A community-based prospective cohort study of dengue viral infection in Malaysia: the study protocol

BACKGROUND: Globally, dengue infections constitute a significant public health burden. In recent decades, Malaysia has become a dengue hyper-endemic country with the co-circulation of the four dengue virus serotypes. The cyclical dominance of sub-types contributes to a pattern of major outbreaks. The consequences can be observed in the rising incidence of reported dengue cases and dengue related deaths. Understanding the complex interaction of the dengue virus, its human hosts and the mosquito vectors at the community level may help develop strategies for addressing the problem. METHODS: A prospective cohort study will be conducted in Segamat district of Johor State in Peninsular Malaysia. Researchers received approval from the Malaysian Medical Research Ethics Committee and Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee. The study will be conducted at a Malaysian based health and demographic surveillance site over a 1 year period in three different settings (urban, semi-urban and rural). The study will recruit healthy adults (male and female) aged 18 years and over, from three ethnic groups (Malay, Chinese and Indian). The sample size calculated using the Fleiss method with continuity correction is 333. Sero-surveillance of participants will be undertaken to identify asymptomatic, otherwise healthy cases; cases with dengue fever who are managed as out-patients; and cases with dengue fever admitted to a hospital. A genetic analysis of the participants will be undertaken to determine whether there is a relationship between genetic predisposition and disease severity. A detailed medical history, past history of dengue infection, vaccination history against other flaviviruses such as Japanese encephalitis and Yellow fever, and the family history of dengue infection will also be collected. In addition, a mosquito surveillance will be carried out simultaneously in recruitment areas to determine the molecular taxonomy of circulating vectors. DISCUSSION: The research findings will estimate the burden of asymptomatic and symptomatic dengue at the community level. It will also examine the relationship between virus serotypes and host genotypes, and the association of the clinical manifestation of the early phase with the entire course of illness. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40249-016-0172-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

The nature of learning at forest school: : practitioners' perspectives

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Education 3-13 on 11 September 2015, available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03004279.2015.1078833This paper investigates forest school practitioners perceptions of learning at forest school to identify the topics covered, the learning styles, and the philosophies underpinning its delivery, based on interviews with experienced forest school practitioners. Practitioners identified the focus of learning at forest school as social development: teamwork, relationships with others, self-knowledge, and learning to take risks. Children also engaged with nature and developed an attachment to the woods where forest school took place. Learning styles were kinaesthetic, sensory, and experiential. Forest school leaders saw themselves as facilitators of learning rather than teachers.Peer reviewe

Detection of all four dengue serotypes in Aedes aegypti female mosquitoes collected in a rural area in Colombia

The Aedes aegypti vector for dengue virus (DENV) has been reported in urban and periurban areas. The information about DENV circulation in mosquitoes in Colombian rural areas is limited, so we aimed to evaluate the presence of DENV in Ae. aegypti females caught in rural locations of two Colombian municipalities, Anapoima and La Mesa. Mosquitoes from 497 rural households in 44 different rural settlements were collected. Pools of about 20 Ae. aegypti females were processed for DENV serotype detection. DENV in mosquitoes was detected in 74% of the analysed settlements with a pool positivity rate of 62%. The estimated individual mosquito infection rate was 4.12% and the minimum infection rate was 33.3/1,000 mosquitoes. All four serotypes were detected; the most frequent being DENV-2 (50%) and DENV-1 (35%). Two-three serotypes were detected simultaneously in separate pools. This is the first report on the co-occurrence of natural DENV infection of mosquitoes in Colombian rural areas. The findings are important for understanding dengue transmission and planning control strategies. A potential latent virus reservoir in rural areas could spill over to urban areas during population movements. Detecting DENV in wild-caught adult mosquitoes should be included in the development of dengue epidemic forecasting models

The role of hydrogen and fuel cells in the global energy system

Hydrogen technologies have experienced cycles of excessive expectations followed by disillusion. Nonetheless, a growing body of evidence suggests these technologies form an attractive option for the deep decarb onisation of global energy systems, and that recent improvements in their cost and performance point towards economic viability as well. This paper is a comprehensive review of the potential role that hydrogen could play in the provision of electricity, h eat, industry, transport and energy storage in a low - carbon energy system, and an assessment of the status of hydrogen in being able to fulfil that potential. The picture that emerges is one of qualified promise: hydrogen is well established in certain nic hes such as forklift trucks, while mainstream applications are now forthcoming. Hydrogen vehicles are available commercially in several countries, and 225,000 fuel cell home heating systems have been sold. This represents a step change from the situation of only five years ago. This review shows that challenges around cost and performance remain, and considerable improvements are still required for hydrogen to become truly competitive. But such competitiveness in the medium - term future no longer seems an unrealistic prospect, which fully justifies the growing interest and policy support for these technologies around the world

Wiener Zeitschrift zur Geschichte der Neuzeit

With the globalization, several free trade areas have been and are being created all around the world. They usually have positive consequences for increasing economic exchanges, but negative ecological or health side effects. These negative effects are difficult to predict or even to understand due to the complexity of the system and of the number of involved processes. In this article, we focus on the Southeast Asia free trade area (the ASEAN) and specifically in the East-West economic corridor. A significant correlation has been observed in this area between the corridor opening and dengue fever cases, without being able to establish a causality relationship. We choose to tackle this issue by building an agent-based geographically explicit model. We propose an approach coupling dengue fever dynamics, climate data, economic mobility and health policies, following a design methodology decomposing these processes in sub-models and linking them to make one integrated model. In addition, we propose a way to deal with lack of data in the modeling process. Our simulation results show that there is influence of the increase in mobility and application of different control policies on the increase of dengue cases