Co-infections of malaria and soil-transmitted helminths in localities with different levels of urbanisation in the Mount Cameroon region

Malaria co-exists with intestinal helminths and they have different effects on infected individuals. A total of 235 and 208 children from Ekona and Great Soppo respectively of both sexes aged 4–14 years were enrolled into a cross-sectional study. Capillary blood was collected for detection and determination of malaria parasitaemia as well as PCV. Stool samples were collected for quantitative determination of helminth ova by Kato-Katz technique. The prevalence of malaria and helminths was higher in Ekona than Great Soppo. In Great Soppo, Trichuris was the most prevalent helminth than Great Soppo and an association was found between these co-infections. More children were co-infected in Ekona and co-infecting species were Ascaris and Plasmodium falciparum. The prevalence of malaria and intestinal helminths as well as co-infection was lower in Great Soppo than in Ekona, probably due to increased urbanization in Great Soppo than Ekona

Hybrid evolutionary algorithm with Hermite radial basis function interpolants for computationally expensive adjoint solvers

In this paper, we present an evolutionary algorithm hybridized with a gradient-based optimization technique in the spirit of Lamarckian learning for efficient design optimization. In order to expedite gradient search, we employ local surrogate models that approximate the outputs of a computationally expensive Euler solver. Our focus is on the case when an adjoint Euler solver is available for efficiently computing the sensitivities of the outputs with respect to the design variables. We propose the idea of using Hermite interpoloation to construct gradient-enhanced radial basis function networks that incorporate sensitivity data provided by the adjoint Euler solver. Further, we conduct local search using a trust-region framework that interleaves gradient-enhanced surrogate models with the computationally expensive adjoint Euler solver. This ensures that the present hybrid evolutionary algorithm inherits the convergence prperties of the classical trust-region approach. We present numerical results for airfoil aerodynamic design optimization problemss to show that the proposed algorithm converges to good designs on a limited computational budget

Cholinesterase Inhibitors for Alzheimer Disease: Multitargeting Strategy based on Anti-Alzheimer's Drugs Repositioning

International audienceIn the brain, acetylcholine (ACh) is regarded as one of the major neurotransmitters. During the advancement of Alzheimer's disease (AD) cholinergic deficits occur and this can lead to extensive cognitive dysfunction and decline. Acetylcholinesterase (AChE) remains a highly feasible target for the symptomatic improvement of AD. Acetylcholinesterase (AChE) remains a highly viable target for the symptomatic improvementin AD because cholinergic deficit is a consistent and early finding in AD. The treatment approach of inhibitingperipheral AChE for myasthenia gravis had effectively proven that AChE inhibition was a reachable therapeutictarget. Subsequently tacrine, donepezil, rivastigmine, and galantamine were developed and approved for thesymptomatic treatment of AD. Since then, multiple cholinesterase inhibitors (ChEIs) have been continued to bedeveloped. These include newer ChEIs, naturally derived ChEIs, hybrids, and synthetic analogues. In this paper,we summarize the different types of ChEIs which are under development and their respective mechanisms ofactions