Pregnancy and neonatal outcomes in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo: a systematic review.

Background: Conflict is known to impact maternal and neonatal health in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), an area of longstanding insecurity. We conducted a systematic review on pregnancy and neonatal outcomes in this region to provide a comprehensive overview of maternal and neonatal outcomes over a 20-year period.

Methods: We systematically searched databases, such as Medline, EMBASE, Global Health, ClinicalTrials.

Global collaborative research in metabolic and bariatric surgery (GCRMBS): current status and directions for the future.

Obesity has been recognized as a chronic disorder by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and was first reported in the Paleolithic age. In the recent years there has not been an international collaborative that facilitates professional cooperation on a worldwide level to increase the output of high-level evidence in the fields of obesity treatment and metabolic and bariatric surgery (MBS). In other surgical and medical fields, international collaborative research networks have shown to increase the quality and amount of treatment-changing evidence.

Operational Research to Support Rapid Evidence-Based Responses to Outbreaks: Learnings from COVID-19.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for making testing readily available was recognized as an important factor for individuals to help make informed decisions, including to isolate or seek care, and for policymakers to control transmission. Toward this end, FIND and the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator funded 16 rapid operational research studies and one implementation project in Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia evaluating the utility, acceptability, and feasibility of different community-based SARS-CoV-2 testing approaches. Here, we discuss common factors and challenges encountered during study implementation.

Sub-attosecond-precision optical-waveform stability measurements using electro-optic sampling.

The generation of laser pulses with controlled optical waveforms, and their measurement, lie at the heart of both time-domain and frequency-domain precision metrology. Here, we obtain mid-infrared waves via intra-pulse difference-frequency generation (IPDFG) driven by 16-femtosecond near-infrared pulses, and characterise the jitter of sub-cycle fractions of these waves relative to the gate pulses using electro-optic sampling (EOS). We demonstrate sub-attosecond temporal jitter at individual zero-crossings and sub-0.