Multiscale analysis of a spatially heterogeneous microscopic traffic model

The microscopic Optimal Velocity (OV) model is posed on an inhomogeneous ring-road, consisting of two spatial regimes which differ by a scaled OV function. Parameters are chosen throughout for which all uniform flows are linearly stable. The large time behaviour of this discrete system is stationary and exhibits three types of macroscopic traffic pattern, each consisting of plateaus joined together by sharp interfaces. At a coarse level, these patterns are determined by simple flow and density balances, which in some cases have non-unique solutions. The theory of characteristics for the classical Lighthill–Whitham PDE model is then applied to explain which pattern the OV model selects. A global analysis of a second-order PDE model is then performed in an attempt to explain some qualitative details of interface structure. Finally, the full microscopic model is analysed at the linear level to explain features which cannot be described by the present macroscopic approache

M\"{o}bius deconvolution on the hyperbolic plane with application to impedance density estimation

In this paper we consider a novel statistical inverse problem on the Poincar\'{e}, or Lobachevsky, upper (complex) half plane. Here the Riemannian structure is hyperbolic and a transitive group action comes from the space of $2\times2$ real matrices of determinant one via M\"{o}bius transformations. Our approach is based on a deconvolution technique which relies on the Helgason--Fourier calculus adapted to this hyperbolic space. This gives a minimax nonparametric density estimator of a hyperbolic density that is corrupted by a random M\"{o}bius transform. A motivation for this work comes from the reconstruction of impedances of capacitors where the above scenario on the Poincar\'{e} plane exactly describes the physical system that is of statistical interest.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-AOS783 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

A critical review of the role of taro Colocasia esculenta L. (Schott) to food security: A comparative analysis of Kenya and Pacific Island taro germplasm

The many threats to global food security in Sub Sahara Africa include poverty, unsustainable cultivation practices and climate change. Increasing poverty and decreasing food security have been exacerbated by continued low food crop productivity by smallholder farmers, constrained by several factors. Taro (Colocasia esculenta L. (Schott.) is a amongst the category of plant species that farmers and researchers have neglected or underutilized crops considered as orphan crops yet they can have the potentials to ameliorate malnutrition and food paucity in developing nations. In Kenya, taro production has suffered low crop productivity leading to underexploitation in terms of popularity of the crop, food security, nutritional aspects and economical contribution to the country earnings. In terms of food production, it does not translate into improved yields for sustained food security and as a result of this; its agricultural production is extremely low. The agronomic potential and importance of taro remains unknown because it has remained as underutilized crop in the country due to little attention attached to the crop. As a result, it has led to dangerous levels of reduced economic livelihoods and loss of its genetic diversity. This paper review interest in neglected taro food crop stems from a variety of factors that could lead to an increased understanding of the adaptation potential of taro to enhance development of efficient and sustainable taro cultivation practices. The review could be a major breakthrough in understanding various biotechnological approaches towards integrating the taro crop into mainstream research for crop improvement and intervention programs. © 201 5 PSCI Publisher All rights reserved. Key words: Taro as a food crop; Under-exploitation; Commercial production; Agronomic potential; Low crop productivity; Undesirable impacts; Economic livelihoods; Genetic diversity; Smallholders farmers

Pattern of risky sexual behavior and associated factors among undergraduate students of the University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria

Introduction: Age at sexual debut had decreased in the developing countries recently. Few documented studies have looked into the pattern ofrisky sexual behaviour and associated factors among undergraduate students in Rivers state of recent. This study examined the pattern of sexual risky behaviour of undergraduate in University of Port-Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. Methods: A descriptive cross sectional survey was adopted and three hundred students were purposively recruited. Data were collected by a self –administered semi-structured questionnaire and analysed using descriptive and chi-square statistics at 0.05 significant level. Results: The mean age of respondents was 21.3±2.8years; more than half (57.4%) were females. Almost a quarter (24.5%) was each in 200 and 300 level of study respectively and more than a quarter (26.7%) livesalone. Sixty-one percent of the respondents had ever taken alcohol beverage with 36.1% of them were current users. More than half (52.0%) the respondents had either boy/girlfriend and a total of 144 (52.0%) had ever had sexual intercourse; of these 13% reportedly had only one sexualpartner in their lifetime; girl/boy friend topped the list of their sexual partner; 48.6% respondents were currently sexually active and 32% used aform of protection during their last sexual activity. The mean age at sexual debut was 17.0± 4.5years. Few (13.4%) have had sex in exchange forgifts and 5.1% of these was with a friend. Higher proportions of respondents who reported lifetime use of alcohol were sexually active (p<0.005).Conclusion: Respondents exhibits risky sexual behavior as more had sex without any form of protection. Public enlightenment programmes andtargeted behavioral change interventions are therefore recommended.Key words: isky sexual behaviour, pattern, undergraduat

Experiences of diagnosis, stigma, culpability, and disclosure in male patients with hepatitis C virus: an interpretative phenomenological analysis

The current study aimed to explore the lived experience of patients with hepatitis C virus infection. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven male participants living with hepatitis C virus and were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Two master themes were identified: (1) diagnosis and the search for meaning and (2) impact of stigma on disclosure. Participants reported fears of contaminating others, feelings of stigma and concerns of disclosing the condition to others. Response to diagnosis, stigma and disclosure among the participants appeared to be interrelated and directly related to locus of blame for virus contraction. More specifically, hepatitis C virus transmission via medical routes led to an externalisation of culpability and an openness to disclosure. Transmission of hepatitis C virus as a direct result of intravenous drug use led to internalised blame and a fear of disclosure. The inter- and intra-personal consequences of hepatitis C virus explored in the current study have potential implications for tailoring future psychological therapy and psychoeducation to the specific needs of the hepatitis C virus population

Health Economic Studies of Colorectal Cancer and the Contribution of a National Administrative Data Repository: a Systematic Review

Introduction: Several forces are contributing to an increase in the number of people living with and surviving colorectal cancer (CRC). However, due to the lack of available data, little is known about the implications of these forces. In recent years, the use of administrative records to inform research has been increasing. The aim of this paper is to investigate the potential contribution that administrative data could have on the health economic research of CRC. Methods: To achieve this aim, we conducted a systematic review of the health economic CRC literature published in the United Kingdom and Europe within the last decade (2009–2019). Results: Thirty-seven relevant studies were identified and divided into economic evaluations, cost of illness studies and cost consequence analyses. Conclusions: The use of administrative data, including cancer registry, screening and hospital records, within the health economic research of CRC is commonplace. However, we found that this data often come from regional databases, which reduces the generalisability of results. Further, administrative data appear less able to contribute towards understanding the wider and indirect costs associated with the disease. We explore several ways in which various sources of administrative data could enhance future research in this area

A systematic review of cerebral microdialysis and outcomes in TBI: relationships to patient functional outcome, neurophysiologic measures, and tissue outcome.

OBJECTIVE: To perform a systematic review on commonly measured cerebral microdialysis (CMD) analytes and their association to: (A) patient functional outcome, (B) neurophysiologic measures, and (C) tissue outcome; after moderate/severe TBI. The aim was to provide a foundation for next-generation CMD studies and build on existing pragmatic expert guidelines for CMD. METHODS: We searched MEDLINE, BIOSIS, EMBASE, Global Health, Scopus, Cochrane Library (inception to October 2016). Strength of evidence was adjudicated using GRADE. RESULTS: (A) Functional Outcome: 55 articles were included, assessing outcome as mortality or Glasgow Outcome Scale (GOS) at 3-6 months post-injury. Overall, there is GRADE C evidence to support an association between CMD glucose, glutamate, glycerol, lactate, and LPR to patient outcome at 3-6 months. (B) Neurophysiologic Measures: 59 articles were included. Overall, there currently exists GRADE C level of evidence supporting an association between elevated CMD measured mean LPR, glutamate and glycerol with elevated ICP and/or decreased CPP. In addition, there currently exists GRADE C evidence to support an association between elevated mean lactate:pyruvate ratio (LPR) and low PbtO2. Remaining CMD measures and physiologic outcomes displayed GRADE D or no evidence to support a relationship. (C) Tissue Outcome: four studies were included. Given the conflicting literature, the only conclusion that can be drawn is acute/subacute phase elevation of CMD measured LPR is associated with frontal lobe atrophy at 6 months. CONCLUSIONS: This systematic review replicates previously documented relationships between CMD and various outcome, which have driven clinical application of the technique. Evidence assessments do not address the application of CMD for exploring pathophysiology or titrating therapy in individual patients, and do not account for the modulatory effect of therapy on outcome, triggered at different CMD thresholds in individual centers. Our findings support clinical application of CMD and refinement of existing guidelines

Bio.Phylo: A Unified Toolkit for Processing, Analyzing and Visualizing Phylogenetic Trees in Biopython

Background: Ongoing innovation in phylogenetics and evolutionary biology has been accompanied by a proliferation of software tools, data formats, analytical techniques and web servers. This brings with it the challenge of integrating phylogenetic and other related biological data found in a wide variety of formats, and underlines the need for reusable software that can read, manipulate and transform this information into the various forms required to build computational pipelines. Results: We built a Python software library for working with phylogenetic data that is tightly integrated with Biopython, a broad-ranging toolkit for computational biology. Our library, Bio.Phylo, is highly interoperable with existing libraries, tools and standards, and is capable of parsing common file formats for phylogenetic trees, performing basic transformations and manipulations, attaching rich annotations, and visualizing trees. We unified the modules for working with the standard file formats Newick, NEXUS and phyloXML behind a consistent and simple API, providing a common set of functionality independent of the data source. Conclusions: Bio.Phylo meets a growing need in bioinformatics for working with heterogeneous types of phylogenetic data. By supporting interoperability with multiple file formats and leveraging existing Biopython features, this library simplifies the construction of phylogenetic workflows. We also provide examples of the benefits of building a community around a shared open-source project. Bio.Phylo is included with Biopython, available through the Biopython website, http://biopython.org

New Acrylic Monolithic Carbon Molecular Sieves for O2/N2 and CO2/CH4 Separations

The modification of activated carbon fibres prepared from a commercial textile acrylic fibre into materials with monolithic shape using phenolic resin as binder was studied. The molecular sieving properties for the gas separations CO2/CH4 and O2/N2 were evaluated from the gas uptake volume and selectivity at 100 s contact time taken from the kinetic adsorption curves of the individual gases. The pseudo-first order rate constant was also determined by the application of the LDF model. The samples produced show high CO2 and O2 rates of adsorption, in the range 3–35 · 10_3 s_1, and in most cases null or very low adsorption of CH4 and N2 which make them very promising samples to use in PSA systems, or similar. Although the selectivity was very high, the adsorption capacity was low in certain cases. However, the gas uptake in two samples reached 23 cm3 g_1 for CO2 and 5 cm3 g_1 for O2, which can be considered very good. The materials were heat-treated using a microwave furnace, which is a novel and more economic method, when compared with conventional furnaces, to improve the molecular sieves properties