Uterine Fibroid Embolisation for Symptomatic Uterine Fibroids: A Survey of Clinical Practice in Europe

Item does not contain fulltextPURPOSE: To assess current uterine fibroid embolisation (UFE) practice in European countries and determine the clinical environment for UFE in different hospitals. MATERIAL AND METHODS: In May 2009, an invitation for an online survey was sent by e-mail to all members of the Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiologic Society of Europe, representing a total number of 1,250 different candidate European treatment centres. The survey covered 21 questions concerning local UFE practice. RESULTS: A total of 282 respondents completed the questionnaire. Fifteen questionnaires were excluded because they were doubles from centres that had already returned a questionnaire. The response rate was 267 of 1,250 centres (21.4%). Ninety-four respondents (33%) did not perform UFE and were excluded, and six centres were excluded because demographic data were missing. The remaining 167 respondents from different UFE centres were included in the study. Twenty-six percent of the respondents were from the United Kingdom (n = 43); 16% were from Germany (n = 27); 11% were from France (n = 18); and the remaining 47% (n = 79) were from other European countries. Most centres (48%, n = 80) had 5 to 10 years experience with UFE and performed 10 to 50 procedures annually (53% [n = 88]) of respondents). Additional demographic data, as well as specific data on referral of patients, UFE techniques used, and periprocedural and postprocedural, care will be provided. CONCLUSION: Although UFE as an alternative treatment for hysterectomy or myomectomy is widespread in Europe, its impact on the management of the patient with symptomatic fibroids seems, according to the overall numbers of UFE procedures, somewhat disappointing. Multiple factors might be responsible for this observation

Subprime Mortgage Pricing: The Impact of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender on the Cost of Borrowing

Some observers have argued that minority borrowers and neighborhoods were targeted for expensive credit in 2004-06, the peak period for subprime lending. To investigate this claim, we take advantage of a new data set that merges demographic information on subprime borrowers with information on the mortgages they took out. In a sample of more than 75,000 adjustable-rate mortgages, we find no evidence of adverse pricing by race, ethnicity, or gender in either the initial rate or the reset margin. Indeed, if any pricing differential exists, minority borrowers appear to pay slightly lower rates, as do those borrowers in Zip codes with a larger percentage of black or Hispanic residents or a higher unemployment rate. Mortgage rates are also lower in locations that previously had higher rates of house price appreciation. These results suggest some economies of scale in subprime lending. Yet there are important caveats: we are unable to measure points and fees at loan origination, and the data do not indicate whether borrowers might have qualified for less expensive conforming mortgages

The scientific basis of climate-smart agriculture: A systematic review protocol

Background: ‘Climate-smart agriculture’ (CSA)—agriculture and food systems that sustainably increase food production, improve resilience (or adaptive capacity) of farming systems, and mitigate climate change when possible—has quickly been integrated into the global development agenda. However, the empirical evidence base for CSA has not been assembled, complicating the transition from CSA concept to concrete actions, and contributing to ideological disagreement among development practitioners. Thus, there is an urgent need to evaluate current knowledge on the effectiveness of CSA to achieve its intended benefits and inform discourse on food, agriculture, and climate change. This systematic review intends to establish the scientific evidence base of CSA practices to inform the next steps in development of agricultural programming and policy. We will evaluate the impact of 73 promising farm-level management practices across five categories (agronomy, agroforestry, livestock, postharvest management, and energy systems) to assess their contributions to the three CSA pillars: (1) agronomic and economic productivity, (2) resilience and adaptive capacity, and (3) climate change mitigation in the developing world. The resulting data will be compiled into a searchable Web-based database and analytical engine that can be used to assess the relative effectiveness and strength of evidence for CSA, as well as identify best-fit practices for specific farming and development contexts. This represents the largest meta-analysis of agricultural practices to date. Methods/Design: This protocol sets out the approach for investigating the question: How do farm-level CSA management practices and technologies affect food production and/or farmers’ incomes, resilience/adaptive capacity, and climate change mitigation in farming systems of developing countries? The objective of this ongoing systematic review is to provide a first appraisal of the evidence for CSA practices in order to inform subsequent programming. The review is based on data found in English-language peer-reviewed journals with searches using terms relevant to CSA practices and CSA outcomes. Searches were conducted via Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus. Articles located were screened first by abstract and then full text according to predefined eligibility criteria for inclusion in the review. Data capturing the context of the study (e.g., geographic location, environmental context), management practices, and impacts (e.g., indicators of CSA outcomes) will be compiled from those studies that meet the predetermined criteria. Statistical relationships between practices and impacts will be evaluated via meta-analytical approaches including response ratios and effect sizes. Mechanisms to identify bias and maintain consistency continue to be applied throughout the review process. These analyses will be complemented with an analysis of determinants of/barriers to adoption of promising CSA practices covered in the meta-analysis. Results of the review will be incorporated into a publicly available Web-based database. Data will be publicly available under Creative Commons License in 2016

Measurement of the cross-section and charge asymmetry of WW bosons produced in proton-proton collisions at s=8\sqrt{s}=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents measurements of the $W^+ \rightarrow \mu^+\nu$ and $W^- \rightarrow \mu^-\nu$ cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 20.2~\mbox{fb^{-1}}. The precision of the cross-section measurements varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the 1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between them.Comment: 38 pages in total, author list starting page 22, 5 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2017-13

Search for chargino-neutralino production with mass splittings near the electroweak scale in three-lepton final states in √s=13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for supersymmetry through the pair production of electroweakinos with mass splittings near the electroweak scale and decaying via on-shell W and Z bosons is presented for a three-lepton final state. The analyzed proton-proton collision data taken at a center-of-mass energy of √s=13  TeV were collected between 2015 and 2018 by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139  fb−1. A search, emulating the recursive jigsaw reconstruction technique with easily reproducible laboratory-frame variables, is performed. The two excesses observed in the 2015–2016 data recursive jigsaw analysis in the low-mass three-lepton phase space are reproduced. Results with the full data set are in agreement with the Standard Model expectations. They are interpreted to set exclusion limits at the 95% confidence level on simplified models of chargino-neutralino pair production for masses up to 345 GeV

Opera and poison : a secret and enjoyable approach to teaching and learning chemistry

The storyline of operas, with historical or fictional characters, often include potions and poisons. This has prompted a study of the chemistry behind some operatic plots. The results were originally presented as a lecture given at the University of Minho in Portugal, within the context of the International Year of Chemistry. The same lecture was subsequently repeated at other universities as an invited lecture for science students and in public theaters for wider audiences. The lecture included a multimedia and interactive content that allowed the audience to listen to arias and to watch video clips with selected scenes extracted from operas. The present article, based on the lecture, demonstrates how chemistry and opera can be related and may also serve as a source of motivation and inspiration for chemistry teachers looking for alternative pedagogical approaches. Moreover, the lecture constitutes a vehicle that transports chemistry knowledge to wider audiences through examples of everyday molecules, with particular emphasis on natural products.The author is pleased to express his gratitude to Jorge Calado and Michael John Smith for useful discussions. The author also thanks the reviewers of the manuscript for their helpful comments and suggestions. Thanks are due to the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT,Portugal), QREN and FEDER/EU for financial support through the research centers, CQ/UM PEst-C/QUI/UI0686/2011. Ciencia Viva, Portugal, is also acknowledged for financial support of the activities organized by the University of Minho during the International Year of Chemistry. The author also expresses his gratitude to Ana Paula Ferreira and Andre Cunha Leal from RTP Antena 2 who contributed immensely to the popularization of the lecture on which this paper is based on

Specifically neuropathic Gaucher's mutations accelerate cognitive decline in Parkinson's.

OBJECTIVE: We hypothesized that specific mutations in the β-glucocerebrosidase gene (GBA) causing neuropathic Gaucher's disease (GD) in homozygotes lead to aggressive cognitive decline in heterozygous Parkinson's disease (PD) patients, whereas non-neuropathic GD mutations confer intermediate progression rates. METHODS: A total of 2,304 patients with PD and 20,868 longitudinal visits for up to 12.8 years (median, 4.1) from seven cohorts were analyzed. Differential effects of four types of genetic variation in GBA on longitudinal cognitive decline were evaluated using mixed random and fixed effects and Cox proportional hazards models. RESULTS: Overall, 10.3% of patients with PD and GBA sequencing carried a mutation. Carriers of neuropathic GD mutations (1.4% of patients) had hazard ratios (HRs) for global cognitive impairment of 3.17 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.60-6.25) and a hastened decline in Mini-Mental State Exam scores compared to noncarriers (p = 0.0009). Carriers of complex GBA alleles (0.7%) had an HR of 3.22 (95% CI, 1.18-8.73; p = 0.022). By contrast, the common, non-neuropathic N370S mutation (1.5% of patients; HR, 1.96; 95% CI, 0.92-4.18) or nonpathogenic risk variants (6.6% of patients; HR, 1.36; 95% CI, 0.89-2.05) did not reach significance. INTERPRETATION: Mutations in the GBA gene pathogenic for neuropathic GD and complex alleles shift longitudinal cognitive decline in PD into "high gear." These findings suggest a relationship between specific types of GBA mutations and aggressive cognitive decline and have direct implications for improving the design of clinical trials. Ann Neurol 2016;80:674-685

Search for direct stau production in events with two hadronic tau-leptons in root s=13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of the supersymmetric partners ofτ-leptons (staus) in final stateswith two hadronically decayingτ-leptons is presented. The analysis uses a dataset of pp collisions corresponding to an integrated luminosity of139fb−1, recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LargeHadron Collider at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. No significant deviation from the expected StandardModel background is observed. Limits are derived in scenarios of direct production of stau pairs with eachstau decaying into the stable lightest neutralino and oneτ-lepton in simplified models where the two staumass eigenstates are degenerate. Stau masses from 120 GeV to 390 GeV are excluded at 95% confidencelevel for a massless lightest neutralino

The Economic Crisis and Residential Electricity Consumption in Spanish Provinces: A Spatial Econometric Analysis

This paper presents an empirical analysis of residential electricity demand considering the existence of spatial effects. This analysis has been performed using aggregate panel data at the province level for 46 Spanish provinces for the period from 2001 to 2009. For this purpose, we estimated a log-log demand equation using a spatial autoregressive model with autoregressive disturbances (SARAR). The purpose of this empirical analysis is to determine the influence of price, income, and spatial spillovers on residential electricity demand in Spain. We are particularly interested in analyzing the impact of household disposable income variation across provinces observed during the economic crisis period from 2008-2009. The estimation results show relatively high income elasticity and relatively low price elasticity. Furthermore, the results show the presence of spatial effects in Spanish residential electricity consumption

Benchmark data and model independent event classification for the large hadron collider

We describe the outcome of a data challenge conducted as part of the Dark Machines (https://www.darkmachines.org) initiative and the Les Houches 2019 workshop on Physics at TeV colliders. The challenged aims to detect signals of new physics at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) using unsupervised machine learning algorithms. First, we propose how an anomaly score could be implemented to define model-independent signal regions in LHC searches. We define and describe a large benchmark dataset, consisting of > 1 billion simulated LHC events corresponding to 10 fb−1 of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. We then review a wide range of anomaly detection and density estimation algorithms, developed in the context of the data challenge, and we measure their performance in a set of realistic analysis environments. We draw a number of useful conclusions that will aid the development of unsupervised new physics searches during the third run of the LHC, and provide our benchmark dataset for future studies at https://www.phenoMLdata.org. Code to reproduce the analysis is provided at https://github.com/bostdiek/DarkMachines-UnsupervisedChallenge