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Eigenfunctions of the Fourier transform with prescribed zeros played a major role in the proof that the E8 and the Leech lattice give the best sphere packings in respective dimensions 8 and 24 by Cohn, Kumar, Miller, Radchenko and Viazovska. The functions used for a linear programming argument were constructed as Laplace transforms of certain modular and quasimodular forms. Similar constructions were used by Cohn and Gonçalves to find a function satisfying an optimal uncertainty principle in dimension 12. This paper gives a unified view on these constructions and develops the machinery to find the underlying forms in all dimensions divisible by 4. Furthermore, the positivity of the Fourier coefficients of the quasimodular forms occurring in this context is discussed.
To compare antimicrobial prescribing practices in Australian hematology and oncology patients to noncancer acute inpatients and to identify targets for stewardship interventions.
Design:
Retrospective comparative analysis of a national prospectively collected database.
Methods:
Using data from the 2014–2018 annual Australian point-prevalence surveys of antimicrobial prescribing in hospitalized patients (ie, Hospital National Antimicrobial Prescribing Survey called Hospital NAPS), the most frequently used antimicrobials, their appropriateness, and guideline concordance were compared among hematology/bone marrow transplant (hemBMT), oncology, and noncancer inpatients in the setting of treatment of neutropenic fever and antibacterial and antifungal prophylaxis.
Results:
In 454 facilities, 94,226 antibiotic prescriptions for 62,607 adult inpatients (2,230 hemBMT, 1,824 oncology, and 58,553 noncancer) were analyzed. Appropriateness was high for neutropenic fever management across groups (83.4%–90.4%); however, hemBMT patients had high rates of carbapenem use (111 of 746 prescriptions, 14.9%), and 20.2% of these prescriptions were deemed inappropriate. Logistic regression demonstrated that hemBMT patients were more likely to receive appropriate antifungal prophylaxis compared to oncology and noncancer patients (adjusted OR, 5.3; P < .001 for hemBMT compared to noncancer patients). Oncology had a low rate of antifungal prophylaxis guideline compliance (67.2%), and incorrect dosage and frequency were key factors. Compared to oncology patients, hemBMT patients were more likely to receive appropriate nonsurgical antibacterial prophylaxis (aOR, 8.4; 95% CI, 5.3–13.3; P < .001). HemBMT patients were also more likely to receive appropriate nonsurgical antibacterial prophylaxis compared to noncancer patients (OR, 3.1; 95% CI, 1.9–5.0; P < .001). However, in the Australian context, the hemBMT group had higher than expected use of fluoroquinolone prophylaxis (66 of 831 prescriptions, 8%).
Conclusions:
This study demonstrates why separate analysis of hemBMT and oncology populations is necessary to identify specific opportunities for quality improvement in each patient group.
The Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS) is the first large-area survey to be conducted with the full 36-antenna Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope. RACS will provide a shallow model of the ASKAP sky that will aid the calibration of future deep ASKAP surveys. RACS will cover the whole sky visible from the ASKAP site in Western Australia and will cover the full ASKAP band of 700–1800 MHz. The RACS images are generally deeper than the existing NRAO VLA Sky Survey and Sydney University Molonglo Sky Survey radio surveys and have better spatial resolution. All RACS survey products will be public, including radio images (with
$\sim$
15 arcsec resolution) and catalogues of about three million source components with spectral index and polarisation information. In this paper, we present a description of the RACS survey and the first data release of 903 images covering the sky south of declination
$+41^\circ$
made over a 288-MHz band centred at 887.5 MHz.
To inform the efficient allocation of testing resources, we evaluated the characteristics of those tested for COVID-19 to determine predictors of a positive test. Recent travel and exposure to a confirmed case were both highly predictive of positive testing. Symptom-based screening strategies alone may be inadequate to control the ongoing pandemic.
Shifting from shellfish collecting to fishing as a primary coastal foraging strategy can allow hunter-gatherers to obtain more food and settle in larger populations. On California's northern Channel Islands (NCI), after the development of the single-piece shell fishhook around 2500 cal BP, diet expanded from primarily shellfish to include nearshore fishes in greater numbers. During the Medieval Climatic Anomaly (1150–600 cal BP), settlement on the islands condensed to a small number of large coastal villages with high population densities supported largely by nearshore fish species including rockfishes, surfperches, and señoritas. Faunal data from five sites on western Santa Rosa Island (CA-SRI-15, -31, -97, -313, and -333) demonstrate an increase in nearshore fishing through time. We argue that demographic changes that occurred on the northern Channel Islands were accompanied by changes in subsistence strategies that were related in part to risk of failure when attempting to acquire different resources. As population density increased, the low-risk strategy of shellfish harvesting declined in relative importance as a higher-risk strategy of nearshore fishing increased. While multiple simultaneous subsistence strategies are frequently noted among individual hunter-gatherer communities in the ethnographic record, this study provides a framework to observe similar patterns in the archaeological record.
Introduction: Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is an integral tool in the modern emergency physician's toolkit. Evidence suggests many imaging and lab investigations are ordered without true medical indications; it is unknown how POCUS utilization impacts health care costs at a patient level. The purpose of this study was to assess whether POCUS use in the emergency department (ED) was associated with cost savings via decreased laboratory and radiographic testing. Methods: POCUMON is a single-center, prospective pilot study. The participants were a convenience sample of ED staff physicians and PGY-5 Emergency Medicine (EM) residents working in the ED from July-October 2019. Physicians who used POCUS as part of their assessment had the cost of their patient investigation plans compared with those proposed by a control group of ED physicians simultaneously on-shift. The control group was blinded to the POCUS findings but had access to the patient and medical record. The lab investigations and imaging studies ordered by both groups were recorded with respective costs. Data were analyzed using a paired T-test, with sub-group analyses. Ethics approval was obtained from the Queen's University HSREB (No.6026732). Results: 50 patient assessments using POCUS were captured in the study period. 76% of patient assessments were performed by EM staff physicians; 94% of control assessments were provided by EM staff physicians. Patient chief complaints included abdominal pain (7), chest pain/dyspnea (10), flank pain (3), pregnancy concerns (4), trauma (7), extremity complaints (4), back pain (3), and other (12). The POCUS group had a trend for lower number of laboratory tests (4.7 ± 0.44 vs 5.22 ± 0.39; p = 0.28) and imaging studies (0.94 ± 0.14 vs 1.1 ± 0.11; p = 0.33). Overall health care costs were similar in both groups, with a trend to cost savings in the POCUS group ($142.00 ± 15.44 vs $174.60 ± 17.00; p = 0.12). Subgrouping identified significant cost savings in the POCUS group for patients with a chief complaint of flank pain ($43.64 vs $248.82, p = 0.01). Conclusion: POCUS use was not associated with significant health care cost savings. ED POCUS usage did see a trend towards decreased laboratory and imaging investigations. Patients presenting with flank pain had significantly lower expenditures associated with their visit when POCUS was incorporated into their assessment. Large scale prospective studies are needed to investigate if POCUS is associated with cost-savings in ED patients.
Preclinical studies have suggested that continuous, long-term opiate exposure may be neurotoxic. There is accumulating evidence for neural and neuropsychological abnormalities in diverse human drug addiction populations. However, the structural and behavioural correlates of human opiate dependency have been less studied than other drugs.
Aims
We investigated brain structure and neuropsychological functioning in opiate dependent, treatment-seeking patients receiving Methadone Maintenance Treatment, to test hypotheses of regional grey matter reductions correlating with methadone exposure and neuropsychological measures.
Methods
Cambridge Gambling Task (CGT) data were acquired from 47 patients receiving MMT and 51 controls. T1 weighted Magnetic Resonance Images were acquired from a representative subset of these volunteers.
Results
MMT patients exhibited grey matter reductions in the orbito-medial prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia. Additionally, patients exhibited significant abnormalities on CGT behavioural measures; risk adjustment, risk taking and impulsivity. Both the initial titration dose of methadone at the commencement of MMT following protocolised tolerance testing, and methadone dose at the time of scanning, correlated with grey matter reductions in the globus pallidus. Abnormal risk adjustment behaviour correlated with reductions in globus pallidus grey matter, increased risk taking with orbitofrontal grey matter reductions, and increased impulsivity with cingulate cortex reductions.
Conclusions
These findings support an interpretation of heightened risk taking and impulsivity in patients receiving MMT. However, the anatomically restricted correlates with indices of methadone exposure suggest that most structural brain abnormalities are not opiate linked, with the possible exception of the globus pallidus.
Violence risk assessment tools are increasingly used within criminal justice and forensic psychiatry, however there is little relevant, reliable and unbiased data regarding their predictive accuracy. We argue that such data are needed to (i) prevent excessive reliance on risk assessment scores, (ii) allow matching of different risk assessment tools to different contexts of application, (iii) protect against problematic forms of discrimination and stigmatisation, and (iv) ensure that contentious demographic variables are not prematurely removed from risk assessment tools.
To describe an investigation into 5 clinical cases of carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (CRAB).
Design:
Epidemiological investigation supplemented by whole-genome sequencing (WGS) of clinical and environmental isolates.
Setting:
A tertiary-care academic health center in Boston, Massachusetts.
Patients or participants:
Individuals identified with CRAB clinical infections.
Methods:
A detailed review of patient demographic and clinical data was conducted. Clinical isolates underwent phenotypic antimicrobial susceptibility testing and WGS. Infection control practices were evaluated, and CRAB isolates obtained through environmental sampling were assessed by WGS. Genomic relatedness was measured by single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis.
Results:
Four clinical cases spanning 4 months were linked to a single index case; isolates differed by 1–7 SNPs and belonged to a single cluster. The index patient and 3 case patients were admitted to the same room prior to their development of CRAB infection, and 2 case patients were admitted to the same room within 48 hours of admission. A fourth case patient was admitted to a different unit. Environmental sampling identified highly contaminated areas, and WGS of 5 environmental isolates revealed that they were highly related to the clinical cluster.
Conclusions:
We report a cluster of highly resistant Acinetobacter baumannii that occurred in a burn ICU over 5 months and then spread to a separate ICU. Two case patients developed infections classified as community acquired under standard epidemiological definitions, but WGS revealed clonality, highlighting the risk of burn patients for early-onset nosocomial infections. An extensive investigation identified the role of environmental reservoirs.
Research exploring the longitudinal course of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms has documented four modal trajectories (low, remitting, high, and delayed), with proportions varying across studies. Heterogeneity could be due to differences in trauma types and patient demographic characteristics.
Methods
This analysis pooled data from six longitudinal studies of adult survivors of civilian-related injuries admitted to general hospital emergency departments (EDs) in six countries (pooled N = 3083). Each study included at least three assessments of the clinician-administered PTSD scale in the first post-trauma year. Latent class growth analysis determined the proportion of participants exhibiting various PTSD symptom trajectories within and across the datasets. Multinomial logistic regression analyses examined demographic characteristics, type of event leading to the injury, and trauma history as predictors of trajectories differentiated by their initial severity and course.
Results
Five trajectories were found across the datasets: Low (64.5%), Remitting (16.9%), Moderate (6.7%), High (6.5%), and Delayed (5.5%). Female gender, non-white race, prior interpersonal trauma, and assaultive injuries were associated with increased risk for initial PTSD reactions. Female gender and assaultive injuries were associated with risk for membership in the Delayed (v. Low) trajectory, and lower education, prior interpersonal trauma, and assaultive injuries with risk for membership in the High (v. Remitting) trajectory.
Conclusions
The results suggest that over 30% of civilian-related injury survivors admitted to EDs experience moderate-to-high levels of PTSD symptoms within the first post-trauma year, with those reporting assaultive violence at increased risk of both immediate and longer-term symptoms.
Triply Periodic Minimal Surfaces (TPMS) possess locally minimized surface area under the constraint of periodic boundary conditions. Different families of surfaces were obtained with different topologies satisfying such conditions. Examples of such families include Primitive (P), Gyroid (G) and Diamond (D) surfaces. From a purely mathematical subject, TPMS have been recently found in materials science as optimal geometries for structural applications. Proposed by Mackay and Terrones in 1991, schwarzites are 3D crystalline porous carbon nanocrystals exhibiting a TPMS-like surface topology. Although their complex topology poses serious limitations on their synthesis with conventional nanoscale fabrication methods, such as Chemical Vapour Deposition (CVD), schwarzites can be fabricated by Additive Manufacturing (AM) techniques, such as 3D Printing. In this work, we used an optimized atomic model of a schwarzite structure from the D family (D8bal) to generate a surface mesh that was subsequently used for 3D-printing through Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM). This D schwarzite was 3D-printed with thermoplastic PolyLactic Acid (PLA) polymer filaments. Mechanical properties under uniaxial compression were investigated for both the atomic model and the 3D-printed one. Fully atomistic Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations were also carried out to investigate the uniaxial compression behavior of the D8bal atomic model. Mechanical testings were performed on the 3D-printed schwarzite where the deformation mechanisms were found to be similar to those observed in MD simulations. These results are suggestive of a scale-independent mechanical behavior that is dominated by structural topology.
In this work, we report a preliminary study, based on molecular dynamics simulations, about 3D carbon nanotube networks that could be formed inside the beta zeolites. We investigated their structural stability and mechanical properties. Our results show that from all possible carbon nanotubes that can be embedded inside the channels of the beta zeolite, the one with chirality (6,0) is the most stable. Using the carbon nanotube (6,0), it is possible to build 3D structures with both all (higher density) and only partially (lower density) filled zeolite channels. Under tensile uniaxial force, the 3D low-density carbon nanotube networks are anisotropic and can be stretched along the direction in which all nanotubes are perpendicular up to 130% of strain without fracture. Also, the porosity and network stiffness can be tuned depending on the amount of carbon nanotubes filling the channels of the zeolites.
In 1977, French excavations at Aï Khanoum in north-east Afghanistan—a foundation of Antiochus I Sotēr and subsequently one of the major cities of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom—of a building dating to shortly before the destruction of the place in 145 b.c.e. uncovered inter alia the remains of a papyrus and a parchment document. The papyrus text, dated by Cavallo on the basis of its letterforms to the mid third century b.c.e., preserved a fragment of a philosophical dialogue seemingly to be associated with the Peripatetic school. The second document consisted of two separate portions of a piece of parchment roughly assigned on the basis of its letterforms to the second half of the third or the first half of the second century b.c.e.; as also in the case of the papyrus, the letters survived not on the parchment itself but impressed upon the hardened dirt that surrounded it. Only column II of the original editors’ ‘Texte 2a’ (the more substantial of the two parchment fragments) contains a significant amount of text, which appears in neither TrGF nor PCG. I present it here without regard to standard editorial niceties, which are rendered impossible by the desperate state of the original document, now almost certainly lost, and the nature of the original publication.
Computational acceleration of performance metric-based materials discovery via high-throughput screening and machine learning methods is becoming widespread. Nevertheless, development and optimization of the opto-electronic properties that depend on dilute concentrations of point defects in new materials have not significantly benefited from these advances. Here, the authors present an informatics and simulation suite to computationally accelerate these processes. This will enable faster and more fundamental materials research, and reduce the cost and time associated with the materials development cycle. Analogous to the new avenues enabled by current first-principles-based property databases, this type of framework will open entire new research frontiers as it proliferates.
Determining infectious cross-transmission events in healthcare settings involves manual surveillance of case clusters by infection control personnel, followed by strain typing of clinical/environmental isolates suspected in said clusters. Recent advances in genomic sequencing and cloud computing now allow for the rapid molecular typing of infecting isolates.
Objective:
To facilitate rapid recognition of transmission clusters, we aimed to assess infection control surveillance using whole-genome sequencing (WGS) of microbial pathogens to identify cross-transmission events for epidemiologic review.
Methods:
Clinical isolates of Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococcus faecium, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Klebsiella pneumoniae were obtained prospectively at an academic medical center, from September 1, 2016, to September 30, 2017. Isolate genomes were sequenced, followed by single-nucleotide variant analysis; a cloud-computing platform was used for whole-genome sequence analysis and cluster identification.
Results:
Most strains of the 4 studied pathogens were unrelated, and 34 potential transmission clusters were present. The characteristics of the potential clusters were complex and likely not identifiable by traditional surveillance alone. Notably, only 1 cluster had been suspected by routine manual surveillance.
Conclusions:
Our work supports the assertion that integration of genomic and clinical epidemiologic data can augment infection control surveillance for both the identification of cross-transmission events and the inclusion of missed and exclusion of misidentified outbreaks (ie, false alarms). The integration of clinical data is essential to prioritize suspect clusters for investigation, and for existing infections, a timely review of both the clinical and WGS results can hold promise to reduce HAIs. A richer understanding of cross-transmission events within healthcare settings will require the expansion of current surveillance approaches.
Investigations into the existence of life in other parts of the cosmos find strong parallels with studies of the origin and evolution of life on our own planet. In this way, astrobiology and paleobiology are married by their common interest in disentangling the interconnections between life and the surrounding environment. In this way, a cross-point of both sciences is paleometry, which involves a myriad of imaging and geochemical techniques, usually non-destructive, applied to the investigation of the fossil record. In the last decades, paleometry has benefited from an unprecedented technological improvement, thus solving old questions and raising new ones. This advance has been paralleled by conceptual approaches and discoveries fuelled by technological evolution in astrobiological research. In this context, we present some new data and review recent advances on the employment of paleometry to investigations on paleobiology and astrobiology in Brazil in areas such biosignatures in Ediacaran microbial mats, biogenicity tests on enigmatic Ediacaran structures, research on Ediacaran metazoan biomineralization, fossil preservation in Cretaceous insects and fish, and finally the experimental study on the decay of fish to test the effect of distinct types of sediment on soft-tissue preservation, as well as the effects of early diagenesis on fish bone preservation.
Recently, a new class of carbon allotrope called protomene was proposed. This new structure is composed of sp2 and sp3 carbon-bonds. Topologically, protomene can be considered as an sp3 carbon structure (∼80% of this bond type) doped by sp2 carbons. First-principles simulations have shown that protomene presents an electronic bandgap of ∼3.4 eV. However, up to now, its mechanical properties have not been investigated. In this work, we have investigated protomene mechanical behavior under tensile strain through fully atomistic reactive molecular dynamics simulations using the ReaxFF force field, as available in the LAMMPS code. At room temperature, our results show that the protomene is very stable and the obtained ultimate strength and ultimate stress indicates an anisotropic behavior. The highest ultimate strength was obtained for the x-direction, with a value of ∼110 GPa. As for the ultimate strain, the highest one was for the z-direction (∼25% of strain) before protomene mechanical fracture.
LSJ s.v. A defines ἀληθινός as meaning ‘truthful, trusty’ of persons and ‘true, genuine’ of objects, and offers Amphis, fr. 26 (preserved at Ath. Deipn. 2.57b and 7.277c, and identified in the latter passage as drawn from a play entitled Leukas) as an example of the second sense:
ὅστις ἀγοράζων ὄψον <- x- ˘ ->
ἐξὸν ἀπολαύειν ἰχθύων ἀληθινῶν
ῥαφανῖδας ἐπιθυμεῖ πρίασθαι, μαίνεται
Anyone who, when shopping for dainties …
wants to purchase radishes, when he has a chance
to enjoy alêthinoi fish, is crazy.
The context of the fragment is unknown. But the speaker is patently drawing a contrast not between ‘real fish’ and something that resembles fish (‘false fish’), as LSJ would have it, but between a type of fish that any sensible person would buy for dinner, should the opportunity arise, and radishes, which are edible but unexciting fare. So too at Macho 28–32, when King Ptolemy's guests were served a variegated rockfish (πετραίου … ποικίλου), three κωβιοί cut into steaks, and καράβων … ἀληθινῶν (29)—literally ‘real crayfish’—they were astonished and delighted. The reaction suggests that the banqueters were happy because the crayfish Ptolemy served matched the quality of the other seafood he set before them, not because the king had declined to deceive them (sc. by serving a different food disguised as crayfish).
Breakthrough Listen is a 10-yr initiative to search for signatures of technologies created by extraterrestrial civilisations at radio and optical wavelengths. Here, we detail the digital data recording system deployed for Breakthrough Listen observations at the 64-m aperture CSIRO Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia. The recording system currently implements two modes: a dual-polarisation, 1.125-GHz bandwidth mode for single-beam observations, and a 26-input, 308-MHz bandwidth mode for the 21-cm multibeam receiver. The system is also designed to support a 3-GHz single-beam mode for the forthcoming Parkes ultra-wideband feed. In this paper, we present details of the system architecture, provide an overview of hardware and software, and present initial performance results.