Search

The objective of our study was to examine the prevalence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) among residents of nursing homes for the elderly of selected institutions in two Slovak regions compared to non-institutionalized volunteers of the same age, as well as young volunteers (20-24 years old). Nasal swabs from all participants (n = 424) were processed using standard methods for the isolation and identification of S. aureus and MRSA. Statistically significant differences were found between nursing home residents and young volunteers (12% vs. 1.5%; OR 8.85; 95% CI 2.087-37.706; p = 0.0007), as well as between non-institutionalized seniors and young volunteers (11% vs. 1.5%; OR 8; 95% CI 1.888-33.901; p = 0.005) in the prevalence of MRSA. Our results suggest that nursing home residency and older age could be a risk factor for the occurrence of high-risk MRSA strains.

The expansion of industry and the use of pesticides in agriculture represent one of the major causes of environmental contamination. Unfortunately, individuals and animals are exposed to these foreign and often toxic substances on a daily basis. Therefore, it is crucial to monitor the impact of such chemicals on human health. Several in vitro studies have addressed this issue, but it is difficult to explore the impact of these compounds on living organisms. A nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has become a useful alternative to animal models mainly because of its transparent body, fast growth, short life cycle, and easy cultivation. Furthermore, at the molecular level, there are significant similarities between humans and C. elegans. These unique features make it an excellent model to complement mammalian models in toxicology research. Heavy metals and pesticides, which are considered environmental contaminants, are known to have affected the locomotion, feeding behavior, brood size, growth, life span, and cell death of C. elegans. Today, there are increasing numbers of research articles dedicated to this topic, of which we summarized the most recent findings dedicated to the effect of heavy metals, heavy metal mixtures, and pesticides on the well-characterized nervous system of this nematode.

Caenorhabditis elegans represents a favorite non-mammalian animal model, which is often used to study the effect of foreign substances on living organisms. Its epidermal barrier is a primary biological barrier that protects nematodes from the toxicity of chemicals. In this study, we investigated the effect of Bisphenol A (BPA), an endocrine disrupting chemical, and its structural analog Bisphenol S (BPS), which is often used as a substitute for BPA in some products, on the behavior of C. elegans wild type (N2) and C. elegans bli-1 mutant strain, which is characterized by the production of abnormal cuticle blisters. We found that exposure of C. elegans wild type (N2), as well as its mutant strain bli-1 , to selected concentrations of BPA (0.1, 0.5, 1 and 5 µM) and BPS (0.1, 0.5, 1 and 5 µM) resulted in significant changes in reproduction, habituation behavior, and body length of nematodes. Based on our findings, we can conclude that BPS, which was supposed to be a safer alternative to BPA, caused almost identical detrimental effects on C. elegans behavior. Furthermore, compared to the wild type of C. elegans , these effects were more pronounced in the bli-1 strain, which is characterized by a mutation in an individual collagen gene responsible for proper cuticle formation, underlying the role of the epidermal barrier in bisphenol toxicity. Taken together, our data indicate the potential risks of using BPS as a BPA alternative., Competing Interests: The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Kamila Melnikov – received funding from Trnava University in Trnava. Grant number 13/TU/2022, Zuzana Bárdyová – received funding from Trnava University in Trnava. Grant number 11/TU/2022., (© 2023 The Authors.)

We discuss nonfactorizable QCD corrections to Higgs boson production in vector boson fusion at the Large Hadron Collider. We point out that these corrections can be computed in the eikonal approximation retaining all the terms that are not suppressed by the ratio of the transverse momenta of the tagging jets to the total center-of-mass energy. Our analysis shows that in certain kinematic distributions the nonfactorizable corrections can be as large as a percent making them quite comparable to their factorizable counterparts.

We present compact analytic formulas that describe the decay of colorless particles to both q q ¯ and gg final states through next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD in the context of the nested soft-collinear subtraction scheme. In addition to their relevance for the description of decays like V → q q ¯ ' , V = Z , W , H → b b ¯ and H → g g , these results provide an important building block for calculating NNLO QCD corrections to arbitrary processes at colliders within the nested soft-collinear subtraction scheme., (© The Author(s) 2019.)

We compute next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the top-bottom interference contribution to H+j production at the LHC. To achieve this, we combine the recent computation of the two-loop amplitudes for gg→Hg and qg→Hq, performed in the approximation of a small b-quark mass, and the numerical calculation of the squared one-loop amplitudes for gg→Hgg and qg→Hqg, performed within OpenLoops. We find that QCD corrections to the interference are large and similar to the QCD corrections to the top-mediated Higgs production cross section. We also observe a significant reduction in the mass-renormalization scheme uncertainty once the next-to-leading order QCD prediction for the interference is employed.

We discuss a modification of the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) subtraction scheme based on the residue-improved sector decomposition that reduces the number of double-real emission sectors from five to four. In particular, a sector where energies and angles of unresolved particles vanish in a correlated fashion is redundant and can be discarded. This simple observation allows us to formulate a transparent iterative subtraction procedure for double-real emission contributions, to demonstrate the cancellation of soft and collinear singularities in an explicit and (almost) process-independent way and to write the result of a NNLO calculation in terms of quantities that can be computed in four space-time dimensions. We illustrate this procedure explicitly in the simple case of [Formula: see text] gluonic corrections to the Drell-Yan process of [Formula: see text] annihilation into a lepton pair. We show that this framework leads to fast and numerically stable computation of QCD corrections.

We present precise predictions for Higgs boson production in association with a jet. We work in the Higgs effective field theory framework and compute next-to-next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the gluon-gluon and quark-gluon channels, which is sufficient for reliable LHC phenomenology. We present fully differential results as well as total cross sections for the LHC. Our next-to-next-to-leading order predictions reduce the unphysical scale dependence by more than a factor of 2 and enhance the total rate by about twenty percent compared to next-to-leading order QCD predictions. Our results demonstrate for the first time satisfactory convergence of the perturbative series.

We propose a model for increasing liquid saturation in a granular packing, which can account for liquid redistribution at saturation levels beyond the well-studied capillary bridge regime. The model is capable of resolving and combining capillary bridges, menisci, and fully saturated pores to form local liquid clusters of any shape. They can exchange volume due to the local Laplace pressure gradient via a liquid film on the surfaces of grains. Local instabilities such as Haines jumps trigger the discontinuous evolution of the liquid front. The applicability of the model is demonstrated and compared to benchmark experiments on the level of individual liquid structures as well as on larger systems.

We study the stability of coherent structures in plane Couette flow against long-wavelength perturbations in wide domains that cover several pairs of coherent structures. For one and two pairs of vortices, the states retain the stability properties of the small domains, but for three pairs new unstable modes are found. They are shown to be connected to bifurcations that break the translational symmetry and drive the coherent structures from the spanwise extended state to a modulated one that is a precursor to spanwise localized states. Tracking the stability of the orbits as functions of the spanwise wave length reveals a rich variety of additional bifurcations.

A descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted to explore disclosure decisions regarding potential HIV infection by men who have sex with men (MSM). The sample consisted of 104 Israeli MSM. A questionnaire based on the theory of reasoned action was used for data determination. The questionnaire deals with beliefs, attitudes, and disclosure intentions. Results showed that only 30% of respondents intended to disclose potential HIV infection. A total of 70% of those who intended to disclose would choose to disclose the information to their brother/sister, two thirds to their mother, and only about 50% to their father. All components of the theory have an effect on MSM intentions of disclosure to others. In addition, behavioral beliefs, that is, MSM beliefs of the consequences of disclosure, were found to be the most significant predictor of behavioral intention. Research recommendations include the promotion of positive behavioral attitudes toward disclosure, leading to an increase in behavioral intentions of disclosure.

We compute the Omicron(alpha(2)(s)) QCD corrections to the fully differential cross section pp --> WX --> lnuX, retaining all effects from spin correlations. The knowledge of these corrections makes it possible to calculate with high precision the boson production rate and acceptance at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), subject to realistic cuts on the lepton and missing energy distributions. For certain choices of cuts we find large corrections when going from next-to-leading order (NLO) to next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbation theory. These corrections are significantly larger than those obtained by parton-shower event generators merged with NLO calculations. Our result may be used to assess and significantly reduce the QCD uncertainties in the many studies of boson production planned at the LHC.

We present a calculation of the fully differential cross section for Higgs-boson production in the gluon fusion channel through next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in perturbative QCD. We apply the method introduced in Phys. Rev. D 69, 076010 (2004)] to compute double real emission corrections. Our calculation permits arbitrary cuts on the final state in the reaction hh-->H+X. It can easily be extended to include decays of the Higgs boson into observable final states. In this Letter, we discuss the most important features of the calculation, and present some examples of physical applications that illustrate the range of observables that can be studied using our result. We compute the NNLO rapidity distribution of the Higgs boson, and also calculate the NNLO rapidity distribution with a veto on jet activity.

We present a calculation of the differential two-jet cross section in e(+)e(-) annihilation through next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in the strong coupling constant alpha(s). The calculation is performed using a new method for dealing with real radiation suggested recently by us. For the first time, the two-jet event rate is computed directly, without any reference to the inclusive cross section e(+)e(-)-->hadrons. We also calculate the energy distribution of the leading jet in e(+)e(-)-->2 jets and find significant modifications of the shape of this distribution at NNLO.

We compute the rapidity distribution of the virtual photon produced in the Drell-Yan process through next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD. We introduce a powerful new method for calculating differential distributions in hard scattering processes. This method is based upon a generalization of the optical theorem; it allows the integration-by-parts technology developed for multiloop diagrams to be applied to noninclusive phase-space integrals, and permits a high degree of automation. We apply our results to the analysis of fixed-target experiments.

We compute O(alpha(2)(s)) QCD corrections to the lepton invariant mass spectrum in the decay b-->ulnu(l), relevant for the determination of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix element /V(ub)/. Our method can also be used to evaluate moments of the lepton energy distribution with an O(alpha(2)(s)) accuracy. The Abelian part of our result gives the neutrino invariant mass spectrum in the muon decay and, upon integration, the O(alpha(2)) correction to the muon lifetime.

We derive an analytic result for the pion pole contribution to the light-by-light scattering correction to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, a(mu) = (g(mu)-2)/2. Using the vector meson dominance model for the pion transition form factor, we obtain a(LBL,pi0)mu = +56x10(-11).

We describe a new approach to computing energy levels of a nonrelativistic bound state of two constituents with masses M and m, by a systematic expansion in powers of m/M. After discussing the method, we demonstrate its potential with an example of the radiative recoil corrections to the Lamb shift and hyperfine splitting relevant for the hydrogen, muonic hydrogen, and muonium. A discrepancy between two previous calculations of O(alpha(Zalpha)5m2/M) radiative recoil corrections to the Lamb shift is resolved and several new terms of O(alpha(Zalpha)5m4/M3) and higher are obtained.

We compute O(alpha(3)lnalpha) relative corrections to the ground-state hyperfine splitting of a QED two-body bound state with different masses of constituents. The general result is then applied to muonium and positronium. In particular, a new value of the muon-to-electron mass ratio is derived from the muonium ground-state hyperfine splitting.

The last unknown contribution to hydrogen energy levels at order mα^{7}, due to the slope of the Dirac form factor at three loops, is evaluated in a closed analytical form. The resulting shift of the hydrogen nS energy level is found to be 3.016/n^{3} kHz. Using the QED calculations of the 1S Lamb shift, we extract a precise value of the proton charge radius r_{p}=0.883±0.014 fm.