Clinical presentation and outcome of Tuberculosis in Human Immunodeficiency Virus infected children on anti-retroviral therapy

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The tuberculosis (TB) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemics are poorly controlled in sub-Saharan Africa, where highly active antiretroviral treatment (HAART) has become more freely available. Little is known about the clinical presentation and outcome of TB in HIV-infected children on HAART.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We performed a comprehensive file review of all children who commenced HAART at Tygerberg Children's Hospital from January 2003 through December 2005.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Data from 290 children were analyzed; 137 TB episodes were recorded in 136 children; 116 episodes occurred before and 21 after HAART initiation; 10 episodes were probably related to immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome (IRIS). The number of TB cases per 100 patient years were 53.3 during the 9 months prior to HAART initiation, and 6.4 during post HAART follow-up [odds ratio (OR) 16.6; 95% confidence interval (CI) 12.5–22.4]. A positive outcome was achieved in 97/137 (71%) episodes, 6 (4%) cases experienced no improvement, 16 (12%) died and the outcome could not be established in 18 (13%). Mortality was less in children on HAART (1/21; 4.8%) compared to those not on HAART (15/116; 12.9%).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We recorded an extremely high incidence of TB among HIV-infected children, especially prior to HAART initiation. Starting HAART at an earlier stage is likely to reduce morbidity and mortality related to TB, particularly in TB-endemic areas. Management frequently deviated from standard guidelines, but outcomes in general were good.</p

A web browsing workload model for simulation

Bibliography: p. 163-167.The simulation of packet switched networks depends on accurate web workload models as input for network models. We derived a workload model for traffic generated by an individual browsing the web. We derived the workload model by studying packet traces of web traffic generated by individuals browsing the web on a campus network

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Email Message Interarrival Time Analysis

The arrival pattern of email messages at an email server shows daily and weekly arrival patterns. The interarrival distribution is skewed to the right and has a large variance which suggests heavy-tailed behaviour. Further analysis shows that although the data is severely skewed the tail of the distribution does not follow a power rate and is therefore not heavy-tailed

Cellular Networks: Past, Present, and Future

Mobile communication is the fastest growing field in the telecommunications industry. The most successful mobile communication system is the cellular radio network. A cellular radio network is used to transmit voice and data. Data transmission over a cellular network is a new service, which makes data networks accessible from mobile terminals via cellular telephones. This article discusses cellular radio network technology and its applications, especially pertaining to data transmission. Its history, present state, operation and planned future developments are explained

Analyzing Storage System Workloads

Disk storage subsystems have not kept up the speed with processors. Processor performance has been increasing at a much higher rate than that of disk drives. Therefore, I/O subsystem has become a bottleneck in current computer systems. With this in mind the research community is looking into ways of improving the I/O subsystem. IBM and HP are among the organizations doing research and development of high performance storage systems also referred to as Enterprise Storage Systems (ESSs). Much of this effort goes into the evaluation of these systems for correctness and performance. For these evaluations, using simulations or otherwise, to be reliable, there is need to correctly understand and model the disk I/O workloads also known as I/O traffic or physical I/O workloads. Therefore in our work, we analyzed I/O workload traces to derive statistics which can be used as a guide in the (a) modelling of I/O workload and subsequent production of I/O workload representative of the actual I/O workload for evaluation and (b) optimization of the storage systems. Our results show that the distribution of inter-arrival times of I/O requests are heavy-tailed, and that the I/O request sizes are a function of the operating system