Guidelines for the Diagnosis, Treatment and Prevention of Leprosy

The development of these guidelines was coordinated by Laura Gillini, Medical Officer, Global Leprosy Programme (GLP) and supervised by Erwin Cooreman, GLP Team Leader. The GLP would like to thank members of the Guidelines Development Group (GDG), members of the External Review Group (ERG), and World Health Organization (WHO) staff who contributed to the development of these guidelines as part of the Steering Group or as peer reviewers. The GLP appreciates the input provided by the national leprosy programmes of the following countries: Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Morocco and the Philippines. The GLP is particularly grateful to the persons affected by leprosy who participated in focus group discussions in Colombia, Ghana, India and Nepal on diagnosis, treatment and contact screening. The guidelines for the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of leprosy were developed with full funding support from The Nippon Foundation.Publisher PD

Recommendations for the re-opening of dental services : a rapid review of international sources

The COVID-19 Dental Services Evidence Review Working Group would like to thank and acknowledge the contribution of the following individuals for providing the advice and access to the international guidance documents necessary for this rapid review: Colette Bridgman, Chief Dental Officer, Wales; Alonso Carrasco-Labra, Director, ADA Science & Research Institute; Riana Clarke, National Clinical Director Oral Health, New Zealand; Michael Donaldson, Chief Dental Officer, Northern Ireland; Tom Ferris, Chief Dental Officer, Scotland; Sara Hurley, Chief Dental Officer, England; Marco Landi, Council of European Dentists; Timothy Ricks, Chief Dental Officer, US Public Health Service; James Taylor, Chief Dental Officer, Canada; Benoit Varenne, Dental Officer, World Health Organization. The COVID-19 Dental Services Evidence Review Working Group are grateful for the help and support provided by Shona Floate, University of Glasgow; Anne Littlewood, Laura MacDonald and Helen Worthington from Cochrane Oral Health; David Felix, Postgraduate Dental Dean, NES and colleagues from NES’s Clinical Effectiveness workstream: Samantha Rutherford; Douglas Stirling; Michele West; Linda Young.Publisher PD

Checklist for One Health Epidemiological Reporting of Evidence (COHERE).

One Health is defined as the intersection and integration of knowledge regarding humans, animals, and the environment, yet as the One Health scientific literature expands, there is considerable heterogeneity of approach and quality of reporting in One Health studies. In addition, many researchers who publish such studies do not include or integrate data from all three domains of human, animal, and environmental health. This points to a critical need to unify guidelines for One Health studies. This report details the Checklist for One Health Epidemiological Reporting of Evidence (COHERE) to guide the design and publication format of future One Health studies. COHERE was developed by a core writing team and international expert review group that represents multiple disciplines, including human medicine, veterinary medicine, public health, allied professionals, clinical laboratory science, epidemiology, the social sciences, ecohealth and environmental health. The twin aims of the COHERE standards are to 1) improve the quality of reporting of observational or interventional epidemiological studies that collect and integrate data from humans, animals and/or vectors, and their environments; and 2) promote the concept that One Health studies should integrate knowledge from these three domains. The 19 standards in the COHERE checklist address descriptions of human populations, animal populations, environmental assessment, spatial and temporal relationships of data from the three domains, integration of analyses and interpretation, and inclusion of expertise in the research team from disciplines related to human health, animal health, and environmental health

l W nu production at CLIC: a window to TeV scale non-decoupled neutrinos

We discuss single heavy neutrino production e+ e- -> N nu -> l W nu, l = e, mu, tau, at a future high energy collider like CLIC, with a centre of mass energy of 3 TeV. This process could allow to detect heavy neutrinos with masses of 1-2 TeV if their coupling to the electron V_eN is in the range 0.004-0.01. We study the dependence of the limits on the heavy neutrino mass and emphasise the crucial role of lepton flavour in the discovery of a positive signal at CLIC energy. We present strategies to determine heavy neutrino properties once they are discovered, namely their Dirac or Majorana character and the size and chirality of their charged current couplings. Conversely, if no signal is found, the bound V_eN < 0.002-0.006 would be set for masses of 1-2 TeV, improving the present limit up to a factor of 30. We also extend previous work examining in detail the flavour and mass dependence of the corresponding limits at ILC, as well as the determination of heavy neutrino properties if they are discovered at this collider.Comment: LaTeX 32 pages. Added comments and references. Matches version to appear in JHE

Literacy : a summary review

Compilation of summaries of publications on educational research concerning literacy - presents topics such as use of language in education, bilingualism, instruction methodology, functional literacy, and the Experimental World Literacy Programme

Strange quark mass from Finite Energy QCD sum rules to five loops

The strange quark mass is determined from a new QCD Finite Energy Sum Rule (FESR) optimized to reduce considerably the systematic uncertainties arising from the hadronic resonance sector. As a result, the main uncertainty in this determination is due to the value of $\Lambda_{QCD}$. The correlator of axial-vector divergences is used in perturbative QCD to five-loop order, including quark and gluon condensate contributions, in the framework of both Fixed Order (FOPT), and Contour Improved Perturbation Theory (CIPT). The latter exhibits very good convergence, leading to a remarkably stable result in the very wide range $s_0 = 1.0 - 4.0 {GeV}^2$, where $s_0$ is the radius of the integration contour in the complex energy (squared) plane. The value of the strange quark mass in this framework at a scale of 2 GeV is $m_s(2 {GeV}) = 95 \pm 5 (111 \pm 6) {MeV}$ for $\Lambda_{QCD} = 420 (330) {MeV}$, respectively.Comment: Additional comments added at the end of the Conclusions, and one extra reference is given. A note added in proof uses the most recent determination of Lambda_QCD from ALEPH to narrow down the predictio

Report on the legislation governing the sale of goods and supply of services

The Sales Law Review Group (of which F.White was a member) was established in 2008 by the then Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment to advise on reform of the law of sale of goods and related matters. The Group's final Report was published in October 2011 (Prn. A11/1576)

Lepton non-universality at LEP and charged Higgs

A recent analysis of the LEP data shows an interesting deviation from lepton universality in W boson decays. An excess at the level of 2.8 sigma is found in the tau mode branching ratio with respect to the other two modes. It is suggested that this seeming lepton non-universality might stem from pair production of charged Higgs bosons almost degenerate with W, that preferentially decay to heavy fermions. It is shown that the deviation can be reduced to 1.4 sigma in two Higgs doublet model I without any conflict with the existing direct or indirect constraints. This conclusion is largely independent of tan beta, the ratio of Higgs vacuum expectation values. This scenario can be tested at the forthcoming international linear collider.Comment: 16 pages, published version with minor change