Estimation of adult antiretroviral treatment coverage in South Africa

Objectives. To estimate the annual numbers of individualsreceiving antiretroviral treatment in South Africa up to mid-2008, and the coverage of antiretroviral treatment in adultsaccording to various definitions of need.Methods. Antiretroviral coverage is defined as the numberof patients receiving antiretroviral treatment at a point in time, divided by the number needing treatment. Numbers of patients receiving antiretroviral treatment are estimated from public sector data, and data provided by disease management programmes and NGO programmes. The unmet need for treatment in adults is estimated using a Markov model of HIV progression in adults, combined with estimates of annual new HIV infections from a national AIDS and demographic model.Results. By the middle of 2008, 568 000 adults and childrenwere receiving antiretroviral treatment in South Africa, with the public health sector accounting for 79% of this total. Using the current Department of Health criteria for defining antiretroviral eligibility (CD4+ coun

An improved wavelet analysis method for detecting DDoS attacks

Wavelet Analysis method is considered as one of the most efficient methods for detecting DDoS attacks. However, during the peak data communication hours with a large amount of data transactions, this method is required to collect too many samples that will greatly increase the computational complexity. Therefore, the real-time response time as well as the accuracy of attack detection becomes very low. To address the above problem, we propose a new DDoS detection method called Modified Wavelet Analysis method which is based on the existing Isomap algorithm and wavelet analysis. In the paper, we present our new model and algorithm for detecting DDoS attacks and demonstrate the reasons of why we enlarge the Hurst's value of the self-similarity in our new approach. Finally we present an experimental evaluation to demonstrate that the proposed method is more efficient than the other traditional methods based on wavelet analysis. © 2010 IEEE

Prevalence and clinical significance of anti-C1q antibodies in cutaneous and systemic lupus erythematosus

Autoantibodies against C1q are strongly linked to immune-complex disorders like systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Although anti-C1q antibodies have received much interest in the recent years, their biological functions remain unclear. Anti-C1q antibodies are strongly associated with lupus nephritis. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of anti-C1q antibodies in Egyptian lupus patients as well as to evaluate the associations between anti C1q antibodies and clinical and serologic parameters of patients with cutaneous and systemic lupus erythematosus. Fifty-eight patients of lupus erythematosus were recruited in the study, and they were divided into 3 groups according to their clinical presentations and laboratory investigations; group (1) consists of 20 patients with musculoskeletal manifestations, mainly arthritis (34.5%), group (2) consists of 12 patients with lupus nephritis (20%), and group (3) consists of 26 patients with cutaneous lupus (44.8%). Fourteen age and sex matched healthy subjects served as controls. Complete blood picture, kidney function tests, liver function tests and anti-double stranded DNA were done for all the studied patients. Anti-C1q antibodies were determined by immunometric enzyme immunoassay for all the studied subjects. Anti-C1q antibodies were positive in (63.8%) of lupus erythematosus (LE) patients and (0%) of controls. Moreover, the serum anti-C1q antibodies titers were significantly higher (P < 0.001) in all lupus erythematosus patients (both systemic and cutaneous) when compared to healthy controls. Surprisingly, serum anti-C1q antibodies were significantly higher in patients with cutaneous lupus than those with lupus nephritis (P <0.001). Anti-C1q titers were significantly correlated with levels of anti–double stranded DNA (P <0.001), as well as with proteinuria (<0.05) in lupus nephritis patients. It was concluded that anti C1q antibodies might play a pathogenic role in the pathogenesis of cutaneous lupus and could positively be associated with evolution to SLE. Moreover, it could predict patients who subsequently develop nephritis, thus early use of immune modulators in cutaneous lupus could improve patients’ prognosis by decreasing the possibility of evolution to systemic lupus complications, mainly nephritis.Keywords: Anti-C1q; Systemic lupus erythematosus; Cutaneous lupus erythematosus; Lupus nephritis; Complement; Proteinuri

Correlation functions, null polygonal Wilson loops, and local operators

We consider the ratio of the correlation function of n+1 local operators over the correlator of the first n of these operators in planar N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory, and consider the limit where the first n operators become pairwise null separated. By studying the problem in twistor space, we prove that this is equivalent to the correlator of a n-cusp null polygonal Wilson loop with the remaining operator in general position, normalized by the expectation value of the Wilson loop itself, as recently conjectured by Alday, Buchbinder and Tseytlin. Twistor methods also provide a BCFW-like recursion relation for such correlators. Finally, we study the natural extension where n operators become pairwise null separated with k operators in general position. As an example, we perform an analysis of the resulting correlator for k=2 and discuss some of the difficulties associated to fixing the correlator completely in the strong coupling regime.Comment: 34 pages, 6 figures. v2: typos corrected and references added; v3: published versio

Prediction of combustion noise for an aeroengine combustor

Combustion noise may become an important noise source for lean-burn gas turbine engines, and this noise is usually associated with highly unsteady flames. This work aims to compute the broadband combustion noise spectrum for a realistic aeroengine combustor, and to compare with available measured noise data on a demonstrator aeroengine. A low-order linear network model is applied to a demonstrator engine combustor to obtain the transfer function that relates to unsteadiness in the rate of heat release, acoustic, entropic and vortical fluctuations. A spectral model is used for the heat release rate fluctuation, which is the source of the noise. The mean flow of the aeroengine combustor required as input data to this spectral model is obtained from RANS simulations. The computed acoustic field for a low-medium power setting indicates that the models used in this study capture the main characteristics of the broadband spectral shape of combustion noise. Reasonable agreement with the measured spectral level is achieved.The current research has been conducted under UK Technology Strategy Board contract TP11/HVM/6/I/AB201K.This is the accepted manuscript. The final published version is available from ARC at http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/1.B34857. Copyright © 2013 by the authors. Published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc., with permission

Correlation function of null polygonal Wilson loops with local operators

We consider the correlator of a light-like polygonal Wilson loop with n cusps with a local operator (like the dilaton or the chiral primary scalar) in planar N =4 super Yang-Mills theory. As a consequence of conformal symmetry, the main part of such correlator is a function F of 3n-11 conformal ratios. The first non-trivial case is n=4 when F depends on just one conformal ratio \zeta. This makes the corresponding correlator one of the simplest non-trivial observables that one would like to compute for generic values of the `t Hooft coupling \lambda. We compute F(\zeta,\lambda) at leading order in both the strong coupling regime (using semiclassical AdS5 x S5 string theory) and the weak coupling regime (using perturbative gauge theory). Some results are also obtained for polygonal Wilson loops with more than four edges. Furthermore, we also discuss a connection to the relation between a correlator of local operators at null-separated positions and cusped Wilson loop suggested in arXiv:1007.3243.Comment: 36 pages, 2 figure

Complete genome sequences of clinical Pandoraea fibrosis isolates

Pandoraea fibrosis is a newly identified Gram-negative bacterial species that was isolated from the respiratory tract of an Australian cystic fibrosis patient. The complete assembled genome sequences of two consecutive isolates (second isolate collected 11 months after antibiotic treatment) from the same individual are presented here

Insight into the atomic scale structure of CaF₂-CaO-SiO₂ glasses using a combination of neutron diffraction, ²⁹Si solid state NMR, high energy X-ray diffraction, FTIR, and XPS

Bioactive glasses are important for biomedical and dental applications. The controlled release of key ions, which elicit favourable biological responses, is known to be the first key step in the bioactivity of these materials. Properties such as bioactivity and solubility can be tailored for specific applications. The addition of fluoride ions is particularly interesting for dental applications as it promotes the formation of fluoro-apatite. To date there have been mixed reports in the literature on how fluorine is structurally incorporated into bioactive glasses. To optimize the design and subsequent bioactivity of these glasses, it is important to understand the connections between the glass composition, structure and relevant macroscopic properties such as apatite formation and glass degradation in aqueous media. Using neutron diffraction, high energy X-ray diffraction, ²⁹Si NMR, FTIR and XPS we have investigated the atomic scale structure of mixed calcium oxide / calcium fluoride silicate based bioactive glasses. No evidence of direct Si-F bonding was observed, instead fluorine was found to bond directly to calcium resulting in mixed oxygen/fluoride polyhedra. It was therefore concluded that the addition of fluorine does not depolymerise the silicate network and that the widely used network connectivity models are valid in these oxyfluoride systems

Preliminary results using a P300 brain-computer interface speller: a possible interaction effect between presentation paradigm and set of stimuli

Fernández-Rodríguez Á., Medina-Juliá M.T., Velasco-Álvarez F., Ron-Angevin R. (2019) Preliminary Results Using a P300 Brain-Computer Interface Speller: A Possible Interaction Effect Between Presentation Paradigm and Set of Stimuli. In: Rojas I., Joya G., Catala A. (eds) Advances in Computational Intelligence. IWANN 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 11506. Springer, ChamSeveral proposals to improve the performance controlling a P300-based BCI speller have been studied using the standard row-column presentation (RCP) par-adigm. However, this paradigm could not be suitable for those patients with lack of gaze control. To solve that, the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) para-digm, which presents the stimuli located in the same position, has been proposed in previous studies. Thus, the aim of the present work is to assess if a stimuli set of pictures that improves the performance in RCP, could also improve the per-formance in a RSVP paradigm. Six participants have controlled four conditions in a calibration task: letters in RCP, pictures in RCP, letters in RSVP and pictures in RSVP. The results showed that pictures in RCP obtained the best accuracy and information transfer rate. The improvement effect given by pictures was greater in the RCP paradigm than in RSVP. Therefore, the improvements reached under RCP may not be directly transferred to the RSVP.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech