21 research outputs found
Epidemiological determinants of spread of causal agent of severe acute respiratory syndrome in Hong Kong.
BACKGROUND: Health authorities worldwide, especially in the Asia Pacific region, are seeking effective public-health interventions in the continuing epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). We assessed the epidemiology of SARS in Hong Kong. METHODS: We included 1425 cases reported up to April 28, 2003. An integrated database was constructed from several sources containing information on epidemiological, demographic, and clinical variables. We estimated the key epidemiological distributions: infection to onset, onset to admission, admission to death, and admission to discharge. We measured associations between the estimated case fatality rate and patients' age and the time from onset to admission. FINDINGS: After the initial phase of exponential growth, the rate of confirmed cases fell to less than 20 per day by April 28. Public-health interventions included encouragement to report to hospital rapidly after the onset of clinical symptoms, contact tracing for confirmed and suspected cases, and quarantining, monitoring, and restricting the travel of contacts. The mean incubation period of the disease is estimated to be 6.4 days (95% CI 5.2-7.7). The mean time from onset of clinical symptoms to admission to hospital varied between 3 and 5 days, with longer times earlier in the epidemic. The estimated case fatality rate was 13.2% (9.8-16.8) for patients younger than 60 years and 43.3% (35.2-52.4) for patients aged 60 years or older assuming a parametric gamma distribution. A non-parametric method yielded estimates of 6.8% (4.0-9.6) and 55.0% (45.3-64.7), respectively. Case clusters have played an important part in the course of the epidemic. INTERPRETATION: Patients' age was strongly associated with outcome. The time between onset of symptoms and admission to hospital did not alter outcome, but shorter intervals will be important to the wider population by restricting the infectious period before patients are placed in quarantine
A gridRPC-based environment for grid computing
This project aimed to develop an effective and efficient GridRPC-based environment for multiple clusters of computers distributed on the Grid. It contains programming and execution environments for GridRPC applications. The programming environment allows users to deploy GridRPC services and develop GridRPC applications to consume the existing services. In order to make the Grid transparent to the users, the GridRPC execution environment is equipped with many mechanisms for resource discovery, resource selection, request scheduling and dispatching. Especially, composite services and request bundling mechanisms are introduced and examined together with the aids of multithreaded programming techniques. They are useful to improve performance for embarrassingly parallel applications.MASTER OF ENGINEERING (SCE
Vibration Analysis of Bidirectional Functionally Graded Porous Plates Using MITC3+
The article presents the vibration behavior of bidirectional functionally graded (BDFG) porous plates using the new triangular 3-node element (a cubic bubble function for the interpolation of the rotations to enrich the bending displacements) which is called the MITC3+ element. The BDFG porous plates have material properties varying in two directions with even and uneven porosity distribution. Based on Hamiltonās principle, the motion equations for BDFG plates are derived. Then, some examples are performed to verify the accuracy and reliability of the proposed method. Finally, the new numerical results on the free vibration response of BDFG porous plates are provided.  
MOGAS, A Multi-Organizational Grid Accounting System
The recently rising trend of growing computational power requirements of various applications such as in science and technology research works has promoted the need for linking up high performance computational resources distributed across different organizations. This also implies that there is a need for proper management and accountability of resource usage. It becomes essential for the resource owners to account for their usage on the various resources shared among the different organizations. For accounting purpose, a system is required to gather, maintain, and process the information of Grid jobs submitted by different users possibly from different organizations involved in the resource sharing. In this paper, we present a general architecture on the implementation of a Grid Accounting System which supports a multi organizational Grid. The architecture comprises of a number of modular components can be easily integrated with the various Grid middlewares and softwares. A more detailed implementation of the system integrated with Globus Toolkit middleware is also presented here as a case study
GRASG - a framework for "gridifying" and running applications on service-oriented grids
The convergence of grid computing technologies and Web services offers many opportunities to utilize resources distributed across the Internet and solves many issues of interoperability. As a result, enabling applications as Web services are required intensively. Hence, a framework for "gridifying" and running applications on service-oriented grids (GRASG) was built to offer developers a flexible and effective tool for "gridifying" applications and making use of distributed resources on grid environment without much effort from the developers. It allows users to quickly enable an application as a Web service and access this service in a simple fashion. Further, in order to make use of distributed resources, GRASG provides a metascheduling mechanism that is able to schedule jobs to grid resources using Web services protocol. These features reduce the time taken for application development and execution
Advanced non-cardia gastric cancer and Helicobacter pylori infection in Vietnam
Abstract Background The incidence of gastric cancer in the Northern city, Hanoi is higher than in the Southern city, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. We previously reported that Helicobacter pylori vacA m1 genotype might be responsible for the difference between the two cities, however, the study only included non-cancer patients. The aim of this study is to investigate the non-cardia gastric cancer characteristics and the role of H. pylori virulence on different non-cardia gastric cancer incidence between two cities in Vietnam. Methods and Results We recruited 282 non-cardia gastric cancer patients that had undergone gastroscopy in two cities, Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi, Vietnam. Characteristics of non-cardia gastric cancer were late age of onset (mean age, 62.5Ā years), predominance in males (ratio of males/females; 3.9:1), diffuse type (55.3%), and high prevalence of H. pylori infection (79.4%). H. pylori infection and the vacA m1 genotype conferred an increased risk for GC (OR, 2.02; 95% CI 1.4ā3.0; PĀ =Ā 0.0003 and OR, 2.7; 95% CI 1.5ā4.7; PĀ =Ā 0.001, respectively). Interestingly, the presence of vacA m1 genotype in the gastric cancer group was significantly higher than that in the non-cancer group (68.8% vs 44.9%, PĀ =Ā 0.001) and the significant tendency still observed in Ho Chi Minh (67.6% vs 31.9%, PĀ <Ā 0.0001). Conclusion We first describe the characteristics of non-cardia gastric cancer in Vietnam. Helicobacter pylori infection was associated with the development of non-cardia GC. vacA m1 genotype might contribute to incidence differences between the two cities