGA clinical data contain key features representing the democratized nature of the data collection process. To ensure proper use of this large clinical dataset associated with genomic features, we developed a standardized dataset named the TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource (TCGA-CDR), which includes four major clinical outcome endpoints. In addition to detailing major challenges and statistical limitations encountered during the effort of integrating the acquired clinical data, we present a summary that includes endpoint usage recommendations for each cancer type. These TCGA-CDR findings appear to be consistent with cancer genomics studies independent of the TCGA effort and provide opportunities for investigating cancer biology using clinical correlates at an unprecedented scale. Analysis of clinicopathologic annotations for over 11,000 cancer patients in the TCGA program leads to the generation of TCGA Clinical Data Resource, which provides recommendations of clinical outcome endpoint usage for 33 cancer types

Horizontal Branch Stars: The Interplay between Observations and Theory, and Insights into the Formation of the Galaxy

We review HB stars in a broad astrophysical context, including both variable and non-variable stars. A reassessment of the Oosterhoff dichotomy is presented, which provides unprecedented detail regarding its origin and systematics. We show that the Oosterhoff dichotomy and the distribution of globular clusters (GCs) in the HB morphology-metallicity plane both exclude, with high statistical significance, the possibility that the Galactic halo may have formed from the accretion of dwarf galaxies resembling present-day Milky Way satellites such as Fornax, Sagittarius, and the LMC. A rediscussion of the second-parameter problem is presented. A technique is proposed to estimate the HB types of extragalactic GCs on the basis of integrated far-UV photometry. The relationship between the absolute V magnitude of the HB at the RR Lyrae level and metallicity, as obtained on the basis of trigonometric parallax measurements for the star RR Lyrae, is also revisited, giving a distance modulus to the LMC of (m-M)_0 = 18.44+/-0.11. RR Lyrae period change rates are studied. Finally, the conductive opacities used in evolutionary calculations of low-mass stars are investigated. [ABRIDGED]Comment: 56 pages, 22 figures. Invited review, to appear in Astrophysics and Space Scienc

Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results

Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp. Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02

Measurement of the polarisation of W bosons produced with large transverse momentum in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS experiment

This paper describes an analysis of the angular distribution of W->enu and W->munu decays, using data from pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2010, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 35 pb^-1. Using the decay lepton transverse momentum and the missing transverse energy, the W decay angular distribution projected onto the transverse plane is obtained and analysed in terms of helicity fractions f0, fL and fR over two ranges of W transverse momentum (ptw): 35 < ptw < 50 GeV and ptw > 50 GeV. Good agreement is found with theoretical predictions. For ptw > 50 GeV, the values of f0 and fL-fR, averaged over charge and lepton flavour, are measured to be : f0 = 0.127 +/- 0.030 +/- 0.108 and fL-fR = 0.252 +/- 0.017 +/- 0.030, where the first uncertainties are statistical, and the second include all systematic effects.Comment: 19 pages plus author list (34 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables, revised author list, matches European Journal of Physics C versio

Observation of a new chi_b state in radiative transitions to Upsilon(1S) and Upsilon(2S) at ATLAS

The chi_b(nP) quarkonium states are produced in proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV and recorded by the ATLAS detector. Using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.4 fb^-1, these states are reconstructed through their radiative decays to Upsilon(1S,2S) with Upsilon->mu+mu-. In addition to the mass peaks corresponding to the decay modes chi_b(1P,2P)->Upsilon(1S)gamma, a new structure centered at a mass of 10.530+/-0.005 (stat.)+/-0.009 (syst.) GeV is also observed, in both the Upsilon(1S)gamma and Upsilon(2S)gamma decay modes. This is interpreted as the chi_b(3P) system.Comment: 5 pages plus author list (18 pages total), 2 figures, 1 table, corrected author list, matches final version in Physical Review Letter