Disease Morbidity and Cost Analysis Associated with Laboratory-Confirmed Influenza Among Children <15 Years in South Korea, 2004–2007

Background: The available opinions regarding participation do not appear to be applicableto adults with visual and severe or profound intellectual disabilities (VSPID). Because a cleardefinition and operationalization are lacking, it is difficult for support professionals to givemeaning to participation for adults with VSPID. Aims: The purpose of the present study was to develop a definition and operationalizationof the concept of participation of adults with VSPID. Methods: Parents or family members, professionals, and experts participated in an onlineconcept mapping procedure. This procedure includes generating statements, clusteringthem, and rating their importance. The data were analyzed quantitatively using multidi-mensional scaling and qualitatively with triangulation. Results: A total of 53 participants generated 319 statements of which 125 were clusteredand rated. The final cluster map of the statements contained seven clusters: (1) Experienceand discover; (2) Inclusion; (3) Involvement; (4) Leisure and recreation; (5) Communica-tion and being understood; (6) Social relations; and (7) Self-management and autonomy.The average importance rating of the statements varied from 6.49 to 8.95. A definition ofparticipation of this population was developed which included these seven clusters. Conclusions: The combination of the developed definition, the clusters, and the statementsin these clusters, derived from the perceptions of parents or family members, professionals,and experts, can be employed to operationalize the construct of participation of adults withVSPID. This operationalization supports professionals in their ability to give meaning toparticipation in these adults. Future research will focus on using the operationalization asa checklist of participation for adults with VSPID

Experimental and analytical assessment of ductility in lightly reinforced concrete members

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Engineering Structures. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2010 Elsevier B.V.This paper is concerned with the ultimate behaviour of lightly reinforced concrete members under extreme loading conditions. Although the consideration given to the assessment of ductility is of general relevance to various applications, it is of particular importance to conditions resembling those occurring during severe building fires. The main purpose of the investigation is to examine the failure of idealised members representing isolated strips within composite floor slabs which become lightly reinforced in a simulated fire situation due to the early loss of the steel deck. An experimental study, focusing on the failure state associated with rupture of the reinforcement in idealised concrete members, is presented. The tests enable direct assessment of the influence of a number of important parameters such as the reinforcement type, properties and ratio on the ultimate response. The results of several tests also facilitate a detailed examination of the distribution of bond stresses along the length. After describing the experimental arrangements and discussing the main test results, the paper introduces a simplified analytical model that can be used to represent the member response up to failure. The model is validated and calibrated through comparisons against the test results as well as more detailed nonlinear finite element simulations. The results and observations from this investigation offer an insight into the key factors that govern the ultimate behaviour. More importantly, the analytical model permits the development of simple expressions which capture the influence of salient parameters such as bond characteristics and reinforcement properties, for predicting the ductility of this type of member. With due consideration of the findings from other complementary experimental and analytical studies on full slab elements under ambient and elevated temperatures, this work represents a proposed basis for developing quantified failure criteria.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC

Modelling non-dust fluids in cosmology

Currently, most of the numerical simulations of structure formation use Newtonian gravity. When modelling pressureless dark matter, or `dust', this approach gives the correct results for scales much smaller than the cosmological horizon, but for scenarios in which the fluid has pressure this is no longer the case. In this article, we present the correspondence of perturbations in Newtonian and cosmological perturbation theory, showing exact mathematical equivalence for pressureless matter, and giving the relativistic corrections for matter with pressure. As an example, we study the case of scalar field dark matter which features non-zero pressure perturbations. We discuss some problems which may arise when evolving the perturbations in this model with Newtonian numerical simulations and with CMB Boltzmann codes.Comment: 5 pages; v2: typos corrected and refs added, submitted version; v3: version to appear in JCA

Comparative genome analysis of multiple vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium isolated from two fatal cases

Enterococcus faecium is both a commensal of the human intestinal tract and an opportunistic pathogen. The increasing incidence of enterococcal infections is mainly due to the ability of this organism to develop resistance to multiple antibiotics, including vancomycin. The aim of this study was to perform comparative genome analyses on four vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VREfm) strains isolated from two fatal cases in a tertiary hospital in Malaysia. Two sequence types, ST80 and ST203, were identified which belong to the clinically important clonal complex (CC) 17. This is the first report on the emergence of ST80 strains in Malaysia. Three of the studied strains (VREr5, VREr6, VREr7) were each isolated from different body sites of a single patient (patient Y) and had different PFGE patterns. While VREr6 and VREr7 were phenotypically and genotypically similar, the initial isolate, VREr5, was found to be more similar to VRE2 isolated from another patient (patient X), in terms of the genome contents, sequence types and phylogenomic relationship. Both the clinical records and genome sequence data suggested that patient Y was infected by multiple strains from different clones and the strain that infected patient Y could have derived from the same clone from patient X. These multidrug resistant strains harbored a number of virulence genes such as the epa locus and pilus-associated genes which could enhance their persistence. Apart from that, a homolog of E. faecalis bee locus was identified in VREr5 which might be involved in biofilm formation. Overall, our comparative genomic analyses had provided insight into the genetic relatedness, as well as the virulence potential, of the four clinical strains

Amyloid-Related memory decline in preclinical Alzheimer’s Disease is dependent on APOE ε4 and is detectable over 18-Months

High levels of β-amyloid (Aβ) in the brain and carriage of the APOE ε4 allele have each been linked to cognitive impairment in cognitively normal (CN) older adults. However, the relationship between these two biomarkers and cognitive decline is unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between cerebral Aβ level, APOE ε4 carrier status, and cognitive decline over 18 months, in 317 cognitively healthy (CN) older adults (47.6% males, 52.4% females) aged between 60 and 89 years (Mean = 69.9, SD = 6.8). Cognition was assessed using the Cogstate Brief Battery (CBB) and the California Verbal Learning Test, Second Edition (CVLT-II). Planned comparisons indicated that CN older adults with high Aβ who were also APOE ε4 carriers demonstrated the most pronounced decline in learning and working memory. In CN older adults who were APOE ε4 non-carriers, high Aβ was unrelated to cognitive decline in learning and working memory. Carriage of APOE ε4 in CN older adults with low Aβ was associated with a significantly increased rate of decline in learning and unexpectedly, improved cognitive performance on measures of verbal episodic memory over 18 months. These results suggest that Aβ and APOE ε4 interact to increase the rate of cognitive decline in CN older adults and provide further support for the use of Aβ and APOE ε4 as biomarkers of early Alzheimer’s disease

ATOMIC HYDROGEN-DRIVEN SIZE CONTROL OF CATALYTIC NANOPARTICLES FOR SINGLE-WALLED CARBON NANOTUBE GROWTH

International audienceThe effects of an atomic hydrogen (Hat ) pretreatment of the catalyst layer on the low tem- perature growth of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) have been investigated using a modified catalytic chemical vapor deposition system. Well-defined and isolated individual Fe nanoparticles as a catalyst are successfully formed on the defects with high trapping energy which are created on the Al2O3 surface by Hat pretreatment, yielding highly dense SWCNTs. The pretreatment mechanism of Hat , compared to H2 , is also discussed. It was also found that the quality of SWCNTs can be enhanced when Hat is flowed with CH4 during nanotubes growth at low temperature. In this case, the undesired carbon products and defects on catalyst seeds and nanotube walls can be selectively removed by Hat . Therefore it is essential to use Hat in the pretreatment stage for increasing catalytic activity and to keep the size of nanoparticles in the nm range. Hat can also be employed in growth stage for enhancing SWCNTs quality and density at low temperature

Effective Electromagnetic Lagrangian at Finite Temperature and Density in the Electroweak Model

Using the exact propagators in a constant magnetic field, the effective electromagnetic Lagrangian at finite temperature and density is calculated to all orders in the field strength B within the framework of the complete electroweak model, in the weak coupling limit. The partition function and free energy are obtained explicitly and the finite temperature effective coupling is derived in closed form. Some implications of this result, potentially interesting to astrophysics and cosmology, are discussed.Comment: 14 pages, Revtex

Consistent perturbations in an imperfect fluid

We present a new prescription for analysing cosmological perturbations in a more-general class of scalar-field dark-energy models where the energy-momentum tensor has an imperfect-fluid form. This class includes Brans-Dicke models, f(R) gravity, theories with kinetic gravity braiding and generalised galileons. We employ the intuitive language of fluids, allowing us to explicitly maintain a dependence on physical and potentially measurable properties. We demonstrate that hydrodynamics is not always a valid description for describing cosmological perturbations in general scalar-field theories and present a consistent alternative that nonetheless utilises the fluid language. We apply this approach explicitly to a worked example: k-essence non-minimally coupled to gravity. This is the simplest case which captures the essential new features of these imperfect-fluid models. We demonstrate the generic existence of a new scale separating regimes where the fluid is perfect and imperfect. We obtain the equations for the evolution of dark-energy density perturbations in both these regimes. The model also features two other known scales: the Compton scale related to the breaking of shift symmetry and the Jeans scale which we show is determined by the speed of propagation of small scalar-field perturbations, i.e. causality, as opposed to the frequently used definition of the ratio of the pressure and energy-density perturbations.Comment: 40 pages plus appendices. v2 reflects version accepted for publication in JCAP (new summary of notation, extra commentary on choice of gauge and frame, extra references to literature

Sulfonated Styrene-(ethylene-co-butylene)-styrene/Montmorillonite Clay Nanocomposites: Synthesis, Morphology, and Properties

Sulfonated styrene-(ethylene-butylene)-styrene triblock copolymer (SSEBS) was synthesized by reaction of acetyl sulfate with SEBS. SSESB-clay nanocomposites were then prepared from hydrophilic Na-montmorillonite (MT) and organically (quaternary amine) modified hydrophobic nanoclay (OMT) at very low loading. SEBS did not show improvement in properties with MT-based nanocomposites. On sulfonation (3 and 6 weight%) of SEBS, hydrophilic MT clay-based nanocomposites exhibited better mechanical, dynamic mechanical, and thermal properties, and also controlled water–methanol mixture uptake and permeation and AC resistance. Microstructure determined by X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy due to better dispersion of MT nanoclay particles and interaction of MT with SSEBS matrix was responsible for this effect. The resulting nanocomposites have potential as proton transfer membranes for Fuel Cell applications