A new analysis method for polymer-confined concrete columns

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Cost-effectiveness of a screening strategy for Q fever among pregnant women in risk areas: a clustered randomized controlled trial

Contains fulltext : 87399.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)BACKGROUND: In The Netherlands the largest human Q fever outbreak ever reported in the literature is currently ongoing with more than 2300 notified cases in 2009. Pregnant women are particularly at risk as Q fever during pregnancy may cause maternal and obstetric complications. Since the majority of infected pregnant women are asymptomatic, a screening strategy might be of great value to reduce Q fever related complications. We designed a trial to assess the (cost-)effectiveness of a screening program for Q fever in pregnant women living in risks areas in The Netherlands. METHODS/DESIGN: We will conduct a clustered randomized controlled trial in which primary care midwife centres in Q fever risk areas are randomized to recruit pregnant women for either the control group or the intervention group. In both groups a blood sample is taken around 20 weeks postmenstrual age. In the intervention group, this sample is immediately analyzed by indirect immunofluorescence assay for detection of IgG and IgM antibodies using a sensitive cut-off level of 1:32. In case of an active Q fever infection, antibiotic treatment is recommended and serological follow up is performed. In the control group, serum is frozen for analysis after delivery. The primary endpoint is a maternal (chronic Q fever or reactivation) or obstetric complication (low birth weight, preterm delivery or fetal death) in Q fever positive women. Secondary aims pertain to the course of infection in pregnant women, diagnostic accuracy of laboratory tests used for screening, histo-pathological abnormalities of the placenta of Q fever positive women, side effects of therapy, and costs. The analysis will be according to the intention-to-screen principle, and cost-effectiveness analysis will be performed by comparing the direct and indirect costs between the intervention and control group. DISCUSSION: With this study we aim to provide insight into the balance of risks of undetected and detected Q fever during pregnancy. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov, protocol record NL30340.042.09

A First Generation Microsatellite- and SNP-Based Linkage Map of Jatropha

Jatropha curcas is a potential plant species for biodiesel production. However, its seed yield is too low for profitable production of biodiesel. To improve the productivity, genetic improvement through breeding is essential. A linkage map is an important component in molecular breeding. We established a first-generation linkage map using a mapping panel containing two backcross populations with 93 progeny. We mapped 506 markers (216 microsatellites and 290 SNPs from ESTs) onto 11 linkage groups. The total length of the map was 1440.9 cM with an average marker space of 2.8 cM. Blasting of 222 Jatropha ESTs containing polymorphic SSR or SNP markers against EST-databases revealed that 91.0%, 86.5% and 79.2% of Jatropha ESTs were homologous to counterparts in castor bean, poplar and Arabidopsis respectively. Mapping 192 orthologous markers to the assembled whole genome sequence of Arabidopsis thaliana identified 38 syntenic blocks and revealed that small linkage blocks were well conserved, but often shuffled. The first generation linkage map and the data of comparative mapping could lay a solid foundation for QTL mapping of agronomic traits, marker-assisted breeding and cloning genes responsible for phenotypic variation

Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 310 diseases and injuries, 1990-2015:a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015

Background Non-fatal outcomes of disease and injury increasingly detract from the ability of the world's population to live in full health, a trend largely attributable to an epidemiological transition in many countries from causes affecting children, to non-communicable diseases (NCDs) more common in adults. For the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2015 (GBD 2015), we estimated the incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for diseases and injuries at the global, regional, and national scale over the period of 1990 to 2015.Methods We estimated incidence and prevalence by age, sex, cause, year, and geography with a wide range of updated and standardised analytical procedures. Improvements from GBD 2013 included the addition of new data sources, updates to literature reviews for 85 causes, and the identification and inclusion of additional studies published up to November, 2015, to expand the database used for estimation of non-fatal outcomes to 60 900 unique data sources. Prevalence and incidence by cause and sequelae were determined with DisMod-MR 2.1, an improved version of the DisMod-MR Bayesian meta-regression tool first developed for GBD 2010 and GBD 2013. For some causes, we used alternative modelling strategies where the complexity of the disease was not suited to DisMod-MR 2.1 or where incidence and prevalence needed to be determined from other data. For GBD 2015 we created a summary indicator that combines measures of income per capita, educational attainment, and fertility (the Socio-demographic Index [SDI]) and used it to compare observed patterns of health loss to the expected pattern for countries or locations with similar SDI scores.Findings We generated 9.3 billion estimates from the various combinations of prevalence, incidence, and YLDs for causes, sequelae, and impairments by age, sex, geography, and year. In 2015, two causes had acute incidences in excess of 1 billion: upper respiratory infections (17.2 billion, 95% uncertainty interval [UI] 15.4-19.2 billion) and diarrhoeal diseases (2.39 billion, 2.30-2.50 billion). Eight causes of chronic disease and injury each affected more than 10% of the world's population in 2015: permanent caries, tension-type headache, iron-deficiency anaemia, age-related and other hearing loss, migraine, genital herpes, refraction and accommodation disorders, and ascariasis. The impairment that affected the greatest number of people in 2015 was anaemia, with 2.36 billion (2.35-2.37 billion) individuals affected. The second and third leading impairments by number of individuals affected were hearing loss and vision loss, respectively. Between 2005 and 2015, there was little change in the leading causes of years lived with disability (YLDs) on a global basis. NCDs accounted for 18 of the leading 20 causes of age-standardised YLDs on a global scale. Where rates were decreasing, the rate of decrease for YLDs was slower than that of years of life lost (YLLs) for nearly every cause included in our analysis. For low SDI geographies, Group 1 causes typically accounted for 20-30% of total disability, largely attributable to nutritional deficiencies, malaria, neglected tropical diseases, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis. Lower back and neck pain was the leading global cause of disability in 2015 in most countries. The leading cause was sense organ disorders in 22 countries in Asia and Africa and one in central Latin America; diabetes in four countries in Oceania; HIV/AIDS in three southern sub-Saharan African countries; collective violence and legal intervention in two north African and Middle Eastern countries; iron-deficiency anaemia in Somalia and Venezuela; depression in Uganda; onchoceriasis in Liberia; and other neglected tropical diseases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.Interpretation Ageing of the world's population is increasing the number of people living with sequelae of diseases and injuries. Shifts in the epidemiological profile driven by socioeconomic change also contribute to the continued increase in years lived with disability (YLDs) as well as the rate of increase in YLDs. Despite limitations imposed by gaps in data availability and the variable quality of the data available, the standardised and comprehensive approach of the GBD study provides opportunities to examine broad trends, compare those trends between countries or subnational geographies, benchmark against locations at similar stages of development, and gauge the strength or weakness of the estimates available. Copyright (C) The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.</p

The Hong Kong New Literacies Project: Enhancing English language education for the 21st century

The proliferation of mass media, popular culture, digital and mobile technologies has resulted in profound changes to everyday communication and the nature of texts. New multimodal and dynamic forms of texts and textual practices, or ‘new literacies,’ have emerged in the 21 st century (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006). Outside school, young peoples’ lives are infused with digitally-mediated literacies and popular cultural texts, whereas their school lives tend to be dominated by single mode, static texts which give little recognition to the powerful role of pleasure and desire in engagement in literacy. This paper introduces The Hong Kong New Literacies Project, a collaborative action research project which aims to prepare English teachers in Hong Kong primary and secondary schools to meet the new cognit ive and semiotic demands of mult imodal literacies in the 21st century. The project addresses three elements of new literacies in English language education: multimodality, popular culture, and critical literacy. We report on the first stage of the project, in which teachers and students from twelve primary and secondary schools were interviewed and surveyed to gain information about their engagement with new media and communications technologies and various forms of popular culture and their conceptions of literacy and literacy education.link_to_OA_fulltex

Cognitive-linguistic profiles of Chinese improved dyslexic adolescent readers

Poster Session 2: no. 2-40This study was to identify cognitive-linguistic abilities that might distinguish Hong Kong Chinese improved adolescent readers with developmental dyslexia from non-improved. A total of 84 adolescent readers with 28 improved dyslexics, 28 non-improved dyslexics, and 28 average readers participated and were administered measures of morphological skills, visual-orthographic skills, rapid naming skills, verbal working memory, reading comprehension, writing, word reading, word dictation, and one-minute word reading. Results showed that the improved dyslexics performed better than the non-improved dyslexics in visual-orthographic, word reading, one-minute reading, writing, and reading comprehension. In addition, the improved dyslexics showed comparable performance in the measures of morphological skills, one-minute reading, and reading comprehension to their average readers. Among these measures, morphological and visual-orthographic skills showed the greatest power in discriminating improved and non-improved dyslexics. Findings underscore the importance of cognitive-linguistic processes underlying the manifestations of improved and non-improved dyslexia in Chinese adolescent readers.link_to_OA_fulltex