Normal Coordinates Describing Coupled Oscillations in the Gravitational Field

The motion of a local source inducing small oscillations in the gravitational field is investigated and shown to exhibit pure rotational kinetic energy. Should the net affect of these slow, revolving oscillations cause large-scale rotations in spacetime it would certainly result in anomalous celestial accelerations. When this angular rotational frequency of spacetime is applied to the anomalous acceleration of the Pioneer 10/11 spacecrafts, the correlation is promising.Comment: General Relativity and Gravitation Ref.: Ms. No. GERG-D-06-00077R1 accepted for publication October 06, 200

Geographical and temporal distribution of SARS-CoV-2 clades in the WHO European Region, January to June 2020

We show the distribution of SARS-CoV-2 genetic clades over time and between countries and outline potential genomic surveillance objectives. We applied three available genomic nomenclature systems for SARS-CoV-2 to all sequence data from the WHO European Region available during the COVID-19 pandemic until 10 July 2020. We highlight the importance of real-time sequencing and data dissemination in a pandemic situation. We provide a comparison of the nomenclatures and lay a foundation for future European genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2.Peer reviewe

Avaliação do impacto da suplementação alimentar a gestantes no cotrole do baixo peso ao nascer no município de São Paulo, SP (Brasil)

A partir de estudo realizado em oito grandes maternidades do Município de São Paulo, SP (Brasil) que atendem clientela predominantemente de baixo nível sócio-econômico, objetivou-se analisar o impacto da suplementação alimentar durante a assistência pré-natal sobre a incidência de recém-nascidos de baixo peso ao nascer (peso < 2.500 g). Foram envolvidos no estudo 1.060 recém-nascidos de mães que receberam suplementação e 664 recém-nascidos de mães que não a receberam. Ã incidência de baixo peso ao nascer foi de cerca de 11%, considerada elevada e semelhante em ambos os grupos de recém-nascidos. A análise multivariada, realizada para controlar eventuais diferenças entre os grupos, que não a condição de suplementação, descartou qualquer associação significativa entre suplementação e peso ao nascer e revelou, por outro lado, que tabagismo e morbidade na gestação e determinadas características antropométricas e reprodutivas da mãe, prévias à gestação, são importantes fatores de risco para o baixo peso ao nascer. A aparente explicação para a ausência de impacto da suplementação alimentar na população estudada parece residir não na quantidade insuficiente da suplementação alimentar oferecida (370 Kcal/dia), mas no predomínio de fatores não alimentares na determinação do baixo peso ao nascer. São formuladas recomendações quanto ao controle do baixo peso ao nascer no contexto estudado

Risk profiles and one-year outcomes of patients with newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation in India: Insights from the GARFIELD-AF Registry.

BACKGROUND: The Global Anticoagulant Registry in the FIELD-Atrial Fibrillation (GARFIELD-AF) is an ongoing prospective noninterventional registry, which is providing important information on the baseline characteristics, treatment patterns, and 1-year outcomes in patients with newly diagnosed non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF). This report describes data from Indian patients recruited in this registry. METHODS AND RESULTS: A total of 52,014 patients with newly diagnosed AF were enrolled globally; of these, 1388 patients were recruited from 26 sites within India (2012-2016). In India, the mean age was 65.8 years at diagnosis of NVAF. Hypertension was the most prevalent risk factor for AF, present in 68.5% of patients from India and in 76.3% of patients globally (P < 0.001). Diabetes and coronary artery disease (CAD) were prevalent in 36.2% and 28.1% of patients as compared with global prevalence of 22.2% and 21.6%, respectively (P < 0.001 for both). Antiplatelet therapy was the most common antithrombotic treatment in India. With increasing stroke risk, however, patients were more likely to receive oral anticoagulant therapy [mainly vitamin K antagonist (VKA)], but average international normalized ratio (INR) was lower among Indian patients [median INR value 1.6 (interquartile range {IQR}: 1.3-2.3) versus 2.3 (IQR 1.8-2.8) (P < 0.001)]. Compared with other countries, patients from India had markedly higher rates of all-cause mortality [7.68 per 100 person-years (95% confidence interval 6.32-9.35) vs 4.34 (4.16-4.53), P < 0.0001], while rates of stroke/systemic embolism and major bleeding were lower after 1 year of follow-up. CONCLUSION: Compared to previously published registries from India, the GARFIELD-AF registry describes clinical profiles and outcomes in Indian patients with AF of a different etiology. The registry data show that compared to the rest of the world, Indian AF patients are younger in age and have more diabetes and CAD. Patients with a higher stroke risk are more likely to receive anticoagulation therapy with VKA but are underdosed compared with the global average in the GARFIELD-AF. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION-URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT01090362

Generating transformation semigroups using endomorphisms of preorders, graphs, and tolerances

Let ΩΩ be the semigroup of all mappings of a countably infinite set Ω. If U and V are subsemigroups of ΩΩ, then we write U≈V if there exists a finite subset F of ΩΩ such that the subsemigroup generated by U and F equals that generated by V and F. The relative rank of U in ΩΩ is the least cardinality of a subset A of ΩΩ such that the union of U and A generates ΩΩ. In this paper we study the notions of relative rank and the equivalence ≈ for semigroups of endomorphisms of binary relations on Ω. The semigroups of endomorphisms of preorders, bipartite graphs, and tolerances on Ω are shown to lie in two equivalence classes under ≈. Moreover such semigroups have relative rank 0, 1, 2, or d in ΩΩ where d is the minimum cardinality of a dominating family for NN. We give examples of preorders, bipartite graphs, and tolerances on Ω where the relative ranks of their endomorphism semigroups in ΩΩ are 0, 1, 2, and d. We show that the endomorphism semigroups of graphs, in general, fall into at least four classes under ≈ and that there exist graphs where the relative rank of the endomorphism semigroup is 2ℵ0.PostprintPeer reviewe

Agile optimization of a two‐echelon vehicle routing problem with pickup and delivery

[EN] In this paper, we consider a vehicle routing problem in which a fleet of homogeneous vehicles, initially located at a depot, has to satisfy customers' demands in a two-echelon network: first, the vehicles have to visit intermediate nodes (e.g., a retail center or a consolidation center), where they deliver raw materials or bulk products and collect a number of processed items requested by the customers in their route; then, the vehicles proceed to complete their assigned routes, thus delivering the processed items to the final customers before returning to the depot. During this stage, vehicles might visit other intermediate nodes for reloading new items. In some real-life scenarios, this problem needs to be solved in just a few seconds or even milliseconds, which leads to the concept of "agile optimization." This might be the case in some rescue operations using drones in humanitarian logistics, where every second can be decisive to save lives. In order to deal with this real-time two-echelon vehicle routing problem with pickup and delivery, an original constructive heuristic is proposed. This heuristic is able to provide a feasible and reasonably good solution in just a few milliseconds. The constructive heuristic is extended into a biased-randomized algorithm using a skewed probability distribution to modify its greedy behavior. This way, parallel runs of the algorithm are able to generate even better results without violating the real-time constraint. Results show that the proposed methodology generates competitive results in milliseconds, being able to outperform other heuristics from the literature.This work has been partially supported by the IoF2020-H2020 and AGAUR 2018-LLAV-00017 projects, as well as by the Erasmus+ program (2018-1-ES01-KA103-049767).Do C. Martins, L.; Hirsch, P.; Juan, AA. (2021). Agile optimization of a two-echelon vehicle routing problem with pickup and delivery. International Transactions in Operational Research. 28(1):201-221. https://doi.org/10.1111/itor.1279620122128

Self-replication, Evolvability and Asynchronicity in Stochastic Worlds

Peer reviewe