Cerebral function monitoring in term or near term neonates at MDH : preliminary experience and proposal of a guideline

Introduction: Cerebral function monitoring (CFM) is a simplified EEG device that is used to monitor cerebral function at the cot-side. Various studies have shown its value in detecting neonatal encephalopathy and electrographic seizures, prognostication of neonatal cerebral insults, assessment of response to anticonvulsant therapy and in selecting encephalopathic infants for therapeutic hypothermia. This paper describes our preliminary experience with this monitoring device at Mater Dei Hospital, and a draft of a protocol for its clinical application. Methods: Fourteen recordings were performed on neurologically normal and abnormal term neonates. The quality of the records and their correlation with other imaging and standard EEG findings was assessed. A dataset including technical and clinical particulars of these cases was then compiled, analyzed and discussed. Results: Amplitude aEEG traces were recorded from a total of 14 patients, 4 of whom were normal term or near term infants, and 10 were infants with a neurological abnormality. All records were of satisfactory quality, and all showed very high impedance levels. Five out of 11 neurologically-abnormal patients had signs of seizure activity on CFM. A technical fault caused high impedance level in the first 2 traces. Annotations were generally lacking. Five out of 10 infants with CNS problems had clinical seizures of which 4 had electrographic seizures on CFM, 4 had electrographic seizures on formal EEG, and 3 had abnormal MRI findings. Conclusion: Our local experience has confirmed the usefulness of CFM monitoring in the setting of a neonatal intensive care unit. Despite some initial problems with high impedance levels and electrode attachment, the tracings obtained were reproducible and of good quality. Almost half of the neurologically-abnormal neonates showed signs of seizure activity on CFM with good correlation with clinical and standard EEG. The timely diagnosis enabled the clinicians to confirm seizure activity, initiate anticonvulsant therapy and monitor the response. Staff training is vital in order to improve utilisation of CFM in neonatal practice.peer-reviewe

Neutrino oscillation physics with a neutrino factory

We illustrate that the baseline Neutrino Factory configuration being developed within the International Design Study for the Neutrino Factory (the IDS-NF) is optimized for standard oscillation-physics measurements and for searches for new physics. For small values of θ13 (sin2 2θ13 < 10−2 ) a Neutrino Factory with two storage rings in which 25 GeV muons decay, pointing to two neutrino detectors, one situated at a distance between 2500 to 5000 km, the second between 7000 and 8000 km is optimal. If the value of θ13 is found to be large (sin2 2θ13 > 10−2 ), a Neutrino Factory in which 10 GeV muons are stored in a single ring provides the best sensitivity for the discovery of CP violation in the neutrino sector, the determination of the neutrino mass hierarchy and the measurement of θ13

The Accelerator Complex from the International Design Study of the Neutrino Factory

The Neutrino Factory produces high-energy neutrino beams with a well-defined flavour content and energy spectrum from the decay of intense, high-energy, stored muon beams to establish CP violation in the neutrino sector. The International Design Study for the Neutrino Factory (the IDSNF) will provide a Reference Design Report (RDR) for the facility. The present baseline design has been re-evaluated to take into account the recent measurements of θ13. This talk describes the status of the accelerator facility and the accelerator subsystems of which it is comprised. This is a modification of the facility described in the Interim Design Report (IDR) completed in 2011. The accelerator facility will deliver 1021 muon decays per year from 10 GeV stored muon beams. The straight sections of the storage ring point to a 100 kton Magnetised Iron Neutrino Detector (MIND) at a distance of 2000-2500 km from the source. The accelerator-physics challenges, and the R&D underway to meet them, will be described together with alternative designs that are being developed to mitigate the technical risks that some of the subsystems present

Accelerator systems for the international design study of the neutrino factory

The Neutrino Factory produces high-energy neutrino beams with a well-defined flavour content and energy spectrum from the decay of intense, high-energy, stored muon beams. The muon stor- age rings include long straight sections that are directed toward neutrino detectors that are sited several thousand kilometers away. This paper outlines the status of the accelerator facility de- scribed in the Interim Design Report (IDR) recently completed by the International Design Study for a Neutrino Factory (IDS-NF). We give a baseline specification for the accelerator, describe the accelerator subsystems that comprise it and briefly indicate some of the accelerator-physics challenges that such a facility presents

Transverse waves in coronal flux tubes with thick boundaries: The effect of longitudinal flows

Observations show that transverse magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves and flows are often simultaneously present in magnetic loops of the solar corona. The waves are resonantly damped in the Alfv\'en continuum because of plasma and/or magnetic field nonuniformity across the loop. The resonant damping is relevant in the context of coronal heating, since it provides a mechanism to cascade energy down to the dissipative scales. It has been theoretically shown that the presence of flow affects the waves propagation and damping, but most of the studies rely on the unjustified assumption that the transverse nonuniformity is confined to a boundary layer much thinner than the radius of the loop. Here we present a semi-analytic technique to explore the effect of flow on resonant MHD waves in coronal flux tubes with thick nonuniform boundaries. We extend a published method, which was originally developed for a static plasma, in order to incorporate the effect of flow. We allowed the flow velocity to continuously vary within the nonuniform boundary from the internal velocity to the external velocity. The analytic part of the method is based on expressing the wave perturbations in the thick nonuniform boundary of the loop as a Frobenius series that contains a singular term accounting for the Alfv\'en resonance, while the numerical part of the method consists of solving iteratively the transcendental dispersion relation together with the equation for the Alfv\'en resonance position. As an application of this method, we investigated the impact of flow on the phase velocity and resonant damping length of MHD kink waves. We consistently recover results in the thin boundary approximation obtained in previous studies. We have extended those results to the case of thick boundaries. We also explored the error associated with the use of the thin boundary approximation beyond its regime of applicability.Comment: Accepted in A&

Final results from the IDS-NF study

Neutrino Factories are facilities that produce neutrino beams with well-defined flavour content and energy spectra, from the decay of intense, high-energy, stored muons, to search for CP violation in the neutrino sector. The International Design Study for the Neutrino Factory (the IDS-NF) is providing a Reference Design Report (RDR) for such facilities, optimised for the high values of θ13. The accelerator facility will deliver 1021 muon decays per year from 10 GeV stored muon beams. The straight sections of the storage ring point to a 100 kton Magnetised Iron Neutrino Detector (MIND) at a distance of ∼ 2000 km from the source. The accuracy in the value of δCP that a Neutrino Factory can achieve is between 4◦ and 5◦ and the δCP coverage is between 85% and 90%, both of which are unrivalled by other future facilities

Telling patients the truth

'And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free' (John 8:32) One of the dilemmas that any practitioner attending a seriously sick/ terminally ill patient experiences is whether he should tell the patient all the truth about the seriousness of his illness or not.peer-reviewe

Family medicine in Malta

Whereas education in family medicine has made great advances in Europe in the last 30 years, it is still developing in Malta. The setting up of a Department of Family Medicine within the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery has brought our country in line with the rest of the European countries. The Malta College of Family Doctors, founded in 1989 filled the great void in the academic field of Family Medicine. Much was accomplished in the last 14 years, though much remains to be done.peer-reviewe

Reactive nitrogen in the Spanish agri-food sector: environmental impact on atmosphere, soils, water and resources.

The presence of reactive species of nitrogen (N) in the biosphere might cause environmental impacts at local, regional and global scales. Nowadays the N flows generated by human activities greatly exceed natural processes, thus a necessity exists of identifying and quantifying the current state of environmental N loads. The aim of this work is to quantify the amount of reactive N used in the Spanish agri-food sector, assessing the related potential environmental impacts and potential uses of resources. Data from a previously calculated N flow analysis in the Spanish agricultural and food production system for the 1996-2000 time period were used. Total anthropogenic N inputs to the systems were calculated. Input and output flows were considered in each economic compartment in order to calculate use efficiency (ratio of useful outputs to total inputs), eco-efficiency (ratio of useful outputs to outputs to the environment) and recycling rate (ratio of flow recycled to an earlier life-cycle compartment divided by total outputs). Environmental impacts were assessed by quantifying the N balance between the economic and the environmental subsystems: water, atmosphere, ecosystems soils and other soils. In this case agricultural soils were also considered an environmental compartment, since they are an important intermediate path to the environment. The impact on resources was evaluated considering the net N imports into the system and legume fixing crops, pastures and forages versus feed and fertilizers within the system. Anthropogenic N inputs are relatively high in Spain, which is a net importer of nitrogen, mainly in fertilizers and food and feed commodities. Environmental compartments receive relative high amounts of reactive nitrogen, especially soils. Furthermore, there was a relative low use of domestic resources, with a low proportion of N recycled within the system

On number fields with equivalent integral trace forms

Let $K$ be a number field. The \textit{integral trace form} is the integral quadratic form given by $\text{tr}_{K/\mathbb{Q}}(x^2)|_{O_{K}}.$ In this article we study the existence of non-conjugated number fields with equivalent integral trace forms. As a corollary of one of the main results of this paper, we show that any two non-totally real number fields with the same signature and same prime discriminant have equivalent integral trace forms. Additionally, based on previous results obtained by the author and the evidence presented here, we conjecture that any two totally real quartic fields of fundamental discriminant have equivalent trace zero forms if and only if they are conjugated