Are herders protected by their herds? An experimental analysis of zooprophylaxis against the malaria vector Anopheles arabiensis

Background The number of Anopheles arabiensis (Diptera: Culicidae) and Anopheles pharoensis caught by human and cattle baits was investigated experimentally in the Arba Minch district of southern Ethiopia to determine if attraction to humans, indoors or outdoors, was affected by the presence or absence of cattle. Methods Field studies were made of the effect of a surrounding ring (10 m radius) of 20 cattle on the numbers of mosquitoes collected by human-baited sampling methods (i) inside or (ii) outside a hut. Results The numbers of An. arabiensis caught outdoors by a human landing catch (HLC) with or without a ring of cattle were not significantly different (2 × 2 Latin square comparisons: means = 24.8 and 37.2 mosquitoes/night, respectively; n = 12, P > 0.22, Tukey HSD), whereas, the numbers of An. pharoensis caught were significantly reduced (44%) by a ring of cattle (4.9 vs. 8.7; n = 12, P 0.999) or An. pharoensis (n = 48, P > 0.870). The HLC catches indoors vs. outdoors were not significantly different for either An. arabiensis or An. pharoensis (n = 12, P > 0.969), but for An. arabiensis only, the indoor catch was reduced significantly by 49% when the hut was surrounded by cattle (Tukey HSD, n = 12, P > 0.01). Conclusions Outdoors, a preponderance of cattle (20:1, cattle:humans) does not provide any material zooprophylactic effect against biting by An. arabiensis. For a human indoors, the presence of cattle outdoors nearly halved the catch. Unfortunately, this level of reduction would not have an appreciable impact on malaria incidence in an area with typically > 1 infective bite/person/night. For An. pharoensis, cattle significantly reduced the human catch indoors and outdoors, but still only by about half. These results suggest that even for traditional pastoralist communities of East Africa, the presence of large numbers of cattle does not confer effective zooprophylaxis against malaria transmitted by An. arabiensis or An. pharoensis

An examination of the impacts of transportation management systems

There is a great deal of research regarding Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Logistics Information Systems (LIS). However, there has not been a recent examination of the current state ofTransportation Management Systems (TMS). This article provides an overview of the previous research and examines the current state of TMS and the relationships between these systems and other information systems in general. The results of over twenty years of LIS and TMS data are presented to highlight potential information gaps and significant relationships between TMS and other functions

Simultaneous real-time visible and infrared video with single-pixel detectors

Conventional cameras rely upon a pixelated sensor to provide spatial resolution. An alternative approach replaces the sensor with a pixelated transmission mask encoded with a series of binary patterns. Combining knowledge of the series of patterns and the associated filtered intensities, measured by single-pixel detectors, allows an image to be deduced through data inversion. In this work we extend the concept of a ‘single-pixel camera’ to provide continuous real-time video at 10 Hz , simultaneously in the visible and short-wave infrared, using an efficient computer algorithm. We demonstrate our camera for imaging through smoke, through a tinted screen, whilst performing compressive sampling and recovering high-resolution detail by arbitrarily controlling the pixel-binning of the masks. We anticipate real-time single-pixel video cameras to have considerable importance where pixelated sensors are limited, allowing for low-cost, non-visible imaging systems in applications such as night-vision, gas sensing and medical diagnostics

Enhancing Skills Transfer through Problem-based Learning. Department of Computer Science, Technical Report Series. NUIM-CS-TR-2005-13

Problem-based Learning (PBL) has proved itself as a successful teaching and learning environment in the medical field, and has slowly become the preferred teaching and learning method in other disciplines. In this report we look at the learning theories that have influenced PBL and investigate the use of PBL in computer science. We extend the boundaries of PBL and software engineering education with a proposal that fully integrates PBL into a computer science and software engineering degree structure. The objective of this proposal is to produce graduates who can successfully transfer their knowledge and skills into practical situations in new domains

Enhancing Skills Transfer through Problem-based Learning. Department of Computer Science, Technical Report Series. NUIM-CS-TR-2005-13

Problem-based Learning (PBL) has proved itself as a successful teaching and learning environment in the medical field, and has slowly become the preferred teaching and learning method in other disciplines. In this report we look at the learning theories that have influenced PBL and investigate the use of PBL in computer science. We extend the boundaries of PBL and software engineering education with a proposal that fully integrates PBL into a computer science and software engineering degree structure. The objective of this proposal is to produce graduates who can successfully transfer their knowledge and skills into practical situations in new domains

Adaptive foveated single-pixel imaging with dynamic super-sampling

As an alternative to conventional multi-pixel cameras, single-pixel cameras enable images to be recorded using a single detector that measures the correlations between the scene and a set of patterns. However, to fully sample a scene in this way requires at least the same number of correlation measurements as there are pixels in the reconstructed image. Therefore single-pixel imaging systems typically exhibit low frame-rates. To mitigate this, a range of compressive sensing techniques have been developed which rely on a priori knowledge of the scene to reconstruct images from an under-sampled set of measurements. In this work we take a different approach and adopt a strategy inspired by the foveated vision systems found in the animal kingdom - a framework that exploits the spatio-temporal redundancy present in many dynamic scenes. In our single-pixel imaging system a high-resolution foveal region follows motion within the scene, but unlike a simple zoom, every frame delivers new spatial information from across the entire field-of-view. Using this approach we demonstrate a four-fold reduction in the time taken to record the detail of rapidly evolving features, whilst simultaneously accumulating detail of more slowly evolving regions over several consecutive frames. This tiered super-sampling technique enables the reconstruction of video streams in which both the resolution and the effective exposure-time spatially vary and adapt dynamically in response to the evolution of the scene. The methods described here can complement existing compressive sensing approaches and may be applied to enhance a variety of computational imagers that rely on sequential correlation measurements.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure

SNPs Meet CNVs in Genome-Wide Association Studies: HGV2007 Meeting Report

SNPs meet CNVs in genome-wide association studies: HGV2007 meeting repor

Vibronic coupling in the superoxide anion: The vibrational dependence of the photoelectron angular distribution

We present a comprehensive photoelectron imaging study of the O₂(X³Σg⁻,v′=0–6)←O₂⁻(X²Πg,v′′=0) and O₂(a¹Δg,v′=0–4)←O₂⁻(X²Πg,v′′=0)photodetachment bands at wavelengths between 900 and 455 nm, examining the effect of vibronic coupling on the photoelectron angular distribution (PAD). This work extends the v′=1–4 data for detachment into the ground electronic state, presented in a recent communication [R. Mabbs, F. Mbaiwa, J. Wei, M. Van Duzor, S. T. Gibson, S. J. Cavanagh, and B. R. Lewis, Phys. Rev. A82, 011401–R (2010)]. Measured vibronic intensities are compared to Franck–Condon predictions and used as supporting evidence of vibronic coupling. The results are analyzed within the context of the one-electron, zero core contribution (ZCC) model [R. M. Stehman and S. B. Woo, Phys. Rev. A23, 2866 (1981)]. For both bands, the photoelectron anisotropy parameter variation with electron kinetic energy,β(E), displays the characteristics of photodetachment from a d-like orbital, consistent with the π∗g 2p highest occupied molecular orbital of O₂⁻. However, differences exist between the β(E) trends for detachment into different vibrational levels of the X³Σg⁻ and a ¹Δg electronic states of O₂. The ZCC model invokes vibrational channel specific “detachment orbitals” and attributes this behavior to coupling of the electronic and nuclear motion in the parent anion. The spatial extent of the model detachment orbital is dependent on the final state of O₂: the higher the neutral vibrational excitation, the larger the electron binding energy. Although vibronic coupling is ignored in most theoretical treatments of PADs in the direct photodetachment of molecular anions, the present findings clearly show that it can be important. These results represent a benchmark data set for a relatively simple system, upon which to base rigorous tests of more sophisticated models.The authors gratefully acknowledge support by the National Science Foundation Grant No. CHE-0748738 and ANU ARC Discovery Projects under Grant Nos. DP0666267 and DP0880850

State space forecasting and noise reduction

We discuss the effects of nonlinearity and noise on the problem of finding states and dynamics. We point out problems which arise in the construction of state space models for scalar time series. We describe solutions for the case when error due to noise dominates parameter estimation error and outline a framework for the general case