Seasonal and socio-economic variations in clinical and self-reported malaria in Accra, Ghana: Evidence from facility data and a community survey

Objectives: This study characterizes the variations in malaria morbidity for Accra.Methods: Both routine reporting of presumptive, clinically diagnosed malaria in out-patient clinics and results from a longitudinal household survey are used in the analysis. In the household survey, cases of suspected malaria were self-reported by patients, based on diagnoses from health centers, hospitals, pharmacies, chemical sellers or traditional healers.Results: Although the malaria ascertainment is not based on parasitology, we see systematic and plausible patterns by season and by district associated with variations in rainfall by month and year. There are significant differences in malaria incidence by socioeconomic group, possibly linked with place, work or residence.Conclusions: Understanding these seasonal and geographic patterns have implications for both prevention and treatment of malaria-like morbidity in both children and adults in urban settings

Effect of annealing on structural and optical properties of ZnO thin films prepared by Sol-Gel technique

Zinc oxide thin films were prepared by sol gel method and spin coating technique, using zinc acetate as precursor solution on glass substrate. The prepared films were annealed at three different temperatures to study the effect of annealing on the structural and optical properties of ZnO thin films. The deposited and annealed films were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-Vis-NIR spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) coupled with microanalysis (EDX). The XRD pattern shows that ZnO films are polycrystalline in nature and crystallite size increases with the increase in annealing temperature. Optical transmittance measurements were taken using UV-Vis-NIR spectrophotometer and the calculated values of the direct band gap energy, Eg was between 3, 28 and 3, 42 eV

A distance-based decision model in interval-valued hesitant fuzzy setting for industrial selection problems

In a classical Group Decision-Making (GDM) analysis, the ratings of potential alternatives and the weights of criteria or Decision Makers (DMs) are known precisely. However, for dealing with uncertain situations, the DMs can de ne their opinions in linguistic variables based on fuzzy sets in industrial selection problems. In this respect, an Interval-Valued Hesitant Fuzzy Set (IVHFS) is the suitable and capable theory that could help the DMs with assigning some interval-valued membership degrees to a candidate or option under a set. This paper introduces a novel Interval-Valued Hesitant Fuzzy Distance-Based Group Decision (IVHF-DBGD) model by a group of DMs, in which the best potential alternative can be appraised and selected among the con icting criteria. In the proposed IVHF-DBGD model, the weight of each criterion is determined by extended IVHF-entropy method along with the DMs' opinions about the criteria's weights. Also, the weight of each DM is computed by a new IVHF-order preference method with the relative closeness. Moreover, this paper introduces a new IVHF-collective index to discriminate among potential alternatives in the selection process. Finally, the computational results with a robot selection from the literature indicate that the proposed IVHF-DBGD model is the suitable group decision-making tool for the industrial selection problems

Caspian Sea gammarus (Pontogammarus maeoticus) as a carotenoid source for muscle pigmentation of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss)

The red coloration of rainbow trout muscle is an important quality criterion. Duplicate groups of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss; initial weight of 200±10g) were fed diets either supplemented 0 (control), 0.5, 2, or 4%, of the Caspian Sea gammarus (Pontogammarus maeoticus) respectively as a prospective alternative carotenoid source. The feeding trial lasted for 39 days. No significant differences (p>0.05) in specific growth rate (SGR), or condition factor (CF) were found between treatments. Carotenoid concentrations were determined in the dorsal region and the Norwegian Quality Cut (NQC). The correlation between mean total carotenoid content of the Norwegian quality cut per treatment and dietary inclusion level of P. maeoticus was high (R2=0.99; p<0.01). Less correlation was found between total carotenoid content of the dorsal cut and inclusion level of P. maeoticus (R2=0.80; P=0.10). The total carotenoid concentrations were significantly higher (p<0.05) in male (4.26±0.39 mg/kg) than in female (3.38±0.23 mg/kg) rainbow trout. In conclusion, it was found that dietary supplementation of the Caspian Sea gammarus at levels of 2 and 4% effectively improved muscle pigmentation of rainbow trout

Variability in gene cassette patterns of class 1 and 2 integrons associated with multi drug resistance patterns in Staphylococcus aureus clinical isolates in Tehran-Iran

Background: To investigate antibiotic resistance, the occurrence and distribution of class 1 and 2 integrons in multidrug- resistant Staphylococcus aureus isolates from hospitals in Tehran, Iran. The isolates were examined for susceptibility to antimicrobial agents. The mecA gene, class 1 and 2 integrons were detected by PCR. Integrase positive strains were further analysed for the presence of resistance gene cassettes using specific primers and were sequenced. Results: Among 139S.aureus isolates, 109 (78.4 ) and 112 (80.5 ) strains were considered as multidrug resistant and mecA positive, respectively. Class 1 integrons and internal variable regions were found in 72.6 (101/139) and 97 (98/101) and class 2 integrons and variable regions also in 35.2 (49/139) and 65.3 (32/49) of S.aureus clinical isolates, respectively. Twelve distinct cassette arrays were found, containing genes encoding resistance to β-lactams, aminoglycosides, streptothricin, trimethoprim, chloramphenicol,a putative glucose dehydrogenase precursor and a protein with unknown function. Gene cassette arrays aadB, aadA2 and dhfrA1-sat2-aadA1 were common in S.aureus isolates. We detected a completely new gene cassettes which contained aadB, oxa2, aacA4, orfD-aacA4-catB8, aadB-catB3, orfD-aacA4 and aadB-aadA1-cmlA6 of class 1 and dhfrA1-sat2-aadA1, dhfrA11, dhfrA1-sat2 of class 2 integrons. Conclusions: This is the first study to report carriage of class 1 and 2 integrons and associated gene cassettes among in S.aureus isolates from Iran. © 2015 Mostafa et al

Protection against live rotavirus challenge in mice induced by parenteral and mucosal delivery of VP6 subunit rotavirus vaccine

Live oral rotavirus (RV) vaccines are part of routine childhood immunization but are associated with adverse effects, particularly intussusception. We have developed a non-live combined RV – norovirus (NoV) vaccine candidate consisting of human RV inner-capsid rVP6 protein and NoV virus-like particles. To determine the effect of delivery route on induction of VP6-specific protective immunity, BALB/c mice were administered a vaccine containing RV rVP6 intramuscularly, intranasally or a combination of both, and challenged with murine RV. At least 65 % protection against RV shedding was observed regardless of delivery route. The levels of post-challenge serum VP6-specific IgA titers correlated with protection

Selection of Service Adaptation Strategies Based on Fuzzy Logic

Web Service adaptation and evolution is receiving huge interest in the service oriented architecture community due to dynamic and volatile web service environment. Regarding quality of service changes, Web Services need to be able to adapt dynamically to respond to such changes. However, formulating quality of service parameters and their relationship with adaptation behaviour of a service based system is a difficult task. In this paper, a Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) is adopted for capturing overall QoS and selecting adaptation strategies using fuzzy rules. The overall QoS is inferred by QoS parameters, while selection of adaptation strategies is inferred by the overall QoS, importance of QoS and cost of service substitution. In particular, hierarchical fuzzy systems were used to reduce the number of rules. Our approach is able to efficiently select adaptation strategies with respect to QoS changes. We test and compare our fuzzy adaptation with a naive adaptation approach that works based on precise measurement of QoS in order to show the performance of the approach in reducing the number of service substitutions and adaptation cost

Evaluating Web Service QoS: A Neural Fuzzy Approach

In Service-Based Applications (SBA), evaluating Quality of Service (QoS) values is an important issue and difficult to calculate due to uncertain and poor available information about quality parameters as well as non-linear relation between them. Fuzzy Logic (FL), can provide such a relation by employing if-then rules using inference methods. However, in a Fuzzy Inference System (FIS), fuzzy rules and membership functions are fixed and can only be defined by an expert of the system. At most cases, there is a need for an adaptive model to dynamically obtain fuzzy rules, optimise membership functions, and predict the state of QoS in the system. Therefore, we propose a fuzzy adaptive system based on learning techniques that can adjust the membership functions initially defined by experts. In particular, we use Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) to tune QoS parameters adaptively according to a given dataset. The difference between predicted and desired QoS is minimized during the learning process. The trained FIS can be used in decision making process for QoS-aware adaptation. Experimental results demonstrate the ability of the proposed approach in finding relationship between the quality variables and predicting the overall QoS values

Study of the properties of TiO2 thin films for photovoltaic application

International audienceTiO2 thin film were deposited on glass substrates, by using sol gel spin coating method with different spin speeds (2900 and 4900) rpm to study their effect on different properties of TiO2 thin films. The structural and optical properties of films have been studied for different speeds. These deposited films have been characterized by various methods such as X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Ultra Visible Spectroscopy and Raman.The (XRD) can be used to identify the presence of Anatase TiO2 phase in the film deposited. The Raman spectra have been used to confirm the presence of Anatase phase detected by the XRD. The Transmission spectra have shown the transparent and opaque parts in the visible and UV wavelengths. We observed that when the spin speed increases, the optical band gap increases and the opposite is right