Human papillomavirus (HPV) causes cervical, vulvar, and vaginal cancers, precancerous dysplasia, and genital warts. We report data for the longest efficacy evaluation to date of a prophylactic HPV ...vaccine. In total, 552 women (16-23 years) were enrolled in a randomised, placebo-controlled study of a quadrivalent HPV 6/11/16/18 L1 virus-like-particle vaccine with vaccination at months 0, 2, and 6. At regular intervals through 3 years, subjects underwent gynaecologic examination, cervicovaginal sampling for HPV DNA, serum anti-HPV testing, and Pap testing, with follow-up biopsy as indicated. A subset of 241 subjects underwent two further years of follow-up. At 5 years post enrollment, the combined incidence of HPV 6/11/16/18-related persistent infection or disease was reduced in vaccine-recipients by 96% (two cases vaccine versus 46 placebo). There were no cases of HPV 6/11/16/18-related precancerous cervical dysplasia or genital warts in vaccine recipients, and six cases in placebo recipients (efficacy = 100%; 95% CI:12-100%). Through 5 years, vaccine-induced anti-HPV geometric mean titres remained at or above those following natural infection. In conclusion, a prophylactic quadrivalent HPV vaccine was effective through 5 years for prevention of persistent infection and disease caused by HPV 6/11/16/18. This duration supports vaccination of adolescents and young adults, which is expected to greatly reduce the burden of cervical and genital cancers, precancerous dysplasia, and genital warts.
Silicon PhotoMultipliers, SiPMs, constitute the enabling technology for a diverse and rapidly growing range of applications: medical imaging, experimental physics, and commercial applications are ...only a few examples. In this work, a characterization protocol for SiPM qualification has been applied to Hamamatsu S13161-3050AE-08 SiPM (8 × 8) array in the (−40 ÷ ＋30) °C temperature range. The protocol foresees to measure several parameters: breakdown voltage, quenching resistance, gain, dark count rate and probability of cross-talk. Methods to extract them and their dependence on temperature at fixed overvoltage are shown and the results are discussed.
Nowadays, Europe is heavily engaged in the evolution of a new generation of high-performance computing (HPC), and new perspectives are looking at the emerging computational era called exascale. The ...presence of converging, domain-independent interests on Big Data among different communities, from Information Communication Technologies (ITC) to Life Sciences, Physics, Astrophysics, Space Sciences and many other fields, as well as the development of new skills, is leading to the establishment of specific collaborations with the aim of exploiting knowledge, capacities and research and innovation potential from different communities. The new program of Europe (named EuroHPC) is encouraging the sharing of these experiences and the cooperation between different entities like scientific research centers, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and private industries, for joint actions and the development of new skills in the Big Data and artificial intelligence (AI) domains. This program has two main pillars: 'Supercomputing and Data Infrastructure Programme' to deliver two world-class precursors of exascale supercomputers on 2020 and 'Research and Innovation Programme' on HPC to support the development of European supercomputing technology with the co-design of European exascale machines and to foster applications, skills development and a wider use of the new generation of computing systems. The co-design of these new systems, considering the big amount of data they need to handle with increasingly complexity, will also drive the development of a new generation of artificial intelligence techniques and visual analytics systems to underpin more accurate investigations. This paper is an analysis of the evolution of computing from a European perspective, looking at new generation systems and data analysis techniques in the era of Big Data, illustrating ideas with examples developed within the context of a specific physics field.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
BACKGROUND: The study aim was to assess the time elapsed between onset of symptoms and diagnosis of endometriosis, and to identify the factors associated with diagnostic delay in a group of Brazilian ...women. METHODS: In this retrospective cohort study, 200 women with surgically confirmed endometriosis were interviewed at an endometriosis outpatient clinic. RESULTS: The median (interquartile range) time elapsed from onset of symptoms until diagnosis of endometriosis was 7.0 (range 3.5–12.1) years. The younger the women at onset of symptoms, the longer the period for diagnosis to be made: the median delay was 12.1 (range 8.0–17.2) years in women aged ≤19 years, and 3.3 (range 2.0–5.5) years in women aged ≥30 years. The median time period between onset of symptoms and diagnosis was 4.0 (2.0–6.0) years for women whose main complaint was infertility, but 7.4 (3.6–13.0) years for those with pelvic pain. CONCLUSIONS: The delay in diagnosis of endometriosis was considered to be long, and especially so for young women with pelvic pain. More information relating to endometriosis should be offered to general physicians and gynaecologists in order to reduce the time taken to diagnose this condition.
BACKGROUND Women with endometriosis may have higher rates of autoimmune disorders, including hypothyroidism. The objective of this study was to compare the prevalence of thyroid dysfunction and ...autoimmune thyroid disease (AITD) between women with endometriosis and a control group. METHODS This was a cross-sectional study carried out in 148 women with surgically confirmed endometriosis and 158 controls. The mean age of the study group was 34.6 (7.1 SD) years (range 21–42) and 32.1 (7.7 SD) years (range 18–44) for controls. Serum levels of thyroid-stimulating hormone, free thyroxine and the anti-thyroperoxidase and anti-thyroglobulin antibodies were evaluated. RESULTS Thyroid disorders were identified in 20.9% of the endometriosis group and 26.5% of the control group (P = 0.25). The overall frequency of thyroid dysfunction was 12.2% and 10.8% for the endometriosis and control groups, and the frequency of positive thyroid antibodies, 14.9% and 22.2%, respectively (P = 0.20). Endometriosis stage and infertility history were not associated with thyroid dysfunction and AITD in the study group. CONCLUSIONS The prevalence of thyroid dysfunction and AITD was similar in the two study groups. Screening for thyroid disturbances in women with endometriosis is not indicated
The Muon Portal Project has built a prototype of a real size detector (6m×3m×7 m) for the inspection of containers by muon tomography. This technique may provide 2D and 3D images of the interior of a ...container, to identify the presence of high-Z materials. In the present Project, 4800 extruded scintillator strips were arranged such as to cover four X–Y detection planes (6m×3 m), two placed above and two below the container to be inspected. Silicon photomultipliers were used as photosensors, to collect the light transported by Wave Length Shifter (WLS) fibres embedded in the scintillator strips. First tomographic images are here presented.
Microscopic simulations may bring a better understanding of the response of gaseous detectors. Such simulations are computationally demanding, due to the modelling of the low energy processes and to ...the high segmentation required for the 2D/3D field maps. In MPGD such maps can be much more complex than those of traditional multiwire chambers, due to the heterogeneous materials and more involute geometries, which break the simplifying symmetries featured in the latter. In order to investigate the performance of the triple GEM 2-dimensional tracking chambers being developed for high luminosity experiments with the Super BigBite Spectrometer at Jefferson Laboratory, we have set up a flexible and rather effcient multistep simulation processor based on either ANSYS or GMSH+ELMER for 3D CAD and electrostatic field modelling and then combined to Garfield++. Potential systematic effects from the 3D CAD modellers, the mesh generators and the electrostatic field solvers have been estimated with dedicated simulations; once these effects have been assessed, the results of the multistep approach have been compared to a simplified whole GEM chamber model.
The objective of this study was to evaluate the perceived stress index, quality of life, and hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis activity in women with endometriosis and chronic pelvic pain. For the ...study, 93 women with endometriosis and 82 healthy women volunteered. The visual analogue scale (VAS) (0 = no pain; 10 = severe pain) was used to determine pain intensity; the perceived stress questionnaire (PSQ) defined stress index, and the health-related quality-of-life (HRQOL)-SF-36 questionnaire was used to evaluate quality of life. Salivary cortisol was measured at 0800, 1600, and 2000 h and the awakening cortisol response was assessed to evaluate the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis activity. The results show that women with endometriosis and chronic pelvic pain of moderate intensity (4.1 ± 0.58, mean ± SEM) have higher levels of perceived stress (0.55 ± 0.01 versus 0.42 ± 0.01, p < 0.05), a poorer quality of life expressed as lower scores for all items of the inventory and hypocortisolism. Lower levels of salivary cortisol were observed in all three samples collected, as well as in the awakening cortisol response, for women with endometriosis (0.19 ± 0.09 μg/dl) when compared with controls (0.78 ± 0.08 μg/dl, p < 0.05 l), and it was independent of pain intensity and Mental health (MH) scores in SF-36. We concluded that women with endometriosis and chronic pelvic pain show low concentrations of salivary cortisol and a high level of perceived stress, associated with a poor quality of life. Whether the hypocortisolism was an adaptive response to the aversive symptoms of the disorder or a feature related to the etiology of endometriosis remains to be elucidated.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This paper is about the Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM), a gas detector that will be installed on the new Super BigBite Spectrometer (SBS), under construction at Jefferson Laboratory in Newport News, ...VA, USA; the main interest of JLAB physics is the study of the fundamental interactions and constituents of hadronic matter and in particular the study of the electromagnetic Form Factors of the nucleons. The Italian group, JLAB12, is engaged in the construction, characterization and commissioning of two of the detectors that will be implemented in SBS: the GEM front tracker and the hadron calorimeter HCAL-J. A Gas Electron Multiplier is a gas detector useful to track the charged particles. It is composed of 2 layers of copper and a layer of Kapton, a dielectric material; all the layers together are inside a box with a mixture of gas:
of Argon an
of CO
. In each GEM foil there are a lot of biconical holes, and it is placed between a drift plane and a readout plane; when a charge particle crosses the gas, it loses energy creating couple ion-electron. If we apply a potential difference, the pairs are accelerated by the electric field, and they have enough energy to create an avalanche. The gain that we can reach with a single GEM foil is 1000. In JLAB's configuration for SBS, a TripleGEMs system will be used; a TripleGEM is composed of 3 GEM foil placed in cascade. The advantages of this technology are: the layers structure, so the primary ionization, the multiplication and the charge collection regions are separated, the high gain about 100,000, the flexibility of geometry, the good spatial resolution about 70 µm, low costs and small streamer or charging up phenomena. To verify GEMs performances and to optimize the digitalization model, we started simulations changing some physical and geometric parameters. In order to run the GEM's simulations, we used two different software: ANSYS Mechanical APDL to create the detector geometry, assign the materials, define the meshes in shape and size and the electric field, and Garfield++, a toolkit for detailed Monte Carlo simulation of a gaseous detector, to evaluate the distribution of the charged particles on the readout plane when we change some parameters like the type of the primary particle, its energy and its incident slope. In particular, we built two different models: a triple GEM model and a cascade model; we are comparing the simulations results with the real test that we did in Juelich (Germany) with a beam of 2.8 GeV protons.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Abstract Objectives To investigate whether there is an association between vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) levels in serum and peritoneal fluid, and the presence of pelvic endometriosis and ...its clinical symptoms. Methods Blood and peritoneal fluid sample levels of VEGF were measured in 46 women undergoing laparoscopy: 32 with suspected endometriosis and 14 with confirmed endometriosis. Data were analyzed according to phase of the menstrual cycle, symptoms, disease stage, and disease site. Results There were no significant associations between serum and peritoneal fluid levels of VEGF and the presence of endometriosis, even when controlling for the menstrual phase. However, among the women with confirmed endometriosis, there was a significant increase ( P = 0.002) in the mean peritoneal VEGF level in those in the late secretory phase compared with those in the proliferative and early secretory phases. Conclusions Measuring VEGF levels in symptomatic patients is not helpful to differentiate those with endometriosis from those with a different condition. However, in the late secretory and menstrual phases, mean VEGF levels were higher in women with confirmed endometriosis than in those suspected of having the disease.
PDF
