Abstract. This paper presents a work that aims to monitor seismo-electromagnetic phenomena in the Western Part of the Eurasia-Nubia Plate Boundary. This region has a significant tectonic activity combined with relatively low electromagnetic noise levels, rendering high quality seismo-electromagnetic measurements possible. An overview of the seismicity of this region is presented and the research plan is discussed accordingly.
Purpose of the studyMaraviroc (MVC) is the first CCR5 inhibitor licensed for clinical use. A pre‐treatment test is mandatory to identify R5 tropic patients. Aim of this study is to detect indications and results of tropism test and to evaluate efficacy and tolerability of MVC‐based regimen.MethodsAn observational retrospective multicentre study was performed in Sicily in 15 Infectious Diseases Units. Clinical records of 213 screened for tropism HIV+ subjects were reviewed for age, sex, risk, clinical stage (CDC, CD4 cell count, HIV RNA viral load), therapeutic line, indication and result of test for tropism; within subjects treated with MVC, HIV RNA, CD4 cell count and metabolic parameters trend and adverse events were analysed.Summary of resultsMedian age 44 (IQR 30–50) years, 67.1% males; 46.3% heterosexuals, 28.6% MSMs, 21.4% IVDUs; 23.7% CDC A, 32.1% CDC B, 44.2% CDC C; median CD4 was 217 (IQR 121–374) cells/µl and mean of HIV RNA was 4.72 (Cl 95% 4.07–4.67) log10 copies/ml; median therapeutic line was 4 (IQR 2–7). 80.8% were submitted to Trofile™ test, 19.2% to genotypic test, 75.5% after a therapeutic failure. 56.8% of subjects screened were R5, 7.5% X4, 21.6% DM, 14% undefined. All X4 patients were tested after a therapeutic failure; patients screened for toxicity were more frequently R5 (75%) (p<0.01). 76 (35.7%) multi‐experienced (at baseline 8% HIV RNA<50 copies/ml, median CD4 cell count 219 (IQR 124–345) cells/µl) subjects were treated with MVC plus an optimized background treatment: MVC was associated in 74% of cases with a protease inhibitors (56% darunavir/ritonavir), in 42% with raltegravir, in 56% with a NUC‐sparing regimen. After 12 months of treatment 56.8% (ITT analysis) and 61.7% (AT) of patients had HIV RNA<50 copies/ml; median CD4 cell count was 387 (IQR 222–455) cells/µl. After 24 months 64.8% (ITT) 80% (AT) had HIV‐RNA<50 copies/ml. Median CD4 cell count was 381 (IQR 218.515) cells/µl with a median increase of 168 (IQR 54–274) cells/µl. At 24 months median value of total and HDL cholesterol and triglycerides were within the normal range. 7 patients stopped the treatment: 2 died, 1 adverse event, 4 virological failure.ConclusionsAlthough the test has been proposed to patients with long treatment history and failure, only 3/5 of R5 tropic patients were treated with MVC. An high number of multi‐experienced subjects treated with a MVC‐based regimen obtained HIV RNA<50 copies/ml and a satisfactory increase of CD4 cell count.
We present a search for gravitational waves from 116 known millisecond and young pulsars using data from the fifth science run of the LIGO detectors. For this search, ephemerides overlapping the run period were obtained for all pulsars using radio and X-ray observations. We demonstrate an updated search method that allows for small uncertainties in the pulsar phase parameters to be included in the search. We report no signal detection from any of the targets and therefore interpret our results as upper limits on the gravitational wave signal strength. The most interesting limits are those for young pulsars. We present updated limits on gravitational radiation from the Crab pulsar, where the measured limit is now a factor of 7 below the spin-down limit. This limits the power radiated via gravitational waves to be less than similar to 2% of the available spin-down power. For the X-ray pulsar J0537-6910 we reach the spin-down limit under the assumption that any gravitational wave signal from it stays phase locked to the X-ray pulses over timing glitches, and for pulsars J1913+1011 and J1952+3252 we are only a factor of a few above the spin-down limit. Of the recycled millisecond pulsars, several of themeasured upper limits are only about an order of magnitude above their spin-down limits. For these our best (lowest) upper limit on gravitational wave amplitude is 2.3 x 10(-26) for J1603-7202 and our best (lowest) limit on the inferred pulsar ellipticity is 7.0 x 10(-8) for J2124-3358. ; Australian Research Council ; Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India ; Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare of Italy ; Spanish Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia ; Conselleria d'Economia Hisenda i Innovacio of the Govern de les Illes Balears ; Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research ; Royal Society ; Scottish Funding Council ; Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education ; Foundation for Polish Science ; Scottish Universities Physics Alliance ; National Aeronautics and Space Administration ; Carnegie Trust ; Leverhulme Trust ; David and Lucile Packard Foundation ; Research Corporation ; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation ; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada ; Commonwealth Government ; Astronomy
United States National Science Foundation (NSF) ; Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom ; Max-Planck-Society (MPS) ; State of Niedersachsen/Germany ; Australian Research Council ; International Science Linkages program of the Commonwealth of Australia ; Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India ; Department of Science and Technology, India ; Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), India ; Ministry of Human Resource Development, India ; Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad ; Conselleria d'Economia i Competitivitat and Conselleria d'Educaci, Cultura i Universitats of the Govern de les Illes Balears ; Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter - Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research ; Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education ; FOCUS Programme of Foundation for Polish Science ; European Union ; Royal Society ; Scottish Funding Council ; Scottish Universities Physics Alliance ; National Aeronautics and Space Administration ; Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA) ; Lyon Institute of Origins (LIO) ; National Research Foundation of Korea ; Industry Canada ; Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation ; National Science and Engineering Research Council Canada ; Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation ; Carnegie Trust ; Leverhulme Trust ; David and Lucile Packard Foundation ; Research Corporation ; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation ; NSF ; STFC ; MPS ; INFN ; CNRS ; Science and Technology Facilities Council ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000938/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006285/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006269/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000946/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000962/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L003465/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K000845/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/J00166X/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000911/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: PPA/G/S/2002/00652 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006269/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000911/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: 1362895 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006277/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/H002359/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K005014/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K00137X/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/M006735/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/M000931/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000938/1 Gravitational Waves ; We describe directed searches for continuous gravitational waves (GWs) in data from the sixth Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) science data run. The targets were nine young supernova remnants not associated with pulsars; eight of the remnants are associated with non-pulsing suspected neutron stars. One target ' s parameters are uncertain enough to warrant two searches, for a total of 10. Each search covered a broad band of frequencies and first and second frequency derivatives for a fixed sky direction. The searches coherently integrated data from the two LIGO interferometers over time spans from 5.3-25.3 days using the matched-filtering. -statistic. We found no evidence of GW signals. We set 95% confidence upper limits as strong (low) as 4 x 10(-25) on intrinsic strain, 2 x 10(-7) on fiducial ellipticity, and 4 x 10(-5) on r-mode amplitude. These beat the indirect limits from energy conservation and are within the range of theoretical predictions for neutron-star ellipticities and r-mode amplitudes.
United States National Science Foundation (NSF) ; Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom ; Max-Planck-Society (MPS) ; State of Niedersachsen/Germany ; Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) ; French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) ; Australian Research Council ; International Science Linkages program of the Commonwealth of Australia ; Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India ; Department of Science and Technology, India ; Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), India ; Ministry of Human Resource Development, India ; Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad ; Conselleria d'Economia i Competitivitat and Conselleria d'Educaci, Cultura i Universitats of the Govern de les Illes Balears ; Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research ; National Science Centre of Poland ; European Union ; Royal Society ; Scottish Funding Council ; Scottish Universities Physics Alliance ; National Aeronautics and Space Administration ; Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA) ; Lyon Institute of Origins (LIO) ; National Research Foundation of Korea ; Industry Canada ; Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation ; Natural Science and Engineering Research Council, Canada ; Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation ; Carnegie Trust ; Leverhulme Trust ; David and Lucile Packard Foundation ; Research Corporation ; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation ; NSF ; STFC ; MPS ; INFN ; CNRS ; Science and Technology Facilities Council ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000938/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: 1362895 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000962/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006285/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L003465/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000962/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006285/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006242/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/J000019/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/N00003X/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000946/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/N000064/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000954/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K000845/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006269/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000938/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K005014/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006269/1 Gravitational Waves ; We present the results of a search for long-duration gravitational wave transients in two sets of data collected by the LIGO Hanford and LIGO Livingston detectors between November 5, 2005 and September 30, 2007, and July 7, 2009 and October 20, 2010, with a total observational time of 283.0 days and 132.9 days, respectively. The search targets gravitational wave transients of duration 10-500 s in a frequency band of 40-1000 Hz, with minimal assumptions about the signal waveform, polarization, source direction, or time of occurrence. All candidate triggers were consistent with the expected background; as a result we set 90% confidence upper limits on the rate of long-duration gravitational wave transients for different types of gravitational wave signals. For signals from black hole accretion disk instabilities, we set upper limits on the source rate density between 3.4 x 10(-5) and 9.4 x 10(-4) Mpc(-3) yr(-1) at 90% confidence. These are the first results from an all-sky search for unmodeled long-duration transient gravitational waves.
Advanced LIGO ; Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom ; Australian Research Council ; Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India, Department of Science and Technology, India ; Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), India ; Ministry of Human Resource Development, India ; Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad ; Conselleria d'Economia i Competitivitat and Conselleria d'Educacio, Cultura i Universitats of the Govern de les Illes Balears ; National Science Centre of Poland ; FOCUS Programme of Foundation for Polish Science ; European Union ; Royal Society ; Scottish Funding Council ; Scottish Universities Physics Alliance ; Lyon Institute of Origins (LIO) ; National Research Foundation of Korea ; Industry Canada ; Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation ; National Science and Engineering Research Council Canada ; Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation ; Research Corporation, Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan ; Kavli Foundation ; Science and Technology Facilities Council ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000954/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000946/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006269/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006242/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L003465/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/J000019/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/N000072/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K000845/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006269/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/N000633/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/M000931/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K005014/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: PPA/G/S/2002/00652 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/N00003X/1 ; We present a possible observing scenario for the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo gravitational-wave detectors over the next decade, with the intention of providing information to the astronomy community to facilitate planning for multi-messenger astronomy with gravitational waves. We determine the expected sensitivity of the network to transient gravitational-wave signals, and study the capability of the network to determine the sky location of the source. We report our findings for gravitational-wave transients, with particular focus on gravitational-wave signals from the inspiral of binary neutron-star systems, which are considered the most promising for multi-messenger astronomy. The ability to localize the sources of the detected signals depends on the geographical distribution of the detectors and their relative sensitivity, and 90% credible regions can be as large as thousands of square degrees when only two sensitive detectors are operational. Determining the sky position of a significant fraction of detected signals to areas of 5 deg(2) to 20 deg(2) will require at least three detectors of sensitivity within a factor of similar to 2 of each other and with a broad frequency bandwidth. Should the third LIGO detector be relocated to India as expected, a significant fraction of gravitational-wave signals will be localized to a few square degrees by gravitational-wave observations alone.
Australian Research Council ; International Science Linkages program of the Commonwealth of Australia ; Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India, Department of Science and Technology, India ; Science and Engineering Research Board, India ; Ministry of Human Resource Development, India ; Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad ; Conselleria d'Economia i Competitivitat ; Cultura i Universitats of the Govern de les Illes Balears ; Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter - Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research ; National Science Centre of Poland ; European Union ; Royal Society ; Scottish Funding Council ; Scottish Universities Physics Alliance ; National Aeronautics and Space Administration ; Hungarian Scientific Research Fund ; Lyon Institute of Origins ; National Research Foundation of Korea ; Industry Canada ; Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation ; National Science and Engineering Research Council Canada ; Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation ; Carnegie Trust ; Leverhulme Trust ; David and Lucile Packard Foundation ; Research Corporation ; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation ; Conselleria d'Educacio ; Science and Technology Facilities Council ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000962/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: 1362895 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006285/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000938/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000962/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K000845/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K005014/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L003465/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000938/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/N000064/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000946/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000954/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006269/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006269/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/J000019/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006242/1 Gravitational Waves ; In this paper we present the results of the first low frequency all-sky search of continuous gravitational wave signals conducted on Virgo VSR2 and VSR4 data. The search covered the full sky, a frequency range between 20 and 128 Hz with a range of spin-down between -1.0 x 10(-10) and +1.5 x 10(-11) Hz/s, and was based on a hierarchical approach. The starting point was a set of short fast Fourier transforms, of length 8192 s, built from the calibrated strain data. Aggressive data cleaning, in both the time and frequency domains, has been done in order to remove, as much as possible, the effect of disturbances of instrumental origin. On each data set a number of candidates has been selected, using the Frequency Hough transform in an incoherent step. Only coincident candidates among VSR2 and VSR4 have been examined in order to strongly reduce the false alarm probability, and the most significant candidates have been selected. The criteria we have used for candidate selection and for the coincidence step greatly reduce the harmful effect of large instrumental artifacts. Selected candidates have been subject to a follow-up by constructing a new set of longer fast Fourier transforms followed by a further incoherent analysis, still based on the Frequency Hough transform. No evidence for continuous gravitational wave signals was found, and therefore we have set a population-based joint VSR2-VSR4 90% confidence level upper limit on the dimensionless gravitational wave strain in the frequency range between 20 and 128 Hz. This is the first all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves conducted, on data of ground-based interferometric detectors, at frequencies below 50 Hz. We set upper limits in the range between about 10(-24) and 2 x 10(-23) at most frequencies. Our upper limits on signal strain show an improvement of up to a factor of similar to 2 with respect to the results of previous all-sky searches at frequencies below 80 Hz.
United States National Science Foundation (NSF) ; Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom ; Max-Planck Society ; State of Niedersachsen/Germany ; Australian Research Council ; Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research ; EGO consortium ; Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India ; Department of Science and Technology, India ; Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), India ; Ministry of Human Resource Development, India ; Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad ; Conselleria d'Economia i Competitivitat and Conselleria d'Educacio Cultura i Universitats of the Govern de les Illes Balears ; National Science Centre of Poland ; European Commission ; Royal Society ; Scottish Funding Council ; Scottish Universities Physics Alliance ; Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA) ; Lyon Institute of Origins (LIO) ; National Research Foundation of Korea ; Industry Canada ; Province of Ontario through Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation ; National Science and Engineering Research Council Canada ; Canadian Institute for Advanced Research ; Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation ; Russian Foundation for Basic Research ; Leverhulme Trust ; Research Corporation ; Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan ; Kavli Foundation ; Australian Government ; National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy ; Government of Western Australia ; United States Department of Energy ; United States National Science Foundation ; Ministry of Science and Education of Spain ; Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom ; Higher Education Funding Council for England ; National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ; Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago ; Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics at the Ohio State University ; Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy at Texas AM University ; Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos ; Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ) ; Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) ; Ministerio da Ciencia, Tecnologia e Inovacao ; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft ; Collaborating Institutions in the Dark Energy Survey ; National Science Foundation ; MINECO ; Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa ; European Research Council under European Union's Seventh Framework Programme ; ERC ; NASA (United States) ; DOE (United States) ; IN2P3/CNRS (France) ; CEA/Irfu (France) ; ASI (Italy) ; INFN (Italy) ; MEXT (Japan) ; KEK (Japan) ; JAXA (Japan) ; Wallenberg Foundation ; Swedish Research Council ; National Space Board (Sweden) ; NASA in the United States ; DRL in Germany ; INAF for the project Gravitational Wave Astronomy with the first detections of adLIGO and adVIRGO experiments ; ESA (Denmark) ; ESA (France) ; ESA (Germany) ; ESA (Italy) ; ESA (Switzerland) ; ESA (Spain) ; German INTEGRAL through DLR grant ; US under NASA Grant ; National Science Foundation PIRE program grant ; Hubble Fellowship ; KAKENHI of MEXT Japan ; JSPS ; Optical and Near-Infrared Astronomy Inter-University Cooperation Program - MEXT ; UK Science and Technology Facilities Council ; ERC Advanced Investigator Grant ; Lomonosov Moscow State University Development programm ; Moscow Union OPTICA ; Russian Science Foundation ; National Research Foundation of South Africa ; Australian Government Department of Industry and Science and Department of Education (National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy: NCRIS) ; NVIDIA at Harvard University ; University of Hawaii ; National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Planetary Defense Office ; Queen's University Belfast ; National Aeronautics and Space Administration through Planetary Science Division of the NASA Science Mission Directorate ; European Research Council under European Union's Seventh Framework Programme/ERC ; STFC grants ; European Union FP7 programme through ERC ; STFC through an Ernest Rutherford Fellowship ; FONDECYT ; Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO) ; NASA in the US ; UK Space Agency in the UK ; Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI) in Italy ; Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnologia (MinCyT) ; Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnologicas (CONICET) from Argentina ; USA NSF PHYS ; NSF ; ICREA ; Science and Technology Facilities Council ; UK Space Agency ; National Science Foundation: AST-1138766 ; National Science Foundation: AST-1238877 ; MINECO: AYA2012-39559 ; MINECO: ESP2013-48274 ; MINECO: FPA2013-47986 ; Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa: SEV-2012-0234 ; ERC: 240672 ; ERC: 291329 ; ERC: 306478 ; German INTEGRAL through DLR grant: 50 OG 1101 ; US under NASA Grant: NNX15AU74G ; National Science Foundation PIRE program grant: 1545949 ; Hubble Fellowship: HST-HF-51325.01 ; KAKENHI of MEXT Japan: 24103003 ; KAKENHI of MEXT Japan: 15H00774 ; KAKENHI of MEXT Japan: 15H00788 ; JSPS: 15H02069 ; JSPS: 15H02075 ; ERC Advanced Investigator Grant: 267697 ; Russian Science Foundation: 16-12-00085 ; Russian Science Foundation: RFBR15-02-07875 ; National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Planetary Defense Office: NNX14AM74G ; National Aeronautics and Space Administration through Planetary Science Division of the NASA Science Mission Directorate: NNX08AR22G ; European Research Council under European Union's Seventh Framework Programme/ERC: 291222 ; STFC grants: ST/I001123/1 ; STFC grants: ST/L000709/1 ; European Union FP7 programme through ERC: 320360 ; FONDECYT: 3140326 ; Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO): CE110001020 ; USA NSF PHYS: 1156600 ; NSF: 1242090 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000946/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K005014/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/N000668/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/M000966/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006269/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000709/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/J00166X/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K000845/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K00090X/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/N000633/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/H001972/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000733/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/N000757/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/M001334/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/J000019/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/M003035/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I001123/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/N00003X/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006269/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/N000072/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L003465/1 ; UK Space Agency: ST/P002196/1 ; This Supplement provides supporting material for Abbott et al. (2016a). We briefly summarize past electromagnetic (EM) follow-up efforts as well as the organization and policy of the current EM follow-up program. We compare the four probability sky maps produced for the gravitational-wave transient GW150914, and provide additional details of the EM follow-up observations that were performed in the different bands.
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted routine hospital services globally. This study estimated the total number of adult elective operations that would be cancelled worldwide during the 12 weeks of peak disruption due to COVID-19. Methods: A global expert response study was conducted to elicit projections for the proportion of elective surgery that would be cancelled or postponed during the 12 weeks of peak disruption. A Bayesian β-regression model was used to estimate 12-week cancellation rates for 190 countries. Elective surgical case-mix data, stratified by specialty and indication (surgery for cancer versus benign disease), were determined. This case mix was applied to country-level surgical volumes. The 12-week cancellation rates were then applied to these figures to calculate the total number of cancelled operations. Results: The best estimate was that 28 404 603 operations would be cancelled or postponed during the peak 12 weeks of disruption due to COVID-19 (2 367 050 operations per week). Most would be operations for benign disease (90·2 per cent, 25 638 922 of 28 404 603). The overall 12-week cancellation rate would be 72·3 per cent. Globally, 81·7 per cent of operations for benign conditions (25 638 922 of 31 378 062), 37·7 per cent of cancer operations (2 324 070 of 6 162 311) and 25·4 per cent of elective caesarean sections (441 611 of 1 735 483) would be cancelled or postponed. If countries increased their normal surgical volume by 20 per cent after the pandemic, it would take a median of 45 weeks to clear the backlog of operations resulting from COVID-19 disruption. Conclusion: A very large number of operations will be cancelled or postponed owing to disruption caused by COVID-19. Governments should mitigate against this major burden on patients by developing recovery plans and implementing strategies to restore surgical activity safely.
