Background: After a transient ischemic attack (TIA) or minor stroke, the long-term risk of subsequent stroke is uncertain. Methods: Electronic databases were searched for observational studies reporting subsequent stroke during a minimum follow-up of 1 year in patients with TIA or minor stroke. Unpublished data on number of stroke events and exact person-time at risk contributed by all patients during discrete time intervals of follow-up were requested from the authors of included studies. This information was used to calculate the incidence of stroke in individual studies, and results across studies were pooled using random-effects meta-analysis. Results: Fifteen independent cohorts involving 129794 patients were included in the analysis. The pooled incidence rate of subsequent stroke per 100 person-years was 6.4 events in the first year and 2.0 events in the second through tenth years, with cumulative incidences of 14% at 5 years and 21% at 10 years. Based on 10 studies with information available on fatal stroke, the pooled case fatality rate of subsequent stroke was 9.5% (95% CI, 5.9 – 13.8). Conclusions: One in five patients is expected to experience a subsequent stroke within 10 years after a TIA or minor stroke, with every tenth patient expected to die from their subsequent stroke.

Faecal examinations for helminth eggs were performed on 1869 people from two riverside localities, Vientiane Municipality and Saravane Province, along the Mekong River, Laos. To obtain adult flukes, 42 people positive for small trematode eggs (Opisthorchis viverrini, heterophyid, or lecithodendriid eggs) were treated with a 20–30 mg kg−1 single dose of praziquantel and purged. Diarrhoeic stools were then collected from 36 people (18 in each area) and searched for helminth parasites using stereomicroscopes. Faecal examinations revealed positive rates for small trematode eggs of 53.3% and 70.8% (average 65.2%) in Vientiane and Saravane Province, respectively. Infections with O. viverrini and six species of intestinal flukes were found, namely, Haplorchis taichui, H. pumilio, H. yokogawai, Centrocestus caninus, Prosthodendrium molenkampi, and Phaneropsolus bonnei. The total number of flukes collected and the proportion of fluke species recovered were markedly different in the two localities; in Vientiane, 1041 O. viverrini (57.8 per person) and 615 others (34.2 per person), whereas in Saravane, 395 O. viverrini (21.9 per person) and 155207 others (8622.6 per person). Five people from Saravane harboured no O. viverrini but numerous heterophyid and/or lecithodendriid flukes. The results indicate that O. viverrini and several species of heterophyid and lecithodendriid flukes are endemic in these two riverside localities, and suggest that the intensity of infection and the relative proportion of fluke species vary by locality along the Mekong River basin.

We evaluated whether universal chlorhexidine bathing (decolonization) with or without COVID-19 intensive training impacted COVID-19 rates in 63 nursing homes (NHs) during the 2020–2021 Fall/Winter surge. Decolonization was associated with a 43% lesser rise in staff case-rates (P < .001) and a 52% lesser rise in resident case-rates (P < .001) versus control.

Background: ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease without a cure and limited treatment options. Edaravone, a free radical scavenger, was shown to slow disease progression in a select group of patients with ALS over 6 months; however, the effect on survival was not investigated in randomized trials. The objective of this study is to describe real-world survival effectiveness over a longer timeframe. Methods: This retrospective cohort study included patients with ALS across Canada with symptom onset up to three years. Those with a minimum 6-month edaravone exposure between 2017 and 2022 were enrolled in the interventional arm, and those without formed the control arm. The primary outcome of tracheostomy-free survival was compared between the two groups, accounting for age, sex, ALS-disease progression rate, disease duration, pulmonary vital capacity, bulbar ALS-onset, and presence of frontotemporal dementia or C9ORF72 mutation using inverse propensity treatment weights. Results: 182 patients with mean ± SD age 60±11 years were enrolled in the edaravone arm and 860 in the control arm (mean ± SD age 63±12 years). Mean ± SD time from onset to edaravone initiation was 18±10 months. Tracheostomy-free survival will be calculated. Conclusions: This study will provide evidence for edaravone effectiveness on tracheostomy-free survival in patients with ALS.

Intense acoustic loads from jet noise cause noise pollution and induce failures, such as the malfunctioning of electronic devices and fatigue failure of internal/external structures. Consequently, the prediction of jet noise characteristics is crucial in the development of high-speed vehicles. This study presents acoustic experiments and predictions for an under-expanded, unheated jet using a small-scale prototype. Outdoor measurements are carried out using a vertical ejection setup. Acoustic characteristics are measured using both linear and circular microphone arrays. Additionally, numerical prediction of the same jet noise is performed using a detached eddy simulation and the permeable Ffowcs-Williams and Hawkings acoustic analogy. The vertical experimental setup exhibits the typical acoustic characteristics of a supersonic jet in terms of directivity and broadband shock-associated noise. Moreover, the numerical prediction exhibits satisfactory accuracy for the jet downstream, where the large-scale turbulence structures of the directivity predominate. However, discrepancy increases in the domain of lower directivity. The presented experiment and prediction will be extended to future studies regarding the noise of various deflector duct configurations impinging on supersonic jets.

We have found a class of circular radio objects in the Evolutionary Map of the Universe Pilot Survey, using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope. The objects appear in radio images as circular edge-brightened discs, about one arcmin diameter, that are unlike other objects previously reported in the literature. We explore several possible mechanisms that might cause these objects, but none seems to be a compelling explanation.

The goal of this randomly-assigned placebo-controlled double-blind study was to determine if the addition of buspirone, a widely available 5-HT1A partial agonist, would enhance cognitive function, in subjects with schizophrenia treated with atypical antipsychotic drugs (AAPDs). Seventy-three patients with schizophrenia, who had been treated with an AAPD for at least three months, were randomly assigned to receive either buspirone, 30 mg/day, or matching placebo. All other medications remained unchanged. Attention, verbal fluency, verbal learning and memory, verbal working memory, and executive function, as well as psychopathology, were assessed at baseline, and 6 weeks, and 3 and 6 months after baseline. A significant Time x Group interaction effect was noted on the Digit Symbol Substitution Test, a measure of attention/speeded motor performance, due to better performance of the buspirone group compared to the placebo group at 3 months. No significant interaction effects were noted for other domains of cognition. Scores on the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (Total, Positive) were improved during treatment with buspirone but not placebo, but the effects did not reach statistical significance.

The results of this study showed a possible benefit of buspirone augmentation of AAPDs to enhance attention. However, we did not replicate the results of the previous study with tandospirone that improved executive function and verbal learning and memory, which may be due to the differences between tandospirone and buspirone, between typical antipsychotics and AAPDs, or a combination of the above. Further study to determine the usefulness of 5-HT1A agonist treatment in schizophrenia is indicated.

Stigma and social exclusion related to mental health are of substantial public health importance for Europe. As part of ROAMER (ROAdmap for MEntal health Research in Europe), we used systematic mapping techniques to describe the current state of research on stigma and social exclusion across Europe. Findings demonstrate growing interest in this field between 2007 and 2012. Most studies were descriptive (60%), focused on adults of working age (60%) and were performed in Northwest Europe—primarily in the UK (32%), Finland (8%), Sweden (8%) and Germany (7%). In terms of mental health characteristics, the largest proportion of studies investigated general mental health (20%), common mental disorders (16%), schizophrenia (16%) or depression (14%). There is a paucity of research looking at mechanisms to reduce stigma and promote social inclusion, or at factors that might promote resilience or protect against stigma/social exclusion across the life course. Evidence is also limited in relation to evaluations of interventions. Increasing incentives for cross-country research collaborations, especially with new EU Member States and collaboration across European professional organizations and disciplines, could improve understanding of the range of underpinning social and cultural factors which promote inclusion or contribute toward lower levels of stigma, especially during times of hardship.

The COllaborative project of Development of Anthropometrical measures in Twins (CODATwins) project is a large international collaborative effort to analyze individual-level phenotype data from twins in multiple cohorts from different environments. The main objective is to study factors that modify genetic and environmental variation of height, body mass index (BMI, kg/m2) and size at birth, and additionally to address other research questions such as long-term consequences of birth size. The project started in 2013 and is open to all twin projects in the world having height and weight measures on twins with information on zygosity. Thus far, 54 twin projects from 24 countries have provided individual-level data. The CODATwins database includes 489,981 twin individuals (228,635 complete twin pairs). Since many twin cohorts have collected longitudinal data, there is a total of 1,049,785 height and weight observations. For many cohorts, we also have information on birth weight and length, own smoking behavior and own or parental education. We found that the heritability estimates of height and BMI systematically changed from infancy to old age. Remarkably, only minor differences in the heritability estimates were found across cultural–geographic regions, measurement time and birth cohort for height and BMI. In addition to genetic epidemiological studies, we looked at associations of height and BMI with education, birth weight and smoking status. Within-family analyses examined differences within same-sex and opposite-sex dizygotic twins in birth size and later development. The CODATwins project demonstrates the feasibility and value of international collaboration to address gene-by-exposure interactions that require large sample sizes and address the effects of different exposures across time, geographical regions and socioeconomic status.

In-spiraling supermassive black holes should emit gravitational waves, which would produce characteristic distortions in the time of arrival residuals from millisecond pulsars. Multiple national and regional consortia have constructed pulsar timing arrays by precise timing of different sets of millisecond pulsars. An essential aspect of precision timing is the transfer of the times of arrival to a (quasi-)inertial frame, conventionally the solar system barycenter. The barycenter is determined from the knowledge of the planetary masses and orbits, which has been refined over the past 50 years by multiple spacecraft. Within the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), uncertainties on the solar system barycenter are emerging as an important element of the NANOGrav noise budget. We describe what is known about the solar system barycenter, touch upon how uncertainties in it affect gravitational wave studies with pulsar timing arrays, and consider future trends in spacecraft navigation.

This study aimed to examine the association between vitamin B6, folate and vitamin B12 biomarkers and plasma fatty acids in European adolescents. A subsample from the Healthy Lifestyle in Europe by Nutrition in Adolescence study with valid data on B-vitamins and fatty acid blood parameters, and all the other covariates used in the analyses such as BMI, Diet Quality Index, education of the mother and physical activity assessed by a questionnaire, was selected resulting in 674 cases (43 % males). B-vitamin biomarkers were measured by chromatography and immunoassay and fatty acids by enzymatic analyses. Linear mixed models elucidated the association between B-vitamins and fatty acid blood parameters (changes in fatty acid profiles according to change in 10 units of vitamin B biomarkers). DHA, EPA) and n-3 fatty acids showed positive associations with B-vitamin biomarkers, mainly with those corresponding to folate and vitamin B12. Contrarily, negative associations were found with n-6:n-3 ratio, trans-fatty acids and oleic:stearic ratio. With total homocysteine (tHcy), all the associations found with these parameters were opposite (for instance, an increase of 10 nmol/l in red blood cell folate or holotranscobalamin in females produces an increase of 15·85 µmol/l of EPA (P value <0·01), whereas an increase of 10 nmol/l of tHcy in males produces a decrease of 2·06 µmol/l of DHA (P value <0·05). Positive associations between B-vitamins and specific fatty acids might suggest underlying mechanisms between B-vitamins and CVD and it is worth the attention of public health policies.

In the fields of engineering, nanoscience, and biomechanics, thin structural members, such as beams, plates, and shells, that are supported by an elastic medium are used in several applications. There is a possibility that these thin structures might buckle under severe loading conditions; higher-order, complicated elastic buckling modes can be found owing to the balance of rigidities between the thin members and elastic supports. In this study, we have shown a new and simple ‘power law’ relation between the critical buckling strain (or loads) and rigidity parameters in structural members supported by an elastic medium, which can be modelled as a Winkler foundation. The following structural members have been considered in this paper: i) a slender beam held by an outer elastic support under axial loading, ii) cylindrical shells supported by an inner elastic core under hydrostatic pressure (plane strain condition), and iii) complete spherical shells that are filled with an inner elastic medium.

Sparganosis is one of the top three tissue-dwelling heterologous helminthic diseases, along with cysticercosis and paragonimiasis, in Korea. Due to a lack of effective early diagnosis and treatment methods, this parasitic disease is regarded as a public health threat. This study evaluated reactivity, against sparganum extracts, of sera from inhabitants of Cheorwon-gun, Goseong-gun and Ongjin-gun in Korea. The sera from 836 subjects were subjected to enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and immunoblot analysis. The sera from 18 (5.8%) and 15 (5.1%) inhabitants in Cheorwon-gun (n = 312) and Goseong-gun (n = 294), respectively, exhibited highly positive reactions to the sparganum antigen, whereas only two (0.9%) inhabitants in Ongjin-gun (n = 230) showed positivity. We sought antigenic proteins for serodiagnosis of positive sera by immunoproteomic approaches. Total sparganum lysates were separated by two-dimensional electrophoresis and then subjected to immunoblot analysis with mixed sparganosis-positive sera. We found seven antigenic spots and identified paramyosin as an antigenic protein by liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry. By two-dimensional (2D)-based mass analysis and immunoblotting against sparganosis-positive sera, paramyosin was identified as a candidate antigen for serodiagnosis of sparganosis.

An investigation has been made into the stability of compressor blade flutter in separating flow in the presence of external perturbations. The fluttering blade is an example of a hysteretic system governed by a non-linear difference-differential equation for which an analytical approach is not possible and for which the authors originally proposed this new treatment. For design purposes a digital computer has been used to produce stability diagrams under specified conditions including blade torsion. The solution for the response is also available if required. The method involves forming the non-linear feedback analogue to the blade system and which has behaviour governed by the same equation as that studied. The stability is then studied on a digital computer in the presence of small external perturbations by means of a dual input describing function applied to the analogous feedback system with consideration given to the aerodynamic phase lag involved and initially small blade torsional motion.

We present recent observation results of Sgr A* at millimeter obtained with VLBI arrays in Korea and Japan.

7 mm monitoring of Sgr A* is part of our AGN large project. The results at 7 epochs during 2013-2014, including high resolution maps, flux density and two-dimensional size measurements are presented. The source shows no significant variation in flux and structure related to the G2 encounter in 2014. According to recent MHD simulations by kawashima et al., flux and magnetic field energy can be expected to increase several years after the encounter; We will keep our monitoring in order to test this prediction.

Astrometric observations of Sgr A* were performed in 2015 at 7 and 3.5 millimeter simultaneously. Source-frequency phase referencing was applied and a combined ”core-shift” of Sgr A* and a nearby calibrator was measured. Future observations and analysis are necessary to determine the core-shift in each source.