Book Review: \u3cem\u3eChrist and Krishna: Where the Jordan Meets the Ganges\u3c/em\u3e

A review of Christ and Krishna: Where the Jordan Meets the Ganges by Steven J. Rosen

Book Review: \u3ci\u3eKṛṣṇa and Christ: Body-Divine Relation in the Thought of Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and Classical Christian Orthodoxy\u3c/i\u3e

Book review of Kṛṣṇa and Christ: Body-Divine Relation in the Thought of Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and Classical Christian Orthodoxy. By Steven Tsoukalas. Eugene, OR: WIPF & STOCK, 2011, 310 pages

Book Review: \u3ci\u3eCaste, Gender, and Christianity in Colonial India: Telugu Women in Mission\u3c/i\u3e

Book review of Caste, Gender, and Christianity in Colonial India: Telugu Women in Mission. By James Elisha Taneti. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 203 pages

Frequency and risk factors for incident and redetected Chlamydia trachomatis infection in sexually active, young, multi-ethnic women: a community based cohort study.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the frequency and risk factors for incident and redetected Chlamydia trachomatis infection in sexually active, young, multi-ethnic women in the community. DESIGN: Cohort study. SETTING: 20 London universities and Further Education colleges. PARTICIPANTS: 954 sexually experienced women, mean age 21.5 years (range 16-27), 26% from ethnic minorities, who were recruited to the Prevention of Pelvic Infection (POPI) chlamydia screening trial between 2004 and 2006, and returned repeat postal self-taken vaginal swabs 11-32 (median 16) months after recruitment. RESULTS: The estimated annual incidence of chlamydia infection among 907 women who tested negative at baseline was 3.4 per 100 person-years (95% CI 2.5 to 4.6 per 100 person-years), but 6.6 per 100 person-years (95% CI 4.5 to 9.3 per 100 person-years) in the 326 teenagers (<20 years). Predictors of incident chlamydia infection were age <20 years (relative risk (RR) 4.0, 95% CI 2.1 to 7.5), and (after adjusting for age) a new sexual partner during 12 months follow-up (RR 4.4, 95% CI 2.0 to 9.9), smoking (RR 2.2 95% CI 1.2 to 3.9), concurrent bacterial vaginosis (RR 2.0 95% CI 1.1 to 3.9) and high risk carcinogenic human papillomavirus (RR 2.2, 95% CI 1.1 to 4.3). Of 47 women positive for chlamydia at baseline, 12 (25.5%, 95% CI 13.9% to 40.3%) had redetected infection at a median of 16 months follow-up. Taking into account follow-up time (65 person-years), the annual redetection rate was 18.5 per 100 person-years (95% CI 9.9 to 30.0 per 100 person-years). CONCLUSIONS: One in four women with chlamydia infection at baseline retested positive, supporting recent recommendations to routinely retest chlamydia positives

Inferring Latent States and Refining Force Estimates via Hierarchical Dirichlet Process Modeling in Single Particle Tracking Experiments

Optical microscopy provides rich spatio-temporal information characterizing in vivo molecular motion. However, effective forces and other parameters used to summarize molecular motion change over time in live cells due to latent state changes, e.g., changes induced by dynamic micro-environments, photobleaching, and other heterogeneity inherent in biological processes. This study focuses on techniques for analyzing Single Particle Tracking (SPT) data experiencing abrupt state changes. We demonstrate the approach on GFP tagged chromatids experiencing metaphase in yeast cells and probe the effective forces resulting from dynamic interactions that reflect the sum of a number of physical phenomena. State changes are induced by factors such as microtubule dynamics exerting force through the centromere, thermal polymer fluctuations, etc. Simulations are used to demonstrate the relevance of the approach in more general SPT data analyses. Refined force estimates are obtained by adopting and modifying a nonparametric Bayesian modeling technique, the Hierarchical Dirichlet Process Switching Linear Dynamical System (HDP-SLDS), for SPT applications. The HDP-SLDS method shows promise in systematically identifying dynamical regime changes induced by unobserved state changes when the number of underlying states is unknown in advance (a common problem in SPT applications). We expand on the relevance of the HDP-SLDS approach, review the relevant background of Hierarchical Dirichlet Processes, show how to map discrete time HDP-SLDS models to classic SPT models, and discuss limitations of the approach. In addition, we demonstrate new computational techniques for tuning hyperparameters and for checking the statistical consistency of model assumptions directly against individual experimental trajectories; the techniques circumvent the need for "ground-truth" and subjective information.Comment: 25 pages, 6 figures. Differs only typographically from PLoS One publication available freely as an open-access article at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.013763

Timing of progression from Chlamydia trachomatis infection to pelvic inflammatory disease: a mathematical modelling study

PMCID: PMC3505463The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/12/187. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Flexible Ultrathin PolyDVB/EVB Composite Membranes for the Optimization of a Whole Blood Glucose Sensor.

An ultrathin composite membrane has been developed as the outer covering barrier in a model amperometric glucose oxidase enzyme electrode. The membrane was formed by cathodic electropolymerization of divinylbenzene/ethylvinylbenzene at the surface of a gold coated polyester support membrane. Permeability coefficients were determined for O2 and glucose across membranes with a range of polymer thicknesses. Anionic interferents (such as ascorbate), were screened from the working electrode via a charge exclusion mechanism. The enzyme electrode showed an initial 10% signal drift when first exposed to whole human blood over a period of 2 hours, after which responses remained essentially stable. Whole blood patient glucose determinations yielded a correlation coefficient of r2=0.99 compared to standard hospital analyses