Municipal distribution of ovarian cancer mortality in Spain

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Spain was the country that registered the greatest increases in ovarian cancer mortality in Europe. This study describes the municipal distribution of ovarian cancer mortality in Spain using spatial models for small-area analysis.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Smoothed relative risks of ovarian cancer mortality were obtained, using the Besag, York and Molliè autoregressive spatial model. Standardised mortality ratios, smoothed relative risks, and distribution of the posterior probability of relative risks being greater than 1 were depicted on municipal maps.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>During the study period (1989–1998), 13,869 ovarian cancer deaths were registered in 2,718 Spanish towns, accounting for 4% of all cancer-related deaths among women. The highest relative risks were mainly concentrated in three areas, i.e., the interior of Barcelona and Gerona (north-east Spain), the north of Lugo and Asturias (north-west Spain) and along the Seville-Huelva boundary (in the south-west). Eivissa (Balearic Islands) and El Hierro (Canary Islands) also registered increased risks.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Well established ovarian cancer risk factors might not contribute significantly to the municipal distribution of ovarian cancer mortality. Environmental and occupational exposures possibly linked to this pattern and prevalent in specific regions, are discussed in this paper. Small-area geographical studies are effective instruments for detecting risk areas that may otherwise remain concealed on a more reduced scale.</p

Kidney cancer mortality in Spain: geographic patterns and possible hypotheses

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Since the second half of the 1990s, kidney cancer mortality has tended to stabilize and decline in many European countries, due to the decrease in the prevalence of smokers. Nevertheless, incidence of kidney cancer is rising across the sexes in some of these countries, a trend which may possibly reflect the fact that improvements in diagnostic techniques are being outweighed by the increased prevalence of some of this tumor's risk factors. This study sought to: examine the geographic pattern of kidney cancer mortality in Spain; suggest possible hypotheses that would help explain these patterns; and enhance existing knowledge about the large proportion of kidney tumors whose cause remains unknown.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Smoothed municipal relative risks (RRs) for kidney cancer mortality were calculated in men and women, using the conditional autoregressive model proposed by Besag, York and Molliè. Maps were plotted depicting smoothed relative risk estimates, and the distribution of the posterior probability of RR>1 by sex.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Municipal maps displayed a marked geographic pattern, with excess mortality in both sexes, mainly in towns along the Bay of Biscay, including areas of Asturias, the Basque Country and, to a lesser extent, Cantabria. Among women, the geographic pattern was strikingly singular, not in evidence for any other tumors, and marked by excess risk in towns situated in the Salamanca area and Extremaduran Autonomous Region. This difference would lead one to postulate the existence of different exposures of environmental origin in the various regions.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The reasons for this pattern of distribution are not clear, and it would thus be of interest if the effect of industrial emissions on this disease could be studied. The excess mortality observed among women in towns situated in areas with a high degree of natural radiation could reflect the influence of exposures which derive from the geologic composition of the terrain and then become manifest through the agency of drinking water.</p

Measurement-induced entanglement and teleportation on a noisy quantum processor

Measurement has a special role in quantum theory: by collapsing the wavefunction it can enable phenomena such as teleportation and thereby alter the "arrow of time" that constrains unitary evolution. When integrated in many-body dynamics, measurements can lead to emergent patterns of quantum information in space-time that go beyond established paradigms for characterizing phases, either in or out of equilibrium. On present-day NISQ processors, the experimental realization of this physics is challenging due to noise, hardware limitations, and the stochastic nature of quantum measurement. Here we address each of these experimental challenges and investigate measurement-induced quantum information phases on up to 70 superconducting qubits. By leveraging the interchangeability of space and time, we use a duality mapping, to avoid mid-circuit measurement and access different manifestations of the underlying phases -- from entanglement scaling to measurement-induced teleportation -- in a unified way. We obtain finite-size signatures of a phase transition with a decoding protocol that correlates the experimental measurement record with classical simulation data. The phases display sharply different sensitivity to noise, which we exploit to turn an inherent hardware limitation into a useful diagnostic. Our work demonstrates an approach to realize measurement-induced physics at scales that are at the limits of current NISQ processors

Non-Abelian braiding of graph vertices in a superconducting processor

Indistinguishability of particles is a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics. For all elementary and quasiparticles observed to date - including fermions, bosons, and Abelian anyons - this principle guarantees that the braiding of identical particles leaves the system unchanged. However, in two spatial dimensions, an intriguing possibility exists: braiding of non-Abelian anyons causes rotations in a space of topologically degenerate wavefunctions. Hence, it can change the observables of the system without violating the principle of indistinguishability. Despite the well developed mathematical description of non-Abelian anyons and numerous theoretical proposals, the experimental observation of their exchange statistics has remained elusive for decades. Controllable many-body quantum states generated on quantum processors offer another path for exploring these fundamental phenomena. While efforts on conventional solid-state platforms typically involve Hamiltonian dynamics of quasi-particles, superconducting quantum processors allow for directly manipulating the many-body wavefunction via unitary gates. Building on predictions that stabilizer codes can host projective non-Abelian Ising anyons, we implement a generalized stabilizer code and unitary protocol to create and braid them. This allows us to experimentally verify the fusion rules of the anyons and braid them to realize their statistics. We then study the prospect of employing the anyons for quantum computation and utilize braiding to create an entangled state of anyons encoding three logical qubits. Our work provides new insights about non-Abelian braiding and - through the future inclusion of error correction to achieve topological protection - could open a path toward fault-tolerant quantum computing

Observation of gravitational waves from the coalescence of a 2.5–4.5 M ⊙ compact object and a neutron star

We report the observation of a coalescing compact binary with component masses 2.5–4.5 M ⊙ and 1.2–2.0 M ⊙ (all measurements quoted at the 90% credible level). The gravitational-wave signal GW230529_181500 was observed during the fourth observing run of the LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA detector network on 2023 May 29 by the LIGO Livingston observatory. The primary component of the source has a mass less than 5 M ⊙ at 99% credibility. We cannot definitively determine from gravitational-wave data alone whether either component of the source is a neutron star or a black hole. However, given existing estimates of the maximum neutron star mass, we find the most probable interpretation of the source to be the coalescence of a neutron star with a black hole that has a mass between the most massive neutron stars and the least massive black holes observed in the Galaxy. We provisionally estimate a merger rate density of 55−47+127Gpc−3yr−1 for compact binary coalescences with properties similar to the source of GW230529_181500; assuming that the source is a neutron star–black hole merger, GW230529_181500-like sources may make up the majority of neutron star–black hole coalescences. The discovery of this system implies an increase in the expected rate of neutron star–black hole mergers with electromagnetic counterparts and provides further evidence for compact objects existing within the purported lower mass gap

Ultralight vector dark matter search using data from the KAGRA O3GK run

Among the various candidates for dark matter (DM), ultralight vector DM can be probed by laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors through the measurement of oscillating length changes in the arm cavities. In this context, KAGRA has a unique feature due to differing compositions of its mirrors, enhancing the signal of vector DM in the length change in the auxiliary channels. Here we present the result of a search for U(1)B−L gauge boson DM using the KAGRA data from auxiliary length channels during the first joint observation run together with GEO600. By applying our search pipeline, which takes into account the stochastic nature of ultralight DM, upper bounds on the coupling strength between the U(1)B−L gauge boson and ordinary matter are obtained for a range of DM masses. While our constraints are less stringent than those derived from previous experiments, this study demonstrates the applicability of our method to the lower-mass vector DM search, which is made difficult in this measurement by the short observation time compared to the auto-correlation time scale of DM

Outpatient Parenteral Antibiotic Treatment for Infective Endocarditis: A Prospective Cohort Study From the GAMES Cohort

BACKGROUND: Outpatient parenteral antibiotic treatment (OPAT) has proven efficacious for treating infective endocarditis (IE). However, the 2001 Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) criteria for OPAT in IE are very restrictive. We aimed to compare the outcomes of OPAT with those of hospital-based antibiotic treatment (HBAT). METHODS: Retrospective analysis of data from a multicenter, prospective cohort study of 2000 consecutive IE patients in 25 Spanish hospitals (2008-2012) was performed. RESULTS: A total of 429 patients (21.5%) received OPAT, and only 21.7% fulfilled IDSA criteria. Males accounted for 70.5%, median age was 68 years (interquartile range [IQR], 56-76), and 57% had native-valve IE. The most frequent causal microorganisms were viridans group streptococci (18.6%), Staphylococcus aureus (15.6%), and coagulase-negative staphylococci (14.5%). Median length of antibiotic treatment was 42 days (IQR, 32-54), and 44% of patients underwent cardiac surgery. One-year mortality was 8% (42% for HBAT; P < .001), 1.4% of patients relapsed, and 10.9% were readmitted during the first 3 months after discharge (no significant differences compared with HBAT). Charlson score (odds ratio [OR], 1.21; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.04-1.42; P = .01) and cardiac surgery (OR, 0.24; 95% CI, .09-.63; P = .04) were associated with 1-year mortality, whereas aortic valve involvement (OR, 0.47; 95% CI, .22-.98; P = .007) was the only predictor of 1-year readmission. Failing to fulfill IDSA criteria was not a risk factor for mortality or readmission. CONCLUSIONS: OPAT provided excellent results despite the use of broader criteria than those recommended by IDSA. OPAT criteria should therefore be expanded