Diet of Bengal Tigers (Panthera tigris tigris) in Chitwan National Park, Nepal

We studied the diet of the Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris tigris) in Chitwan National Park, Nepal, by identifying 109 prey items from 85 tiger scats. Tigers in this region fed upon eight different mammal species. Chital (Axis axis) was the major prey with a frequency of 45% of the Tigers’ diet. The occurrence of other prey species included sambar (Cervus unicolor, 23%), wild pig (Sus scrofa, 15%), hog deer (Axis porcinus, 9%), barking deer (Muntiacus muntjak, 4%), and gaur (Bos gaurus, 2%). Tigers also hunted livestock, but this prey comprised a small component of the relative biomass (buffalo 5% and cow 2%). Our study suggests that the tiger depends mostly upon wild prey for its subsistence in the Chitwan National Park, but will also sporadically hunt livestock

Head injury at a tertiary referral centre in the Eastern Region of Nepal

Background: The purpose of this epidemiologic study was to determine the pattern and characteristics of head injuries and to establish an epidemiologic data bank for designing preventive strategies for head injuries in the eastern region of Nepal.Patients and Methods: This retrospective review was done at B.P.Koirala institute of Health Sciences, Dharan, Nepal. All the patients with head injury admitted to the Department of Surgery between the periods January 2005 to December 2005 were included in the study.Results: The study population consisted of 334 patients who sustained head injuries. Their ages ranged from 1 to 88 with a mean age of 28.53 years. The majority (66.3%), were young adults in the 2nd to 5th decades The male to female sex ratio was 2.6:1. Road traffic crushes were the most common cause (43.4%) followed by fall from heights (30.8%). X-ray of skull showed lesions in 114 cases (49.8%) such as depressed fracture (11.4%) and linear fracture (24.0%). Common lesions on CT scan included cerebral contusion (21.6%), extradural haematoma (20.9%), linear fracture (23.8%), subarachnoid haemorrhage (18.5%) and pnemocephalus (11.2%). Forty patients (12.0%) sustained moderate head injury. There were 15 deaths. One patient had associated intra-abdominal injury (splenic rupture) and two patient sustained pulmonary trauma and succumbed to haemothorax and aspiration.Conclusion: A clearer understanding of the patterns of head injuries will assist health care providers to plan and manage the treatment of traumatic facial injuries. Such epidemiological information can also be used to guide the future funding of public health programs geared toward prevention

A reference relative time-scale as an alternative to chronological age for cohorts with long follow-up

Background: Epidemiologists have debated the appropriate time-scale for cohort survival studies; chronological age or time-on-study being two such time-scales. Importantly, assessment of risk factors may depend on the choice of time-scale. Recently, chronological or attained age has gained support but a case can be made for a ‘reference relative time-scale’ as an alternative which circumvents difficulties that arise with this and other scales. The reference relative time of an individual participant is the integral of a reference population hazard function between time of entry and time of exit of the individual. The objective here is to describe the reference relative time-scale, illustrate its use, make comparison with attained age by simulation and explain its relationship to modern and traditional epidemiologic methods. Results: A comparison was made between two models; a stratified Cox model with age as the time-scale versus an un-stratified Cox model using the reference relative time-scale. The illustrative comparison used a UK cohort of cotton workers, with differing ages at entry to the study, with accrual over a time period and with long follow-up. Additionally, exponential and Weibull models were fitted since the reference relative time-scale analysis need not be restricted to the Cox model. A simulation study showed that analysis using the reference relative time-scale and analysis using chronological age had very similar power to detect a significant risk factor and both were equally unbiased. Further, the analysis using the reference relative time-scale supported fully-parametric survival modelling and allowed percentile predictions and mortality curves to be constructed. Conclusions: The reference relative time-scale was a viable alternative to chronological age, led to simplification of the modelling process and possessed the defined features of a good time-scale as defined in reliability theory. The reference relative time-scale has several interpretations and provides a unifying concept that links contemporary approaches in survival and reliability analysis to the traditional epidemiologic methods of Poisson regression and standardised mortality ratios. The community of practitioners has not previously made this connection

Impact of air pollution on global burden of disease in 2019

Air pollution consisting of ambient air pollution and household air pollution (HAP) threatens health globally. Air pollution aggravates the health of vulnerable people such as infants, children, women, and the elderly as well as people with chronic diseases such as cardiorespiratory illnesses, little social support, and poor access to medical services. This study is aimed to estimate the impact of air pollution on global burden of disease (GBD). We extracted data about mortality and disability adjusted life years (DALYs) attributable to air pollution from 1990 to 2019. The extracted data were then organized and edited into a usable format using STATA version 15. Furthermore, we also estimated the impacts for three categories based on their socio-demographic index (SDI) as calculated by GBD study. The impacts of air pollution on overall burden of disease by SDI, gender, type of pollution, and type of disease is estimated and their trends over the period of 1990 to 2019 are presented. The attributable burden of ambient air pollution is increasing over the years while attributable burden of HAP is declining over the years, globally. The findings of this study will be useful for evidence-based planning for prevention and control of air pollution and reduction of burden of disease from air pollution at global, regional, and national levels

Chromium coated silicon nitride electron beam exit window

A Si3N4 membrane with a thin Cr coating is proposed and demonstrated as an electron beam exit window. On average, 85% electron power transmission efficiency was achieved with a 1 μm thick Si3N4 membrane coated with 1 μm thick Cr and the membrane sustained a beam current of up to 3 mA at 60 keV electron energy for the continuous operation of 3 min. However, for an uncoated membrane of same thickness, the average electron power transmission efficiency was 71% and the maximum beam current sustained was 800 μA. It was also shown that a one micron thick Si3N4 square membrane window of 10 mm × 10 mm could withstand a differential pressure of 1.3 bars.The work carried out at Brunel University was co-funded by the EC Seventh Framework Programme theme FP7-SST-2011-RTD-1 for the DEECON project (grant number 284745)

Network-coding-based Cooperative V2V Communication in Vehicular Cloud Networks

Chinacom 2018 - 13th EAI International Conference on Communications and Networking in China, 23-25 October 2018, Chengdu, ChinaThis is the author accepted manuscript. the final version is available from Springer Verlag via the DOI in this recordWe investigate the potential of applying cooperative relaying and network coding techniques to support vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication in vehicular cloud networks (VCN). A reuse-mode MIMO content distribution system with multiple sources, multiple relays, and multiple destinations under Nakagami-m fading is considered. We apply a class of finite field network codes in the relays to achieve high spatial diversity in an efficient manner and derive the system communication error probability that the destinations fail to recover the desired source messages. The results show that our method can improve the performance over conventional data transmission solutions

Sequence Analysis of Novel Staphylococcus aureus Lineages from Wild and Captive Macaques

Staphylococcus aureus is a widespread and common opportunistic bacterium that can colonise or infect humans as well as a wide range of animals. There are a few studies of both methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA) and methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) isolated from monkeys, apes, and lemurs, indicating a presence of a number of poorly or unknown lineages of the pathogen. In order to obtain insight into staphylococcal diversity, we sequenced strains from wild and captive individuals of three macaque species (Macaca mulatta, M. assamensis, and M. sylvanus) using Nanopore and Illumina technologies. These strains were previously identified by microarray as poorly or unknown strains. Isolates of novel lineages ST4168, ST7687, ST7688, ST7689, ST7690, ST7691, ST7692, ST7693, ST7694, ST7695, ST7745, ST7746, ST7747, ST7748, ST7749, ST7750, ST7751, ST7752, ST7753, and ST7754 were sequenced and characterised for the first time. In addition, isolates belonging to ST2990, a lineage also observed in humans, and ST3268, a MRSA strain already known from macaques, were also included into the study. Mobile genetic elements, genomic islands, and carriage of prophages were analysed. There was no evidence for novel host-specific virulence factors. However, a conspicuously high rate of carriage of a pathogenicity island harbouring edinB and etD2/etE as well as a higher number of repeat units within the gene sasG (encoding an adhesion factor) than in human isolates were observed. None of the strains harboured the genes encoding Panton–Valentine leukocidin. In conclusion, wildlife including macaques may harbour an unappreciated diversity of S. aureus lineages that may be of clinical relevance for humans, livestock, or for wildlife conservation, given the declining state of many wildlife populations

Sequence Analysis of Novel Staphylococcus aureus Lineages from Wild and Captive Macaques

Staphylococcus aureus is a widespread and common opportunistic bacterium that can colonise or infect humans as well as a wide range of animals. There are a few studies of both methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA) and methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) isolated from monkeys, apes, and lemurs, indicating a presence of a number of poorly or unknown lineages of the pathogen. In order to obtain insight into staphylococcal diversity, we sequenced strains from wild and captive individuals of three macaque species (Macaca mulatta, M. assamensis, and M. sylvanus) using Nanopore and Illumina technologies. These strains were previously identified by microarray as poorly or unknown strains. Isolates of novel lineages ST4168, ST7687, ST7688, ST7689, ST7690, ST7691, ST7692, ST7693, ST7694, ST7695, ST7745, ST7746, ST7747, ST7748, ST7749, ST7750, ST7751, ST7752, ST7753, and ST7754 were sequenced and characterised for the first time. In addition, isolates belonging to ST2990, a lineage also observed in humans, and ST3268, a MRSA strain already known from macaques, were also included into the study. Mobile genetic elements, genomic islands, and carriage of prophages were analysed. There was no evidence for novel host-specific virulence factors. However, a conspicuously high rate of carriage of a pathogenicity island harbouring edinB and etD2/etE as well as a higher number of repeat units within the gene sasG (encoding an adhesion factor) than in human isolates were observed. None of the strains harboured the genes encoding Panton–Valentine leukocidin. In conclusion, wildlife including macaques may harbour an unappreciated diversity of S. aureus lineages that may be of clinical relevance for humans, livestock, or for wildlife conservation, given the declining state of many wildlife populations

Low levels of fruit nitrogen as drivers for the evolution of Madagascar's primate communities

The uneven representation of frugivorous mammals and birds across tropical regions – high in the New World, low in Madagascar and intermediate in Africa and Asia – represents a long-standing enigma in ecology. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain these differences but the ultimate drivers remain unclear. Here, we tested the hypothesis that fruits in Madagascar contain insufficient nitrogen to meet primate metabolic requirements, thus constraining the evolution of frugivory. We performed a global analysis of nitrogen in fruits consumed by primates, as collated from 79 studies. Our results showed that average frugivory among lemur communities was lower compared to New World and Asian-African primate communities. Fruits in Madagascar contain lower average nitrogen than those in the New World and Old World. Nitrogen content in the overall diets of primate species did not differ significantly between major taxonomic radiations. There is no relationship between fruit protein and the degree of frugivory among primates either globally or within regions, with the exception of Madagascar. This suggests that low protein availability in fruits influences current lemur communities to select for protein from other sources, whereas in the New World and Old World other factors are more significant in shaping primate communities