161 research outputs found
Diode Laser-Induced Fluorescence of Xenon Ion Velocity Distributions
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/77011/1/AIAA-2005-4406-547.pd
A new paradigm for pattern classification: Nearest Border Techniques
Published version of a chapter in the book: AI 2013: Advances in Artificial Intelligence. Also available from the publisher at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03680-9_44There are many paradigms for pattern classification. As opposed to these, this paper introduces a paradigm that has not been reported in the literature earlier, which we shall refer to as the Nearest Border (NB) paradigm. The philosophy for developing such a NB strategy is as follows: Given the training data set for each class, we shall first attempt to create borders for each individual class. After that, we advocate that testing is accomplished by assigning the test sample to the class whose border it lies closest to. This claim is actually counter-intuitive, because unlike the centroid or the median, these border samples are often âoutliersâ and are, really, the points that represent the class the least. However, we have formally proven this claim, and the theoretical results have been verified by rigorous experimental testing
No evidence of long-term immunosuppression after high-titer Edmonst(r)on-Zagreb measles vaccination in Senegal (sic)
Interleukin 7 from Maternal Milk Crosses the Intestinal Barrier and Modulates T- Cell Development in Offspring
Background
Breastfeeding protects against illnesses and death in hazardous environments, an
effect partly mediated by improved immune function. One hypothesis suggests that
factors within milk supplement the inadequate immune response of the offspring,
but this has not been able to account for a series of observations showing that
factors within maternally derived milk may supplement the development of the
immune system through a direct effect on the primary lymphoid organs. In a
previous human study we reported evidence suggesting a link between IL-7 in
breast milk and the thymic output of infants. Here we report evidence in mice of
direct action of maternally-derived IL-7 on T cell development in the offspring.
Methods and Findings
 We have used recombinant IL-7 labelled with a fluorescent dye to trace the
movement in live mice of IL-7 from the stomach across the gut and into the
lymphoid tissues. To validate the functional ability of maternally derived IL-
7 we cross fostered IL-7 knock-out mice onto normal wild type mothers. Subsets
of thymocytes and populations of peripheral T cells were significantly higher
than those found in knock-out mice receiving milk from IL-7 knock-out mothers.
Conclusions/Significance Our study provides direct evidence that interleukin 7,
a factor which is critical in the development of T lymphocytes, when maternally
derived can transfer across the intestine of the offspring, increase T cell
production in the thymus and support the survival of T cells in the peripheral
secondary lymphoid tissue
Parametrizations of Inclusive Cross Sections for Pion Production in Proton-Proton Collisions
Accurate knowledge of cross sections for pion production in proton-proton
collisions finds wide application in particle physics, astrophysics, cosmic ray
physics and space radiation problems, especially in situations where an
incident proton is transported through some medium, and one requires knowledge
of the output particle spectrum given the input spectrum. In such cases
accurate parametrizations of the cross sections are desired. In this paper we
review much of the experimental data and compare to a wide variety of different
cross section parametrizations. In so doing, we provide parametrizations of
neutral and charged pion cross sections which provide a very accurate
description of the experimental data. Lorentz invariant differential cross
sections, spectral distributions and total cross section parametrizations are
presented.Comment: 32 pages with 15 figures. Published in Physical Review D62, 094030.
File includes 6 tex files. The main file is paper.tex which has include
statements refering to the rest. figures are in graphs.di
A novel spatial and stochastic model to evaluate the within and between farm transmission of classical swine fever virus: II Validation of the model
A role for INDEPTH Asian sites in translating research to action for non-communicable disease prevention and control: a case study from Ballabgarh, India
A Simple, Inexpensive Device for Nucleic Acid Amplification without ElectricityâToward Instrument-Free Molecular Diagnostics in Low-Resource Settings
Molecular assays targeted to nucleic acid (NA) markers are becoming increasingly important to medical diagnostics. However, these are typically confined to wealthy, developed countries; or, to the national reference laboratories of developing-world countries. There are many infectious diseases that are endemic in low-resource settings (LRS) where the lack of simple, instrument-free, NA diagnostic tests is a critical barrier to timely treatment. One of the primary barriers to the practicality and availability of NA assays in LRS has been the complexity and power requirements of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) instrumentation (another is sample preparation).In this article, we investigate the hypothesis that an electricity-free heater based on exothermic chemical reactions and engineered phase change materials can successfully incubate isothermal NA amplification assays. We assess the heater's equivalence to commercially available PCR instruments through the characterization of the temperature profiles produced, and a minimal method comparison. Versions of the prototype for several different isothermal techniques are presented.We demonstrate that an electricity-free heater based on exothermic chemical reactions and engineered phase change materials can successfully incubate isothermal NA amplification assays, and that the results of those assays are not significantly different from ones incubated in parallel in commercially available PCR instruments. These results clearly suggest the potential of the non-instrumented nucleic acid amplification (NINA) heater for molecular diagnostics in LRS. When combined with other innovations in development that eliminate power requirements for sample preparation, cold reagent storage, and readout, the NINA heater will comprise part of a kit that should enable electricity-free NA testing for many important analytes
Carbon nanoparticles in lateral flow methods to detect genes encoding virulence factors of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli
The use of carbon nanoparticles is shown for the detection and identification of different Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli virulence factors (vt1, vt2, eae and ehxA) and a 16S control (specific for E. coli) based on the use of lateral flow strips (nucleic acid lateral flow immunoassay, NALFIA). Prior to the detection with NALFIA, a rapid amplification method with tagged primers was applied. In the evaluation of the optimised NALFIA strips, no cross-reactivity was found for any of the antibodies used. The limit of detection was higher than for quantitative PCR (q-PCR), in most cases between 104 and 105Â colony forming units/mL or 0.1â0.9Â ng/ÎźL DNA. NALFIA strips were applied to 48 isolates from cattle faeces, and results were compared to those achieved by q-PCR. E. coli virulence factors identified by NALFIA were in very good agreement with those observed in q-PCR, showing in most cases sensitivity and specificity values of 1.0 and an almost perfect agreement between both methods (kappa coefficient larger than 0.9). The results demonstrate that the screening method developed is reliable, cost-effective and user-friendly, and that the procedure is fast as the total time required is <1Â h, which includes amplification
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