414 research outputs found
Awareness and acceptability of human papillomavirus vaccine: an application of the instrumental variables bivariate probit model
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Although lower uptake rates of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine among socioeconomically disadvantaged populations have been documented, less is known about the relationships between awareness and acceptability, and other factors affecting HPV vaccine uptake.</p> <p>The current study aimed to estimate the potential effectiveness of increased HPV vaccine awareness on the acceptability of HPV vaccination in a nationally representative sample of women, using a methodology that controlled for potential non-random selection.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This study used a population-based sample from the 2007 Health Information National Trends Survey, a cross-sectional study of the US population aged 18 years or older, and focused on the subsample of 742 women who have any female children under the age of 18 years in the household. An instrumental variables bivariate probit model was used to jointly estimate HPV vaccine awareness and acceptability.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The proportion of HPV vaccine acceptability among the previously aware and non-aware groups was 58% and 47%, respectively. Results from the instrumental variables bivariate probit model showed that the estimated marginal effect of awareness on acceptability was 46 percentage points, an effect that was even greater than observed.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Among populations who are not currently aware of the HPV vaccine, the potential impact of raising awareness on acceptability of HPV vaccination is substantial. This finding provides additional support to strengthening public health programs that increase awareness and policy efforts that address barriers to HPV vaccination.</p
Pupillary Stroop effects
We recorded the pupil diameters of participants performing the words’ color-naming Stroop task (i.e., naming the color of a word that names a color). Non-color words were used as baseline to firmly establish the effects of semantic relatedness induced by color word distractors. We replicated the classic Stroop effects of color congruency and color incongruency with pupillary diameter recordings: relative to non-color words, pupil diameters increased for color distractors that differed from color responses, while they reduced for color distractors that were identical to color responses. Analyses of the time courses of pupil responses revealed further differences between color-congruent and color-incongruent distractors, with the latter inducing a steep increase of pupil size and the former a relatively lower increase. Consistent with previous findings that have demonstrated that pupil size increases as task demands rise, the present results indicate that pupillometry is a robust measure of Stroop interference, and it represents a valuable addition to the cognitive scientist’s toolbox
A review of elliptical and disc galaxy structure, and modern scaling laws
A century ago, in 1911 and 1913, Plummer and then Reynolds introduced their
models to describe the radial distribution of stars in `nebulae'. This article
reviews the progress since then, providing both an historical perspective and a
contemporary review of the stellar structure of bulges, discs and elliptical
galaxies. The quantification of galaxy nuclei, such as central mass deficits
and excess nuclear light, plus the structure of dark matter halos and cD galaxy
envelopes, are discussed. Issues pertaining to spiral galaxies including dust,
bulge-to-disc ratios, bulgeless galaxies, bars and the identification of
pseudobulges are also reviewed. An array of modern scaling relations involving
sizes, luminosities, surface brightnesses and stellar concentrations are
presented, many of which are shown to be curved. These 'redshift zero'
relations not only quantify the behavior and nature of galaxies in the Universe
today, but are the modern benchmark for evolutionary studies of galaxies,
whether based on observations, N-body-simulations or semi-analytical modelling.
For example, it is shown that some of the recently discovered compact
elliptical galaxies at 1.5 < z < 2.5 may be the bulges of modern disc galaxies.Comment: Condensed version (due to Contract) of an invited review article to
appear in "Planets, Stars and Stellar
Systems"(www.springer.com/astronomy/book/978-90-481-8818-5). 500+ references
incl. many somewhat forgotten, pioneer papers. Original submission to
Springer: 07-June-201
Egg removal and intraspecific brood parasitism in the European starling ( Sturnus vulgaris )
From 1983 to 1986 we monitored 284 European starling ( Sturnus vulgaris ) nests in New Jersey for evidence of intraspecific brood parasitism and egg removal during the laying period. Egg removal occurred significantly more often at nests where intraspecific brood parasitism was detected (12 of 35 nests, 34%) than at unparasitized nests (23 of 249 nests, 9%). Brood parasitism (92% of parasitized nests) and egg removal (74% of nests with egg removal) were most common at nests where egg laying began in April of each year (i.e., early nests). Egg removal occurred at 26 (19%) and brood parasitism at 32 (23%) of 138 early nests. Both brood parasitism and egg removal were concentrated during the first four days in the laying period when brood parasitism is most likely to be successful and when host nests are most vulnerable to parasitism (Romagnano 1987). Both parasitism and removal usually involved a single egg at each nest. We detected brood parasitism and egg removal on the same day at five of 12 nests (42%) where both were observed. Because starlings do not remove foreign eggs from their nests once they begin laying (Stouffer et al. 1987) we hypothesize that parasite females sometimes removed host eggs while parasitizing nests.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/46889/1/265_2004_Article_BF00295201.pd
Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV
The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS
has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions
at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection
criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined.
For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a
muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the
whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4,
while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The
efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than
90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall
momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The
transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity
for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be
better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions
of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO
Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV
The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS
has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions
at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection
criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined.
For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a
muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the
whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4,
while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The
efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than
90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall
momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The
transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity
for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be
better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions
of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO
Azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles at high transverse momenta in PbPb collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV
The azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles in PbPb collisions at
nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV is measured with the CMS
detector at the LHC over an extended transverse momentum (pt) range up to
approximately 60 GeV. The data cover both the low-pt region associated with
hydrodynamic flow phenomena and the high-pt region where the anisotropies may
reflect the path-length dependence of parton energy loss in the created medium.
The anisotropy parameter (v2) of the particles is extracted by correlating
charged tracks with respect to the event-plane reconstructed by using the
energy deposited in forward-angle calorimeters. For the six bins of collision
centrality studied, spanning the range of 0-60% most-central events, the
observed v2 values are found to first increase with pt, reaching a maximum
around pt = 3 GeV, and then to gradually decrease to almost zero, with the
decline persisting up to at least pt = 40 GeV over the full centrality range
measured.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO
Search for new physics with same-sign isolated dilepton events with jets and missing transverse energy
A search for new physics is performed in events with two same-sign isolated
leptons, hadronic jets, and missing transverse energy in the final state. The
analysis is based on a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of
4.98 inverse femtobarns produced in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of
7 TeV collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. This constitutes a factor of
140 increase in integrated luminosity over previously published results. The
observed yields agree with the standard model predictions and thus no evidence
for new physics is found. The observations are used to set upper limits on
possible new physics contributions and to constrain supersymmetric models. To
facilitate the interpretation of the data in a broader range of new physics
scenarios, information on the event selection, detector response, and
efficiencies is provided.Comment: Published in Physical Review Letter
- …