Compulsory and recommended vaccination in Italy: evaluation of coverage and non-compliance between 1998-2002 in Northern Italy

BACKGROUND: Since vaccinations are an effective prevention tool for maintaining the health of society, the monitoring of immunization coverage allows us to identify areas where disease outbreaks are likely to occur, and possibly assist us in predicting future outbreaks. The aim of this study is the investigation of the coverage achieved for compulsory (diphtheria, tetanus, polio, hepatitis B,) and recommended (pertussis, Haemophilus influenzae, measles-mumps-rubella) vaccinations between 1998 and 2002 in the municipality of Bologna and the identification of the subjects not complying with compulsory and recommended vaccinations. METHODS: The statistics regarding vaccinal coverage were elaborated from the data supplied by the Bologna vaccinal registration system (1998–2000) and the IPV4 program (2001–2002). To calculate the coverage for compulsory vaccinations and cases of non-compliance reference was made to the protocol drawn up by the Emilia Romagna Regional Administration. The reasons for non-compliance were divided into various categories RESULTS: In Bologna the levels of immunization for the four compulsory vaccinations are satisfactory: over 95% children completed the vaccinal cycle, receiving the booster for anti-polio foreseen in their 3(rd )year and for anti-dyphteria, tetanus, pertussis at 6 years. The frequency of subjects with total non-compliance (i.e. those who have not begun any compulsory vaccinations by the age of one year) is generally higher in Bologna than in the region, with a slight increase in 2002 (2.52% and 1.06% in the city and the region respectively). The frequency of the anti-measles vaccination is higher than that of mumps and rubella, which means that the single vaccine, as opposed to the combined MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) was still being used in the period in question. The most common reason for non compliance is objection of parents and is probably due to reduction of certain diseases or anxiety about the possible risks. CONCLUSION: In Bologna the frequency of children aged 12 and 24 months who have achieved compulsory vaccination varied, in 2002, between 95% and 98%. As regards recommended vaccinations the percentage of coverage against Haemophilus influenzae is 93.3%, while the levels for measles, mumps and pertussis range from 84% to approx. 92%. Although these percentages are higher if compared to those obtained by other Italian regions, every effort should be made to strengthen the aspects that lead to a successful vaccinal strategy

I-CARE, a European Prospective Cohort Study Assessing Safety and Effectiveness of Biologics in Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Background and aims: There is a need to evaluate the benefit-risk ratio of current therapies in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients to provide the best quality of care. The primary objective of I-CARE (IBD Cancer and serious infections in Europe) was to assess prospectively safety concerns in IBD, with specific focus on the risk of cancer/lymphoma and serious infections in patients treated with anti-tumor necrosis factor and other biologic monotherapy as well as in combination with immunomodulators.. Methods: I-CARE was designed as a European prospective longitudinal observational multicenter cohort study to include patients with a diagnosis of Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, or IBD unclassified established at least 3 months prior to enrollment. Results: A total of 10,206 patients were enrolled between March 2016 and April 2019, including 6169 (60.4%) patients with Crohn's disease, 3853 (37.8%) with ulcerative colitis, and 184 (1.8%) with a diagnosis of IBD unclassified. Thirty-two percent of patients were receiving azathioprine/thiopurines, 4.6% 6-mercaptopurine, and 3.2% methotrexate at study entry. At inclusion, 47.3% of patients were treated with an anti-tumor necrosis factor agent, 8.8% with vedolizumab, and 3.4% with ustekinumab. Roughly one-quarter of patients (26.8%) underwent prior IBD-related surgery. Sixty-six percent of patients had been previously treated with systemic steroids. Three percent of patients had a medical history of cancer prior to inclusion and 1.1% had a history of colonic, esophageal, or uterine cervix high-grade dysplasia.. Conclusions: I-CARE is an ongoing investigator-initiated observational European prospective cohort study that will provide unique information on the long-term benefits and risks of biological therapies in IBD patients

Frequency of Solar-Like Systems and of Ice and Gas Giants Beyond the Snow Line from High-Magnification Microlensing Events in 2005-2008

We present the first measurement of planet frequency beyond the "snow line" for planet/star mass-ratios[-4.5<log q<-2]: d^2 N/dlog q/dlog s=(0.36+-0.15)/dex^2 at mean mass ratio q=5e-4, and consistent with being flat in log projected separation, s. Our result is based on a sample of 6 planets detected from intensive follow-up of high-mag (A>200) microlensing events during 2005-8. The sample host stars have typical mass M_host 0.5 Msun, and detection is sensitive to planets over a range of projected separations (R_E/s_max,R_E*s_max), where R_E 3.5 AU sqrt(M_host/Msun) is the Einstein radius and s_max (q/5e-5)^{2/3}, corresponding to deprojected separations ~3 times the "snow line". Though frenetic, the observations constitute a "controlled experiment", which permits measurement of absolute planet frequency. High-mag events are rare, but the high-mag channel is efficient: half of high-mag events were successfully monitored and half of these yielded planet detections. The planet frequency derived from microlensing is a factor 7 larger than from RV studies at factor ~25 smaller separations [2<P<2000 days]. However, this difference is basically consistent with the gradient derived from RV studies (when extrapolated well beyond the separations from which it is measured). This suggests a universal separation distribution across 2 dex in semi-major axis, 2 dex in mass ratio, and 0.3 dex in host mass. Finally, if all planetary systems were "analogs" of the Solar System, our sample would have yielded 18.2 planets (11.4 "Jupiters", 6.4 "Saturns", 0.3 "Uranuses", 0.2 "Neptunes") including 6.1 systems with 2 or more planet detections. This compares to 6 planets including one 2-planet system in the actual sample, implying a first estimate of 1/6 for the frequency of solar-like systems.Comment: 42 pages, 10 figure

Characterizing Low-Mass Binaries From Observation of Long Time-scale Caustic-crossing Gravitational Microlensing Events

Despite astrophysical importance of binary star systems, detections are limited to those located in small ranges of separations, distances, and masses and thus it is necessary to use a variety of observational techniques for a complete view of stellar multiplicity across a broad range of physical parameters. In this paper, we report the detections and measurements of 2 binaries discovered from observations of microlensing events MOA-2011-BLG-090 and OGLE-2011-BLG-0417. Determinations of the binary masses are possible by simultaneously measuring the Einstein radius and the lens parallax. The measured masses of the binary components are 0.43 $M_{\odot}$ and 0.39 $M_{\odot}$ for MOA-2011-BLG-090 and 0.57 $M_{\odot}$ and 0.17 $M_{\odot}$ for OGLE-2011-BLG-0417 and thus both lens components of MOA-2011-BLG-090 and one component of OGLE-2011-BLG-0417 are M dwarfs, demonstrating the usefulness of microlensing in detecting binaries composed of low-mass components. From modeling of the light curves considering full Keplerian motion of the lens, we also measure the orbital parameters of the binaries. The blended light of OGLE-2011-BLG-0417 comes very likely from the lens itself, making it possible to check the microlensing orbital solution by follow-up radial-velocity observation. For both events, the caustic-crossing parts of the light curves, which are critical for determining the physical lens parameters, were resolved by high-cadence survey observations and thus it is expected that the number of microlensing binaries with measured physical parameters will increase in the future.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, 4 table

Increasing the Astrophysical Reach of the Advanced Virgo Detector via the Application of Squeezed Vacuum States of Light

Current interferometric gravitational-wave detectors are limited by quantum noise over a wide range of their measurement bandwidth. One method to overcome the quantum limit is the injection of squeezed vacuum states of light into the interferometer’s dark port. Here, we report on the successful application of this quantum technology to improve the shot noise limited sensitivity of the Advanced Virgo gravitational-wave detector. A sensitivity enhancement of up to 3.2±0.1  dB beyond the shot noise limit is achieved. This nonclassical improvement corresponds to a 5%–8% increase of the binary neutron star horizon. The squeezing injection was fully automated and over the first 5 months of the third joint LIGO-Virgo observation run O3 squeezing was applied for more than 99% of the science time. During this period several gravitational-wave candidates have been recorded

Measurement of the cross-section and charge asymmetry of WW bosons produced in proton-proton collisions at s=8\sqrt{s}=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents measurements of the $W^+ \rightarrow \mu^+\nu$ and $W^- \rightarrow \mu^-\nu$ cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 20.2~\mbox{fb^{-1}}. The precision of the cross-section measurements varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the 1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between them.Comment: 38 pages in total, author list starting page 22, 5 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2017-13

Directional Limits on Persistent Gravitational Waves from Advanced LIGO’s First Observing Run

We employ gravitational-wave radiometry to map the stochastic gravitational wave background expected from a variety of contributing mechanisms and test the assumption of isotropy using data from the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory’s (aLIGO) first observing run. We also search for persistent gravitational waves from point sources with only minimal assumptions over the 20–1726 Hz frequency band. Finding no evidence of gravitational waves from either point sources or a stochastic background, we set limits at 90% confidence. For broadband point sources, we report upper limits on the gravitational wave energy flux per unit frequency in the range Fα;ΘðfÞ < ð0.1–56Þ × 10−8 erg cm−2 s−1 Hz−1ðf=25 HzÞα−1 depending on the sky location Θ and the spectral power index α. For extended sources, we report upper limits on the fractional gravitational wave energy density required to close the Universe of Ωðf; ΘÞ < ð0.39–7.6Þ × 10−8 sr−1ðf=25 HzÞα depending on Θ and α. Directed searches for narrowband gravitational waves from astrophysically interesting objects (Scorpius X-1, Supernova 1987 A, and the Galactic Center) yield median frequency-dependent limits on strain amplitude of h0 < ð6.7; 5.5; and 7.0Þ × 10−25, respectively, at the most sensitive detector frequencies between 130–175 Hz. This represents a mean improvement of a factor of 2 across the band compared to previous searches of this kind for these sky locations, considering the different quantities of strain constrained in each case

Vitamin D deficiency is associated with orthostatic hypotension in older men: a cross-sectional analysis from the British Regional Heart Study.

BACKGROUND: orthostatic hypotension (OH) that occurs within, or at, 1 minute of standing is associated with higher risk of falls, myocardial infarction, syncope and mortality, compared to OH that occurs after 1 minute of standing. Whether vitamin D deficiency increases the risk of OH is controversial. METHODS: this was a cross-sectional analysis of 3,620 older, community-dwelling men. Multinomial, multiple logistic regression models were used to calculate the risk of OH across categories of vitamin D status (deficient [<25 nmol/l], insufficient [≥25-<50 nmol/l] and sufficient [≥50 nmol/l]) and parathyroid hormone quintile. RESULTS: men with vitamin D deficiency were more likely to have OH that occurred within 1 minute of standing in univariate logistic regression (OR 1.88, 95% CI 1.40-2.53) and multinomial, multiple logistic regression (OR 1.51, 95% CI 1.06-2.15), compared to men with sufficient levels of vitamin D. Vitamin D insufficiency was not associated with the risk of OH. Elevated parathyroid hormone was not associated with risk of OH. CONCLUSION: the absence of an association between vitamin D insufficiency and risk of OH and the presence of an association between vitamin D deficiency and risk of OH suggest that there may be a threshold effect; it is only below a particular level of vitamin D that risk of OH is increased. In this cohort, the threshold was <25 nmol/l. Future work should investigate whether treating vitamin D deficiency can improve postural blood pressure or if preventing vitamin D deficiency reduces the incidence of OH

Prospects for observing and localizing gravitational-wave transients with Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo and KAGRA

We present possible observing scenarios for the Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo and KAGRA gravitational-wave detectors over the next decade, with the intention of providing information to the astronomy community to facilitate planning for multi-messenger astronomy with gravitational waves. We estimate the sensitivity of the network to transient gravitational-wave signals, and study the capability of the network to determine the sky location of the source. We report our findings for gravitational-wave transients, with particular focus on gravitational-wave signals from the inspiral of binary neutron star systems, which are the most promising targets for multi-messenger astronomy. The ability to localize the sources of the detected signals depends on the geographical distribution of the detectors and their relative sensitivity, and 90% credible regions can be as large as thousands of square degrees when only two sensitive detectors are operational. Determining the sky position of a significant fraction of detected signals to areas of 5– 20 deg2 requires at least three detectors of sensitivity within a factor of ∼2 of each other and with a broad frequency bandwidth. When all detectors, including KAGRA and the third LIGO detector in India, reach design sensitivity, a significant fraction of gravitational-wave signals will be localized to a few square degrees by gravitational-wave observations alone