A mathematical model of Marburg virus disease outbreaks and the potential role of vaccination in control.

BACKGROUND: Marburg virus disease is an acute haemorrhagic fever caused by Marburg virus. Marburg virus is zoonotic, maintained in nature in Egyptian fruit bats, with occasional spillover infections into humans and nonhuman primates. Although rare, sporadic cases and outbreaks occur in Africa, usually associated with exposure to bats in mines or caves, and sometimes with secondary human-to-human transmission. Outbreaks outside of Africa have also occurred due to importation of infected monkeys. Although all previous Marburg virus disease outbreaks have been brought under control without vaccination, there is nevertheless the potential for large outbreaks when implementation of public health measures is not possible or breaks down. Vaccines could thus be an important additional tool, and development of several candidate vaccines is under way. METHODS: We developed a branching process model of Marburg virus transmission and investigated the potential effects of several prophylactic and reactive vaccination strategies in settings driven primarily by multiple spillover events as well as human-to-human transmission. Linelist data from the 15 outbreaks up until 2022, as well as an Approximate Bayesian Computational framework, were used to inform the model parameters. RESULTS: Our results show a low basic reproduction number which varied across outbreaks, from 0.5 [95% CI 0.05-1.8] to 1.2 [95% CI 1.0-1.9] but a high case fatality ratio. Of six vaccination strategies explored, the two prophylactic strategies (mass and targeted vaccination of high-risk groups), as well as a combination of ring and targeted vaccination, were generally most effective, with a probability of potential outbreaks being terminated within 1 year of 0.90 (95% CI 0.90-0.91), 0.89 (95% CI 0.88-0.90), and 0.88 (95% CI 0.87-0.89) compared with 0.68 (0.67-0.69) for no vaccination, especially if the outbreak is driven by zoonotic spillovers and the vaccination campaign initiated as soon as possible after onset of the first case. CONCLUSIONS: Our study shows that various vaccination strategies can be effective in helping to control outbreaks of MVD, with the best approach varying with the particular epidemiologic circumstances of each outbreak

Customer Referral Behavior: Do Switchers and Stayers Differ?

In today’s highly competitive market environment, service providers are beginning to recognize that customer referral plays an important role in enhancing firm value through cost-effective acquisition of new customers. While a significant body of research has focused on exploring customer referral, surprisingly limited research to date has addressed how customer referral may vary for different customer groups, particularly among switchers and stayers. This article examines the moderating effect of switchers and stayers on the relationships between service quality and perceived value on customer referral behavior. Actual referral data were collected from 441 customers of an Internet Service Provider in two waves for this study. The results show that the effects of positive changes in service quality and perceived value on customer referral behavior are stronger for recently acquired customers (switchers) than for long-term customers (stayers). The findings of the study suggest that investment in service quality and value improvements yield significantly higher returns (through greater customer referrals) for switchers than for stayers. Based on the findings, the authors recommend that service managers should identify and target newly acquired customers, who have switched from different service providers, right from the outset of the relationship with service offerings that signify higher quality and value in order to maximize customer referrals

Estimating number of cases and spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) using critical care admissions, United Kingdom, February to March 2020.

An exponential growth model was fitted to critical care admissions from two surveillance databases to determine likely coronavirus disease (COVID-19) case numbers, critical care admissions and epidemic growth in the United Kingdom before the national lockdown. We estimate, on 23 March, a median of 114,000 (95% credible interval (CrI): 78,000-173,000) new cases and 258 (95% CrI: 220-319) new critical care reports, with 527,000 (95% CrI: 362,000-797,000) cumulative cases since 16 February

Autonomous and non-cell autonomous role of cilia in structural birth defects in mice

Ciliopathies are associated with wide spectrum of structral birth defects (SBDs), indicating impoartant roles for cilia in decelopment , here we provide novel insights into the temporospatial requirement for cilia in SBDs arising from deficiency in Ift140, an intraflagellar transport (IFT) protein regulating ciliogenesis. Ift140-deficient mice exhibit cilia defects accompanied by wide spectrum of SBDs including macrostomia (craniofacial defects), exencephaly, body wall defects, tracheoesophageal fistula (TEF), randomized heart looping, congenital heart defects (CHDs), lung hypoplasia, renal anomalies, and polydactyly. Tamoxifen inducible CAGGCre-ER deletion of a floxed Ift140 allele between E5.5 to 9.5 revealed early requirement for Ift140 in left-right heart looping regulation, mid to late requirement for cardiac outflow septation and alignment, and late requirement for craniofacial development and body wall closure. Surprisingly, CHD were not observed with 4 Cre drivers targeting different lineages essential for heart development, but craniofacial defects and omphalocele were observed with Wnt1-Cre targeting neural crest and Tbx18-Cre targeting epicardial lineage and rostral sclerotome through which trunk neural crest cells migrate. These findings revealed cell autonomous role of cilia in cranial/trunk neural crest-mediated craniofacial and body wall closure defects, while non-cell autonomous multi-lineage interactions underlie CHD pathogenesis, revealing unexpected developmental complexity for CHD associated with ciliopathies

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: A Measurement of the Thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect Using the Skewness of the CMB Temperature Distribution

We present a detection of the unnormalized skewness induced by the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect in filtered Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) 148 GHz cosmic microwave background temperature maps. Contamination due to infrared and radio sources is minimized by template subtraction of resolved sources and by constructing a mask using outlying values in the 218 GHz (tSZ-null) ACT maps. We measure = -31 +- 6 \mu K^3 (measurement error only) or +- 14 \mu K^3 (including cosmic variance error) in the filtered ACT data, a 5-sigma detection. We show that the skewness is a sensitive probe of sigma_8, and use analytic calculations and tSZ simulations to obtain cosmological constraints from this measurement. From this signal alone we infer a value of sigma_8= 0.79 +0.03 -0.03 (68 % C.L.) +0.06 -0.06 (95 % C.L.). Our results demonstrate that measurements of non-Gaussianity can be a useful method for characterizing the tSZ effect and extracting the underlying cosmological information.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures. Replaced with version accepted by Phys. Rev. D, with improvements to the likelihood function and the IR source treatment; only minor changes in the result

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Temperature and Gravitational Lensing Power Spectrum Measurements from Three Seasons of Data

We present the temperature power spectra of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) derived from the three seasons of data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) at 148 GHz and 218 GHz, as well as the cross-frequency spectrum between the two channels. We detect and correct for contamination due to the Galactic cirrus in our equatorial maps. We present the results of a number of tests for possible systematic error and conclude that any effects are not significant compared to the statistical errors we quote. Where they overlap, we cross-correlate the ACT and the South Pole Telescope (SPT) maps and show they are consistent. The measurements of higher-order peaks in the CMB power spectrum provide an additional test of the Lambda CDM cosmological model, and help constrain extensions beyond the standard model. The small angular scale power spectrum also provides constraining power on the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effects and extragalactic foregrounds. We also present a measurement of the CMB gravitational lensing convergence power spectrum at 4.6-sigma detection significance.Comment: 21 pages; 20 figures, Submitted to JCAP, some typos correcte

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Data Characterization and Map Making

We present a description of the data reduction and mapmaking pipeline used for the 2008 observing season of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT). The data presented here at 148 GHz represent 12% of the 90 TB collected by ACT from 2007 to 2010. In 2008 we observed for 136 days, producing a total of 1423 hours of data (11 TB for the 148 GHz band only), with a daily average of 10.5 hours of observation. From these, 1085 hours were devoted to a 850 deg^2 stripe (11.2 hours by 9.1 deg) centered on a declination of -52.7 deg, while 175 hours were devoted to a 280 deg^2 stripe (4.5 hours by 4.8 deg) centered at the celestial equator. We discuss sources of statistical and systematic noise, calibration, telescope pointing, and data selection. Out of 1260 survey hours and 1024 detectors per array, 816 hours and 593 effective detectors remain after data selection for this frequency band, yielding a 38% survey efficiency. The total sensitivity in 2008, determined from the noise level between 5 Hz and 20 Hz in the time-ordered data stream (TOD), is 32 micro-Kelvin sqrt{s} in CMB units. Atmospheric brightness fluctuations constitute the main contaminant in the data and dominate the detector noise covariance at low frequencies in the TOD. The maps were made by solving the least-squares problem using the Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient method, incorporating the details of the detector and noise correlations. Cross-correlation with WMAP sky maps, as well as analysis from simulations, reveal that our maps are unbiased at multipoles ell > 300. This paper accompanies the public release of the 148 GHz southern stripe maps from 2008. The techniques described here will be applied to future maps and data releases.Comment: 20 pages, 18 figures, 6 tables, an ACT Collaboration pape

Using job strain and organizational justice models to predict multiple forms of employee performance behaviours among Australian policing personnel

The overall purpose of this investigation was to examine the relationship between stress-related working conditions and three forms of employee performance behaviours: in-role behaviours, citizenship behaviours directed at other individuals and citizenship behaviours directed at the organization. The potentially stressful working conditions were based on the job strain model (incorporating job demands, job control and social support) as well as organizational justice theory. A sample of Australian-based police officers (n = 640) took part in this study and the data were collected via a mail-out survey. Multiple regression analyses were undertaken to assess both the strength and the nature of the relationships between the working conditions and employee performance and these analyses included tests for additive, interactional and curvilinear effects. The overall results indicated that a significant proportion of the explained variance in all three outcome measures was attributed to the additive effects of demand, control and support. The level of variance associated with the organizational justice dimensions was relatively small, although there were signs that specific dimensions of justice may provide unique insights into the relationship between job stressors and employee performance. The implications of these and other notable findings are discussed.<br /

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Cosmological parameters from three seasons of data

We present constraints on cosmological and astrophysical parameters from high-resolution microwave background maps at 148 GHz and 218 GHz made by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in three seasons of observations from 2008 to 2010. A model of primary cosmological and secondary foreground parameters is fit to the map power spectra and lensing deflection power spectrum, including contributions from both the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (tSZ) effect and the kinematic Sunyaev-Zeldovich (kSZ) effect, Poisson and correlated anisotropy from unresolved infrared sources, radio sources, and the correlation between the tSZ effect and infrared sources. The power ell^2 C_ell/2pi of the thermal SZ power spectrum at 148 GHz is measured to be 3.4 +\- 1.4 muK^2 at ell=3000, while the corresponding amplitude of the kinematic SZ power spectrum has a 95% confidence level upper limit of 8.6 muK^2. Combining ACT power spectra with the WMAP 7-year temperature and polarization power spectra, we find excellent consistency with the LCDM model. We constrain the number of effective relativistic degrees of freedom in the early universe to be Neff=2.79 +\- 0.56, in agreement with the canonical value of Neff=3.046 for three massless neutrinos. We constrain the sum of the neutrino masses to be Sigma m_nu < 0.39 eV at 95% confidence when combining ACT and WMAP 7-year data with BAO and Hubble constant measurements. We constrain the amount of primordial helium to be Yp = 0.225 +\- 0.034, and measure no variation in the fine structure constant alpha since recombination, with alpha/alpha0 = 1.004 +/- 0.005. We also find no evidence for any running of the scalar spectral index, dns/dlnk = -0.004 +\- 0.012.Comment: 26 pages, 22 figures. This paper is a companion to Das et al. (2013) and Dunkley et al. (2013). Matches published JCAP versio