Assessment of varicella vaccine effectiveness in Germany: a time-series approach

A multivariate time-series regression model was developed in order to describe the 2005-2008 age-specific time-course of varicella sentinel surveillance data following the introduction of a varicella childhood vaccination programme in Germany. This ecological approach allows the assessment of vaccine effectiveness under field conditions by relating vaccine coverage in cohorts of 24-month-old children to the mean number of cases per reporting unit in the sentinel network. For the 1-2 years age group, which is directly affected by the vaccination programme, a one-dose vaccine effectiveness of 83·2% (95% CI 80·2-85·7) was estimated which corresponds to previous approaches assessing varicella vaccine effectiveness in the field in the US

A multiplicative hazard regression model to assess the risk of disease transmission at hospital during community epidemics

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>During community epidemics, infections may be imported within hospital and transmitted to hospitalized patients. Hospital outbreaks of communicable diseases have been increasingly reported during the last decades and have had significant consequences in terms of patient morbidity, mortality, and associated costs. Quantitative studies are thus needed to estimate the risks of communicable diseases among hospital patients, taking into account the epidemiological process outside, hospital and host-related risk factors of infection and the role of other patients and healthcare workers as sources of infection.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We propose a multiplicative hazard regression model to analyze the risk of acquiring a communicable disease by patients at hospital. This model derives from epidemiological data on communicable disease epidemics in the community, hospital ward, patient susceptibility to infection, and exposure of patients to infection at hospital. The model estimates the relative effect of each of these factors on a patient's risk of communicable disease.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Using individual data on patients and health care workers in a teaching hospital during the 2004-2005 influenza season in Lyon (France), we show the ability of the model to assess the risk of influenza-like illness among hospitalized patients. The significant effects on the risk of influenza-like illness were those of old age, exposure to infectious patients or health care workers, and a stay in a medical care unit.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The proposed multiplicative hazard regression model could be an interesting epidemiological tool to quantify the risk of communicable disease at hospital during community epidemics and the uncertainty inherent in such quantification. Furthermore, key epidemiological, environmental, host, or exposure factors that influence this risk can be identified.</p

Behavioural plasticity in Argyrodes antipodiana.

In this thesis I look at the behavioural plasticity of A.antipodiana while foraging and interacting with conspecifics. The aim is to see how an animal, with apparently limited intelligence is able to deal with environmental variability. I conclude that A.antipodiana appears to have been able to overcome these limitations very effectively by using four methods, of which the first two effectively reduce the amount of learning necessary. Firstly, A.antipodiana simplifies the situation as much as possible by ignoring some of the variability. For example, in social situations, A.antipodiana appears to recognize only a few categories of conspecifics, rather than recognize conspecifics as individuals. Consequently, the social groups of A.antipodiana are not characterized by complicating factors such as aggressive orders or dominance hierarchies. Secondly, A.antipodiana largely ignores current situations and instead bases much of its behavioural decisions on its internal conditions. For example, in male-male conflicts, males respond to their opponents largely according to their own size, level of hunger, the number of contests in which they have participated, or their past experience of winning or losing; rather than to the characteristics of their opponents. Likewise in social interactions A.antipodiana is more inclined to be aggressive towards conspecifics if it itself is foraging, and less inclined if it is feeding with the host. When the situation cannot be simplified, A.antipodiana adopts a third response which is to use the simplest method possible for adjusting its behaviour. For example, A.antipodiana's ability to develop araneophagic skills appears to be governed by a critical period. Thus rather than developing araneophagic skills through trial and error with practise, the ability appears to be simply 'switched on' if required. The fourth means by which A.antipodiana compensates for limited intelligence is to be very selective in the areas in which it does use learning. For example, A.antipodiana seems to use problem solving when foraging, but only when it is actually trying to reach the food bundle upon which the host is feeding. A.antipodiana also seems to learn to move more stealthfully on the host's web. There is even evidence that A.antipodiana may behave with intent when males are competing for opportunities to copulate. Thus the intelligence of A.antipodiana appears to be severely limited. However, despite these limitations, by reducing the amount of learning necessary, and then channelling what learning it has to very restricted, but very poignant areas of its behaviour, A.antipodiana, is able to respond very effectively to its variable environment

Alignment of the CMS tracker with LHC and cosmic ray data

© CERN 2014 for the benefit of the CMS collaboration, published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License by IOP Publishing Ltd and Sissa Medialab srl. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation and DOI.The central component of the CMS detector is the largest silicon tracker ever built. The precise alignment of this complex device is a formidable challenge, and only achievable with a significant extension of the technologies routinely used for tracking detectors in the past. This article describes the full-scale alignment procedure as it is used during LHC operations. Among the specific features of the method are the simultaneous determination of up to 200 000 alignment parameters with tracks, the measurement of individual sensor curvature parameters, the control of systematic misalignment effects, and the implementation of the whole procedure in a multi-processor environment for high execution speed. Overall, the achieved statistical accuracy on the module alignment is found to be significantly better than 10μm

Juxtaposing BTE and ATE – on the role of the European insurance industry in funding civil litigation

One of the ways in which legal services are financed, and indeed shaped, is through private insurance arrangement. Two contrasting types of legal expenses insurance contracts (LEI) seem to dominate in Europe: before the event (BTE) and after the event (ATE) legal expenses insurance. Notwithstanding institutional differences between different legal systems, BTE and ATE insurance arrangements may be instrumental if government policy is geared towards strengthening a market-oriented system of financing access to justice for individuals and business. At the same time, emphasizing the role of a private industry as a keeper of the gates to justice raises issues of accountability and transparency, not readily reconcilable with demands of competition. Moreover, multiple actors (clients, lawyers, courts, insurers) are involved, causing behavioural dynamics which are not easily predicted or influenced. Against this background, this paper looks into BTE and ATE arrangements by analysing the particularities of BTE and ATE arrangements currently available in some European jurisdictions and by painting a picture of their respective markets and legal contexts. This allows for some reflection on the performance of BTE and ATE providers as both financiers and keepers. Two issues emerge from the analysis that are worthy of some further reflection. Firstly, there is the problematic long-term sustainability of some ATE products. Secondly, the challenges faced by policymakers that would like to nudge consumers into voluntarily taking out BTE LEI

Penilaian Kinerja Keuangan Koperasi di Kabupaten Pelalawan

This paper describe development and financial performance of cooperative in District Pelalawan among 2007 - 2008. Studies on primary and secondary cooperative in 12 sub-districts. Method in this stady use performance measuring of productivity, efficiency, growth, liquidity, and solvability of cooperative. Productivity of cooperative in Pelalawan was highly but efficiency still low. Profit and income were highly, even liquidity of cooperative very high, and solvability was good

Impacts of the Tropical Pacific/Indian Oceans on the Seasonal Cycle of the West African Monsoon

The current consensus is that drought has developed in the Sahel during the second half of the twentieth century as a result of remote effects of oceanic anomalies amplified by local land–atmosphere interactions. This paper focuses on the impacts of oceanic anomalies upon West African climate and specifically aims to identify those from SST anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Oceans during spring and summer seasons, when they were significant. Idealized sensitivity experiments are performed with four atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs). The prescribed SST patterns used in the AGCMs are based on the leading mode of covariability between SST anomalies over the Pacific/Indian Oceans and summer rainfall over West Africa. The results show that such oceanic anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Ocean lead to a northward shift of an anomalous dry belt from the Gulf of Guinea to the Sahel as the season advances. In the Sahel, the magnitude of rainfall anomalies is comparable to that obtained by other authors using SST anomalies confined to the proximity of the Atlantic Ocean. The mechanism connecting the Pacific/Indian SST anomalies with West African rainfall has a strong seasonal cycle. In spring (May and June), anomalous subsidence develops over both the Maritime Continent and the equatorial Atlantic in response to the enhanced equatorial heating. Precipitation increases over continental West Africa in association with stronger zonal convergence of moisture. In addition, precipitation decreases over the Gulf of Guinea. During the monsoon peak (July and August), the SST anomalies move westward over the equatorial Pacific and the two regions where subsidence occurred earlier in the seasons merge over West Africa. The monsoon weakens and rainfall decreases over the Sahel, especially in August.Peer reviewe

Search for heavy resonances decaying to two Higgs bosons in final states containing four b quarks

A search is presented for narrow heavy resonances X decaying into pairs of Higgs bosons (H) in proton-proton collisions collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC at root s = 8 TeV. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb(-1). The search considers HH resonances with masses between 1 and 3 TeV, having final states of two b quark pairs. Each Higgs boson is produced with large momentum, and the hadronization products of the pair of b quarks can usually be reconstructed as single large jets. The background from multijet and t (t) over bar events is significantly reduced by applying requirements related to the flavor of the jet, its mass, and its substructure. The signal would be identified as a peak on top of the dijet invariant mass spectrum of the remaining background events. No evidence is observed for such a signal. Upper limits obtained at 95 confidence level for the product of the production cross section and branching fraction sigma(gg -> X) B(X -> HH -> b (b) over barb (b) over bar) range from 10 to 1.5 fb for the mass of X from 1.15 to 2.0 TeV, significantly extending previous searches. For a warped extra dimension theory with amass scale Lambda(R) = 1 TeV, the data exclude radion scalar masses between 1.15 and 1.55 TeV