2,161 research outputs found
A persistent spot of bother â why vaccinations havenât stopped measles
Despite high vaccination rates, Australia and other developed countries periodically have small outbreaks of measles, as seen in the recent scares in Victoria and New South Wales. Until about 40 years ago, serious measles epidemics occurred every two or three years. Virtually every child was infected within the first few years of life and one or two in every thousand died from complications. Many were admitted to hospital and some suffered permanent brain damage from encephalitis. When the measles vaccine was introduced in 1968, the incidence of the disease fell rapidly, but small outbreaks continued.A national survey in 1989 showed that 85% of Australian children were immunised. But then a large and prolonged measles outbreak in 1993-4 prompted an Australian Measles Control Campaign (MCC) in 1997
The evolution, current indications and outcomes of cementless total knee arthroplasty
Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) has been performed by orthopedic surgeons for decades, but the cementless TKA has only recently gained much interest in the world of arthroplasty. Initially, early designs had multiple complications, particularly with aseptic loosening due to osteolysis and micromotion. However, modifications have shown good outcomes and excellent survivorship. Over the last several decades, changes in implant designs as well as implant materials/coatings have helped with bone in growth and stability. Furthermore, surgeons have been performing TKA in younger and more obese patients as these populations have been increasing. Good results from the cementless TKA compared to cemented TKA may be a better option in these more challenging populations, as several studies have shown greater survivorship in patients that are younger and have a greater BMI. Additionally, a cementless TKA may be more cost effective, which remains a concern in today\u27s healthcare environment. Overall, cemented and cementless TKA have great results in modern times and there is still a debate as to which implant is superior
One Health: parasites and beyond
The field of parasitism is broad, encompassing relationships between organisms where one benefits at the expense of another. Traditionally the discipline focuses on eukaryotes, with the study of bacteria and viruses complementary but distinct. Nonetheless, parasites vary in size and complexity from single celled protozoa, to enormous plants like those in the genus Rafflesia. Lifecycles range from obligate intracellular to extensive exoparasitism. Examples of parasites include high profile medical and zoonotic pathogens such as Plasmodium, veterinary pathogens of wild and captive animals and many of the agents which cause neglected tropical diseases, stretching to parasites which infect plants and other parasites (e.g. (Blake et al., 2015; Hemingway, 2015; Hotez et al., 2014; Kikuchi et al., 2011; Meekums et al., 2015; Sandlund et al., 2015). The breadth of parasitology has been matched by the variety of ways in which parasites are studied, drawing upon biological, chemical, molecular, epidemiological and other expertise. Despite such breadth bridging between disciplines has commonly been problematic, regardless of extensive encouragement from government agencies, peer audiences and funding bodies promoting multi-disciplinary research. Now, progress in understanding and collaboration can benefit from establishment of the One Health concept (Stark et al., 2015; Zinsstag et al., 2012). One Health draws upon biological, environmental, medical, veterinary and social science disciplines in order to improve human, animal and environmental health, although it remains tantalizingly difficult to engage many relevant parties. For infectious diseases traditional divides have been exacerbated as the importance of wildlife reservoirs, climate change, food production systems and socio-economic diversity have been recognised but often not addressed in a multi-disciplinary manner. In response the 2015 Autumn Symposium organized by the British Society for Parasitology (BSP; https://www.bsp.uk.net/home/) was focused on One Health, running under the title âOne Health: parasites and beyondâŠâ. The meeting, held at the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) in Camden, London from September 14th to 15th, drew upon a blend of specialist parasitology reinforced with additional complementary expertise. Scientists, advocates, policy makers and industry representatives were invited to present at the meeting, promoting and developing One Health understanding with relevance to parasitology. The decision to widen the scope of the meeting to non-parasitological, but informative topics, is reflected in the diversity of the articles included in this special issue. A key feature of the meeting was encouragement of early career scientists, with more than 35% of the delegates registered as students and 25 posters
Kummer strikes back : new DH speed records
This paper introduces high-security constant-time variable-base-point Diffie--Hellman software using just 274593 Cortex-A8 cycles, 91460 Sandy Bridge cycles, 90896 Ivy Bridge cycles, or 72220 Haswell cycles. The only higher speed appearing in the literature for any of these platforms is a claim of 60000 Haswell cycles for unpublished software performing arithmetic on a binary elliptic curve. The new speeds rely on a synergy between (1) state-of-the-art formulas for genus-2 hyperelliptic curves and (2) a modern trend towards vectorization in CPUs. The paper introduces several new techniques for efficient vectorization of Kummer-surface computations. Keywords: implementation / performance, Diffie--Hellman, hyperelliptic curves, Kummer surfaces, vectorizatio
Experimental investigation of dynamical structures formation due to flowing complex plasma past an obstacle
We report the experimental observation of dynamical behavior of flowing
complex plasma past a spherical obstacle. The experiment has been carried out
in a -shaped DC glow discharge experimental device using kaolin particles
as the dust component in a background of Argon plasma. A stationary dust cloud
is formed by maintaining the pumping speed and gas flow rate. A spherical
obstacle vertically mounted on the cathode tray acts as an obstacle to the flow
of dust particles. The controlled dust flow is generated by reducing the mass
flow of the neutrals through a mass flow controller. The flowing dust particles
are repelled by the electrostatic field of the negatively charged sphere and a
microparticle free region (dust void) is formed surrounding the obstacle. The
far particles are attracted towards the floating obstacle and reflected back
when they have arrived at a minimum distance, causing a ring shaped structure
around the obstacle. We characterize the shape of this structure over a range
of dust flow speeds and obstacle biases. For a supersonic flow of dust fluid
around a negatively biased obstacle, a bow shock is formed on the upstream side
of the sphere, while the generation of wave structures is observed on the
downstream side for a particular range of flow velocities. Reynolds numbers in
this case is estimated as . This wave structure reminds of the
beginning of the formation of a Von-K\'arm\'an vortex street. A physical
picture for the observed structure based on ion-drag, neutral streaming and
electric forces is discussed.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure
pShuffle: A Plasmid for in vitro Evolution
Multi-gene shuffling is a powerful method used to combine and optimize attributes of various proteins. Here we report on the design and construction of the plasmid âpShuffleâ which is suited for a variety of in vitro DNA-recombination techniques. The multiple cloning site (MCS) of pShuffle was designed to allow for the cloning of genes as well as their expression under control of either a lac- or a T7-promoter. As a specific feature, this MCS allows for the fusion of special linker sequences to both ends of cloned genes. After subsequent DNA-recombination steps, these linkers facilitate reamplification of generated gene variants, and thus may be used to construct clone libraries for activity screenings. The suitability of pShuffle for multi-gene shuffling applications was further shown with a set of styrene monooxygenase genes originating from proteo- and actinobacteria
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Transition to sustainable chemistry through digitalization
Modern chemistry is the backbone of our society, but it is also a major contributor to global environmental pollution and the ongoing climate crisis. The transition toward a sustainable future requires a radical transformation of how chemistry is designed, developed, and used. This represents a âbreak it or make itâ challenge for the chemical industry with significant technology lock-in and high entry barriers to radical innovations. We propose that urgently required systemic changes in chemical industry, research and development (R&D), chemicals assessment and management, and education to advance sustainable chemistry are attainable through increased and more rapid adoption of digitalization and new digital tools. This will enable flexible data exchange, increased transparency of information flows along cross-country chemical, material, and product life cycles, and chemistries that are safe and sustainable by design, addressing the complexity of chemicals-environment-health interactions and lowering the costs of entry into chemical R&D and manufacture, and new, more sustainable and collaborative business models
Renewable Energy Project Financing: Impacts of the Financial Crisis and Federal Legislation
Extraordinary financial market conditions have disrupted the flows of equity and debt investment into U.S. renewable energy (RE) projects since the fourth quarter of 2008. The pace and structure of renewable energy project finance has been reshaped by a combination of forces, including the financial crisis, global economic recession, and major changes in federal legislation affecting renewable energy finance. This report explores the impacts of these key market events on renewable energy project financing and development
ECC2K-130 on NVIDIA GPUs
A major cryptanalytic computation is currently underway on multiple platforms, including standard CPUs, FPGAs, PlayStations and Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), to break the Certicom ECC2K-130 challenge. This challenge is to compute an elliptic-curve discrete logarithm on a Koblitz curve over . Optimizations have reduced the cost of the computation to approximately 277 bit operations in 261 iterations. GPUs are not designed for fast binary-field arithmetic; they are designed for highly vectorizable floating-point computations that fit into very small amounts of static RAM. This paper explains how to optimize the ECC2K-130 computation for this unusual platform. The resulting GPU software performs more than 63 million iterations per second, including 320 million multiplications per second, on a $500 NVIDIA GTX 295 graphics card. The same techniques for finite-field arithmetic and elliptic-curve arithmetic can be reused in implementations of larger systems that are secure against similar attacks, making GPUs an interesting option as coprocessors when a busy Internet server has many elliptic-curve operations to perform in parallel
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