A nationwide neurosurgical inter-disciplinary service for cancer-related refractory pain.

Purpose: Neurosurgical ablative procedures, such as cordotomy and cingulotomy, are often considered irreversible and destructive but can provide an effective and individualized solution for cancer-related refractory pain, when all other approaches have been unsuccessful. This paper provides an in-depth exploration of a novel approach to managing refractory cancer pain. It involves an interdisciplinary team led by a neurosurgeon at a renowned national referral center.

Capgras syndrome in children and adolescents: A systematic review.

Objectives: To improve understanding of Capgras syndrome (CS) in the pediatric population, this study investigates its clinical features and discerns similarities and differences compared to CS in adults.

Methods: We conducted a descriptive systematic review of case reports following PRISMA guidelines, including cases of pediatric patients with CS. Patient demographics, medical and psychiatric history, imposter identity, underlying diagnosis, clinical manifestation, treatments, and outcomes were extracted and analyzed.

Changes in Symptom Severity among Children and Adolescents with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A 2-year Follow-up.

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused significant global turmoil, including changes in social and societal conduct such as lockdowns, social isolation, and extensive regulations. These changes can be major sources of stress. The first wave of the pandemic (April-May 2020) was a time of global uncertainty.

Constraints on axion-like dark matter from a SERF comagnetometer.

Ultralight axion-like particles are well-motivated relics that might compose the cosmological dark matter and source anomalous time-dependent magnetic fields. We report on terrestrial bounds from the Noble And Alkali Spin Detectors for Ultralight Coherent darK matter (NASDUCK) collaboration on the coupling of axion-like particles to neutrons and protons. The detector uses nuclei of noble-gas and alkali-metal atoms and operates in the Spin-Exchange Relaxation-Free (SERF) regime, achieving high sensitivity to axion-like dark matter fields.

The relationship between oxidative stress and psychotic disorders in 22q11.2 deletion syndrome.

Background: 22q11.2 Deletion syndrome (22q11.2DS) is the most common microdeletion syndrome in humans.

The contribution of medical burden to 22q11.2 deletion syndrome quality of life and functioning.

Purpose: To date, there is no systematic method to quantify the medical burden of individuals with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11.2DS).

Thermal Dark Matter from Freeze-Out of Inverse Decays.

We propose a new thermal dark matter candidate whose abundance is determined by the freeze-out of inverse decays. The relic abundance depends parametrically only on a decay width, while matching the observed value requires that the coupling determining the width-and the width itself-should be exponentially small. The dark matter is therefore very weakly coupled to the standard model, evading conventional searches.

Impact of Dark Compton Scattering on Direct Dark Matter Absorption Searches.

Direct detection experiments are gaining in mass reach. Here we show that the inclusion of dark Compton scattering, which has typically been neglected in absorption searches, has a substantial impact on the reach and discovery potential of direct detection experiments at high bosonic cold dark matter masses. We demonstrate this for relic dark photons and axionlike particles: we improve expected reach across materials, and further use results from SuperCDMS, EDELWEISS, and GERDA to place enhanced limits on dark matter parameter space.

Determining Dark-Matter-Electron Scattering Rates from the Dielectric Function.

We show that the rate for dark-matter-electron scattering in an arbitrary material is determined by an experimentally measurable quantity, the complex dielectric function, for any dark matter interaction that couples to electron density. This formulation automatically includes many-body effects, eliminates all systematic theoretical uncertainties on the electronic wave functions, and allows a direct calibration of the spectrum by electromagnetic probes such as infrared spectroscopy, x-ray scattering, and electron energy-loss spectroscopy. Our formalism applies for several common benchmark models, including spin-independent interactions through scalar and vector mediators of arbitrary mass.

Risk perceptions and politics: Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Politics may color interpretations of facts, and thus perceptions of risk. We find that a higher share of Trump voters in a county is associated with lower perceptions of risk during the COVID-19 pandemic. Controlling for COVID-19 case counts and deaths, as Trump's vote share rises in the local area, individuals search less for information on the virus and its potential economic impacts, and engage in fewer visits to non-essential businesses.

Civic capital and social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Using mobile phone and survey data, we show that during the early phases of COVID-19, voluntary social distancing was greater in areas with higher civic capital and amongst individuals exhibiting a higher sense of civic duty. This effect is robust to including controls for political ideology, income, age, education, and other local-level characteristics. This result is present for U.

Detecting Sub-GeV Dark Matter with Superconducting Nanowires.

We propose the use of superconducting nanowires as both target and sensor for direct detection of sub-GeV dark matter. With excellent sensitivity to small energy deposits on electrons and demonstrated low dark counts, such devices could be used to probe electron recoils from dark matter scattering and absorption processes. We demonstrate the feasibility of this idea using measurements of an existing fabricated tungsten-silicide nanowire prototype with 0.

Long-lived particles at the energy frontier: the MATHUSLA physics case.

We examine the theoretical motivations for long-lived particle (LLP) signals at the LHC in a comprehensive survey of standard model (SM) extensions. LLPs are a common prediction of a wide range of theories that address unsolved fundamental mysteries such as naturalness, dark matter, baryogenesis and neutrino masses, and represent a natural and generic possibility for physics beyond the SM (BSM). In most cases the LLP lifetime can be treated as a free parameter from the [Formula: see text]m scale up to the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis limit of [Formula: see text] m.

Inflating to the Weak Scale.

We present a new solution to the hierarchy problem, where the Higgs boson mass is at its observed electroweak value because such a patch inflates the most in the early Universe. If the Higgs boson mass depends on a field undergoing quantum fluctuations during inflation, then inflation will fill the Universe with the Higgs boson mass that corresponds to the largest vacuum energy. The hierarchy problem is solved if the maximum vacuum energy occurs for the observed Higgs boson mass.

Superconducting Detectors for Superlight Dark Matter.

We propose and study a new class of superconducting detectors that are sensitive to O(meV) electron recoils from dark matter-electron scattering. Such devices could detect dark matter as light as the warm dark-matter limit, m(X)≳1  keV. We compute the rate of dark-matter scattering off of free electrons in a (superconducting) metal, including the relevant Pauli blocking factors.

Model for Thermal Relic Dark Matter of Strongly Interacting Massive Particles.

A recent proposal is that dark matter could be a thermal relic of 3→2 scatterings in a strongly coupled hidden sector. We present explicit classes of strongly coupled gauge theories that admit this behavior. These are QCD-like theories of dynamical chiral symmetry breaking, where the pions play the role of dark matter.

Mechanism for thermal relic dark matter of strongly interacting massive particles.

We present a new paradigm for achieving thermal relic dark matter. The mechanism arises when a nearly secluded dark sector is thermalized with the standard model after reheating. The freeze-out process is a number-changing 3→2 annihilation of strongly interacting massive particles (SIMPs) in the dark sector, and points to sub-GeV dark matter.

Relating direct CP violation in D decays and the forward-backward asymmetry in tt[over ¯] production.

The CDF and LHCb experiments have recently provided two intriguing hints for new physics: a large forward-backward asymmetry in tt[over ¯] production and a direct CP asymmetry in D decays of order of a percent. In both cases, flavor nonuniversal interactions are required in the up sector, raising the possibility that the two effects come from one and the same new physics source. We show that a minimal model, with an extra scalar doublet, previously suggested to explain the top data, gives-without any modifications or additions-a contribution to CP violation in charm decays that is of the right size.

Multiple test procedures for dose finding.

The problem of identifying the lowest dose level for which the mean response differs from that at the zero dose level is considered. A general framework for stepwise testing procedures that use contrasts among the dose level means is proposed. Using this framework, several new procedures are derived.

Mathematical formulae for the prediction of the residual beta cell function during the first two years of disease in children and adolescents with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus.

On the basis of a retrospective study of 71 children followed for 24 months after diagnosis of type I insulin dependent diabetes a fitted mathematical model was constructed for the prediction of the course of beta cell function from the time of diagnosis. Two equations were derived, one for the maximal basal (B-max) and the other for the maximal i.v.

More powerful procedures for multiple significance testing.

The problem of multiple comparisons is discussed in the context of medical research. The need for more powerful procedures than classical multiple comparison procedures is indicated. To this end some new, general and simple procedures are discussed and demonstrated by two examples from the medical literature: the neuropsychologic effects of unidentified childhood exposure to lead, and the sleep patterns of sober chronic alcoholics.

The antihypertensive effect of atenolol and bopindolol in the elderly.

The antihypertensive efficacy and tolerability of two betablockers: atenolol and bopindolol, was compared in a group of 30 elderly subjects aged 64.8 +/- 4.6 years.

Alternative estimation procedures for Pr(X less than Y) in categorized data.

Consider two independent random variables X and Y. The functional R = Pr(X less than Y) [or gamma = Pr(X less than Y) - Pr(Y less than X)] is of practical importance in many situations, including clinical trials, genetics, and reliability. In this paper several approaches to estimation of gamma when X and Y are presented in discretized (categorical) form are analyzed and compared.