Cost-effectiveness of management strategies for acute urethritis in the developing world.

OBJECTIVE: To recommend a cost-effective approach for the management of acute male urethritis in the developing world, based on the findings of a theoretical study. METHODS: A model was developed to assess the cost-effectiveness of three urethritis management strategies in a theoretical cohort of 1000 men with urethral syndrome. (1) All patients were treated with cefixime and doxycycline for gonococcal urethritis (GU) and nongonococcal urethritis (NGU), respectively, as recommended by WHO. (2) All patients were treated with doxycycline for NGU; treatment with cefixime was based on the result of direct microscopy of a urethral smear. (3) All patients were treated with cotrimoxazole or kanamycin for GU and doxycycline for NGU. Cefixime was kept for patients not responding to the first GU treatment. Strategy costs included consultations, laboratory diagnosis (where applicable) and drugs. The outcome was the rate of patients cured of urethritis. Cost-effectiveness was measured in terms of cost per cured urethritis. RESULTS: Strategy costs in our model depended largely on drug costs. The first strategy was confirmed as the most effective but also the most expensive approach. Cefixime should cost no more than US$1.5 for the strategy to be the most cost-effective. The second strategy saved money and drugs but proved a valuable alternative only when laboratory performance was optimal. The third strategy with cotrimoxazole was the least expensive but a low follow-up visit rate, poor treatment compliance or lower drug efficacy limited effectiveness. Maximizing compliance by replacing cotrimoxazole with single-dose kanamycin had the single greatest impact on the effectiveness of the third strategy. CONCLUSION: Our model suggested that a cost-effective approach would be to treat gonorrhoea with a single-dose antibiotic selected from locally available products that cost no more than US$ 1.5

Learning Faculty to Teach with an E-Learning Platform: Some Design Principles

In: A.J. Kallenberg and M.J.J.M. van de Ven (Eds), 2002, The New Educational Benefits of ICT in Higher Education: Proceedings. Rotterdam: Erasmus Plus BV, OECR ISBN 90-9016127-9The implementation of electronic learning platforms requires new competencies of faculty members. Institutions of higher education are challenged to support their staff to acquire those competencies. Training seems to be an interesting way to do so. This paper includes a brief description of a faculty development programme of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium). The evaluation of the programme - both by the trainers and the participants - clearly pointed at the necessity to carefully analyse the characteristics of the participants, as well as the competencies needed to integrate successfully an e-learning platform in one's teaching practice. This exercise led to the formulation of some design principles for faculty development programmes on e-learning platforms. The change of faculty members' teaching conceptions as well as the attention for their stages of concern can be pointed at as crucial elements of these principles

The use of tongue protrusion gestures for video-based communication

We propose a system that tracks the mouth region in a video sequence and detects the occurrence of a tongue protrusion event. Assuming that the natural location of the tongue is inside the mouth, the tongue protrusion gesture is interpreted as an intentional communication sign that the user wishes to perform a task. The system operates in three steps: (1) mouth template segmentation, in which we initialize one template for the entire mouth, and one template for each of the left and right halves of the mouth; (2) mouth region tracking using the Normalized Correlation Coefficient (NCC), and (3) tongue protrusion event detection and interpretation. We regard the tongue protrusion transition as the event that begins when a minimum part of the tongue starts protruding from the mouth, and which ends when the protrusion is clearly visible. The left and right templates are compared to their corresponding halves for each new mouth image that has been tracked, and a left-NCC and a right-NCC are obtained for each part. By analyzing the NCCs during the tongue protrusion transition time, the left or right position of the protrusion, relative to the center of the mouth, is determined. We analyze our proposed communication method and demonstrate that it adapts easily to different users. The detection of this gesture can be used for instance as a dual-switch hand-free human-computer interface for granting control of a computer

Detection of tongue protrusion gestures from videos

We propose a system that, using video information, segments the mouth region from a face image and then detects the protrusion of the tongue from inside the oral cavity. Initially, under the assumption that the mouth is closed, we detect both mouth corners. We use a set of specifically oriented Gabor filters for enhancing horizontal features corresponding to the shadow existing between the upper and lower lips. After applying the Hough line detector, the extremes of the line that was found are regarded as the mouth corners. Detection rate for mouth corner localization is 85.33%. These points are then input to a mouth appearance model which fits a mouth contour to the image. By segmenting its bounding box we obtain a mouth template. Next, considering the symmetric nature of the mouth, we divide the template into right and left halves. Thus, our system makes use of three templates. We track the mouth in the following frames using normalized correlation for mouth template matching. Changes happening in the mouth region are directly described by the correlation value, i.e., the appearance of the tongue in the surface of the mouth will cause a decrease in the correlation coefficient through time. These coefficients are used for detecting the tongue protrusion. The right and left tongue protrusion positions will be detected by analyzing similarity changes between the right and left half-mouth templates and the currently tracked ones. Detection rates under the default parameters of our system are 90.20% for the tongue protrusion regardless of the position, and 84.78% for the right and left tongue protrusion positions. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of real-time tongue protrusion detection in vision-based systems and motivates further investigating the usage of this new modality in human-computer communication

Multi-view shape reconstruction in CAVE system

Nowadays, many applications, ranging from medicine to video games, require accurate 3D geometry and motion of human actors

Modeling the Personal Space of Virtual Agents for Behavior Simulation

In this paper we propose a mathematical model for the concept of personal space (PS) and apply it to simulate the non-verbal communication between agents in virtual worlds. The distance between two persons reflects the type of their relationship. Human-like autonomous virtual agents should be equipped with such capability to simulate natural interactions. We define three types of relationships; (1) stranger relationship, (2) business relationship, and (3) friendly relationship. First we model the space around an agent as a probability distribution function which reflects at each point in the space the importance of that point to the agent. The agent updates dynamically this function according to(1) his relation with the other agent, (2) his face orientation, and(3) the evolution of the relationship over time as a stranger agent may become a friend. We demonstrate the concept on a multi-agent platform and show that space-aware agents exhibit better natural behavior

Correlation of Feeding Supplementary Food with Nutritional Status of Baduta

Tindakan peningkatan status gizi Baduta melalui pemberian pemberian MP-ASI dapat menurunkan angka kematian anak. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui hubungan pola pemberian MP-ASI dengan status gizi Baduta di wilayah kerja Puskesmas Bolou, Kabupaten Sabu Rajua. Jenis Penelitian ini adalah penelitian kuantitatif dengan desain penelitian cross sectional study dengan pendekatan observasional analitik. Sampel penelitian berjumlah 60 orang yang diperoleh melalui teknik stratified random sampling. Analisis data yang digunakan adalah analisis univariat dan bivariat dengan uji statistik Chi Square. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan adanya hubungan antara Pola Pemberian MP-ASI dengan status gizi BB/U (p=0,000) dan Status Gizi PB/U (p=0,018) pada baduta di wilayah kerja Puskesmas Bolou, Kabupaten Sabu Rajua. Petugas kesehatan diharapkan dapat melakukan sosialisasi terkait jenis maupun jumlah bahan makanan yang penting dan bergizi bagi baduta

Text to image synthesis for improved image captioning

Generating textual descriptions of images has been an important topic in computer vision and natural language processing. A number of techniques based on deep learning have been proposed on this topic. These techniques use human-annotated images for training and testing the models. These models require a large number of training data to perform at their full potential. Collecting human generated images with associative captions is expensive and time-consuming. In this paper, we propose an image captioning method that uses both real and synthetic data for training and testing the model. We use a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) based text to image generator to generate synthetic images. We use an attention-based image captioning method trained on both real and synthetic images to generate the captions. We demonstrate the results of our models using both qualitative and quantitative analysis on popularly used evaluation metrics. We show that our experimental results achieve two fold benefits of our proposed work: i) it demonstrates the effectiveness of image captioning for synthetic images, and ii) it further improves the quality of the generated captions for real images, understandably because we use additional images for training

Catalysis of Proton Reduction by a [BO_4]-Bridged Dicobalt Glyoxime

We report the preparation of a dicobalt compound with two singly proton-bridged cobaloxime units linked by a central [BO_4] bridge. Reaction of a doubly proton-bridged cobaloxime complex with trimethyl borate afforded the compound in good yield. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction studies confirmed the bridging nature of the [BO_4] moiety. Using electrochemical methods, the dicobalt complex was found to be an electrocatalyst for proton reduction in acetonitrile solution. Notably, the overpotential for proton reduction (954 mV) was found to be higher than in the cases of two analogous single-site cobalt glyoximes under virtually identical conditions

The epidemiology of gonorrhoea, chlamydial infection and syphilis in four African cities.

OBJECTIVES: To compare the epidemiology of gonorrhoea, chlamydial infection and syphilis in four cities in sub-Saharan Africa; two with a high prevalence of HIV infection (Kisumu, Kenya and Ndola, Zambia), and two with a relatively low HIV prevalence (Cotonou, Benin and Yaoundé, Cameroon). DESIGN: Cross-sectional study, using standardized methods, including a standardized questionnaire and standardized laboratory tests, in four cities in sub-Saharan Africa. METHODS: In each city, a random sample of about 2000 adults aged 15-49 years was taken. Consenting men and women were interviewed about their socio-demographic characteristics and their sexual behaviour, and were tested for HIV, syphilis, herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2), gonorrhoea, chlamydial infection, and (women only) Trichomonas vaginalis infection. Risk factor analyses were carried out for chlamydial infection and syphilis seroreactivity. RESULTS: The prevalence of gonorrhoea ranged between 0% in men in Kisumu and 2.7% in women in Yaoundé. Men and women in Yaoundé had the highest prevalence of chlamydial infection (5.9 and 9.4%, respectively). In the other cities, the prevalence of chlamydial infection ranged between 1.3% in women in Cotonou and 4.5% in women in Kisumu. In Ndola, the prevalence of syphilis seroreactivity was over 10% in both men and women; it was around 6% in Yaoundé, 3-4% in Kisumu, and 1-2% in Cotonou. Chlamydial infection was associated with rate of partner change for both men and women, and with young age for women. At the population level, the prevalence of chlamydial infection correlated well with reported rates of partner change. Positive syphilis serology was associated with rate of partner change and with HSV-2 infection. The latter association could be due to biological interaction between syphilis and HSV-2 or to residual confounding by sexual behaviour. At the population level, there was no correlation between prevalence of syphilis seroreactivity and reported rates of partner change. CONCLUSION: Differences in prevalence of chlamydial infection could be explained by differences in reported sexual behaviour, but the variations in prevalence of syphilis seroreactivity remained unexplained. More research is needed to better understand the epidemiology of sexually transmitted infections in Africa