Calf muscle stimulation with the Veinoplus device results in a significant increase in lower limb inflow without generating limb ischemia or pain in patients with peripheral artery disease

OBJECTIVE: Increase in arterial inflow to the lower limbs is important to obtain functional improvement in peripheral artery disease (PAD) patients with claudication. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of electrical stimulation of calf muscles on arterial inflow and tissue oxygen content in PAD in the area of stimulation.METHODS: Fifteen adult patients [mean (standard deviation) age, 62 (12 ) years; height, 165 (8)cm; weight, 76 (13) kg; lowest ankle-brachial index 0.66 (0.19)] with stable arterial claudication were recruited. All patients performed a treadmill test (3.2 km/h, 10% slope) associated with a transcutaneous oximetry test expressed as decrease from rest of oxygen pressure (DROP) index values (calf changes minus chest changes from rest) with a maximum walking distance (median [25th/75th percentiles]) of 295 [133-881] m. The DROP index on the symptomatic side was -25 [-18/-34] mm Hg. On another day the patients underwent electrical stimulation in the seated position on the leg that was the most symptomatic on the treadmill. After resting values were recorded, the gastrocnemius was stimulated for 20minutes at increasing contraction rates at 5-minute steps of 60, 75, 86, and 100bpm on the most symptomatic side. Arterial blood inflow with duplex Doppler ultrasound scanning of the femoral artery, DROP transcutaneous oxygen pressure value, and oxygen concentration (O2Hb) from the near-infrared spectroscopic signal of the calf were recorded on both sides. Patients were instructed to report eventual contraction-induced pain in the stimulated calf. Results are given as mean (standard deviation) or median [25th/75th percentiles] according to distribution, and the level of statistical significance was set at P < .05 on two-tailed tests. RESULTS: Lower limb inflow (mL/min) was 64 [48/86] vs 63 [57/81] (P> .05) before stimulation, 123 [75/156] vs 57 [44/92] (P < .01) at 60bpm, 127 [91/207] vs 49 [43/68] (P < .01) at 75bpm, 140 [84/200] vs 57 [45/71] (P < .01) at 86bpm, and 154 [86/185] vs 55 [46/94] (P < .01) at 100bpm on the stimulated vs nonstimulated limb, respectively. No apparent decrease or significant leg difference was observed in DROP index or O2Hb values. None of the patients reported contraction-induced pain in the leg. CONCLUSIONS: Electrical stimulation of calf muscle with the Veinoplus device results in a significant increase of arterial inflow without measurable muscle ischemia or pain. Potential use of this device as an adjuvant treatment to improve walking capacity in PAD patients remains to be evaluated

Performances agronomiques des amendements a base de biochar en milieu paysan a l’ouest du Burkina Faso

Au Burkina Faso, la baisse de la fertilité des sols représente une contrainte importante pour la durabilité de l’agriculture. Dans cette étude, l’influence du compost, du biochar et du co-compost au biochar sur les propriétés chimiques du sol, le rendement du cotonnier et du maïs a été évaluée sur un lixisol endoplinthique en milieu paysan. Le dispositif était en blocs randomisés comportant trois traitements en quatre répétitions : T= compost + NPK + Urée, T2 = biochar pristine + NPK + urée, et T3=co-compost au biochar + NPK + urée. La dose d’apport des amendements était de 2,5t.ha-1.an-1 pendant deux ans, associée à la dose recommandée d’engrais minéraux (coton : NPK = 150 kg.ha-1 et urée = 50 kg.ha-1 ; maïs : NPK = 200 kg.ha-1 et urée = 100 kg.ha-1). L’adjonction du biochar pendant le compostage a augmenté les teneurs en azote total, magnésium total et phosphore total de l’amendement obtenu, respectivement de 48 %, 64 % et 68 % comparativement au compost. Même si les paramètres physico-chimiques du sol, deux ans après, n’ont pas été améliorés, une augmentation significative du rendement du coton graine de 14 % (biochar) et 19 % (co-compost au biochar) comparativement au compost a été observée la troisième année. Les amendements à base de biochar peuvent être suggérés aux producteurs pour l’amélioration du rendement des cultures à moyen terme.   English title: Agronomic Performance of Biochar-Based Amendments in Farmers’ environment in western Burkina Faso In Burkina Faso, declining soil fertility is a major constraint to agricultural productivity and sustainability. In the present study, compost, biochar and co-composted biochar were applied to endoplinthic lixisol, and the effects on soil physicochemical properties, cotton and maize yield over three  years (i.e., three cropping seasons) were investigated. The trial was a completely randomized block design included three treatments and four  repetitions: T1= compost + NPK + Urea, T2= pristine biochar + NPK + Urea and T3= co-composted biochar + NPK + Urea. The amendments rate were  2.5 t.ha-1 each year (2018 and 2019) combined with the recommended rate of mineral fertilizer (cotton: 150 kg.ha-1 NPK , 50 kg.ha-1 Urea; maize:  200 kg.ha-1 NPK, 100 kg.ha-1 Urea). The addition of biochar during the composting process increased the total nitrogen, total magnesium and total  phosphorus contents of co-composted biochar by 48%, 64% and 68% respectively compared to compost. Although the biochar-based amendments  did not improve the physico-chemical parameters of the soil, two years after their application, a significant increase in cotton yield by 14% (biochar)  and 19% (co-composted biochar) compared to compost in the third year was observed. Biochar-based amendments can be suggested to producers  for medium-term crop yield improvement

REST: Robust and Efficient Neural Networks for Sleep Monitoring in the Wild

In recent years, significant attention has been devoted towards integrating deep learning technologies in the healthcare domain. However, to safely and practically deploy deep learning models for home health monitoring, two significant challenges must be addressed: the models should be (1) robust against noise; and (2) compact and energy-efficient. We propose REST, a new method that simultaneously tackles both issues via 1) adversarial training and controlling the Lipschitz constant of the neural network through spectral regularization while 2) enabling neural network compression through sparsity regularization. We demonstrate that REST produces highly-robust and efficient models that substantially outperform the original full-sized models in the presence of noise. For the sleep staging task over single-channel electroencephalogram (EEG), the REST model achieves a macro-F1 score of 0.67 vs. 0.39 achieved by a state-of-the-art model in the presence of Gaussian noise while obtaining 19x parameter reduction and 15x MFLOPS reduction on two large, real-world EEG datasets. By deploying these models to an Android application on a smartphone, we quantitatively observe that REST allows models to achieve up to 17x energy reduction and 9x faster inference. We open-source the code repository with this paper: https://github.com/duggalrahul/REST.Comment: Accepted to WWW 202

Application of geographically-weighted regression analysis to assess risk factors for malaria hotspots in Keur Soce health and demographic surveillance site.

BACKGROUND: In Senegal, considerable efforts have been made to reduce malaria morbidity and mortality during the last decade. This resulted in a marked decrease of malaria cases. With the decline of malaria cases, transmission has become sparse in most Senegalese health districts. This study investigated malaria hotspots in Keur Soce sites by using geographically-weighted regression. Because of the occurrence of hotspots, spatial modelling of malaria cases could have a considerable effect in disease surveillance. METHODS: This study explored and analysed the spatial relationships between malaria occurrence and socio-economic and environmental factors in small communities in Keur Soce, Senegal, using 6 months passive surveillance. Geographically-weighted regression was used to explore the spatial variability of relationships between malaria incidence or persistence and the selected socio-economic, and human predictors. A model comparison of between ordinary least square and geographically-weighted regression was also explored. Vector dataset (spatial) of the study area by village levels and statistical data (non-spatial) on malaria confirmed cases, socio-economic status (bed net use), population data (size of the household) and environmental factors (temperature, rain fall) were used in this exploratory analysis. ArcMap 10.2 and Stata 11 were used to perform malaria hotspots analysis. RESULTS: From Jun to December, a total of 408 confirmed malaria cases were notified. The explanatory variables-household size, housing materials, sleeping rooms, sheep and distance to breeding site returned significant t values of -0.25, 2.3, 4.39, 1.25 and 2.36, respectively. The OLS global model revealed that it explained about 70 % (adjusted R(2) = 0.70) of the variation in malaria occurrence with AIC = 756.23. The geographically-weighted regression of malaria hotspots resulted in coefficient intercept ranging from 1.89 to 6.22 with a median of 3.5. Large positive values are distributed mainly in the southeast of the district where hotspots are more accurate while low values are mainly found in the centre and in the north. CONCLUSION: Geographically-weighted regression and OLS showed important risks factors of malaria hotspots in Keur Soce. The outputs of such models can be a useful tool to understand occurrence of malaria hotspots in Senegal. An understanding of geographical variation and determination of the core areas of the disease may provide an explanation regarding possible proximal and distal contributors to malaria elimination in Senegal

Estimates of measles case fatality ratios: a comprehensive review of community-based studies.

BACKGROUND: Global deaths from measles have decreased notably in past decades, due to both increases in immunization rates and decreases in measles case fatality ratios (CFRs). While some aspects of the reduction in measles mortality can be monitored through increases in immunization coverage, estimating the level of measles deaths (in absolute terms) is problematic, particularly since incidence-based methods of estimation rely on accurate measures of measles CFRs. These ratios vary widely by geographic and epidemiologic context and even within the same community from year-to-year. METHODS: To understand better the variations in CFRs, we reviewed community-based studies published between 1980 and 2008 reporting age-specific measles CFRs. RESULTS: The results of the search consistently document that measles CFRs are highest in unvaccinated children under age 5 years; in outbreaks; the lowest CFRs occur in vaccinated children regardless of setting. The broad range of case and death definitions, study populations and geography highlight the complexities in extrapolating results for global public health planning. CONCLUSIONS: Values for measles CFRs remain imprecise, resulting in continued uncertainty about the actual toll measles exacts

Détermination du débit de filtration glomérulaire (DFG) au cours du diabète : Cockroft et Gault, MDRD ou CKD-EPI ?

Plusieurs paramètres peuvent être étudiés pour évaluer le rein. Parmi ceux-ci, le débit de filtration glomérulaire (DFG) a été déterminé avec les formules de Cockroft et Gault (CG), du Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) et du Chronic Kidney Disease EPIdemiology Collaboration (CKD-EPI) et la formule la mieux adaptée pour le diabétique a été recherchée. Chez 59 diabétiques de type 1 (DT1) et 70 diabétiques de type 2 (DT2), le DFG a été déterminé avec les formules de CG, du MDRD et du CKD-EPI. Avec l’analyse statistique, les seuils de significativité ont été fixés pour p<0,05 ; T0α>1,96 et Z0α>1,96. Le MDRD est superposable au CKD-EPI chez les DT1 et DT2. Chez les DT1, le DFG moyen et la corrélation entre 1/créatininémie et DFG ne varient pas si CG ou CKD-EPI ; cependant, les sujets à DFG réduit (< 90 ml/min/1,73 m²) sont plus nombreux avec CG plutôt qu’avec CKD-EPI (66,10% vs 47,46% ; T0α=2,05). Chez les DT2, le DFG moyen et la proportion de sujets à DFG réduit sont indépendants de la formule utilisée, mais la corrélation entre 1/créatininémie et DFG est plus forte si CKD-EPI que CG (0,961 vs 0,632 ; Z0α=7,02). Ainsi, la formule la mieux adaptée pour la détermination du DFG serait CG chez les DT1 et CKD-EPI chez les DT2, sachant que CKD-EPI est équivalent à MDRD quel que soit le type de diabète.Mots clés : Cockroft et Gault - MDRD - CKD-EPI – débit de filtration glomérulaire (DFG) – diabète

Endophytes from African Rice (Oryza glaberrima L.) Efficiently Colonize Asian Rice (Oryza sativa L.) Stimulating the Activity of Its Antioxidant Enzymes and Increasing the Content of Nitrogen, Carbon, and Chlorophyll.

Bacterial endophytes support the adaptation of host plants to harsh environments. In this study, culturable bacterial endophytes were isolated from the African rice Oryza glaberrima L., which is well-adapted to grow with poor external inputs in the tropical region of Mali. Among these, six N-fixer strains were used to inoculate O. glaberrima RAM133 and the Asian rice O. sativa L. cv. Baldo, selected for growth in temperate climates. The colonization efficiency and the N-fixing activity were evaluated and compared for the two rice varieties. Oryza sativa-inoculated plants showed a fairly good colonization efficiency and nitrogenase activity. The inoculation of Oryza sativa with the strains Klebsiella pasteurii BDA134-6 and Phytobacter diazotrophicus BDA59-3 led to the highest nitrogenase activity. In addition, the inoculation of ‘Baldo’ plants with the strain P. diazotrophicus BDA59-3 led to a significant increase in nitrogen, carbon and chlorophyll content. Finally, ‘Baldo’ plants inoculated with Kl. pasteurii BDA134-6 showed the induction of antioxidant enzymes activity and the maintenance of nitrogen-fixation under salt stress as compared to the unstressed controls. As these endophytes efficiently colonize high-yielding crop varieties grown in cold temperate climates, they become good candidates to promote their growth under unfavorable conditions

Seasonal Intermittent Preventive Treatment for the Prevention of Anaemia and Malaria in Ghanaian Children: A Randomized, Placebo Controlled Trial

BACKGROUND: Malaria and anaemia are the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in children in sub-Saharan Africa. We have investigated the effect of intermittent preventive treatment with sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine or artesunate plus amodiaquine on anaemia and malaria in children in an area of intense, prolonged, seasonal malaria transmission in Ghana. METHODS: 2451 children aged 3-59 months from 30 villages were individually randomised to receive placebo or artesunate plus amodiaquine (AS+AQ) monthly or bimonthly, or sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) bimonthly over a period of six months. The primary outcome measures were episodes of anaemia (Hb1 year old when they received IPTc compared to the placebo group. However the incidence of malaria in the post intervention period was higher in children who were <1 year old when they received AS+AQ monthly compared to the placebo group. INTERPRETATION: IPTc is safe and efficacious in reducing the burden of malaria in an area of Ghana with a prolonged, intense malaria transmission season. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00119132

Sorghum head-bugs and grain molds in West and Central Africa: I. Host plant resistance and bug–mold interactions on sorghum grains

A regional sorghum head-bug and grain mold resistance trial was conducted in 1996 and 1997 at 15 and 13 research stations located in 10 West and Central African countries, respectively. Two cultivars namely IS 14384 and CGM 39/17-2-2 exhibited consistently high levels of resistance both to head-bugs and grain molds over years and localities. Eurystylus oldi was the dominant head-bug species at all localities except in Benin, Chad and Guinea. Sorghum grain mycoflora varied little between sites with genera Phoma and Fusarium dominating, followed by Curvularia. Efficiency of the insecticidal treatment on head-bug incidence partially confirmed the critical role played by head-bugs in aggravating mold infectio