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Objective To assess the efficacy and safety of dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors compared with metformin as monotherapy, or with other commonly used hypoglycaemic drugs combined with metformin, in adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus.Design Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials.Data sources Medline, Embase, the Cochrane Library, conference proceedings, trial registers, and drug manufacturers’ websites.Eligibility criteria Randomised controlled trials of adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus that compared a DPP-4 with metformin as monotherapy or with a sulfonylurea, pioglitazone, a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonist, or basal insulin combined with metformin on the change from baseline in glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c).Data extraction The primary outcome was the change in HbA1c. Secondary outcomes included the proportion of patients achieving the goal of HbA1c <7%, the change in body weight, discontinuation rate because of any adverse event, occurrence of any serious adverse event, all cause mortality, and incidence of hypoglycaemia, nasopharyngitis, urinary tract infection, upper respiratory infection, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhoea.Results 27 reports of 19 studies including 7136 patients randomised to a DPP-4 inhibitor and 6745 patients randomised to another hypoglycaemic drug were eligible for the systematic review and meta-analysis. Overall risk of bias for the primary outcome was low in three reports, unclear in nine, and high in 14. Compared with metformin as monotherapy, DPP-4 inhibitors were associated with a smaller decline in HbA1c (weighted mean difference 0.20, 95% confidence interval 0.08 to 0.32) and in body weight (1.5, 0.9 to 2.11). As a second line treatment, DPP-4 inhibitors were inferior to GLP-1 agonists (0.49, 0.31 to 0.67) and similar to pioglitazone (0.09, −0.07 to 0.24) in reducing HbA1c and had no advantage over sulfonylureas in the attainment of the HbA1c goal (risk ratio in favour of sulfonylureas 1.06, 0.98 to 1.14). DPP-4 inhibitors had a favourable weight profile compared with sulfonylureas (weighted mean difference −1.92, −2.34 to −1.49) or pioglitazone (−2.96, −4.13 to −1.78), but not compared with GLP-1 agonists (1.56, 0.94 to 2.18). Only a minimal number of hypoglycaemias were observed in any treatment arm in trials comparing a DPP-4 inhibitor with metformin as monotherapy or with pioglitazone or a GLP-1 agonist as second line treatment. In most trials comparing a DPP-4 inhibitor with sulfonylureas combined with metformin, the risk for hypoglycaemia was higher in the group treated with a sulfonylurea. Incidence of any serious adverse event was lower with DPP-4 inhibitors than with pioglitazone. Incidence of nausea, diarrhoea, and vomiting was higher in patients receiving metformin or a GLP-1 agonist than in those receiving a DPP-4 inhibitor. Risk for nasopharyngitis, upper respiratory tract infection, or urinary tract infection did not differ between DPP-4 inhibitors and any of the active comparators.Conclusion In patients with type 2 diabetes who do not achieve the glycaemic targets with metformin alone, DPP-4 inhibitors can lower HbA1c, in a similar way to sulfonylureas or pioglitazone, with neutral effects on body weight. Increased unit cost, which largely exceeds that of the older drugs, and uncertainty about their long term safety, however, should also be considered.

Frequency-domain multiplexing (fMux) is an established technique for the readout of large arrays of transition-edge sensor (TES) bolometers. Each TES in a multiplexing module has a unique AC voltage bias that is selected by a resonant filter. This scheme enables the operation and readout of multiple bolometers on a single pair of wires, reducing thermal loading onto sub-Kelvin stages. The current receiver on the South Pole Telescope, SPT-3G, uses a 68x fMux system to operate its large-format camera of ∼ 16,000 TES bolometers. We present here the successful implementation and performance of the SPT-3G readout as measured on-sky. Characterization of the noise reveals a median pair-differenced 1/f knee frequency of 33 mHz, indicating that low-frequency noise in the readout will not limit SPT-3G’s measurements of sky power on large angular scales. Measurements also show that the median readout white noise level in each of the SPT-3G observing bands is below the expectation for photon noise, demonstrating that SPT-3G is operating in the photon-noise-dominated regime.

SPT-3G is a polarization-sensitive receiver, installed on the South Pole Telescope, that measures the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) from degree to arcminute scales. The receiver consists of ten 150-mm-diameter detector wafers, containing a total of ∼ 16 , 000 transition-edge sensor (TES) bolometers observing at 95, 150, and 220 GHz. During the 2018–2019 austral summer, one of these detector wafers was replaced by a new wafer fabricated with Al–Mn TESs instead of the Ti/Au design originally deployed for SPT-3G. We present the results of in-laboratory characterization and on-sky performance of this Al–Mn wafer, including electrical and thermal properties, optical efficiency measurements, and noise-equivalent temperature. In addition, we discuss and account for several calibration-related systematic errors that affect measurements made using frequency-domain multiplexing readout electronics.

Frequency-domain multiplexing (fMux) is an established technique for the readout of large arrays of transition-edge sensor (TES) bolometers. Each TES in a multiplexing module has a unique AC voltage bias that is selected by a resonant filter. This scheme provides for the operation and readout of multiple bolometers on a single pair of wires, reducing thermal loading onto sub-Kelvin stages. The current receiver on the South Pole Telescope, SPT-3G, uses a 68x fMux system to operate its large-format camera of ~16,000 TES bolometers. We present here the successful implementation and performance of the SPT-3G readout as measured on-sky. Characterization of the noise reveals a median pair-differenced 1/f knee frequency of 33 mHz, indicating that low-frequency noise in the readout will not limit SPT-3G’s measurements of sky power on large angular scales. Measurements further show that the median readout white noise level in each of the SPT-3G observing bands is below the expectation for photon noise, demonstrating that SPT-3G is operating in the photon-noise-dominated regime.

[...]we also expressed our concerns about the lack of long term safety data and increased cost, which should be taken into account by prescribers. Competing interests: DRM has been a member of an advisory board for vildagliptin (Novartis) and has received consulting fees from Novartis, Novo Nordisk, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Eli Lilly, Boehringer Ingelheim, AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson, and Janssen Global Services; AT has been a member of an advisory board for liraglutide (Novo Nordisk), has received lecture fees and a research grant from Novartis, and has received support with an educational grant from Novo Nordisk. 1 Karagiannis T, Paschos P, Paletas K, Matthews DR, Tsapas A. Dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors for treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus in the clinical setting: systematic review and meta-analysis.

Ultralight axionlike particles (ALPs) are compelling dark matter candidates because of their potential to resolve small-scale discrepancies between \\(\\Lambda\\)CDM predictions and cosmological observations. Axion-photon coupling induces a polarization rotation in linearly polarized photons traveling through an ALP field; thus, as the local ALP dark matter field oscillates in time, distant static polarized sources will appear to oscillate with a frequency proportional to the ALP mass. We use observations of the cosmic microwave background from SPT-3G, the current receiver on the South Pole Telescope, to set upper limits on the value of the axion-photon coupling constant \\(g_{\\phi\\gamma}\\) over the approximate mass range \\(10^{-22} - 10^{-19}\\) eV, corresponding to oscillation periods from 12 hours to 100 days. For periods between 1 and 100 days (\\(4.7 \\times 10^{-22} \\text{ eV} \\leq m_\\phi \\leq 4.7 \\times 10^{-20} \\text{ eV}\\)), where the limit is approximately constant, we set a median 95% C.L. upper limit on the amplitude of on-sky polarization rotation of 0.071 deg. Assuming that dark matter comprises a single ALP species with a local dark matter density of \\(0.3\\text{ GeV/cm}^3\\), this corresponds to \\(g_{\\phi\\gamma} < 1.18 \\times 10^{-12}\\text{ GeV}^{-1} \\times \\left( \\frac{m_{\\phi}}{1.0 \\times 10^{-21} \\text{ eV}} \\right)\\). These new limits represent an improvement over the previous strongest limits set using the same effect by a factor of ~3.8.

In this work, we attempt to establish correlations between Quaternary sediments in the Souli region of W Epirus. There are no palaeontological findings, and as a result chronological classification has been based on other criteria, namely geological cartography, the tectonics of the sediments (faults, folds, etc.), geomorphology and sedimentological differences.

SPT-3G is the third survey receiver operating on the South Pole Telescope dedicated to high-resolution observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Sensitive measurements of the temperature and polarization anisotropies of the CMB provide a powerful dataset for constraining cosmology. Additionally, CMB surveys with arcminute-scale resolution are capable of detecting galaxy clusters, millimeter-wave bright galaxies, and a variety of transient phenomena. The SPT-3G instrument provides a significant improvement in mapping speed over its predecessors, SPT-SZ and SPTpol. The broadband optics design of the instrument achieves a 430 mm diameter image plane across observing bands of 95 GHz, 150 GHz, and 220 GHz, with 1.2 arcmin FWHM beam response at 150 GHz. In the receiver, this image plane is populated with 2690 dual-polarization, tri-chroic pixels (~16000 detectors) read out using a 68X digital frequency-domain multiplexing readout system. In 2018, SPT-3G began a multiyear survey of 1500 deg\\(^{2}\\) of the southern sky. We summarize the unique optical, cryogenic, detector, and readout technologies employed in SPT-3G, and we report on the integrated performance of the instrument.

We report new measurements of millimeter-wave temperature power spectra in the angular multipole range \\(1700 \\le \\ell \\le 11,000\\) (wavelengths \\(13^\\prime \\gtrsim \\lambda \\gtrsim 2^\\prime\\)). We use two years of data in three observing bands centered near 95, 150, and 220 GHz from the SPT-3G receiver on the South Pole Telescope that cover a 1646 deg\\(^2\\) region of the Southern sky. Using the measured power spectra, we present constraints on the thermal and kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effects, radio galaxies, and cosmic infrared background (CIB). We find that inferred SZ powers are dependent on the detailed modeling of the thermal SZ-CIB correlation, and to a lesser extent on the assumed angular dependence of the SZ spectra. We report constraints for simulation-based model templates as well as fits where the angular dependencies of the SZ and CIB power spectra are allowed to vary. In the latter case at \\(\\ell=3000\\), we find thermal SZ power at 143 GHz of \\(D_{3000}^{\\rm tSZ} = 4.91\\pm0.37\\, \\mu{\\rm K}^2\\) and kinematic SZ power of \\(D_{3000}^{\\rm kSZ} =1.75\\pm0.86\\, \\mu{\\rm K}^2\\). We use the measured kinematic SZ power to estimate the duration of reionization, noting that the reionization inferences are sensitive to the model choices and assumed level of homogeneous kinematic SZ power from the late-time universe. We find a 95% limit on the duration from an ionization fraction of 25% to 75% of \\(\\Delta^{50} z_{\\rm re} <\\,3.8\\) based on a semi-analytic model, or a limit on the duration from an ionization fraction of 5% to 95% of \\(\\Delta^{90} z_{\\rm re} <\\,6.1\\) based on the AMBER simulations.