10 research outputs found
The Molecular Epidemiology of Clostridioides difficile Infection in Central India: A Prospective Observational Cohort Study
This prospective observational cohort study aimed to establish and compare baseline rates of Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) in community and hospitalized patients in Nagpur and rural Melghat Maharashtra, including adults aged ≥18 years with a diagnosis of diarrhoea as defined as 3 or more loose stools in a 24 h period. All diarrhoeal samples were tested for CDI using the C. diff Quik Chek Complete enzyme immunoassay. C. difficile-positive stool samples were characterised by toxigenic culture, antimicrobial susceptibility testing and PCR ribotyping. C. difficile testing was performed on 1683 patients with acute diarrhoea. A total of 54 patients (3.21%; 95% CI: 2.42–4.17) tested positive for both the GDH antigen and free toxin. The risk factors for CDI included the presence of co-morbidities, antibiotic usage, and immunosuppression. The detected PCR ribotypes included 053-16, 017, 313, 001, 107, and 216. Our findings show that toxigenic C. difficile is an important but neglected aetiologic agent of infective diarrhoea in Central India. These results underscore the need to enhance the awareness and testing of patients with diarrhoea in India regarding the presence of toxigenic C. difficile, particularly in high-risk individuals with multiple co-morbidities, immunosuppression, and recent or ongoing antibiotic exposure or hospitalization
Benford's law predicted digit distribution of aggregated income taxes: the surprising conformity of Italian cities and regions
The yearly aggregated tax income data of all, more than 8000, Italian
municipalities are analyzed for a period of five years, from 2007 to 2011, to
search for conformity or not with Benford's law, a counter-intuitive phenomenon
observed in large tabulated data where the occurrence of numbers having smaller
initial digits is more favored than those with larger digits. This is done in
anticipation that large deviations from Benford's law will be found in view of
tax evasion supposedly being widespread across Italy. Contrary to expectations,
we show that the overall tax income data for all these years is in excellent
agreement with Benford's law. Furthermore, we also analyze the data of
Calabria, Campania and Sicily, the three Italian regions known for strong
presence of mafia, to see if there are any marked deviations from Benford's
law. Again, we find that all yearly data sets for Calabria and Sicily agree
with Benford's law whereas only the 2007 and 2008 yearly data show departures
from the law for Campania. These results are again surprising in view of
underground and illegal nature of economic activities of mafia which
significantly contribute to tax evasion. Some hypothesis for the found
conformity is presented.Comment: 18 pages, 5 tables, 4 figures, 61 references, To appear in European
Physical Journal
The New Small Wheel electronics
The increase in luminosity, and consequent higher backgrounds, of the LHC
upgrades require improved rejection of fake tracks in the forward region of the
ATLAS Muon Spectrometer. The New Small Wheel upgrade of the Muon Spectrometer
aims to reduce the large background of fake triggers from track segments that
are not originated from the interaction point. The New Small Wheel employs two
detector technologies, the resistive strip Micromegas detectors and the "small"
Thin Gap Chambers, with a total of 2.45 Million electrodes to be sensed. The
two technologies require the design of a complex electronics system given that
it consists of two different detector technologies and is required to provide
both precision readout and a fast trigger. It will operate in a high background
radiation region up to about 20 kHz/cm at the expected HL-LHC luminosity
of =7.5cms. The architecture of the
system is strongly defined by the GBTx data aggregation ASIC, the
newly-introduced FELIX data router and the software based data handler of the
ATLAS detector. The electronics complex of this new detector was designed and
developed in the last ten years and consists of multiple radiation tolerant
Application Specific Integrated Circuits, multiple front-end boards, dense
boards with FPGA's and purpose-built Trigger Processor boards within the ATCA
standard. The New Small Wheel has been installed in 2021 and is undergoing
integration within ATLAS for LHC Run 3. It should operate through the end of
Run 4 (December 2032). In this manuscript, the overall design of the New Small
Wheel electronics is presented.Comment: 61 page