Taenia solium porcine cysticercosis in Madagascar: Comparison of immuno-diagnostic techniques and estimation of the prevalence in pork carcasses traded in Antananarivo city

Taenia solium cysticercosis was reported in official veterinary and medical statistics to be highly prevalent in pigs and humans in Madagascar, but few estimates are available for pigs. This study aimed to estimate the seroprevalence of porcine cysticercosis among pigs slaughtered in Antananarivo abattoirs. Firstly, the diagnostic performance of two antigen-ELISA techniques (B158B60 Ag-ELISA and HP10 Ag-ELISA) and an immunoblotting method were compared with meat inspection procedures on a sample of pigs suspected to be infected with (group 1; n = 250) or free of (group 2; n = 250) T. solium based on direct veterinary inspection in Madagascar. Sensitivity and specificity of the antigen ELISAs were then estimated using a Bayesian approach for detection of porcine cysticercosis in the absence of a gold standard. Then, a third set of pig sera (group 3, n = 250) was randomly collected in Antananarivo slaughterhouses and tested to estimate the overall prevalence of T. solium contamination in pork meat traded in Antananarivo. The antigen ELISAs showed a high sensitivity (>84%), but the B158B60 Ag-ELISA appeared to be more specific than the HP10 Ag-ELISA (model 1: 95% vs 74%; model 2: 87% vs 71%). The overall prevalence of porcine cysticercosis in Antananarivo slaughterhouses was estimated at 2.3% (95% credibility interval [95%CrI]: 0.09–9.1%) to 2.6% (95%CrI: 0.1–10.3%) depending on the model and priors used. Since the sample used in this study is not representative of the national pig population, village-based surveys and longitudinal monitoring at slaughter are needed to better estimate the overall prevalence, geographical patterns and main risk factors for T. solium contamination, in order to improve control policies. (Résumé d'auteur

(Anti-)deuteron production in pp collisions at 1as=13TeV

The study of (anti-)deuteron production in pp collisions has proven to be a powerful tool to investigate the formation mechanism of loosely bound states in high-energy hadronic collisions. In this paper the production of (anti-)deuterons is studied as a function of the charged particle multiplicity in inelastic pp collisions at s=13 TeV using the ALICE experiment. Thanks to the large number of accumulated minimum bias events, it has been possible to measure (anti-)deuteron production in pp collisions up to the same charged particle multiplicity (d Nch/ d \u3b7 3c 26) as measured in p\u2013Pb collisions at similar centre-of-mass energies. Within the uncertainties, the deuteron yield in pp collisions resembles the one in p\u2013Pb interactions, suggesting a common formation mechanism behind the production of light nuclei in hadronic interactions. In this context the measurements are compared with the expectations of coalescence and statistical hadronisation models (SHM)

IEEE Transactions On Biomedical Engineering : Vol. 60, No. 7, July 2013

1. Closed-Loop Control of Renal Perfusion Pressure in Physiological Experiments 2. Angular Momentum During Unexpected Multidirectional Perturbations Delivered While Walking 3. Influence of Running Stride Frequency in Heart Rate Variability Analysis During treadmill Exercise testing 4. Magnetic Fluid Hyperthermia Modeling Based on Phantom Measurements and Realistic Breast Model 5. Coefficient-Free Blood Pressure Estimation Based on Pulse Transit Time-Cuff Pressure Depedence Etc

Non-rigid Multimodal Medical Image Registration Based on the Conditional Statistics of the Joint Intensity Distribution

AbstractIn this paper, we present a new methodology for multimodal non-rigid medical image registration. The proposed approach is based on combining a rigid registration achieved by a global optimization method, and a multimodal optical flow technique based on the conditional statistics of the joint intensity distribution (CS-JID) of the images to register. The methodology is essentially composed of two steps: first, the global deformation is approximated by using a rigid registration based on particle filtering; second, the optical flow is applied iteratively between the target and sequentially registered source image, by optimizing a new energy function that penalizes the difference between the intensities in one image with respect to the mean of the conditional intensity distribution of the other image, weighted by the conditional variance. After these steps, the non-rigid registration is made up by adding the resulting vector fields, computed by the rigid registration, and the sequential optical flow. The proposed algorithm was tested with three pairs of computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR) images, aligned in the acquisition process, and subsequently warped with a synthetic non-rigid deformation. Preliminary results show that the methodology presents a good alternative for non-rigid multimodal registration, obtaining an average error of less than one pixel in the estimation of the deformation vector field in the majority of the cases

Achieving zero carbon emissions in the construction sector: The role of timber in decarbonising building structures.

This research aims to evaluate a realistic timber adoption scenario as a way of reducing carbon emissions of construction in Chile and the UK for the period 2020-2050. The study finds that a gradual increase of timber construction could complement the emission reduction targets set by traditional materials, providing the needed carbon storage. This analysis shows the urgency to define the criteria that will allow to account for carbon storage in timber construction as a natural contribution to the Paris agreement. Finally, it is worth highlighting that the construction sector also faces several economic and social problems that need to be addressed urgently. Timber adoption would reduce emissions and at the same time improve health, security, gender gap, precision, speed and working conditions in construction