Modeling the Geographic Spread of Rabies in China

Abstract In order to investigate how the movement of dogs affects the geographically inter-provincial spread of rabies in Mainland China, we propose a multi-patch model to describe the transmission dynamics of rabies between dogs and humans, in which each province is regarded as a patch. In each patch the submodel consists of susceptible, exposed, infectious, and vaccinated subpopulations of both dogs and humans and describes the spread of rabies among dogs and from infectious dogs to humans. The existence of the disease-free equilibrium is discussed, the basic reproduction number is calculated, and the effect of moving rates of dogs between patches on the basic reproduction number is studied. To investigate the rabies virus clades lineages, the two-patch submodel is used to simulate the human rabies data from Guizhou and Guangxi, Hebei and Fujian, and Sichuan and Shaanxi, respectively. It is found that the basic reproduction number of the two-patch model could be larger than one even if the isolated basic reproduction number of each patch is less than one. This indicates that the immigration of dogs may make the disease endemic even if the disease dies out in each isolated patch when there is no immigration. In order to reduce and prevent geographical spread of rabies in China, our results suggest that the management of dog markets and trades needs to be regulated, and transportation of dogs has to be better monitored and under constant surveillance. Author Summary In 1999, human rabies cases were reported in about 120 counties in Mainland China, mainly in the southern provinces. Now outbreaks of human rabies have been reported in about 1000 counties and the disease has spread geographically from the south to the north. Phylogeographic analyses of rabies virus strains indicate that prevalent strains in northern provinces are indeed related to the remote southern provinces. It is believed that the geographical spread of rabies virus is caused by the transportation of dogs. In this paper, a multi-patch model is proposed to describe the spatial transmission dynamics of rabies in China and to investigate how the immigration of dogs affects the geographical spread of rabies. The expression and sensitivity analysis of the basic reproduction number indicates that the movement of dogs plays an essential role in the spatial transmission dynamics of rabies. Numerical simulations on the effect of the immigration rate in three pairs of provinces, Guizhou and Guangxi, Hebei and Fujian, Sichuan and Shaanxi, are also performed. It is shown that the immigration of dogs is the main factor for the long-distance inter-provincial spread of rabies and it is necessary to manage such inter-provincial transportation of dogs

Delegatable access control for fine-grained XML

The access control mechanisms are critical to ensure security in XML (eXtensible Markup Language). Several such mechanisms have been used or proposed; however, the notion of delegation in XML has not been studied in the literature. In this paper, we propose an access control model encapsuling delegation authorization rules for XML documents that allow flexible data granularity and limited inference protection. Our access control policy specification is basically DTD-based. It can also be considered to be document-based

UrbanFM: Inferring Fine-Grained Urban Flows

Urban flow monitoring systems play important roles in smart city efforts around the world. However, the ubiquitous deployment of monitoring devices, such as CCTVs, induces a long-lasting and enormous cost for maintenance and operation. This suggests the need for a technology that can reduce the number of deployed devices, while preventing the degeneration of data accuracy and granularity. In this paper, we aim to infer the real-time and fine-grained crowd flows throughout a city based on coarse-grained observations. This task is challenging due to two reasons: the spatial correlations between coarse- and fine-grained urban flows, and the complexities of external impacts. To tackle these issues, we develop a method entitled UrbanFM based on deep neural networks. Our model consists of two major parts: 1) an inference network to generate fine-grained flow distributions from coarse-grained inputs by using a feature extraction module and a novel distributional upsampling module; 2) a general fusion subnet to further boost the performance by considering the influences of different external factors. Extensive experiments on two real-world datasets, namely TaxiBJ and HappyValley, validate the effectiveness and efficiency of our method compared to seven baselines, demonstrating the state-of-the-art performance of our approach on the fine-grained urban flow inference problem

Study on the relationship of acute ketosis intoxication and type 2 diabetes mellitus

AbstractObjectiveTo study the change of serum C-reactive protein (CRP) levels and its correlation with ketosis in type 2 diabetes mellitus patients with acute ketosis intoxication.MethodsA retrospective analysis was conducted for the patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus from August 2015 to January 2016. The patients combined with ketosis were included into diabetic ketosis group and the patients without ketosis were included into negative control group. The clinical data were collected from two groups including general data, blood pressure, liver function and the levels of blood fat, glycosylated hemoglobin, blood ketone, β-hydroxybutyric acid and CRP. The discrepancy of clinical data between two groups was analyzed.ResultsThe levels of glycosylated hemoglobin [(11.6 ± 2.1)% vs. (8.3 ± 1.9)%], blood ketone [0.65 (0.3, 1.75) vs. 0.1 (0.1, 0.2) mmol/L], β-hydroxybutyric acid [0.595 (0.303, 1.775) vs. 0.08 (0.06, 0.15) mmol/L] and CRP [0.595 (0.303, 1.775) vs. 0.08 (0.06, 0.15) mmol/L] were significant higher than those of negative control group, while the levels of blood pressure, blood fat and aminopherase had no significant difference. The serum CRP levels showed positive correlation with blood ketone and β-hydroxybutyric acid (r = 0.490 and r = 0.478, respectively).ConclusionsPoor blood glucose control for a long time and strengthening inflammatory response are correlated with the status of acute ketosis in type 2 diabetes mellitus patients. The CRP levels in ketosis patients were significantly elevated and could be used to evaluate the degree of ketosis

Biocompatibility of hydrophilic silica-coated CdTe quantum dots and magnetic nanoparticles

Fluorescent magnetic nanoparticles exhibit great application prospects in biomedical engineering. Herein, we reported the effects of hydrophilic silica-coated CdTe quantum dots and magnetic nanoparticles (FMNPs) on human embryonic kidney 293 (HEK293) cells and mice with the aim of investigating their biocompatibility. FMNPs with 150 nm in diameter were prepared, and characterized by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and photoluminescence (PL) spectra and magnetometer. HEK293 cells were cultured with different doses of FMNPs (20, 50, and 100μ g/ml) for 1-4 days. Cell viability and adhesion ability were analyzed by CCK8 method and Western blotting. 30 mice were randomly divided into three groups, and were, respectively, injected via tail vein with 20, 60, and 100 μg FMNPs, and then were, respectively, raised for 1, 7, and 30 days, then their lifespan, important organs, and blood biochemical parameters were analyzed. Results show that the prepared water-soluble FMNPs had high fluorescent and magnetic properties, less than 50 μg/ml of FMNPs exhibited good biocompatibility to HEK293 cells, the cell viability, and adhesion ability were similar to the control HEK293 cells. FMNPs primarily accumulated in those organs such as lung, liver, and spleen. Lung exposed to FMNPs displayed a dose-dependent inflammatory response, blood biochemical parameters such as white blood cell count (WBC), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), and aspartate aminotransferase (AST), displayed significant increase when the FMNPs were injected into mice at dose of 100μg. In conclusion, FMNPs exhibit good biocompatibility to cells under the dose of less than 50 μg/ml, and to mice under the dose of less than 2mg/kg body weight. The FMNPs' biocompatibility must be considered when FMNPs are used for in vivo diagnosis and therapy

A New Anelasticity Model for Wave Propagation in Partially Saturated Rocks

Elastic wave propagation in partially saturated reservoir rocks induces fluid flow in multi-scale pore spaces, leading to wave anelasticity (velocity dispersion and attenuation). The propagation characteristics cannot be described by a single-scale flow-induced dissipation mechanism. To overcome this problem, we combine the White patchy-saturation theory and the squirt flow model to obtain a new anelasticity theory for wave propagation. We consider a tight sandstone Qingyang area, Ordos Basin, and perform ultrasonic measurements at partial saturation and different confining pressures, where the rock properties are obtained at full-gas saturation. The comparison between the experimental data and the theoretical results yields a fairly good agreement, indicating the efficacy of the new theory

HSP60, a protein downregulated by IGFBP7 in colorectal carcinoma

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In our previous study, it was well defined that <it>IGFBP7 </it>was an important tumor suppressor gene in colorectal cancer (CRC). We aimed to uncover the downstream molecules responsible for <it>IGFBP7</it>'s behaviour in this study.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Differentially expressed protein profiles between PcDNA3.1(<it>IGFBP7</it>)-transfected RKO cells and the empty vector transfected controls were generated by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE) and mass spectrometry (MS) identification. The selected differentially expressed protein induced by IGFBP7 was confirmed by western blot and ELISA. The biological behaviour of the protein was explored by cell growth assay and colony formation assay.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Six unique proteins were found differentially expressed in PcDNA3.1(<it>IGFBP7</it>)-transfected RKO cells, including albumin (ALB), 60 kDa heat shock protein(HSP60), Actin cytoplasmic 1 or 2, pyruvate kinase muscle 2(PKM2), beta subunit of phenylalanyl-tRNA synthetase(FARSB) and hypothetical protein. The downregulation of HSP60 by IGFBP7 was confirmed by western blot and ELISA. Recombinant human HSP60 protein could increase the proliferation rate and the colony formation ability of PcDNA3.1(<it>IGFBP7</it>)-RKO cells.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>HSP60 was an important downstream molecule of IGFBP7. The downregulation of HSP60 induced by IGFBP7 may be, at least in part, responsible for IGFBP7's tumor suppressive biological behaviour in CRC.</p