吸烟的成本和代价 : 社会成本与对财政预算的影响计算方式的比较

Title in Traditional Chinese: 吸煙的成本和代價:社會成本與對財政預算的影響計算方式的比較Journal title in Traditional Chinese: 中國藥物濫用防治雜誌2004-2005 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe

Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in dromedary camels in Nigeria, 2015

Evidence of current and past Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) infection in dromedary camels slaughtered at an abattoir in Kano, Nigeria in January 2015, was sought by reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) and serology. MERS-CoV RNA was detected in 14 (11%) of 132 nasal swabs and antibody in 126 (96%) of 131 serum samples. Phylogenetic analyses demonstrate that the viruses in Nigeria are genetically distinct from those reported in the Arabian peninsula.published_or_final_versio

Ten Years of Experience Training Non-Physician Anesthesia Providers in Haiti.

Surgery is increasingly recognized as an effective means of treating a proportion of the global burden of disease, especially in resource-limited countries. Often non-physicians, such as nurses, provide the majority of anesthesia; however, their training and formal supervision is often of low priority or even non-existent. To increase the number of safe anesthesia providers in Haiti, Médecins Sans Frontières has trained nurse anesthetists (NAs) for over 10 years. This article describes the challenges, outcomes, and future directions of this training program. From 1998 to 2008, 24 students graduated. Nineteen (79%) continue to work as NAs in Haiti and 5 (21%) have emigrated. In 2008, NAs were critical in providing anesthesia during a post-hurricane emergency where they performed 330 procedures. Mortality was 0.3% and not associated with lack of anesthesiologist supervision. The completion rate of this training program was high and the majority of graduates continue to work as nurse anesthetists in Haiti. Successful training requires a setting with a sufficient volume and diversity of operations, appropriate anesthesia equipment, a structured and comprehensive training program, and recognition of the training program by the national ministry of health and relevant professional bodies. Preliminary outcomes support findings elsewhere that NAs can be a safe and effective alternative where anesthesiologists are scarce. Training non-physician anesthetists is a feasible and important way to scale up surgical services resource limited settings

Longitudinal study of middle east respiratory syndrome coronavirus infection in dromedary camel herds in Saudi Arabia, 2014–2015

Two herds of dromedary camels were longitudinally sampled with nasal and rectal swabs and serum, between September 2014 and May 2015, and the samples were tested for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus RNA and antibodies. Evidence of MERS-CoV infection was confirmed in one herd on the basis of detection of virus RNA in nasal swabs from three camels and significant increases in the antibody titers from three others. The three viruses were genetically identical, thus indicating introduction of a single virus into this herd. There was evidence of reinfection of camels that were previously seropositive, thus suggesting that prior infection does not provide complete immunity from reinfection, a finding that is relevant to camel vaccination strategies as a means to prevent zoonotic transmission.published_or_final_versio

Frequency tracking by method of least squares combined with channel estimation for OFDM over mobile wireless channels

[[abstract]]To track frequency offset and time-varying channel in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems over mobile wireless channels, a common technique is, based on one OFDM training block sample, to apply the maximum-likelihood (ML) algorithm to perform joint frequency tracking and channel estimation employing some adaptive iteration processes. The major drawback of such joint estimation techniques is the local extrema problem arising from the highly nonlinear nature of the log-likelihood function. This makes the joint estimation process very difficult and complicated, and many a time the results are not very satisfactory if the algorithm is not well designed. In this study, rather than using the ML algorithm, we shall apply the method of least squares (LS) for frequency tracking utilizing repeated OFDM training blocks. As will be seen, by using such an LS approach, the frequency offset estimation requires no channel knowledge. The channel state can be estimated separately after the LS frequency offset correction. This not only circumvents the local extrema complication, but also obviates the need for the lengthy adaptive iteration process of joint estimation thus greatly simplifies the entire estimation process. Most importantly, our technique can achieve excellent estimation performance as compared to the usual ML algorithms.[[incitationindex]]SCI[[booktype]]紙

A novel application of quantile regression for identification of biomarkers exemplified by equine cartilage microarray data

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Identification of biomarkers among thousands of genes arrayed for disease classification has been the subject of considerable research in recent years. These studies have focused on disease classification, comparing experimental groups of effected to normal patients. Related experiments can be done to identify tissue-restricted biomarkers, genes with a high level of expression in one tissue compared to other tissue types in the body.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this study, cartilage was compared with ten other body tissues using a two color array experimental design. Thirty-seven probe sets were identified as cartilage biomarkers. Of these, 13 (35%) have existing annotation associated with cartilage including several well-established cartilage biomarkers. These genes comprise a useful database from which novel targets for cartilage biology research can be selected. We determined cartilage specific Z-scores based on the observed M to classify genes with Z-scores ≥ 1.96 in all ten cartilage/tissue comparisons as cartilage-specific genes.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Quantile regression is a promising method for the analysis of two color array experiments that compare multiple samples in the absence of biological replicates, thereby limiting quantifiable error. We used a nonparametric approach to reveal the relationship between percentiles of M and A, where M is log₂(R/G) and A is 0.5 log₂(RG) with R representing the gene expression level in cartilage and G representing the gene expression level in one of the other 10 tissues. Then we performed linear quantile regression to identify genes with a cartilage-restricted pattern of expression.</p

Three-point correlators for giant magnons

Three-point correlation functions in the strong-coupling regime of the AdS/CFT correspondence can be analyzed within a semiclassical approximation when two of the vertex operators correspond to heavy string states having large quantum numbers while the third vertex corresponds to a light state with fixed charges. We consider the case where the heavy string states are chosen to be giant magnon solitons with either a single or two different angular momenta, for various different choices of light string states.Comment: 15 pages. Latex. v2: Misprints corrected. Published versio

Polycation-π Interactions Are a Driving Force for Molecular Recognition by an Intrinsically Disordered Oncoprotein Family

Molecular recognition by intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) commonly involves specific localized contacts and target-induced disorder to order transitions. However, some IDPs remain disordered in the bound state, a phenomenon coined "fuzziness", often characterized by IDP polyvalency, sequence-insensitivity and a dynamic ensemble of disordered bound-state conformations. Besides the above general features, specific biophysical models for fuzzy interactions are mostly lacking. The transcriptional activation domain of the Ewing's Sarcoma oncoprotein family (EAD) is an IDP that exhibits many features of fuzziness, with multiple EAD aromatic side chains driving molecular recognition. Considering the prevalent role of cation-π interactions at various protein-protein interfaces, we hypothesized that EAD-target binding involves polycation- π contacts between a disordered EAD and basic residues on the target. Herein we evaluated the polycation-π hypothesis via functional and theoretical interrogation of EAD variants. The experimental effects of a range of EAD sequence variations, including aromatic number, aromatic density and charge perturbations, all support the cation-π model. Moreover, the activity trends observed are well captured by a coarse-grained EAD chain model and a corresponding analytical model based on interaction between EAD aromatics and surface cations of a generic globular target. EAD-target binding, in the context of pathological Ewing's Sarcoma oncoproteins, is thus seen to be driven by a balance between EAD conformational entropy and favorable EAD-target cation-π contacts. Such a highly versatile mode of molecular recognition offers a general conceptual framework for promiscuous target recognition by polyvalent IDPs. © 2013 Song et al