Pushing and Non-pushing Forward Motion in Crowds: A Systematic Psychological Observation Method for Rating Individual Behavior in Pedestrian Dynamics

Pushing behavior impairs people’s sense of well-being in a crowd and represents a significant safety risk. There are nevertheless still a lot of unanswered questions about who behaves how in a crowded situation, and when, where, and why pushing behavior occurs. Beginning from the supposition that a crowd is not thoroughly homogenous and that behavior can change over time, we developed a method to observe and rate forward motion. Based on the guidelines of quantitative content analysis, we came up with four categories: (1) falling behind, (2) just walking, (3) mild pushing, and (4) strong pushing. These categories allow for the classification of the behavior of any person at any time in a video, and thereby the method allows for a comprehensive systematization of individuals’ actions alongside temporal crowd dynamics. The application of this method involves videos of moving crowds including trajectories. The initial results show a very good inter-coder reliability between two trained raters demonstrating the general suitability of the system to describe forward motion in crowds systematically and quantify it for further analysis. In this way, pushing behavior can be better understood and, prospectively, risks better identified. This article offers a comprehensive presentation of this method of observation

Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis Infection in a Patient with HIV, Germany

Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP), the causative agent of Johne disease in ruminants, has been incriminated as the cause of Crohn disease in humans. We report the first case of human infection with MAP in a patient with HIV; infection was confirmed by obtaining isolates from several different specimen types

Association between polymorphism in IgG Fc receptor IIIa coding gene and biological response to infliximab in Crohn's disease

AIM: To test the hypothesis of an association between polymorphism in FCGR3A (the gene coding for FcgammaRIIIa, which is expressed on macrophages and natural killer cells, is involved in antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity and has recently been associated with a positive response to rituximab, a recombinant immunoglobulin G1 antibody used in non-Hodgkin's lymphomas) and response to infliximab in Crohn's disease. METHODS: FCGR3A-158 polymorphism was determined using an allele-specific polymerase chain reaction assay in 200 Crohn's disease patients who had received infliximab for either refractory luminal (n = 142) or fistulizing (n = 58) Crohn's disease. Clinical and biological responses (according to C-reactive protein levels) were assessed in 200 and 145 patients, respectively. RESULTS: There were 82.9% clinical responders in V/V patients vs. 72.7% in V/F and F/F patients (N.S.). Globally, the decrease in C-reactive protein was significantly higher in V/V patients than in F carriers (P = 0.0078). A biological response was observed in 100% of V/V patients, compared with 69.8% of F carriers (P = 0.0002; relative risk, 1.43; 95% confidence interval, 1.27-1.61). In the sub-group of patients with elevated C-reactive protein before treatment, the multivariate analysis selected the use of immunosuppressive drugs and FCGR3A genotype as independent factors influencing the clinical response to infliximab (P = 0.003). CONCLUSION: Crohn's disease patients with FCGR3A-158 V/V genotype have a better biological and, possibly, clinical response to infliximab

Pedestrian Crowd Management Experiments: A Data Guidance Paper

Understanding pedestrian dynamics and the interaction of pedestrians with their environment is crucial to the safe and comfortable design of pedestrian facilities. Experiments offer the opportunity to explore the influence of individual factors. In the context of the project CroMa (Crowd Management in transport infrastructures), experiments were conducted with about 1000 participants to test various physical and social psychological hypotheses focusing on people's behaviour at railway stations and crowd management measures. The following experiments were performed: i) Train Platform Experiment, ii) Crowd Management Experiment, iii) Single-File Experiment, iv) Personal Space Experiment, v) Boarding and Alighting Experiment, vi) Bottleneck Experiment and vii) Tiny Box Experiment. This paper describes the basic planning and implementation steps, outlines all experiments with parameters, geometries, applied sensor technologies and pre- and post-processing steps. All data can be found in the pedestrian dynamics data archive.Comment: 58 pages, 19 figures, under review Collective Dynamic

A Variant of TNFR2-Fc Fusion Protein Exhibits Improved Efficacy in Treating Experimental Rheumatoid Arthritis

Etanercept, a TNF receptor 2-Fc fusion protein, is currently being used for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). However, 25% to 38% of patients show no response which is suspected to be partially due to insufficient affinity of this protein to TNFα. By using computational protein design, we found that residue W89 and E92 of TNFR2 were critical for ligand binding. Among several mutants tested, W89Y/E92N displayed 1.49-fold higher neutralizing activity to TNFα, as compared to that of Etanercept. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) based binding assay revealed that the equilibrium dissociation constant of W89Y/E92N to TNFα was 3.65-fold higher than that of Etanercept. In a rat model of collagen-induced arthritis (CIA), W89Y/E92N showed a significantly better ability than Etanercept in reducing paw swelling and improvement of arthritic joint histopathologically. These data demonstrate that W89Y/E92N is potentially a better candidate with improved efficacy in treating RA and other autoimmune diseases