Co-trimoxazole prophylaxis in HIV : the evidence

BibliographyHuman immunodeficiency virus (HIV) damages the body’s immune system, making secondary (or opportunistic) infections more common. Treatment and prevention of such infections is integral to the management of patients with HIV infection. Co-trimoxazole is a prophylactic treatment that has a wide range of action against common bacteria, parasites, fungi and yeasts. As part of a minimum care package, UNAIDS/ WHO recommends co-trimoxazole prophylaxis for HIVinfected adults with symptomatic disease (WHO stage II, III or IV), or asymptomatic individuals with CD4 counts ≤500 cells/μl, and for all HIV-positive pregnant women after the first trimester.1 Co-trimoxazole is also recommended for use in children with proven HIV infection and infants exposed to HIV (from 4 - 6 weeks of age until infection with HIV is ruled out).2 The object of this report is to summarise the effects of co-trimoxazole prophylaxis on morbidity and mortality among HIV-infected individuals

In-depth analysis of the Naming Game dynamics: the homogeneous mixing case

Language emergence and evolution has recently gained growing attention through multi-agent models and mathematical frameworks to study their behavior. Here we investigate further the Naming Game, a model able to account for the emergence of a shared vocabulary of form-meaning associations through social/cultural learning. Due to the simplicity of both the structure of the agents and their interaction rules, the dynamics of this model can be analyzed in great detail using numerical simulations and analytical arguments. This paper first reviews some existing results and then presents a new overall understanding.Comment: 30 pages, 19 figures (few in reduced definition). In press in IJMP

Integrated community case management of childhood illness in low- and middle-income countries

The leading causes of mortality globally in children younger than five years of age (under-fives), and particularly in the regions of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and Southern Asia, in 2018 were infectious diseases, including pneumonia (15%), diarrhoea (8%), malaria (5%) and newborn sepsis (7%) (UNICEF 2019). Nutrition-related factors contributed to 45% of under-five deaths (UNICEF 2019). World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), in collaboration with other development partners, have developed an approach – now known as integrated community case management (iCCM) – to bring treatment services for children 'closer to home'. The iCCM approach provides integrated case management services for two or more illnesses – including diarrhoea, pneumonia, malaria, severe acute malnutrition or neonatal sepsis – among under-fives at community level (i.e. outside of healthcare facilities) by lay health workers where there is limited access to health facility-based case management services (WHO/UNICEF 2012)

Hofstadter butterflies of carbon nanotubes: Pseudofractality of the magnetoelectronic spectrum

The electronic spectrum of a two-dimensional square lattice in a perpendicular magnetic field has become known as the Hofstadter butterfly [Hofstadter, Phys. Rev. B 14, 2239 (1976).]. We have calculated quasi-one-dimensional analogs of the Hofstadter butterfly for carbon nanotubes (CNTs). For the case of single-wall CNTs, it is straightforward to implement magnetic fields parallel to the tube axis by means of zone folding in the graphene reciprocal lattice. We have also studied perpendicular magnetic fields which, in contrast to the parallel case, lead to a much richer, pseudofractal spectrum. Moreover, we have investigated magnetic fields piercing double-wall CNTs and found strong signatures of interwall interaction in the resulting Hofstadter butterfly spectrum, which can be understood with the help of a minimal model. Ubiquitous to all perpendicular magnetic field spectra is the presence of cusp catastrophes at specific values of energy and magnetic field. Resolving the density of states along the tube circumference allows recognition of the snake states already predicted for nonuniform magnetic fields in the two-dimensional electron gas. An analytic model of the magnetic spectrum of electrons on a cylindrical surface is used to explain some of the results.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures update to published versio

Calibration of optimal execution of financial transactions in the presence of transient market impact

Trading large volumes of a financial asset in order driven markets requires the use of algorithmic execution dividing the volume in many transactions in order to minimize costs due to market impact. A proper design of an optimal execution strategy strongly depends on a careful modeling of market impact, i.e. how the price reacts to trades. In this paper we consider a recently introduced market impact model (Bouchaud et al., 2004), which has the property of describing both the volume and the temporal dependence of price change due to trading. We show how this model can be used to describe price impact also in aggregated trade time or in real time. We then solve analytically and calibrate with real data the optimal execution problem both for risk neutral and for risk averse investors and we derive an efficient frontier of optimal execution. When we include spread costs the problem must be solved numerically and we show that the introduction of such costs regularizes the solution.Comment: 31 pages, 8 figure

A Crystal Structure of the Bifunctional Antibiotic Simocyclinone D8, Bound to DNA Gyrase

Simocyclinones are bifunctional antibiotics that inhibit bacterial DNA gyrase by preventing DNA binding to the enzyme. We report the crystal structure of the complex formed between the N-terminal domain of the Escherichia coli gyrase A subunit and simocyclinone D8, revealing two binding pockets that separately accommodate the aminocoumarin and polyketide moieties of the antibiotic. These are close to, but distinct from, the quinolone-binding site, consistent with our observations that several mutations in this region confer resistance to both agents. Biochemical studies show that the individual moieties of simocyclinone D8 are comparatively weak inhibitors of gyrase relative to the parent compound, but their combination generates a more potent inhibitor. Our results should facilitate the design of drug molecules that target these unexploited binding pockets

Sharp transition towards shared vocabularies in multi-agent systems

What processes can explain how very large populations are able to converge on the use of a particular word or grammatical construction without global coordination? Answering this question helps to understand why new language constructs usually propagate along an S-shaped curve with a rather sudden transition towards global agreement. It also helps to analyze and design new technologies that support or orchestrate self-organizing communication systems, such as recent social tagging systems for the web. The article introduces and studies a microscopic model of communicating autonomous agents performing language games without any central control. We show that the system undergoes a disorder/order transition, going trough a sharp symmetry breaking process to reach a shared set of conventions. Before the transition, the system builds up non-trivial scale-invariant correlations, for instance in the distribution of competing synonyms, which display a Zipf-like law. These correlations make the system ready for the transition towards shared conventions, which, observed on the time-scale of collective behaviors, becomes sharper and sharper with system size. This surprising result not only explains why human language can scale up to very large populations but also suggests ways to optimize artificial semiotic dynamics.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure

Biofuels: Beneficial or Bad? Should a Ghanaian chief sell his land for biofuel crop cultivation?

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/143190/1/sustainability_2018_oliphantetal_biofuels.pd