2,131 research outputs found

    Decreasing Incidence and Changes in Serotype Distribution of Invasive Pneumococcal Disease in Persons Aged Under 18 Years Since Introduction of 10-Valent and 13-Valent Conjugate Vaccines in Portugal, July 2008 to June 2012

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    The 10-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV10) became available in Portugal in mid-2009 and the 13-valent vaccine (PCV13) in early 2010. The incidence of invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) in patients aged under 18 years decreased from 8.19 cases per 100,000 in 2008–09 to 4.52/100,000 in 2011–12. However, IPD incidence due to the serotypes included in the 7-valent conjugate vaccine (PCV7) in children aged under two years remained constant. This fall resulted from significant decreases in the number of cases due to: (i) the additional serotypes included in PCV10 and PCV13 (1, 5, 7F; from 37.6% to 20.6%), particularly serotype 1 in older children; and (ii) the additional serotypes included in PCV13 (3, 6A, 19A; from 31.6% to 16.2%), particularly serotype 19A in younger children. The decrease in serotype 19A before vaccination indicates that it was not triggered by PCV13 administration. The decrease of serotype 1 in all groups, concomitant with the introduction of PCV10, is also unlikely to have been triggered by vaccination, although PCVs may have intensified and supported these trends. PCV13 serotypes remain major causes of IPD, accounting for 63.2% of isolates recovered in Portugal in 2011–12, highlighting the potential role of enhanced vaccination in reducing paediatric IPD in Portugal

    Tool Condition Monitoring of Single-point Dressing Operation by Digital Signal Processing of AE and AI

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    Abstract This work aims at determining the right moment to stop single-point dressing the grinding wheel in order to optimize the grinding process as a whole. Acoustic emission signals and signal processing tools are used as primary approach. An acoustic emission (AE) sensor was connected to a signal processing module. The AE sensor was attached to the dresser holder, which was specifically built to perform dressing tests. In this work there were three types of test where the edit parameters of each dressing test are: the passes number, the dressing speed, the width of action of the dresser, the dressing time and the sharpness. Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) technique is employed to classify and predict the best moment for stopping the dressing operation. During the ANNs use, the results from Supervised Neural Networks and Unsupervised Neural Networks are compared

    Vineyard yeld estimation by VINBOT robot - preliminary results with the white variety Viosinho

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    Nowadays it is recognized that vineyard yield estimation can bring several benefits to all the vine and wine industry and, consequently, there is a strong demand for fast and reliable yield estimation methods. Recently a strong effort has been made on developing machine vision tools to automatically estimate vineyard yields evolving several research teams worldwide. In this paper we aim to present preliminary results obtained in the frame of an European research project (VINBOT: “Autonomous cloud-computing vineyard robot to optimise yield management and wine quality”) focus on yield estimation. A ground truth evaluation trial was set up in an experimental vineyard with the white variety Viosinho, trained on a vertical shoot positioning system and spur pruned. A sample of contiguous vines was labeled and submitted to a detailed assessment of vegetative and reproductive data to feed a viticulture data library. The vines were scanned during the ripening period of the 2015 season by the VINBOT sensor head composed with a set of sensors capable of capturing vineyard images and 3D data. Ground truth data was used to relate with images taken by the sensors and to test algorithms of image analysis. In this paper we present and discuss the relationships between actual and estimated yield computed using the surface occupied by the grape clusters in the images. Our preliminary results showed that, despite of a slight underestimation of the ground truth, caused mainly by cluster occlusion, when the canopy density allows visualization of most part of the clusters, the yield can be estimated by machine vision with a high fidelity. Further research is ongoing to test those devices and methodologies in other varieties and to improve the estimation accuracyinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

    Decreasing incidence and changes in serotype distribution of invasive pneumococcal disease in persons aged under 18 years since introduction of 10-valent and 13-valent conjugate vaccines in Portugal, July 2008 to June 2012

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    Eurosurveillance. © 2007 - 2021. All rights reservedThe 10-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV10) became available in Portugal in mid-2009 and the 13-valent vaccine (PCV13) in early 2010. The incidence of invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) in patients aged under 18 years decreased from 8.19 cases per 100,000 in 2008–09 to 4.52/100,000 in 2011–12. However, IPD incidence due to the serotypes included in the 7-valent conjugate vaccine (PCV7) in children aged under two years remained constant. This fall resulted from significant decreases in the number of cases due to: (i) the additional serotypes included in PCV10 and PCV13 (1, 5, 7F; from 37.6% to 20.6%), particularly serotype 1 in older children; and (ii) the additional serotypes included in PCV13 (3, 6A, 19A; from 31.6% to 16.2%), particularly serotype 19A in younger children. The decrease in serotype 19A before vaccination indicates that it was not triggered by PCV13 administration. The decrease of serotype 1 in all groups, concomitant with the introduction of PCV10, is also unlikely to have been triggered by vaccination, although PCVs may have intensified and supported these trends. PCV13 serotypes remain major causes of IPD, accounting for 63.2% of isolates recovered in Portugal in 2011–12, highlighting the potential role of enhanced vaccination in reducing paediatric IPD in Portugal.S.I. Aguiar and A.N. Horácio were supported by grants SFRH/BPD/78376/2011and SFRH/BD/81205/2011, respectively, from Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Portugal. This work was partially supported by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Portugal (PTDC/DTP-EPI/1759/2012) and unrestricted research grants from Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
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