Evaluation of the national surveillance system for point-prevalence of healthcare-associated infections in hospitals and in long-term care facilities for elderly in Norway, 2002-2008

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Since 2002, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health has invited all hospitals and long-term care facilities for elderly (LTCFs) to participate in two annual point-prevalence surveys covering the most frequent types of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). In a comprehensive evaluation we assessed how well the system operates to meet its objectives.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Surveillance protocols and the national database were reviewed. Data managers at national level, infection control practitioners and ward personnel in hospitals as well as contact persons in LTCFs involved in prevalence data collection were surveyed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The evaluation showed that the system was structurally simple, flexible and accepted by the key partners. On average 87% of hospitals and 32% of LTCFs participated in 2004-2008; high level of data completeness was achieved. The data collected described trends in the prevalence of reportable HAIs in Norway and informed policy makers. Local results were used in hospitals to implement targeted infection control measures and to argue for more resources to a greater extent than in LTCFs. Both the use of simplified Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) definitions and validity of data seemed problematic as compliance with the standard methodology were reportedly low.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The surveillance system provides important information on selected HAIs in Norway. The system is overall functional and well-established in hospitals, however, requires active promotion in LTCFs. Validity of data needs to be controlled in the participating institutions before reporting to the national level.</p

Financial Satisfaction and (in)formal Sector in a Transition Country

This paper examines the relationship between working in the formal or informal sector and self-reported individual financial satisfaction in a country in transition. It does so by allowing for individual heterogeneity in terms of perceived financial insecurity and tax morale. The empirical analysis uses a dataset for Albania, a country in transition. The method applied is the ‘self-administered questionnaire’, which combines personal contacts with written questionnaire. The results indicate that, for most individuals, working in the informal sector has negative effects on their self reported financial satisfaction. For some individuals, however, this effect is positive. The characteristic defining these two groups of individuals is their attitude towards the perceived financial insecurity related to not paying taxes. These findings have important implications, in particular for transition countries with large informal sectors. Given the involuntary participation in the informal sector in these countries, the majority of individuals working in this sector will remain financially dissatisfied as long as they have no other social safety net

Structural Characteristics and Stellar Composition of Low Surface Brightness Disk Galaxies

We present UBVI surface photometry of a sample of low surface brightness (LSB) disk galaxies. LSB disk galaxies are fairly well described as exponential disks with no preferred value for either scale length, central surface brightness, or rotational velocity. Indeed, the distribution of scale lengths is indistinguishable from that of high surface brightness spirals, indicating that dynamically similar galaxies (e.g., those with comparable Rv^2) exist over a large range in surface density. These LSB galaxies are strikingly blue. The complete lack of correlation between central surface brightness and color rules out any fading scenario. Similarly, the oxygen abundances inferred from HII region spectra are uncorrelated with color so the low metallicities are not the primary cause of the blue colors. While these are difficult to interpret in the absence of significant star formation, the most plausible scenario is a stellar population with a young mean age stemming from late formation and subsequent slow evolution. These properties suggest that LSB disks formed from low initial overdensities with correspondingly late collapse times.Comment: Astronomical Journal, in press 45 pages uuencoded postscript (368K) including 9 multipart figures also available by anonymous ftp @ ftp.ast.cam.ac.uk /pub/ssm/phot.uu CAP-30-210442962983742937

Stereotypic horses (Equus caballus) are not cognitively impaired

Stereotypies in animals are thought to arise from an interaction between genetic predisposition and sub-optimal housing conditions. In domestic horses, a well-studied stereotypy is crib-biting, an abnormal behaviour that appears to help individuals to cope with stressful situations. One prominent hypothesis states that animals affected by stereotypies are cognitively less flexible compared to healthy controls, due to sensitization of a specific brain area, the basal ganglia. The aim of this study was to test this hypothesis in crib-biting and healthy controls, using a cognitive task, reversal learning, which has been used as a diagnostic for basal ganglia dysfunction. The procedure consisted of exposing subjects to four learning tasks; first and second acquisition, and their reversals. For each task, we measured the number of trials to reach criterion and heart rate and heart-rate variability. Importantly, we did not try to prevent crib-biters from executing their stereotypic behaviour. We found that the first reversal learning task required the largest number of trials, confirming its challenging nature. Interestingly, the second reversal learning task required significantly fewer trials to reach criterion, suggesting generalisation learning. However, we did not find any performance differences across groups; both stereotypic and control animals required a similar numbers of trials and did not differ in their physiological responses. Our results thus challenge the widely held belief that crib-biting horses, and stereotypic animals more generally, are cognitively impaired. We conclude that cognitive underperformance may occur in stereotypic horses if they are prevented from crib-biting to cope with experienced stress.PostprintPeer reviewe

Measurements of differential cross-sections in top-quark pair events with a high transverse momentum top quark and limits on beyond the Standard Model contributions to top-quark pair production with the ATLAS detector at √s = 13 TeV

Cross-section measurements of top-quark pair production where the hadronically decaying top quark has transverse momentum greater than 355 GeV and the other top quark decays into ℓνb are presented using 139 fb−1 of data collected by the ATLAS experiment during proton-proton collisions at the LHC. The fiducial cross-section at s = 13 TeV is measured to be σ = 1.267 ± 0.005 ± 0.053 pb, where the uncertainties reflect the limited number of data events and the systematic uncertainties, giving a total uncertainty of 4.2%. The cross-section is measured differentially as a function of variables characterising the tt¯ system and additional radiation in the events. The results are compared with various Monte Carlo generators, including comparisons where the generators are reweighted to match a parton-level calculation at next-to-next-to-leading order. The reweighting improves the agreement between data and theory. The measured distribution of the top-quark transverse momentum is used to search for new physics in the context of the effective field theory framework. No significant deviation from the Standard Model is observed and limits are set on the Wilson coefficients of the dimension-six operators OtG and Otq(8), where the limits on the latter are the most stringent to date. [Figure not available: see fulltext.]

Interaction of Copper-Based Nanoparticles to Soil, Terrestrial, and Aquatic Systems: Critical Review of the State of the Science and Future Perspectives

In the past two decades, increased production and usage of metallic nanoparticles (NPs) has inevitably increased their discharge into the different compartments of the environment, which ultimately paved the way for their uptake and accumulation in various trophic levels of the food chain. Due to these issues, several questions have been raised on the usage of NPs in everyday life and has become a matter of public health concern. Among the metallic NPs, Cu-based NPs have gained popularity due to their cost-effectiveness and multifarious promising uses. Several studies in the past represented the phytotoxicity of Cu-based NPs on plants. However, comprehensive knowledge is still lacking. Additionally, the impact of Cu-based NPs on soil organisms such as agriculturally important microbes, fungi, mycorrhiza, nematode, and earthworms are poorly studied. This review article critically analyses the literature data to achieve a more comprehensive knowledge on the toxicological profile of Cu-based NPs and increase our understanding of the effects of Cu-based NPs on aquatic and terrestrial plants as well as on soil microbial communities. The underlying mechanism of biotransformation of Cu-based NPs and the process of their penetration into plants has also been discussed herein. Overall, this review could provide valuable information to design rules and regulations for the safe disposal of Cu-based NPs into a sustainable environment

Direct constraint on the Higgs–charm coupling from a search for Higgs boson decays into charm quarks with the ATLAS detector

A search for the Higgs boson decaying into a pair of charm quarks is presented. The analysis uses proton–proton collisions to target the production of a Higgs boson in association with a leptonically decaying W or Z boson. The dataset delivered by the LHC at a centre-of-mass energy of and recorded by the ATLAS detector corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb−1. Flavour-tagging algorithms are used to identify jets originating from the hadronisation of charm quarks. The analysis method is validated with the simultaneous measurement of WW, WZ and ZZ production, with observed (expected) significances of 2.6 (2.2) standard deviations above the background-only prediction for the (W/Z)Z(→cc¯) process and 3.8 (4.6) standard deviations for the (W/Z)W(→cq) process. The (W/Z)H(→cc¯) search yields an observed (expected) upper limit of 26 (31) times the predicted Standard Model cross-section times branching fraction for a Higgs boson with a mass of , corresponding to an observed (expected) constraint on the charm Yukawa coupling modifier |κc|<8.5 (12.4), at the 95% confidence level. A combination with the ATLAS (W/Z)H,H→bb¯ analysis is performed, allowing the ratio κc/κb to be constrained to less than 4.5 at the 95% confidence level, smaller than the ratio of the b- and c-quark masses, and therefore determines the Higgs-charm coupling to be weaker than the Higgs-bottom coupling at the 95% confidence level