Many extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics explain the dominance of matter over antimatter in our Universe by neutrinos being their own antiparticles. This would imply the existence of ...neutrinoless double- decay, which is an extremely rare lepton-number-violating radioactive decay process whose detection requires the utmost background suppression. Among the programmes that aim to detect this decay, the GERDA Collaboration is searching for neutrinoless double- decay of sup.76Ge by operating bare detectors, made of germanium with an enriched sup.76Ge fraction, in liquid argon. After having completed Phase I of data taking, we have recently launched Phase II. Here we report that in GERDA Phase II we have achieved a background level of approximately 10sup.3 counts keVsup.1 kgsup.1 yrsup.1. This implies that the experiment is background-free, even when increasing the exposure up to design level. This is achieved by use of an active veto system, superior germanium detector energy resolution and improved background recognition of our new detectors. No signal of neutrinoless double- decay was found when Phase I and Phase II data were combined, and we deduce a lower-limit half-life of 5.310sup.25 years at the 90 per cent confidence level. Our half-life sensitivity of 4.010sup.25 years is competitive with the best experiments that use a substantially larger isotope mass. The potential of an essentially background-free search for neutrinoless double- decay will facilitate a larger germanium experiment with sensitivity levels that will bring us closer to clarifying whether neutrinos are their own antiparticles.
Preterm infants are at risk for neurodevelopmental sequelae even in absence of major cerebral lesions. The hypothesis that Human Recombinant Erythropoietin (rEpo) could improve the neurodevelopmental ...outcome in risk neonates has raised the highest interest in recent years.
A group of preterm neonates born at a gestational age ≤ 30 weeks and free from major cerebral lesions or major visual impairment, were included in the study if they had a complete neurologic evaluation for at least 24 months of postmenstrual age. They were assigned to group I in the case they had been treated with rEpo or group II if untreated. The aim was to evaluate whether rEpo, given at the high cumulative doses utilized for hematologic purposes, is able to improve the neurodevelopmental outcome in preterm infants born at a gestational age ≤ 30 weeks. A group of 104 preterm neonates were studied: 59 neonates who received rEpo for 6.9 ± 2.4 weeks at a median cumulative dose of 6300 UI/Kg (6337 ± 2434 UI/Kg), starting at a median age of 4 days and 45 neonates who were born in the period preceding the routine use of rEpo. The neurodevelopmental quotient at 24 month postmenstrual age was assessed utilizing the Griffiths' Mental Developmental Scales.
Our results failed to show any difference in the Developmental Quotient at 24 month. Bronchopulmonary dysplasia, minor intraventricular hemorrhages and blood transfusions were the clinical features significantly related to the Developmental Quotient.
Our results do not support the hypothesis that rEpo, administered with the schedule utilized for hematologic purposes, improve the neurodevelopmental outcome of preterm neonates, at least those preterm infants free from major impairments.
To evaluate whether pattern III of color Doppler Ultra-sound may identify malignant nodules.
We have retrospectively analyzed data pertaining to 1090 patients of both genders (230 males, 860 ...females), with an average age of 53 years (min 17 years, max 81 years), who underwent thyroidectomy in Department of Surgical Sciences of Sapienza University of Rome since January 2003 through June 2009. We correlated color-Doppler characteristics and histological features through statistical analysis so as to verify statistical correlation between them.
Our study showed that 164/273 (60.1%) patients with malignant disease were associated with vascularization pattern III. Regarding benign disease, 152/268 (56.7%) patients showed a pattern of vascularization 3 at ultrasonography. The statistical analysis was not able to show any correlation between pattern III and malignancy.
Pattern III cannot be used to predict malignancy with confidence, and FNA is still mandatory to rule out the nature of the nodule.
The feasibility of a purified, inactivated dengue (DEN) vaccine made in Vero cells was explored. A DEN-2 virus candidate was chosen for production of a monotypic, purified, inactivated vaccine (PIV). ...Virus was harvested from roller bottle culture supernatants, concentrated, and purified on sucrose gradients. The purified virus was inactivated with 0.05% formalin at 22°C. After inactivation, the virus retained its antigenicity and was immunogenic in mice and rhesus monkeys, in which it elicited high titers of DEN-2 virus-neutralizing antibody. Mice were completely protected against challenge with live, virulent virus after receiving two 0.15-µg doses of PIV. Monkeys vaccinated with three doses ranging as low as 0.25 µg demonstrated complete absence or a significant reduction in the number of days of viremia after challenge with homologous virus. These results warrant further testing and development of PIVs for other DEN virus serotypes.
Service license life cycle Gangadharan, G.R.; Frankova, G.; DAndrea, V.
2007 International Symposium on Collaborative Technologies and Systems
Conference Proceeding
Services enable the collaboration of distributed systems by interacting beyond the organizational boundaries. Being the mechanism of technology transfer, licensing becomes the fundamental concept in ...distribution of services, designing business relationships and strategies. Service licensing is a significant way to manage the rights of service consumers and service providers. In this paper, we compare service level agreements and service licenses and we propose the phases of a service license during its life span. To make the discussion more concrete, we illustrate the proposal of a service license life cycle with a meteorological case study.
This paper examines strategies for teaching sociology in an international setting; the city of London is used as an example. The paper focuses on ways in which faculty can integrate the resources of ...a large city in another culture into their curriculum in programs of study abroad. First we discuss the importance of advance planning, including shaping courses to fit the international setting, anticipatory socialization of students, support for faculty development involving advance work in the international setting, and strategies for integrating coursework with the broader curriculum in the program of study abroad. We then present five examples of integrating courses into the cultural setting. Finally we review some of the advantages and disadvantages of teaching sociology in an international setting.
Building on a Canadian study associating unvaccinated individuals to increased car accidents, we examined the relationship between COVID-19 vaccination status and US preventive care practices.
We ...queried the 2021 National Health Interview Survey. First, we fitted a model to identify respondent-level factors associated with receipt of at least one COVID-19 vaccination. Second, we fitted a survey-weighted logistic regression model adjusted for respondent-level characteristics to examine whether the receipt of at least one COVID-19 vaccination predicted the receipt of preventive care services. Preventive care services assessed included serum cholesterol, glucose, and blood pressure measurements, as well as guideline-concordant cancer screening including breast, cervical, colorectal, and prostate cancer screening.
Factors predicting receipt of COVID-19 vaccination were age (adjusted Odds Ratio (aOR) 1.03; 95 % confidence interval (CI) 1.03–1.03), Hispanic (aOR 1.25; 95 % CI 1.08–1.44), and non-Hispanic Asian (aOR 3.52; 95 % CI 2.74–4.52) ethnicity/race, and history of cancer (aOR 1.61; 95 % CI 1.13–2.30). Unvaccinated respondents were less likely to have received serum cholesterol (aOR 0.69; 95 % CI 0.50–0.70), serum glucose (aOR 0.65; 95 % CI 0.56–0.75), or blood pressure measurements (aOR 0.47; 95 % CI 0.33–0.66); and were less likely to have received breast cancer (aOR 0.35; 95 % CI 0.25–0.48), colorectal cancer (aOR 0.52; 95 % CI 0.46–0.60) and prostate cancer screening (aOR 0.61; 95 % CI 0.48–0.76). There was no significant association between unvaccinated respondents receiving cervical cancer screening (aOR 0.96; 95 % CI 0.81–1.13; p = 0.616).
Non-receipt of COVID-19 vaccination was associated with non-receipt of preventive care services including cancer screening. Further studies are needed to assess if this association is due to system-level factors or reflects a general distrust of medical preventive care amongst this population.
Further elaboration on the structure-activity relationships in our U-50,488 series has revealed that benzologation of this cyclohexane-1,2-diamine derivative provides compounds which either maintain ...the interaction with the kappa receptor (e.g. compounds 3a and 5a in the phenylacetamido series) or eliminate the mu receptor mediated analgesia (e.g. compounds 3-6 in the benzamido series). Naphthologation also caused the elimination of mu receptor mediated analgesia (e.g. compounds 17a and 17b).
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