Using simulation to estimate the power of a badger vaccine trial

The aim of this study was to estimate the power of a badger vaccine field trial using simulation techniques. The effects of sample size, sensitivity and specificity of the diagnostic test, transmission rate between unvaccinated badgers, Vaccine Efficacy for Susceptibility (VES) and Vaccine Efficacy for Infectiousness (VEI) on study power were determined. The most striking result was the large effect of the specificity of the diagnostic test on study power. Sample size had a small effect on power. Study power increased with increasing transmission rate between non-vaccinated badgers. Changes in VES had a higher impact on power than changes in VEI. In summary, study power in group randomized trials depends not only on sample size but on many other parameters. In the current vaccine trial, power was highly dependent on the specificity of the diagnostic test. Therefore, it is critical that the diagnostic test used in the badger vaccine trial is optimized to maximise test specificity

High-energy emission from NGC 5506, the brightest hard X-ray Narrow Line Seyfert 1 galaxy

We present results on the hard X-ray emission of NGC 5506, the brightest narrow line Seyfert 1 galaxy above 20 keV. All the recent observations by INTEGRAL, Swift and Suzaku have been analysed and spectral analysis during nine separated time periods has been performed. While flux variations by a factor of 2 were detected during the last 7 years, only moderate spectral variations have been observed, with the hint of a hardening of the X-ray spectrum and a decrease of the intrinsic absorption with time. Using Suzaku observations it is possible to constrain the amount of Compton reflection to R = 0.6-1.0, in agreement with previous results on the source. The signature of Comptonisation processes can also be found in the detection of a high-energy cut-off during part of the observations, at Ec = 40-100 keV. When a Comptonisation model is applied to the Suzaku data, the temperature and the optical depth of the Comptonising electron plasma are measured at kT = 60-80 keV and tau = 0.6-1.0, respectively. The properties inferred for NGC 5506 in this study agree with those based on other data sets for the same AGN, and fit the picture of NLS1 having in general lower high-energy cut-offs at hard X-rays than their broad line equivalent.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. Proceedings of the Workshop "Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies and Their Place in the Universe", Milano, April 4-6, 2011 (Proceedings of Science, http://pos.sissa.it/cgi-bin/reader/conf.cgi?confid=126

15th World Toilet Summit& Expo: Toilet Board Game& Miniatures

The Second Year Animation students undertaking Game Art and Design course, Design Technology programme, Faculty of Applied and Creative Arts (FACA), Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) were recently invited by World Toilet Organisation (WTO) and World Health Organisation (WHO) to participate in the 15th World Toilet Summit and Expo, 27-29 October 2016 at Imperial Hotel Kuching, Sarawak

Emergent AdS3 and BTZ Black Hole from Weakly Interacting Hot 2d CFT

We investigate emergent holography of weakly coupled two-dimensional hyperK\"ahler sigma model on cotangent bundle of (N-1)-dimensional complex projective space at zero and finite temperature. The sigma model is motivated by the spacetime conformal field theory dual to the near-horizon geometry of Q1 D1-brane bound to Q5 D5-brane wrapped on four-torus times circle, where N = Q1*Q5. The sigma model admits nontrivial instanton for all N greater than or equal to 2, which serves as a local probe of emergent holographic spacetime. We define emergent geometry of the spacetime as that of instanton moduli space via Hitchin's information metric. At zero temperature, we find that emergent geometry is AdS3. At finite temperature, time-periodic instanton is mappable to zero temperature instanton via conformal transformation. Utilizing the transformation, we show that emergent geometry is precisely that of the non-extremal, non-rotating BTZ black hole.Comment: 12 pages, no figure, JHEP.cls; v2. typos correcte

Covers of surfaces with fixed branch locus.

Number theory, Algebra and Geometr