17,790 research outputs found
Should we be treating animal schistosomiasis in Africa? The need for a One Health economic evaluation of schistosomiasis control in people and their livestock
A One Health economic perspective allows informed decisions to be made regarding control priorities and/or implementation strategies for infectious diseases. Schistosomiasis is a major and highly resilient disease of both humans and livestock. The zoonotic component of transmission in sub-Saharan Africa appears to be more significant than previously assumed, and may thereby affect the recently revised WHO vision to eliminate schistosomiasis as a public health problem by 2025. Moreover, animal schistosomiasis is likely to be a significant cost to affected communities due to its direct and indirect impact on livelihoods. We argue here for a comprehensive evaluation of the economic burden of livestock and zoonotic schistosomiasis in sub-Saharan Africa in order to determine if extending treatment to include animal hosts in a One Health approach is economically, as well as epidemiologically, desirable
Quasar-galaxy associations
There is controversy about the measurement of statistical associations
between bright quasars and faint, presumably foreground galaxies. We look at
the distribution of galaxies around an unbiased sample of 63 bright, moderate
redshift quasars using a new statistic based on the separation of the quasar
and its nearest neighbour galaxy. We find a significant excess of close
neighbours at separations less than about 10 arcsec which we attribute to the
magnification by gravitational lensing of quasars which would otherwise be too
faint to be included in our sample. About one quarter to one third of the
quasars are so affected although the allowed error in this fraction is large.Comment: uuencoded Postscript file (including figures and tables), SUSSEX-AST
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Antioxidants that protect mitochondria reduce interleukin-6 and oxidative stress, improve mitochondrial function, and reduce biochemical markers of organ dysfunction in a rat model of acute sepsis
Funding This study was funded by the Medical Research Council (Grant number G0800149). Research material from this study is not available. Acknowledgement We are very grateful to Dr Robin A.J. Smith, Department of Chemistry, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, for the generous gifts of MitoE and MitoQ, without which this work would not have been possible.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
First-principles calculation of the intersublattice exchange interactions and Curie temperatures of full Heusler alloys Ni2MnX (X=Ga, In, Sn, Sb)
The interatomic exchange interactions and Curie temperatures in Ni-based full
Heusler alloys Ni2MnX with X=Ga, In, Sn and Sb are studied within the framework
of the density-functional theory. The calculation of the exchange parameters is
based on the frozen-magnon approach. Despite closeness of the experimental
Curie temperatures for all four systems their magnetism appeared to differ
strongly. This difference involves both the Mn-Mn and Mn-Ni exchange
interactions. The Curie temperatures, Tc, are calculated within the mean-field
approximation by solving a matrix equation for a multi-sublattice system. Good
agreement with experiment for all four systems is obtained. The role of
different exchange interactions in the formation of Tc of the systems is
discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure
Role of the exchange and correlation potential into calculating the x-ray absorption spectra of half-metallic alloys: the case of Mn and Cu K-edge XANES in CuMnM (M = Al, Sn, In) Heusler alloys
This work reports a theoretical study of the x-ray absorption near-edge
structure spectra at both the Cu and the Mn K-edge in several CuMnM (M= Al,
Sn and In) Heusler alloys. Our results show that {\it ab-initio} single-channel
multiple-scattering calculations are able of reproducing the experimental
spectra. Moreover, an extensive discussion is presented concerning the role of
the final state potential needed to reproduce the experimental data of these
half-metallic alloys. In particular, the effects of the cluster-size and of the
exchange and correlation potential needed in reproducing all the experimental
XANES features are discussed.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure
Role of the conduction electrons in mediating exchange interactions in Heusler alloys
Because of large spatial separation of the Mn atoms in Heusler alloys the Mn
3d states belonging to different atoms do not overlap considerably. Therefore
an indirect exchange interaction between Mn atoms should play a crucial role in
the ferromagnetism of the systems. To study the nature of the ferromagnetism of
various Mn-based semi- and full-Heusler alloys we perform a systematic
first-principles calculation of the exchange interactions in these materials.
The calculation of the exchange parameters is based on the frozen-magnon
approach. The calculations show that the magnetism of the Mn-based Heusler
alloys depends strongly on the number of conduction electrons, their spin
polarization and the position of the unoccupied Mn 3d states with respect to
the Fermi level. Various magnetic phases are obtained depending on the
combination of these characteristics. The Anderson's s-d model is used to
perform a qualitative analysis of the obtained results. The conditions leading
to diverse magnetic behavior are identified. If the spin polarization of the
conduction electrons at the Fermi energy is large and the unoccupied Mn 3d
states lie well above the Fermi level, an RKKY-type ferromagnetic interaction
is dominating. On the other hand, the contribution of the antiferromagnetic
superexchange becomes important if unoccupied Mn 3d states lie close to the
Fermi energy. The resulting magnetic behavior depends on the competition of
these two exchange mechanisms. The calculational results are in good
correlation with the conclusions made on the basis of the Anderson s-d model
which provides useful framework for the analysis of the results of
first-principles calculations and helps to formulate the conditions for high
Curie temperature.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, 2 table
Development of novel multiplex microsatellite polymerase chain reactions to enable high-throughput population genetic studies of Schistosoma haematobium
© 2015 Webster et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. The attached file is the published version of the article
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