Attachment of Salmonella spp. to pork meat

Five strains of Salmonella, one wildtype and four knock-out mutants (the prg, flhDC, yhjH and fliC genes) were investigated based on their probability to attach and subsequently detach from a surface of pork fillet. The attachment followed by detachment was measured and modelled for two different contact times using cells coming from either a planktonic or an immobilized state of growth. The results showed that the probability of detachment generally decreased when the contact time increased and that the highest difference between contact times was achieved when the cells were grown planktonic

Financing intersectoral action for health: a systematic review of co-financing models.

BACKGROUND: Addressing the social and other non-biological determinants of health largely depends on policies and programmes implemented outside the health sector. While there is growing evidence on the effectiveness of interventions that tackle these upstream determinants, the health sector does not typically prioritise them. From a health perspective, they may not be cost-effective because their non-health outcomes tend to be ignored. Non-health sectors may, in turn, undervalue interventions with important co-benefits for population health, given their focus on their own sectoral objectives. The societal value of win-win interventions with impacts on multiple development goals may, therefore, be under-valued and under-resourced, as a result of siloed resource allocation mechanisms. Pooling budgets across sectors could ensure the total multi-sectoral value of these interventions is captured, and sectors' shared goals are achieved more efficiently. Under such a co-financing approach, the cost of interventions with multi-sectoral outcomes would be shared by benefiting sectors, stimulating mutually beneficial cross-sectoral investments. Leveraging funding in other sectors could off-set flat-lining global development assistance for health and optimise public spending. Although there have been experiments with such cross-sectoral co-financing in several settings, there has been limited analysis to examine these models, their performance and their institutional feasibility. AIM: This study aimed to identify and characterise cross-sectoral co-financing models, their operational modalities, effectiveness, and institutional enablers and barriers. METHODS: We conducted a systematic review of peer-reviewed and grey literature, following PRISMA guidelines. Studies were included if data was provided on interventions funded across two or more sectors, or multiple budgets. Extracted data were categorised and qualitatively coded. RESULTS: Of 2751 publications screened, 81 cases of co-financing were identified. Most were from high-income countries (93%), but six innovative models were found in Uganda, Brazil, El Salvador, Mozambique, Zambia, and Kenya that also included non-public and international payers. The highest number of cases involved the health (93%), social care (64%) and education (22%) sectors. Co-financing models were most often implemented with the intention of integrating services across sectors for defined target populations, although models were also found aimed at health promotion activities outside the health sector and cross-sectoral financial rewards. Interventions were either implemented and governed by a single sector or delivered in an integrated manner with cross-sectoral accountability. Resource constraints and political relevance emerged as key enablers of co-financing, while lack of clarity around the roles of different sectoral players and the objectives of the pooling were found to be barriers to success. Although rigorous impact or economic evaluations were scarce, positive process measures were frequently reported with some evidence suggesting co-financing contributed to improved outcomes. CONCLUSION: Co-financing remains in an exploratory phase, with diverse models having been implemented across sectors and settings. By incentivising intersectoral action on structural inequities and barriers to health interventions, such a novel financing mechanism could contribute to more effective engagement of non-health sectors; to efficiency gains in the financing of universal health coverage; and to simultaneously achieving health and other well-being related sustainable development goals

Separated by a Common Language: Awareness of Term Usage Differences Between Languages and Disciplines in Biopreparedness

Preparedness for bioterrorism is based on communication between people in organizations who are educated and trained in several disciplines, including law enforcement, health, and science. Various backgrounds, cultures, and vocabularies generate difficulties in understanding and interpretating terms and concepts, which may impair communication. This is especially true in emergency situations, in which the need for clarity and consistency is vital. The EU project AniBio- Threat initiated methods and made a rough estimate of the terms and concepts that are crucial for an incident, and a pilot database with key terms and definitions has been constructed. Analysis of collected terms and sources has shown that many of the participating organizations use various international standards in their area of expertise. The same term often represents different concepts in the standards from different sectors, or, alternatively, different terms were used to represent the same or similar concepts. The use of conflicting terminology can be problematic for decision makers and communicators in planning and prevention or when handling an incident. Since the CBRN area has roots in multiple disciplines, each with its own evolving terminology, it may not be realistic to achieve unequivocal communication through a standardized vocabulary and joint definitions for words from common language. We suggest that a communication strategy should include awareness of alternative definitions and ontologies and the ability to talk and write without relying on the implicit knowledge underlying specialized jargon. Consequently, cross-disciplinary communication skills should be part of training of personnel in the CBRN field. In addition, a searchable repository of terms and definitions from relevant organizations and authorities would be a valuable addition to existing glossaries for improving awareness concerning bioterrorism prevention planning

Investigating the impact of calibration on the quality of explanations

Predictive models used in Decision Support Systems (DSS) are often requested to explain the reasoning to users. Explanations of instances consist of two parts; the predicted label with an associated certainty and a set of weights, one per feature, describing how each feature contributes to the prediction for the particular instance. In techniques like Local Interpretable Model-agnostic Explanations (LIME), the probability estimate from the underlying model is used as a measurement of certainty; consequently, the feature weights represent how each feature contributes to the probability estimate. It is, however, well-known that probability estimates from classifiers are often poorly calibrated, i.e., the probability estimates do not correspond to the actual probabilities of being correct. With this in mind, explanations from techniques like LIME risk becoming misleading since the feature weights will only describe how each feature contributes to the possibly inaccurate probability estimate. This paper investigates the impact of calibrating predictive models before applying LIME. The study includes 25 benchmark data sets, using Random forest and Extreme Gradient Boosting (xGBoost) as learners and Venn-Abers and Platt scaling as calibration methods. Results from the study show that explanations of better calibrated models are themselves better calibrated, with ECE and log loss for the explanations after calibration becoming more conformed to the model ECE and log loss. The conclusion is that calibration makes the models and the explanations better by accurately representing reality.

Attachment of Salmonella spp. to pork meat

Five strains of Salmonella, one wildtype and four knock-out mutants (the prg, flhDC, yhjH and fliC genes) were investigated based on their probability to attach and subsequently detach from a surface of pork fillet. The attachment followed by detachment was measured and modelled for two different contact times using cells coming from either a planktonic or an immobilized state of growth. The results showed that the probability of detachment generally decreased when the contact time increased and that the highest difference between contact times was achieved when the cells were grown planktonic.</p