Identification of unknowns within a probabilistic system: The diagnostic value of attributes

Using a data base underpinned by probability considerations in which a variety of attributes, some of which may be quantitative, are recorded for a number of “operational taxonomic units” (OTUs), a key system is described by which an unnamed specimen may quickly be identified. The concept of “diagnostic power” is introduced, by which each attribute is evaluated in terms of its potential contribution to identifying the unnamed specimen. Besides coverage of different types of attributes and the introduction of “diagnostic power”, the system has the advantages of incorporating multiple values of an attribute for each OTU and offering short-cuts to identification

Study of Leishmaniasis as it occurs in India

Descriptions of 10 cases of Kala azar, 1 case of cutaneous Leishmaniasis, and 64 cases of Oriental Sore are given. These are all cases which have been for some time under my personal care or observation. During my service at Chittagong, however, I had almost daily opportunity of seeing several fresh cases as out -patients or as patients in. the Civil Hospital or Assam -Bengal Railway Hospital and this experience has influenced my conclusions. `I. KALA AZAR. (1) Kala azar has a wider distribution than is generally believed. I have seen cases in Dehra Dun in the Western United Provinces which is a semi hill station. Judging from the number of cases occurring in Gurkhas on return from furlough it seems more than probable that this disease occurs in Nepal. (2) Certain symptoms and signs appear to be overrated and others not given sufficient prominence. The 'double remittent' type of fever is more often than not absent. In my series of cases only two demonstrate this feature, and I have seen it present in other diseases e.g. tuberculosis. The Chief Medical Officer of the Assam-Bengal Railway and the Civil Surgeon Chittagong who both treat very large numbers of Kala azar patients put very little reliance on this symptom. Pigmentation is another sign which is not reliable. It is hard to make it out in a dark-skinned individual and is very often present in malarial cachexia. A clean tongue was almost invariably present in all the cases which I examined. A feature which is seldom mentioned is the brittle state of most Kala azar patients' hair. In many cases it tends to fall out, especially in women. (3) The importance of full examination of the blood cannot be emphasised too much. The principal points to note are the marked leucopenia, the reduction in proportion of polymorphs and relative increase in mononuolears and lymphocytes. The proportion of whites to reds should always be estimated. The .r proportion as generally quoted is 1 white to 1500 reds. In my experience it is even less. Eosinophils are often absent but associated worm infections cause them to appear in quite considerable numbers. (4) Present day treatment of Kala azar in India is not as thorough as it should be. The majority of large hospitals favour the rapid method of injections. The patient, too, is not admitted to hospital as a rule unless complications are present. The result is that the patient ceases to attend and only received a sufficient number of injections to improve but not to cure his condition. This leads to relapses and I believe to increased incidence of dermal leishmaniasis. Whenever possible the patient should be kept in bed and given intravenous injections of neostibosan or urea stibamine every second or third day until at least fifteen injections have been administered. Nourishing diets rich in vitamins should be given. This prolongs the period of treatment but produces a cure rather than a temporary improvement. (5) Judging from the number of admissions nowadays as compared with ten years ago the disease appears to be decreasing.II. KALA AZAR WITH CAPTCRUM ORIS . (1) This is a common and serious complication of Kala azar. Although quite often seen in adults it is four times as common in children in whom it is present in about 12 per cent of cases. (2) Canerum oris is not due to the presence of Leishmania donovani in Kala azar patients. In spite of careful examination no Leishmania were seen in scrapings taken from the lesions though mixed infections were common. It is due to the same causes which produce this condition in other diseases e.g. diphtheria, measles, typhoid etc. Probably lowered resistance due to prolonged fever allows the bacteria normally present in the mouth to erode and invade the tissues of the mouth and face. (3) Blood counts show certain constant features. The white blood corpuscles are increased in number to between 7,000 and 16,000 per c.mm. The increase in leucocytes is due to the increase in polymorphonuclea:rs. The haemoglobin is reduced. (4) The prognosis in C ancrum oris is bad. The majority of cases die in a few weeks from toxaemia or intercurrent infection. Those in hospital often show a marked improvement under treatment but do not remain long enough to reap the full benefit. (5) The most effective treatment consists in intramuscular injections of neostibosan in children, and intravenous injections of urea stibomine in adults. Extensive erosions should be treated with skin grafts once the ulceration has become as nearly as possible aseptic.III. DERMAL LEISHMANIASIS. (1) This is a much commoner disease than the number of hospital admissions would lead one to believe. Now that the disease is better known more patients are coming for treatment. (2) The disease can easily be mistaken for leprosy and unless scrapings are examined from the lesions many patients will be wrongly diagnosed. Owing to the much more favourable prognosis in dermal leishmaniasis this mistake should be carefully guarded against. (3) The chronic nature of the disease and the large number of injections which are often required to effect a cure should be carefully noted. Treatment will always be successful even in the most stubborn cases if persisted in. (4) There is always the danger of spread of Kala azar by means of sandflies feeding on these lesions. It is a danger to the public therefore to allow those patients to go about untreated.IV. ORIENTAL SORE. (1) Oriental sore is caused by a leishmania closely allied to Leishmania donovani but less virulent and only capable of producing skin lesions. It is transmitted by a sandfly which is distinct from the sandfly transmitting Kala azar, and this sandfly is only capable of transmitting Leishmania tropics,. (2) Each bite of an infected sandfly produces a sore at the area bitten. It is not a systemic disease whereas Kala azar is a systemic disease. (3) Antimony in either its trivalent or pentavalent form is the most effective and cheapest drug in the treatment of Oriental sores. The dose of potassium antimony tartrate should be regulated according to the weight of the patient and in any case should never exceed gr.2 at one time. It must be carefully injected to the sloughing it causes if allowed to escape into the tissues. If an accident of this kind does occur then iodex is a useful application and gives some relief. Neostibosan is expensive but is not so liable to cause sore arms or sloughing. (4) In chronic cases emetine hydrochloride gr.0.5 to gr.1 injected into the margins of the sores hastens the healing process produced by the antimony. This treatment is however rather painful. (5) Orisol (berberine sulphate) was not so successful as one might expect from the results claimed for. it. For single sores or small lesions before they have broken down, this drug gives good results. This latter conclusion was also arrived at by Napier (Knowles (68)) some years ago. Results with large or multiple sores are almost always disappointing. (6) Local dressings play a very important part in the rapidity of cure. There were many examples of patients who kept their dressings and sores clean and healing occurred in from three to six weeks. There were many examples of others who were careless or ignorant and allowed their sores to become secondarily infected. They then took even as long as four months to cure. Normal saline is a very satisfactory dressing - followed by iodine once healing has started. (7) Early treatment is most essential. The old-standing case is hard to cure: the recently developed case is comparatively easy to cure. (8) The total dosage of antimony required to effect a cure can be reduced by the use of supplementary emetine or orisol and rigid local treatment

Trends in lower limb amputation incidence in European Union 15+ Countries 1990-2017

Objective: Lower extremity amputation (LEA) carries significant mortality, morbidity and health economic burden. In the Westernworld,it most commonly results from complications of peripheral arterial occlusive disease (PAOD) or diabetic foot disease. Incidence of PAOD has declined in Europe,the United States and parts of Australasia.We aimed to assess trends in LEA incidence in European Union (EU15+) countries for the years 1990 to 2017. Design: Observational study using data obtained from the 2017 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study. Materials: GBD Results Tool: http://ghdx.healthdata.org/gbd-results-too. Methods: Age-standardised incidence rates (ASIRs) for LEA (stratified into toe amputation,and LEA proximal to toes) were extracted from the GBD Results Tool for EU15+ countries foreach ofthe years 1990-2017.Trends were analysed using Join point regression analysis. Results: Between 1990 and 2017, variable trends in the incidence of LEA were observedin EU15+ countries. For LEAs proximal to toes, increasing trends were observed in 6 of 19 countries anddecreasing trends in 9 of 19 countries, with 4 countries showing varying trendsbetween sexes. For toe amputation, increasing trends were observed in 8 of 19 countries and decreasing trends in 8 of 19 countries for both sexes, with 3 countries showing varying trendsbetween sexes. Australia hadthe highest ASIRs for both sexes in all LEAs at all time 6 points, with steadily increasing trends. The USA observed the greatest reduction all LEAsin both sexes over the time periodanalysed (LEAs proximal to toes: females -22.93%, males -29.76%; toe amputation: females -29.93%, males -32.67%). The greatest overall increase in incidence was observed in Australia. Conclusions: Variable trends in LEA incidence were observed across EU15+ countries. These trends do not reflect previously observed reductions in incidence of PAO Dover the same time period

Server‐side workflow execution using data grid technology for reproducible analyses of data‐intensive hydrologic systems

Many geoscience disciplines utilize complex computational models for advancing understanding and sustainable management of Earth systems. Executing such models and their associated data preprocessing and postprocessing routines can be challenging for a number of reasons including (1) accessing and preprocessing the large volume and variety of data required by the model, (2) postprocessing large data collections generated by the model, and (3) orchestrating data processing tools, each with unique software dependencies, into workflows that can be easily reproduced and reused. To address these challenges, the work reported in this paper leverages the Workflow Structured Object functionality of the Integrated Rule‐Oriented Data System and demonstrates how it can be used to access distributed data, encapsulate hydrologic data processing as workflows, and federate with other community‐driven cyberinfrastructure systems. The approach is demonstrated for a study investigating the impact of drought on populations in the Carolinas region of the United States. The analysis leverages computational modeling along with data from the Terra Populus project and data management and publication services provided by the Sustainable Environment‐Actionable Data project. The work is part of a larger effort under the DataNet Federation Consortium project that aims to demonstrate data and computational interoperability across cyberinfrastructure developed independently by scientific communities.Plain Language SummaryExecuting computational workflows in the geosciences can be challenging, especially when dealing with large, distributed, and heterogeneous data sets and computational tools. We present a methodology for addressing this challenge using the Integrated Rule‐Oriented Data System (iRODS) Workflow Structured Object (WSO). We demonstrate the approach through an end‐to‐end application of data access, processing, and publication of digital assets for a scientific study analyzing drought in the Carolinas region of the United States.Key PointsReproducibility of data‐intensive analyses remains a significant challengeData grids are useful for reproducibility of workflows requiring large, distributed data setsData and computations should be co‐located on servers to create executable Web‐resourcesPeer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/137520/1/ess271_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/137520/2/ess271.pd

Effects of mountain gorilla foraging activities on the productivity of their food plant species

Mountain gorillas subsist principally on foliage from the dense herbaceous understorey that is found throughout most of their habitat in the Virunga Volcanoes region. Their foraging activities cause considerable structural damage to this vegetation. Those plant species that are quantitatively most important in the gorillas' diet respond to this damage by increasing primary productivity. At a sample of spots at which gorillas had fed, these species showed significantly higher growth rates over a 6-month interval than they did at nearby spots that had not been touched by the gorillas. Stem densities of herbaceous food species at feeding spots increased markedly both in comparison to their original values and to values for the same species at untouched spots. As a result, spots at which gorillas have fed are likely to become very attractive as future feeding spots. It is unlikely that gorillas ‘manage’ their habitat in any specific fashion, largely because they do not have exclusive use of their home ranges. Their activities appear to maintain habitat productivity over the short term, on a time scale relevant to patterns of area revisits by social groups, and may contribute to long term beneficial alterations of regularly used areas, however. Effects of the type reported here may have been an important aspect of the adaptation by gorillas to terrestrial folivory. RÉSUMEÉ Les gorilles de montagne s'alimentent principalement de feuillages dans le sous-bois herbacÉ dense prÉsent presque partout dans leur habitat de la rÉgion des volcans Virunga. Leurs activitÉs alimentaires causent des dommages structurels considÉrables À cette vÉgÉtation. Les plantes des espÈces qui sont quantitativement les plus importants dans le rÉgime du gorille rÉagissent À ces dÉgats en augmentant leur productivitÉ primaire. Aux postes Échantillons oÙ les gorilles se sont nourris, ces espÈces prÉsentent des taux de croissance significantivement supÉrieurs sur un intervalle de six mois, par rapport aux postes voisins qui n'ont pas ÉtÉ touchÉs par les gorilles. Les densitÉs de tiges des espÈces herbacÉes appÉtÉes aux postes de nourrissage augmentent nettement aussi bien en comparaison avec leurs valeurs antÉrieures qu'avec celles de ces měmes espÈces dans des stations non touchÉes. En consÉquence, les postes oÙ les gorilles se sont nourris ont plus de chance de devenir des futurs postes de nourrissage trÈs attractifs. Il est peu probable que les gorilles ‘gÈrent’ leur habitat d'une quelconque faÇon, surtout parce qu'ils n'ont pas l'utilisation exclusive de leur domaine vital. Leurs activitÉs semblent maintenir À court terme la productivitÉ de leur habitat, sur une Échelle de temps comprenant les visites successives de groupes sociaux, et peuvent contribuer À long terme À des altÉrations bÉnÉfiques pour ces zones rÉguliÉrement frÉquentÉes. Des effets du type rapportÉ ici peuvent avoir ÉtÉ un ÉlÉment important de l'adaptation des gorilles À la folivorie terrestre.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75171/1/j.1365-2028.1987.tb01102.x.pd

Neurophysiology

Contains research objectives and reports on three research projects.National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NsG-496)U.S. Air Force (Aeronautical Systems Division) under Contract AF33 (616)-7783The Teagle Foundation, Inc.National Institutes of Health (Grant MH-04737-03)National Institutes of Health (Grant NB-04897-01)National Science Foundation (Grant G-16526)Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc

Thermodynamic Signature of a Two-Dimensional Metal-Insulator Transition

We present a study of the compressibility, K, of a two-dimensional hole system which exhibits a metal-insulator phase transition at zero magnetic field. It has been observed that dK/dp changes sign at the critical density for the metal-insulator transition. Measurements also indicate that the insulating phase is incompressible for all values of B. Finally, we show how the phase transition evolves as the magnetic field is varied and construct a phase diagram in the density-magnetic field plane for this system.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Physical Review Letters; version 1 is identical to version 2 but didn't compile properl

Generalized partially linear models on Riemannian manifolds

We introduce generalized partially linear models with covariates on Riemannian manifolds. These models, like ordinary generalized linear models, are a generalization of partially linear models on Riemannian manifolds that allow for scalar response variables with error distribution models other than a normal distribution. Partially linear models are particularly useful when some of the covariates of the model are elements of a Riemannian manifold, because the curvature of these spaces makes it difficult to define parametric models. The model was developed to address an interesting application: the prediction of children's garment fit based on three‐dimensional scanning of their bodies. For this reason, we focus on logistic and ordinal models and on the important and difficult case where the Riemannian manifold is the three‐dimensional case of Kendall's shape space. An experimental study with a well‐known three‐dimensional database is carried out to check the goodness of the procedure. Finally, it is applied to a three‐dimensional database obtained from an anthropometric survey of the Spanish child population. A comparative study with related techniques is carried out