Implementation of liquid culture for tuberculosis diagnosis in a remote setting: lessons learned.

Although sputum smear microscopy is the primary method for tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis in low-resource settings, it has low sensitivity. The World Health Organization recommends the use of liquid culture techniques for TB diagnosis and drug susceptibility testing in low- and middle-income countries. An evaluation of samples from southern Sudan found that culture was able to detect cases of active pulmonary TB and extra-pulmonary TB missed by conventional smear microscopy. However, the long delays involved in obtaining culture results meant that they were usually not clinically useful, and high rates of non-tuberculous mycobacteria isolation made interpretation of results difficult. Improvements in diagnostic capacity and rapid speciation facilities, either on-site or through a local reference laboratory, are crucial

A literature review of the membership, roles, and processes of healthcare ethics committees

https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/student_scholarship_posters/1031/thumbnail.jp

Superior Mesenteric Artery Syndrome Following Augmentation Cystoplasty

Superior mesenteric artery syndrome (SMAS) is a rare condition of external duodenal compression in the angle between the superior mesenteric artery and aorta. We report a case of SMAS following augmentation cystoplasty in a young patient. Superior mesenteric artery syndrome (SMAS) is a rare condition that usually presents with symptoms of upper gastrointestinal (GI) obstruction due to extrinsic compression of the third part of duodenum between the abdominal aorta posteriorly and superior mesenteric artery (SMA) anteriorly. Several predisposing factors have been described, however; severe weight loss is considered the most significant. Reduction in the angle and distance between the aorta and the SMA causes compression of the duodenum. Conservative treatment plays a major role in such cases; however, failure of such measures may warrant surgical intervention

Numerical verification of universality for the Anderson transition

We analyze the scaling behavior of the higher Lyapunov exponents at the Anderson transition. We estimate the critical exponent and verify its universality and that of the critical conductance distribution for box, Gaussian and Lorentzian distributions of the random potential

On the informational content of wage offers

This article investigates signaling and screening roles of wage offers in a single-play matching model with two-sided unobservable characteristics. It generates the following predictions as matching equilibrium outcomes: (i) “good” jobs offer premia if “high-quality” worker population is large; (ii) “bad” jobs pay compensating differentials if the proportion of “good” jobs to “low-quality” workers is large; (iii) all firms may offer a pooling wage in markets dominated by “high-quality” workers and firms; or (iv) Gresham’s Law prevails: “good” types withdraw if “bad” types dominate the population. The screening/signaling motive thus has the potential of explaining a variety of wage patterns

The Politics of Commerce : The Congress of Chambers of Commerce of the Empire, 1886-1914

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

An activity-centric conceptual framework for assessing and creating positive urban soundscapes

The Positive Soundscapes Project is an interdisciplinary investigation of soundscape perception [1]. The project seeks to develop a rounded view of human perception of soundscapes by drawing together methods from the disciplines of engineering sound quality [2], acoustics, psychoacoustics, physiology [3], as well as sound art, acoustic ecology and social science [4]. In the acoustics community, sound in the environment, especially that made by other people has overwhelmingly been considered in negative terms as both intrusive and undesirable. The strong focus of traditional engineering acoustics on reducing noise levels ignores the many possibilities for characterizing positive aspects of the soundscape, whereas art and social science disciplines interpret soundscape perception as a multimodal and multi-dimensional concept. The project team come from a wide range of disciplines and are applying their experiences to investigate soundscapes from different aspects to produce a more nuanced and complete picture of listener response than has so far been achieved. In order for the team behind the project to achieve this, an underpinning framework is required, by which to approach and move the project forward, while aligning thinking from the different disciplines. This paper describes a high-level first iteration of the conceptual framework, which is structured in three parts. The use and potential application of the framework within the Positive Soundscapes Project is then discussed

Universality of the critical conductance distribution in various dimensions

We study numerically the metal - insulator transition in the Anderson model on various lattices with dimension $2 < d \le 4$ (bifractals and Euclidian lattices). The critical exponent $\nu$ and the critical conductance distribution are calculated. We confirm that $\nu$ depends only on the {\it spectral} dimension. The other parameters - critical disorder, critical conductance distribution and conductance cummulants - depend also on lattice topology. Thus only qualitative comparison with theoretical formulae for dimension dependence of the cummulants is possible