2,227 research outputs found
Legionnaires' disease on the rise in Switzerland: a denominator-based analysis of national diagnostic data, 2007-2016
The risk of falling ill with Legionnaires’ disease (LD) is suggested to increase, but the global burden of disease is unknown due to a lack of appropriate diagnosis and surveillance systems. In Switzerland, the number of LD cases, captured by the National Notification System for Infectious Diseases, has more than doubled since 2008. This study aims to investigate this increase, contextualizing disease surveillance data with denominator data, which is not routinely available, i.e., the number of tests performed for Legionella spp. We collected the testing data for Legionella spp. of 14 Swiss diagnostic laboratories and calculated the positivity, defined as the proportion of the number of positive tests to the number of tests performed. The number of positive tests increased proportionally to the number of tests performed; hence, the positivity remained stable. However, the cause of the increase in test volume is unclear and has a large impact on the interpretation of the positivity curve. Further, the test outcome was found to be dependent on regional determinants, and the diagnostic method applied. The lack of understanding if and at which stage LD is considered in current case management of pneumonia patients limits the interpretation of observed heterogeneities in incidence or underestimation of LD in Switzerland. The absence of (or non-adherence to) existing guidelines and the heterogeneity in diagnostic testing hampers the comparison of data in the Swiss public health context. Therefore, diagnostic procedures should be harmonised across Switzerland and adherence to national LD management guidelines supported
The merger that led to the formation of the Milky Way's inner stellar halo and thick disk
The assembly process of our Galaxy can be retrieved using the motions and
chemistry of individual stars. Chemo-dynamical studies of the nearby halo have
long hinted at the presence of multiple components such as streams, clumps,
duality and correlations between the stars' chemical abundances and orbital
parameters. More recently, the analysis of two large stellar surveys have
revealed the presence of a well-populated chemical elemental abundance
sequence, of two distinct sequences in the colour-magnitude diagram, and of a
prominent slightly retrograde kinematic structure all in the nearby halo, which
may trace an important accretion event experienced by the Galaxy. Here report
an analysis of the kinematics, chemistry, age and spatial distribution of stars
in a relatively large volume around the Sun that are mainly linked to two major
Galactic components, the thick disk and the stellar halo. We demonstrate that
the inner halo is dominated by debris from an object which at infall was
slightly more massive than the Small Magellanic Cloud, and which we refer to as
Gaia-Enceladus. The stars originating in Gaia-Enceladus cover nearly the full
sky, their motions reveal the presence of streams and slightly retrograde and
elongated trajectories. Hundreds of RR Lyrae stars and thirteen globular
clusters following a consistent age-metallicity relation can be associated to
Gaia-Enceladus on the basis of their orbits. With an estimated 4:1 mass-ratio,
the merger with Gaia-Enceladus must have led to the dynamical heating of the
precursor of the Galactic thick disk and therefore contributed to the formation
of this component approximately 10 Gyr ago. These findings are in line with
simulations of galaxy formation, which predict that the inner stellar halo
should be dominated by debris from just a few massive progenitors.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures. Published in Nature in the issue of Nov. 1st,
2018. This is the authors' version before final edit
Gaia Focused Product Release: Asteroid orbital solution. Properties and assessment
Context. We report the exploitation of a sample of epoch astrometry for 157
000 asteroids, the same object in the Gaia Data Release 3, extended over the
time coverage planned for the Gaia DR4, which is not expected before the end of
2025. This data set covers more than one full orbital period for the vast
majority of these asteroids. The orbital solutions are derived from the Gaia
data alone over a relatively short arc compared to the observation history of
many of these asteroids. Aims. The work aims to produce orbital elements for a
large set of asteroids based on 66 months of accurate astrometry provided by
Gaia and to assess the accuracy of these orbital solutions with a comparison to
the best available orbits derived from independent observations. A second
validation is performed with accurate occultation timings. Methods. We
processed the raw astrometric measurements of Gaia to obtain astrometric
positions of moving objects with 1D sub-mas accuracy at the bright end. For
each asteroid that we matched to the data, an orbit fitting was attempted in
the form of the best fit of the initial conditions at the median epoch.
Results. Orbits are provided in the form of state vectors in the International
Celestial Reference Frame for 156 764 asteroids, including near-Earth objects,
main-belt asteroids, and Trojans. For the asteroids with the best observations,
the (formal) relative uncertainty is better than 1E10. Results are compared to
orbits available from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and MPC. Their orbits are
based on much longer data arcs, but from positions of lower quality. The
relative differences in semi-major axes have a mean of 5E10 and a scatter of
5E9
Joint estimation of phase and phase diffusion for quantum metrology
Phase estimation, at the heart of many quantum metrology and communication
schemes, can be strongly affected by noise, whose amplitude may not be known,
or might be subject to drift. Here, we investigate the joint estimation of a
phase shift and the amplitude of phase diffusion, at the quantum limit. For
several relevant instances, this multiparameter estimation problem can be
effectively reshaped as a two-dimensional Hilbert space model, encompassing the
description of an interferometer phase probed with relevant quantum states --
split single-photons, coherent states or N00N states. For these cases, we
obtain a trade-off bound on the statistical variances for the joint estimation
of phase and phase diffusion, as well as optimum measurement schemes. We use
this bound to quantify the effectiveness of an actual experimental setup for
joint parameter estimation for polarimetry. We conclude by discussing the form
of the trade-off relations for more general states and measurements.Comment: Published in Nature Communications. Supplementary Information
available at
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140404/ncomms4532/extref/ncomms4532-s1.pd
Comparação de duas soluções extratoras na resolução de cinco sistemas enzimáticos em folhas jovens de cupuaçuzeiro (Theobroma grandiflorum Schum.).
bitstream/item/34527/1/ORIENTAL-CirTec4.pd
Elucidating the genetic basis of antioxidant status in lettuce (Lactuca sativa).
A diet rich in phytonutrients from fruit and vegetables has been acknowledged to afford protection against a range of human diseases, but many of the most popular vegetables are low in phytonutrients. Wild relatives of crops may contain allelic variation for genes determining the concentrations of these beneficial phytonutrients, and therefore understanding the genetic basis of this variation is important for breeding efforts to enhance nutritional quality. In this study, lettuce recombinant inbred lines, generated from a cross between wild and cultivated lettuce (Lactuca serriola and Lactuca sativa, respectively), were analysed for antioxidant (AO) potential and important phytonutrients including carotenoids, chlorophyll and phenolic compounds. When grown in two environments, 96 quantitative trait loci (QTL) were identified for these nutritional traits: 4 for AO potential, 2 for carotenoid content, 3 for total chlorophyll content and 87 for individual phenolic compounds (two per compound on average). Most often, the L. serriola alleles conferred an increase in total AOs and metabolites. Candidate genes underlying these QTL were identified by BLASTn searches; in several cases, these had functions suggesting involvement in phytonutrient biosynthetic pathways. Analysis of a QTL on linkage group 3, which accounted for >30% of the variation in AO potential, revealed several candidate genes encoding multiple MYB transcription factors which regulate flavonoid biosynthesis and flavanone 3-hydroxylase, an enzyme involved in the biosynthesis of the flavonoids quercetin and kaempferol, which are known to have powerful AO activity. Follow-up quantitative RT-PCR of these candidates revealed that 5 out of 10 genes investigated were significantly differentially expressed between the wild and cultivated parents, providing further evidence of their potential involvement in determining the contrasting phenotypes. These results offer exciting opportunities to improve the nutritional content and health benefits of lettuce through marker-assisted breeding
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