Searches for New Heavy Resonances in Final States with Leptons and Photons in ATLAS and CMS

Searches for resonances in final states with leptons and photons have always been a powerful tool for discovery in high energy physics. We present here the latest results from the ATLAS and CMS experiments, based on up to 36.1 fb$^{-1}$ of 13 TeV proton-proton collisions produced at the Large Hadron Collider. Detailed results on single lepton, dilepton, diphoton and Z$\gamma$ resonances are included

Item selection by Latent Class-based methods

The evaluation of nursing homes is usually based on the administration of questionnaires made of a large number of polytomous items. In such a context, the Latent Class (LC) model represents a useful tool for clustering subjects in homogenous groups corresponding to different degrees of impairment of the health conditions. It is known that the performance of model-based clustering and the accuracy of the choice of the number of latent classes may be affected by the presence of irrelevant or noise variables. In this paper, we show the application of an item selection algorithm to real data collected within a project, named ULISSE, on the quality-of-life of elderly patients hosted in italian nursing homes. This algorithm, which is closely related to that proposed by Dean and Raftery in 2010, is aimed at finding the subset of items which provides the best clustering according to the Bayesian Information Criterion. At the same time, it allows us to select the optimal number of latent classes. Given the complexity of the ULISSE study, we perform a validation of the results by means of a sensitivity analysis to different specifications of the initial subset of items and of a resampling procedure

Protection against pertussis in humans correlates to elevated serum antibodies and memory B cells

Pertussis is a respiratory infection caused by Bordetella pertussis that may be particularly severe and even lethal in the first months of life when infants are still too young to be vaccinated. Adults and adolescents experience mild symptoms and are the source of infection for neonates. Adoptive maternal immunity does not prevent pertussis in the neonate. We compared the specific immune response of mothers of neonates diagnosed with pertussis and mothers of control children. We show that women have pre-existing pertussis-specific antibodies and memory B cells and react against the infection with a recall response increasing the levels specific serum IgG, milk IgA, and the frequency of memory B cells of all isotypes. Thus, the maternal immune system is activated in response to pertussis and effectively prevents the disease indicating that the low levels of pre-formed serum antibodies are insufficient for protection. For this reason, memory B cells play a major role in the adult defense. The results of this study suggest that new strategies for vaccine design should aim at increasing long-lived plasma cells and their antibodies

Associations between fine and coarse particles and mortality in Mediterranean cities: results from the MED-PARTICLES project

Few studies have investigated the independent health effects of different size fractions of particulate matter (PM) in multiple locations, especially in Europe. We estimated the short-term effects of PM with aerodynamic diameter = 10 µm (PM10), = 2.5 µm (PM2.5), and between 2.5 and 10 µm (PM2.5–10) on all-cause, cardiovascular, and respiratory mortality in 10 European Mediterranean metropolitan areas within the MEDPARTICLES project. We analyzed data from each city using Poisson regression models, and combined cityspecific estimates to derive overall effect estimates. We evaluated the sensitivity of our estimates to co-pollutant exposures and city-specific model choice, and investigated effect modification by age, sex, and season. We applied distributed lag and threshold models to investigate temporal patterns of associations. A 10-µg/m3 increase in PM2.5 was associated with a 0.55% (95% CI: 0.27, 0.84%) increase in all-cause mortality (0–1 day cumulative lag), and a 1.91% increase (95% CI: 0.71, 3.12%) in respiratory mortality (0–5 day lag). In general, associations were stronger for cardiovascular and respiratory mortality than all-cause mortality, during warm versus cold months, and among those = 75 versus < 75 years of age. Associations with PM2.5–10 were positive but not statistically significant in most analyses, whereas associations with PM10 seemed to be driven by PM2.5. We found evidence of adverse effects of PM2.5 on mortality outcomes in the European Mediterranean region. Associations with PM2.5–10 were positive but smaller in magnitude. Associations were stronger for respiratory mortality when cumulative exposures were lagged over 0–5 days, and were modified by season and age.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

A Newly Developed Tri-Leaflet Polymeric Heart Valve Prosthesis.

The potential of polymeric heart valves (PHV) prostheses is to combine the hemodynamic performances of biological valves with the durability of mechanical valves. The aim of this work is to design and develop a new tri-leaflet prosthetic heart valve (HV) made from styrenic block copolymers. A computational finite element model was implemented to optimize the thickness of the leaflets, to improve PHV mechanical and hydrodynamic performances. Based on the model outcomes, 8 prototypes of the designed valve were produced and tested in vitro under continuous and pulsatile flow conditions, as prescribed by ISO 5840 Standard. A specially designed pulse duplicator allowed testing the PHVs at different flow rates and frequency conditions. All the PHVs met the requirements specified in ISO 5840 Standard in terms of both regurgitation and effective orifice area (EOA), demonstrating their potential as HV prostheses.This work was funded by the British Heart Foundation (New Horizons NH/11/4/29059).This is the final published version. It first appeared at http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219519415400096?src=recsys

Infants hospitalized for Bordetella pertussis infection commonly have respiratory viral coinfections

Background: Whether viral coinfections cause more severe disease than Bordetella pertussis (B. pertussis) alone remains unclear. We compared clinical disease severity and sought clinical and demographic differences between infants with B. pertussis infection alone and those with respiratory viral coinfections. We also analyzed how respiratory infections were distributed during the 2 years study. Methods: We enrolled 53 infants with pertussis younger than 180 days (median age 58 days, range 17–109 days, 64. 1% boys), hospitalized in the Pediatric Departments at “Sapienza” University Rome and Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital from August 2012 to November 2014. We tested in naso-pharyngeal washings B. pertussis and 14 respiratory viruses with real-time reverse-transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction. Clinical data were obtained from hospital records and demographic characteristics collected using a structured questionnaire. Results: 28/53 infants had B. pertussis alone and 25 viral coinfection: 10 human rhinovirus (9 alone and 1 in coinfection with parainfluenza virus), 3 human coronavirus, 2 respiratory syncytial virus. No differences were observed in clinical disease severity between infants with B. pertussis infection alone and those with coinfections. Infants with B. pertussis alone were younger than infants with coinfections, and less often breastfeed at admission. Conclusions: In this descriptive study, no associations between clinical severity and pertussis with or without co-infections were found