Abruptio placentae with type II respiratory failure secondary to acute interstitial pneumonia responsive to steroids.

Acute Interstitial Pneumonia (AIP) is categorized as Idiopathic Interstitial Pneumonia (IIP), in which the cause is unknown. Ayoung female of 22 years presented in 34 weeks gestation with abruptio placentae (AP) and underwent Lower Segment Caesarian Section (LSCS) for AP. It progressed to type II respiratory failure secondary to AIPon 4th day post-surgery. It remained unresponsive when treated with noninvasive ventilation (NIV-BiPAP) along with antibiotics. Later, a trial treatment of pulse therapy of Methylprednisolone was executed on 7th day post-surgery which resulted in dramatic improvement in symptoms. It is uncommon to have type II respiratory failure secondary to AIP, and it is rarely steroid responsive

Non-traumatic coma in paediatric patients: Etiology and predictors of outcome

Objective: To determine the common etiological features of non-traumatic coma in children and evaluate possible predictors of morbidity and mortality in these patients.Method: A cross sectional study was carried out at the Paediatric Department of Civil Hospital Karachi from February 2008 to February 2009. In total 100 children, up to 14 years of age having history of non-traumatic coma were included. At the time of enrolment demographic data, clinical features, laboratory parameters and radiological workup were recorded. Data was entered and analyzed with SPSS version 16. Descriptive statistics were generated for all variables. Relationships between categorical variables were evaluated by examining cross-tabulations, chi2 test and Fisher\u27s exact tests. P-values \u3c 0.05 were considered statistically significant.Results: Mean age of the patients in months were 45 months. Male female ratio was 1.45:1. Among 65 survivors 38 (58%) showed no disability and 27 (41%) showed disability. Infections emerged as major cause of mortality (n=23, 79%). Clinical features that showed association with mortality included hypothermia (P = 0.032), hypotension (P = 0.002), altered breathing pattern (P = 0.0001), non reactive pupils (P = 0.001), low Glasgow coma scale (GCS) (P = 0.038), hypotonia (P = 0.002), hyporeflexia (P = 0.0001) and muscle power score of two (P = 0.043).Conclusion: Infections were the leading cause of non-traumatic coma as well as the leading cause of mortality in our study. Hypothermia, hypotension, altered breathing pattern, non reactive pupils, low GCS, hypotonia, hyporeflexia and low muscle power score were significantly associated with mortality in children presenting with non-traumatic coma

Energy efficiency benefits of RAN-as-a-service concept for a cloud-based 5G mobile network infrastructure

This paper focuses on energy efficiency aspects and related benefits of radio-access-network-as-a-service (RANaaS) implementation (using commodity hardware) as architectural evolution of LTE-advanced networks toward 5G infrastructure. RANaaS is a novel concept introduced recently, which enables the partial centralization of RAN functionalities depending on the actual needs as well as on network characteristics. In the view of future definition of 5G systems, this cloud-based design is an important solution in terms of efficient usage of network resources. The aim of this paper is to give a vision of the advantages of the RANaaS, to present its benefits in terms of energy efficiency and to propose a consistent system-level power model as a reference for assessing innovative functionalities toward 5G systems. The incremental benefits through the years are also discussed in perspective, by considering technological evolution of IT platforms and the increasing matching between their capabilities and the need for progressive virtualization of RAN functionalities. The description is complemented by an exemplary evaluation in terms of energy efficiency, analyzing the achievable gains associated with the RANaaS paradigm

Global disparities in surgeons’ workloads, academic engagement and rest periods: the on-calL shIft fOr geNEral SurgeonS (LIONESS) study

: The workload of general surgeons is multifaceted, encompassing not only surgical procedures but also a myriad of other responsibilities. From April to May 2023, we conducted a CHERRIES-compliant internet-based survey analyzing clinical practice, academic engagement, and post-on-call rest. The questionnaire featured six sections with 35 questions. Statistical analysis used Chi-square tests, ANOVA, and logistic regression (SPSS® v. 28). The survey received a total of 1.046 responses (65.4%). Over 78.0% of responders came from Europe, 65.1% came from a general surgery unit; 92.8% of European and 87.5% of North American respondents were involved in research, compared to 71.7% in Africa. Europe led in publishing research studies (6.6 ± 8.6 yearly). Teaching involvement was high in North America (100%) and Africa (91.7%). Surgeons reported an average of 6.7 ± 4.9 on-call shifts per month, with European and North American surgeons experiencing 6.5 ± 4.9 and 7.8 ± 4.1 on-calls monthly, respectively. African surgeons had the highest on-call frequency (8.7 ± 6.1). Post-on-call, only 35.1% of respondents received a day off. Europeans were most likely (40%) to have a day off, while African surgeons were least likely (6.7%). On the adjusted multivariable analysis HDI (Human Development Index) (aOR 1.993) hospital capacity > 400 beds (aOR 2.423), working in a specialty surgery unit (aOR 2.087), and making the on-call in-house (aOR 5.446), significantly predicted the likelihood of having a day off after an on-call shift. Our study revealed critical insights into the disparities in workload, access to research, and professional opportunities for surgeons across different continents, underscored by the HDI

Juxtaposing BTE and ATE – on the role of the European insurance industry in funding civil litigation

One of the ways in which legal services are financed, and indeed shaped, is through private insurance arrangement. Two contrasting types of legal expenses insurance contracts (LEI) seem to dominate in Europe: before the event (BTE) and after the event (ATE) legal expenses insurance. Notwithstanding institutional differences between different legal systems, BTE and ATE insurance arrangements may be instrumental if government policy is geared towards strengthening a market-oriented system of financing access to justice for individuals and business. At the same time, emphasizing the role of a private industry as a keeper of the gates to justice raises issues of accountability and transparency, not readily reconcilable with demands of competition. Moreover, multiple actors (clients, lawyers, courts, insurers) are involved, causing behavioural dynamics which are not easily predicted or influenced. Against this background, this paper looks into BTE and ATE arrangements by analysing the particularities of BTE and ATE arrangements currently available in some European jurisdictions and by painting a picture of their respective markets and legal contexts. This allows for some reflection on the performance of BTE and ATE providers as both financiers and keepers. Two issues emerge from the analysis that are worthy of some further reflection. Firstly, there is the problematic long-term sustainability of some ATE products. Secondly, the challenges faced by policymakers that would like to nudge consumers into voluntarily taking out BTE LEI

Search for stop and higgsino production using diphoton Higgs boson decays

Results are presented of a search for a "natural" supersymmetry scenario with gauge mediated symmetry breaking. It is assumed that only the supersymmetric partners of the top-quark (stop) and the Higgs boson (higgsino) are accessible. Events are examined in which there are two photons forming a Higgs boson candidate, and at least two b-quark jets. In 19.7 inverse femtobarns of proton-proton collision data at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV, recorded in the CMS experiment, no evidence of a signal is found and lower limits at the 95% confidence level are set, excluding the stop mass below 360 to 410 GeV, depending on the higgsino mass

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

Impacts of the Tropical Pacific/Indian Oceans on the Seasonal Cycle of the West African Monsoon

The current consensus is that drought has developed in the Sahel during the second half of the twentieth century as a result of remote effects of oceanic anomalies amplified by local land–atmosphere interactions. This paper focuses on the impacts of oceanic anomalies upon West African climate and specifically aims to identify those from SST anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Oceans during spring and summer seasons, when they were significant. Idealized sensitivity experiments are performed with four atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs). The prescribed SST patterns used in the AGCMs are based on the leading mode of covariability between SST anomalies over the Pacific/Indian Oceans and summer rainfall over West Africa. The results show that such oceanic anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Ocean lead to a northward shift of an anomalous dry belt from the Gulf of Guinea to the Sahel as the season advances. In the Sahel, the magnitude of rainfall anomalies is comparable to that obtained by other authors using SST anomalies confined to the proximity of the Atlantic Ocean. The mechanism connecting the Pacific/Indian SST anomalies with West African rainfall has a strong seasonal cycle. In spring (May and June), anomalous subsidence develops over both the Maritime Continent and the equatorial Atlantic in response to the enhanced equatorial heating. Precipitation increases over continental West Africa in association with stronger zonal convergence of moisture. In addition, precipitation decreases over the Gulf of Guinea. During the monsoon peak (July and August), the SST anomalies move westward over the equatorial Pacific and the two regions where subsidence occurred earlier in the seasons merge over West Africa. The monsoon weakens and rainfall decreases over the Sahel, especially in August.Peer reviewe

Search for anomalous production of events with three or more leptons in pp collisions at √s = 8TeV

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published articles title, journal citation, and DOI.A search for physics beyond the standard model in events with at least three leptons is presented. The data sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.5fb-1 of proton-proton collisions with center-of-mass energy s=8TeV, was collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC during 2012. The data are divided into exclusive categories based on the number of leptons and their flavor, the presence or absence of an opposite-sign, same-flavor lepton pair (OSSF), the invariant mass of the OSSF pair, the presence or absence of a tagged bottom-quark jet, the number of identified hadronically decaying τ leptons, and the magnitude of the missing transverse energy and of the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta. The numbers of observed events are found to be consistent with the expected numbers from standard model processes, and limits are placed on new-physics scenarios that yield multilepton final states. In particular, scenarios that predict Higgs boson production in the context of supersymmetric decay chains are examined. We also place a 95% confidence level upper limit of 1.3% on the branching fraction for the decay of a top quark to a charm quark and a Higgs boson (t→cH), which translates to a bound on the left- and right-handed top-charm flavor-violating Higgs Yukawa couplings, λtcH and λctH, respectively, of |λtcH|2+|λctH|2<0.21