35,235 research outputs found
Emerging and Re-Emerging Zoonoses of Dogs and Cats.
Since the middle of the 20th century, pets are more frequently considered as "family members" within households. However, cats and dogs still can be a source of human infection by various zoonotic pathogens. Among emerging or re-emerging zoonoses, viral diseases, such as rabies (mainly from dog pet trade or travel abroad), but also feline cowpox and newly recognized noroviruses or rotaviruses or influenza viruses can sicken our pets and be transmitted to humans. Bacterial zoonoses include bacteria transmitted by bites or scratches, such as pasteurellosis or cat scratch disease, leading to severe clinical manifestations in people because of their age or immune status and also because of our closeness, not to say intimacy, with our pets. Cutaneous contamination with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, Leptospira spp., and/or aerosolization of bacteria causing tuberculosis or kennel cough are also emerging/re-emerging pathogens that can be transmitted by our pets, as well as gastro-intestinal pathogens such as Salmonella or Campylobacter. Parasitic and fungal pathogens, such as echinococcosis, leishmaniasis, onchocercosis, or sporotrichosis, are also re-emerging or emerging pet related zoonoses. Common sense and good personal and pet hygiene are the key elements to prevent such a risk of zoonotic infection
Rewarding my Self. The role of Self Esteem and Self Determination in Motivation Crowding Theory
The paper aims to reconcile different explanations (and consequences) of the motivation crowding theory in a unique theoretical framework where the locus of control is introduced in a one period maximisation problem and the intrinsic motivation is assumed as an exogenous psychological attitude. The analysis is based on the distinction among different types of objectives of the intrinsic motivation. For each type of objective, the different role of self esteem and self determination mechanisms determine different conditions for crowding out of intrinsic motivation, depending on the self determination sensitivity, its impact on the motivated good and the individual belief about oneâs own self.intrinsic motivation, crowding out, self esteem, self determination
Texture analysis by multi-resolution fractal descriptors
This work proposes a texture descriptor based on fractal theory. The method
is based on the Bouligand-Minkowski descriptors. We decompose the original
image recursively into 4 equal parts. In each recursion step, we estimate the
average and the deviation of the Bouligand-Minkowski descriptors computed over
each part. Thus, we extract entropy features from both average and deviation.
The proposed descriptors are provided by the concatenation of such measures.
The method is tested in a classification experiment under well known datasets,
that is, Brodatz and Vistex. The results demonstrate that the proposed
technique achieves better results than classical and state-of-the-art texture
descriptors, such as Gabor-wavelets and co-occurrence matrix.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure
Flexible dielectric waveguides with powder cores
Flexible dielectric waveguides have been demonstrated at 10 GHz and 94 GHz using thin-wall polymer tubing filled with low-loss, high-dielectric-constant powders. Absorptive losses of the order of 10 dB/m were measured at 94 GHz. with nickel-aluminium titanate and barium tetratitanate powder in polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) lightweight electrical tubing. Bending losses at 94 GHz were negligible for curvature radii greater than 4 cm. M.H. Kuhn's (1974) theory of three-region cylindrical dielectric waveguide was used to calculate dispersion curves for the lower-order modes for several combinations of dimensions and dielectric constants. Good agreement was obtained between experimental and theoretical values of guide wavelength. A scheme is proposed for classifying hybrid modes of three-region guides based on the ratio |Ez/Hz|. For two-region guides, this reduces to E. Snitzer's (1961) familiar scheme
Books Received
We investigate the persistence of spectral gaps of one-dimensional frustration free quantum lattice systems under weak perturbations and with open boundary conditions. Assuming that the interactions of the system satisfy a form of local topological quantum order, we prove explicit lower bounds on the ground state spectral gap and higher gaps for spin and fermion chains. By adapting previous methods using the spectral flow, we analyze the bulk and edge dependence of lower bounds on spectral gaps
Locally adaptive factor processes for multivariate time series
In modeling multivariate time series, it is important to allow time-varying
smoothness in the mean and covariance process. In particular, there may be
certain time intervals exhibiting rapid changes and others in which changes are
slow. If such time-varying smoothness is not accounted for, one can obtain
misleading inferences and predictions, with over-smoothing across erratic time
intervals and under-smoothing across times exhibiting slow variation. This can
lead to mis-calibration of predictive intervals, which can be substantially too
narrow or wide depending on the time. We propose a locally adaptive factor
process for characterizing multivariate mean-covariance changes in continuous
time, allowing locally varying smoothness in both the mean and covariance
matrix. This process is constructed utilizing latent dictionary functions
evolving in time through nested Gaussian processes and linearly related to the
observed data with a sparse mapping. Using a differential equation
representation, we bypass usual computational bottlenecks in obtaining MCMC and
online algorithms for approximate Bayesian inference. The performance is
assessed in simulations and illustrated in a financial application
Extremal -invariant eigenvalues of the Laplacian of -invariant metrics
The study of extremal properties of the spectrum often involves restricting
the metrics under consideration. Motivated by the work of Abreu and Freitas in
the case of the sphere endowed with -invariant metrics, we consider
the subsequence of the spectrum of a Riemannian manifold
which corresponds to metrics and functions invariant under the action of a
compact Lie group . If has dimension at least 1, we show that the
functional admits no extremal metric under volume-preserving
-invariant deformations. If, moreover, has dimension at least three,
then the functional is unbounded when restricted to any conformal
class of -invariant metrics of fixed volume. As a special case of this, we
can consider the standard O(n)-action on ; however, if we also require the
metric to be induced by an embedding of in , we get an
optimal upper bound on .Comment: To appear in Mathematische Zeitschrif
- âŠ