Tradition and Innovation in the Making of “About Ram”: A Contemporary Indian Puppeteer and a Ramayana Scholar in Conversation

Anurupa Roy, director of a troupe of puppeteers in Delhi, India, discusses with Paula Richman, emerita professor at Oberlin College (USA), various facets in the creation of her puppet play About Ram. Roy wanted the audience to experience the diversity of the Ramayana tradition as a tragic love story about a hero (first a prince and later a king) who feels duty-bound to banish his wife with the result that he remains alone for the rest of his life. The play is filled with images of the hero’s past life through animation of his memories and weapons on a screen mounted on stage and music with no words but with a percussion emphasis that draws upon different musical instruments from various regions. Over the period of improvisation by which the performance developed, Roy made the war scenes very stylized and the animator contemporized the weapons to include jet propulsion and machine guns. As part of her goal to develop an embodied language for contemporary puppet practice in India, Roy incorporated dances based on martial arts, which led to a grammar of movement for the puppet performance that was contemporary and engaging

Implementation of a provider-focused intervention for maximizing human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine uptake in young cancer survivors receiving follow-up care in pediatric oncology practices: Protocol for a cluster-randomized trial of the HPV PROTECT intervention

BACKGROUND: Childhood cancer survivors are at high risk for developing new cancers (such as cervical and anal cancer) caused by persistent infection with the human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV vaccination is effective in preventing the infections that lead to these cancers, but HPV vaccine uptake is low among young cancer survivors. Lack of a healthcare provider recommendation is the most common reason that cancer survivors fail to initiate the HPV vaccine. Strategies that are most successful in increasing HPV vaccine uptake in the general population focus on enhancing healthcare provider skills to effectively recommend the vaccine, and reducing barriers faced by the young people and their parents in receiving the vaccine. This study will evaluate the effectiveness and implementation of an evidence-based healthcare provider-focused intervention (HPV PROTECT) adapted for use in pediatric oncology clinics, to increase HPV vaccine uptake among cancer survivors 9 to 17 years of age. METHODS: This study uses a hybrid type 1 effectiveness-implementation approach. We will test the effectiveness of the HPV PROTECT intervention using a stepped-wedge cluster-randomized trial across a multi-state sample of pediatric oncology clinics. We will evaluate implementation (provider perspectives regarding intervention feasibility, acceptability and appropriateness in the pediatric oncology setting, provider fidelity to intervention components and change in provider HPV vaccine-related knowledge and practices [e.g., providing vaccine recommendations, identifying and reducing barriers to vaccination]) using a mixed methods approach. DISCUSSION: This multisite trial will address important gaps in knowledge relevant to the prevention of HPV-related malignancies in young cancer survivors by testing the effectiveness of an evidence-based provider-directed intervention, adapted for the pediatric oncology setting, to increase HPV vaccine initiation in young cancer survivors receiving care in pediatric oncology clinics, and by procuring information regarding intervention delivery to inform future implementation efforts. If proven effective, HPV PROTECT will be readily disseminable for testing in the larger pediatric oncology community to increase HPV vaccine uptake in cancer survivors, facilitating protection against HPV-related morbidities for this vulnerable population. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04469569, prospectively registered on July 14, 2020

Comparing mutation calls in fixed tumour samples between the Affymetrix OncoScan® Array and PCR based next-generation sequencing

Background: The importance of accurate and affordable mutation calling in fixed pathology samples is becoming increasingly important as we move into the era of personalised medicine. The Affymetrix OncoScan® Array platform is designed to produce actionable mutation calls in archival material. Methods: We compared calls made using the OncoScan platform with calls made using a custom designed PCR panel followed by next-generation sequencing (NGS), in order to benchmark the sensitivity and specificity of the OncoScan calls in a large cohort of fixed tumour samples. 392 fixed, clinical samples were sequenced, encompassing 641 PCR regions, 403 putative positive calls and 1528 putative negative calls. Results: A small number of mutations could not be validated, either due to large indels or pseudogenes impairing parts of the NGS pipeline. For the remainder, if calls were filtered according to simple quality metrics, both sensitivity and specificity for the OncoScan platform were over 98%. This applied even to samples with poorer sample quality and lower variant allele frequency (5–10%) than product claims indicated. Conclusions: This benchmarking study will be useful to users and potential users of this platform, who wish to compare technologies or interpret their own results

Observation of Bc+→J/ψDs+ and Bc+→J/ψDs*+ decays

The decays Bc+→J/ψDs+ and Bc+→J/ψDs*+ are observed for the first time using a dataset, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3  fb-1, collected by the LHCb experiment in proton-proton collisions at center-of-mass energies of √s=7 and 8 TeV. The statistical significance for both signals is in excess of 9 standard deviations. The following ratios of branching fractions are measured to be B(Bc+→J/ψDs+)/B(Bc+→J/ψπ+)=2.90±0.57±0.24, B(Bc+→J/ψDs*+)/B(Bc+→J/ψDs+)=2.37±0.56±0.10, where the first uncertainties are statistical and the second systematic. The mass of the Bc+ meson is measured to be mBc+=6276.28±1.44(stat)±0.36(syst)  MeV/c2, using the Bc+→J/ψDs+ decay mode

International AIDS Society global scientific strategy: towards an HIV cure 2016

Antiretroviral therapy is not curative. Given the challenges in providing life-long therapy to a global population of over 35 million people living with HIV, there is intense interest in developing a cure for HIV infection. The International AIDS Society convened a group of international experts to develop a scientific strategy for research towards an HIV cure. This Perspective summarizes the group's strategy

Differential cross section measurements for the production of a W boson in association with jets in proton–proton collisions at √s = 7 TeV

Measurements are reported of differential cross sections for the production of a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, in association with jets, as a function of several variables, including the transverse momenta (pT) and pseudorapidities of the four leading jets, the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT), and the difference in azimuthal angle between the directions of each jet and the muon. The data sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV was collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb[superscript −1]. The measured cross sections are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo generators, MadGraph + pythia and sherpa, and to next-to-leading-order calculations from BlackHat + sherpa. The differential cross sections are found to be in agreement with the predictions, apart from the pT distributions of the leading jets at high pT values, the distributions of the HT at high-HT and low jet multiplicity, and the distribution of the difference in azimuthal angle between the leading jet and the muon at low values.United States. Dept. of EnergyNational Science Foundation (U.S.)Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio