Theoretical and Experimental Study of Rotational Behaviour of Friction Pendulum Bearings

Friction Pendulum Bearing (FPB for short) is a kind of widely used device to improve seismic capacities of building and bridge structures. Despite the considerable progress made in developing theoretical models to understand the mechanical behaviour of FPB, these models mostly focus on the horizontal movement behaviour and rarely on the rotational behaviour of FPB. However, rotational displacements of FPBs indeed will occur along with horizontal displacements in earthquakes and may affect the structural seismic performance. Motivated from these findings, a theoretical model of FPB that describes the rotational behaviour is established based on the moment balance theory in this paper. A set of rotational tests are carried out to validate the theoretical model, and comparisons of experimental and theoretical results show that they are in good agreement. The theoretical model developed in this paper will help understand the structural seismic performance more accurately in the case of rotations of FPBs

Bacterial dermohypodermitis at the Thies Regional Hospital, Senegal (West Africa): A retrospective study of 425 cases

Introduction: Bacterial dermohypodermitis (BDH) risk factors identified in the literature on series of national hospitals are: obesity, diabetes, lymphedema, venous insufficiency. We report a series in a regional hospital. Material and Methods: This was a retrospective study, conducted over a period of 9 years from 1 January 2007 to 31 December 2015. All data of patients received for BDH including. Socio-demographic, clinical, para-clinical and evolution variables was collected and analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 20 software. Results: Of the 35,692 patients received in consultation, 425 had BDH (1.19%) and 33.7% were hospitalized. The mean age was 40.6 ± 17.02 years. The age groups 16-59 years were 81% of the cases. There was a female predominance (74%) with a sex ratio H/F = 0.35. The average time to consultation was 8.1 ± 9.5 days for BDH. The lesion were located in the lower limbs in 90.4% cases. The average hospital stay was 8.6 ± 4.7 days. Artificial skin bleaching (p = 0.003), non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (p = 0.001), high blood pressure (p = 0.013), obesity (p = 0.028) were the risk factors identified in our series. Conclusions: Our series shows that the emergence of BDH also affects regional hospitals in West Africa. It also confirms that artificial skin bleaching, Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, high blood pressure, obesity are aggravating factors

Les aspects des frottis cervico-vaginaux chez les femmes vivants avec le VIH suivies à Thiès/Sénégal et association avec le degré d’immunodépression

De nombreuses études ont démontré que les femmes infectées par le VIH ont un risque accru de survenue de néoplasies cervicales intra épithéliales. L'association entre les deux affections étant bidirectionnelle, l'objectif était de décrire les anomalies cervicales chez les femmes séropositives au virus de l'immunodéficience humaine (VIH), de rechercher des facteurs associés et de proposer des recommandations en termes de suivi de ces femmes. Il s'agissait d'une étude transversale, multicentrique recensant l'ensemble des frottis cervico-vaginaux (FCV) et des colposcopies des patientes infectées par le VIH entre 2012 et 2014 dans les services de dermatologie de Thiès et de Mbour. Les données étaient recueillies et analysées par le logiciel EPI Info 2012 version 3.5.4. Les tests statistiques ont été effectués avec un seuil de significativité p < 0,05. Etaient inclus 125 patientes. L'âge moyen était de 38,98 ± 10.2 ans [20-77]. Il n'y avait aucun signe d'appels dans 82.4%. Le FCV était normal dans 32.8%, inflammatoire dans 44.8%. Les anomalies cytologiques concernaient 22,4% dont, ASC-H (suspicion de lésions de haut grade: 2.4%), LSIL (lésions de bas grade: 8.8%), HSIL (lésions de haut grade: 4%). Leur majorité (60.7%) avaient un taux de CD4 < 500 et étaient au stade 3 de l'OMS dans 64.3%; la biopsie montrait une dysplasie sévère chez 37.5% des patientes ayant pu réaliser cet examen. Deux patientes ont bénéficié d'un traitement curatif notamment l'exérèse chirurgicale. La survenue de dysplasies cervicales même précoces semble être associée à un stade avancé de l'infection VIH. Un dépistage et un traitement précoces sont absolument nécessaires.The Pan African Medical Journal 2015;2

Gag p27-Specific B- and T-Cell Responses in Simian Immunodeficiency Virus SIVagm-Infected African Green Monkeys▿

Nonpathogenic simian immunodeficiency virus SIVagm infection of African green monkeys (AGMs) is characterized by the absence of a robust antibody response against Gag p27. To determine if this is accompanied by a selective loss of T-cell responses to Gag p27, we studied CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell responses against Gag p27 and other SIVagm antigens in the peripheral blood and lymph nodes of acutely and chronically infected AGMs. Our data show that AGMs can mount a T-cell response against Gag p27, indicating that the absence of anti-p27 antibodies is not due to the absence of Gag p27-specific T cells

WHO Global Situational Alert System: a mixed methods multistage approach to identify country-level COVID-19 alerts

Background Globally, since 1 January 2020 and as of 24 January 2023, there have been over 664 million cases of COVID-19 and over 6.7 million deaths reported to WHO. WHO developed an evidence-based alert system, assessing public health risk on a weekly basis in 237 countries, territories and areas from May 2021 to June 2022. This aimed to facilitate the early identification of situations where healthcare capacity may become overstretched.Methods The process involved a three-stage mixed methods approach. In the first stage, future deaths were predicted from the time series of reported cases and deaths to produce an initial alert level. In the second stage, this alert level was adjusted by incorporating a range of contextual indicators and accounting for the quality of information available using a Bayes classifier. In the third stage, countries with an alert level of ‘High’ or above were added to an operational watchlist and assistance was deployed as needed.Results Since June 2021, the system has supported the release of more than US$27 million from WHO emergency funding, over 450 000 rapid antigen diagnostic testing kits and over 6000 oxygen concentrators. Retrospective evaluation indicated that the first two stages were needed to maximise sensitivity, where 44% (IQR 29%–67%) of weekly watchlist alerts would not have been identified using only reported cases and deaths. The alerts were timely and valid in most cases; however, this could only be assessed on a non-representative sample of countries with hospitalisation data available.Conclusions The system provided a standardised approach to monitor the pandemic at the country level by incorporating all available data on epidemiological analytics and contextual assessments. While this system was developed for COVID-19, a similar system could be used for future outbreaks and emergencies, with necessary adjustments to parameters and indicators