Estimating the Severity Profile of Enterovirus A71 Infections in Children: A Bayesian Synthesis Framework

Enterovirus A71 (EV-A71) is responsible for the majority of severe cases of hand, foot, and mouth disease, but little evidence is available on the severity profile of EV-A71 infections. We formulated a hierarchical Bayesian model that synthesized data on diseases/events associated with EV-A71 and EV-A71 antibody responses to infection among unvaccinated children from large clinical trials of EV-A71 vaccination, which were conducted in Jiangsu and Beijing during 2012 and 2013, to reconstruct the severity profile in a unified framework. On average, 15.1% of the children aged 6-35 months were infected by EV-A71 during 1-year follow-up in a mild epidemic season. We estimated that 9.7%, 2.2%, and 0.6% of children infected with EV-A71 were diagnosed with EV-A71-associated diseases, were hospitalized, and showed severe complications, respectively. We estimated on average 1 death per 10,000 EV-A71 infections for children aged 6-35 months. Approximately 70% of children had ≥4-fold rises in antibody titers after infection. Most EV-A71 infections in young children are mild, and overall 2.2% of the infected patients were hospitalized in the 2 trials. There remain several uncertainties about the immune response after infection and the duration of immunity against EV-A71 reinfection

Marangoni effect on the thermal performance of glycerol/water mixture in microchannel

Marangoni effect on the thermal performance of glycerol/water mixture in microchanne

Estimating the Severity Profile of Enterovirus A71 Infections in Children: A Bayesian Synthesis Framework

Estimating the Severity Profile of Enterovirus A71 Infections in Children: A Bayesian Synthesis Framewor

Thermal performance characteristics of a microchannel gas heater for solar heating applications

In the present article, the heat transfer and fluid flow of the air in a compact microchannel gas heater (MCGH) was experimentally quantified. To understand the effect of heat flux value (HFV), and inlet velocity on the heat transfer coefficient (HTC), wall temperature, friction factor, Nusselt number, average pressure-drop value (PDV) and performance index (PI), a microchannel gas heater was constructed and tested with pressurized air. The results showed that the HTC was 20 W/(sqmK) to 70 W/(sqmK), corresponding to inlet velocities 6.7 m/s and 16.7 m/s, respectively within HFV < 1 kW/m2. Also, the highest PI was 1.19 meaning that the HT rate can be increased by 19% at u = 15 m/s in comparison with the reference case (at u = 13.3 m/s). Likewise, the HTC was intensified once the inlet velocity is increased. It was also identified that increasing the HFV has a strong effect on wall temperature, however, slightly changes the HTC. By increasing the heat flux value from 200 W/sqm to 1000 W/sqm, the HTC increased only by 4.7% which was associated with the poor thermophysical properties of air flowing inside MCGH. Two main mechanisms of wall slip and viscous heating were identified as main contributors to the heat transfer enhancement in MCGH

Optical detection of phase transitions in potassium niobate

No description supplie

Detection of superconducting transition temperature using luminescence: a (Bi,Pb)-2223/Ag tape example

No description supplie

Reinforcement Learning in a New Keynesian Model

We construct a New Keynesian (NK) behavioural macroeconomic model with bounded-rationality (BR) and heterogeneous agents. We solve and simulate the model using a third-order approximation for a given policy and evaluate its properties using this solution. The model is inhabited by fully rational (RE) and BR agents. The latter are anticipated utility learners, given their beliefs of aggregate states, and they use simple heuristic rules to forecast aggregate variables exogenous to their micro-environment. In the most general form of the model, RE and BR agents learn from their forecasting errors by observing and comparing them with each other, making the composition of the two types endogenous. This reinforcement learning is then at the core of the heterogeneous expectations model and leads to the striking result that increasing the volatility of exogenous shocks, by assisting the learning process, increases the proportion of RE agents and is welfare-increasing

Transmission of hand, foot and mouth disease and its potential driving factors in Hong Kong

Transmission of hand, foot and mouth disease and its potential driving factors in Hong Kon

Low-temperature thermoluminescence spectra of rare-earth-doped lanthanum fluoride

Lanthanum fluoride consistently shows two strong thermoluminescence glow peaks at low temperature in pure material near 90 and 128 K. A model is proposed in which these thermoluminescence peaks arise from the annealing of halogen defect sites, similar to the H and Vk centers of the alkali halides. Relaxation and decay of these defects in the pure LaF3 lattice results in broad-band intrinsic luminescence. Addition of rare-earth-impurity ions has two effects. First, the broad-band emission is replaced by narrow-band line emission defined by the trivalent rare-earth dopants. Second, it preferentially determines the formation of the halogen defect sites at impurity lattice sites and such sites appear to increase in thermal stability since the glow peak temperature increases from 128 K in the intrinsic material up to 141 K through the sequence of rare-earth dopants from La to Er. The temperature movement directly correlates with the changes in ionic size of the rare-earth ions, when allowance is made for differences in effective coordination number of the impurity ions. The data suggest two alternative lattice sites can be occupied. The model emphasizes that the intense thermoluminescence signals arise from internal charge rearrangements and annealing of defect complexes, rather than through the more conventional model of separated charge traps and recombination centers. At higher temperatures there is a complex array of glow peaks which depend not only on the dopant concentration but also are specific to each rare earth. Such effects imply defect models giving thermoluminescence within localized complexes and possible reasons are mentioned

Effects of the ion-implantation on the thermoluminescence spectra of strontium titanate

No description supplie