0000000000088046
AUTHOR
Galeazzi F
Confirmatory factor analysis of the Patient Assessment of Constipation-Symptoms (PAC-SYM) among patients with chronic constipation.
Background and aim: PAC-SYM is widely adopted to asses constipation severity. However, it has been validated in a small sample, few items have been included based on expert opinion and not on empirical grounds, and its factor structure has never been replicated. We aimed at evaluating the psychometric properties of PAC-SYM in patients with chronic constipation. Methods: We enrolled 2,203 outpatients with chronic constipation in two waves. We used wave I sample to test the psychometric properties of the PAC-SYM and wave II sample to cross-validate its factor structure, to assess criterion validity, responsiveness to clinical change, and its minimal clinically important difference. Results: O…
The ARGO-YBJ Experiment Progresses and Future Extension
Gamma ray source detection above 30 TeV is an encouraging approach for finding galactic cosmic ray origins. All sky survey for gamma ray sources using wide field of view detector is essential for population accumulation for various types of sources above 100 GeV. To target the goals, the ARGO-YBJ experiment has been established. Significant progresses have been made in the experiment. A large air shower detector array in an area of 1 km2 is proposed to boost the sensitivity. Hybrid detections with multi-techniques will allow a good discrimination between different types of primary particles, including photons and protons, thus enable an energy spectrum measurement for individual species. F…
Background radioactivity in the scaler mode technique of the Argo-YBJ detector
""ARGO-YBJ is an extensive air shower detector located at the Yangbajing Cosmic Ray Laboratory (4300 ma.s.l., 606 g cm^−2 atmospheric depth, Tibet, China).. It is made by a single layer of Resistive Plate Chambers. (RPCs, total surface ~ 6700 m^2) grouped into 153 units. called “clusters”. The low energy threshold of the experiment is obtained using the ”scaler operation mode”, counting all the particles hitting the detector without reconstruction of the shower size and arrival direction. For each cluster the signals generated by these particles are put in coincidence in a narrow time window (150 ns) and read by four independent. scaler channels, giving the counting rates of channel. >= 1, …
Gamma ray sources observation with the ARGO-YBJ detector
In this paper we report on the observations of TeV gamma ray sources performed by the air shower de- tector ARGO-YBJ. The objects studied in this work are the blazar Markarian 421 and the extended galactic source MGROJ1908+06, monitored during 2 years of operation. Mrk421 has been detected by ARGO-YBJ with a statisti- cal significance of 11 standard deviations. The observed TeV emission was highly variable, showing large enhance- ments of the flux during active periods. The study of the spectral behaviour during flares revealed a positive correla- tion of the hardness with the flux, as already reported in the past by the Whipple telescope, suggesting that this is a long term property of the…