The increase in fertility in cohabitation across Europe: examining the intersection between union status and childbearing

-Europe, cohabitation, family formation

Methodological choices in brucellosis burden of disease assessments: A systematic review

Background Foodborne and zoonotic diseases such as brucellosis present many challenges to public health and economic welfare. Increasingly, researchers and public health institutes use disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) to generate a comprehensive comparison of the population health impact of these conditions. DALYs calculations, however, entail a number of methodological choices and assumptions, with data gaps and uncertainties to accommodate. Thisreview identifies existing brucellosis burden of disease studies and analyzes their methodological choices, assumptions, and uncertainties. It supports the Global Burden of Animal Diseases programme in the development of a systematic methodology to describe the impact of animal diseases on society, including human health. Methods/Principal findings A systematic search for brucellosis burden of disease calculations was conducted in pre-selected international and grey literature databases. Using a standardized reporting framework, we evaluated each estimate on a variety of key methodological assumptions necessary to compute a DALY. Fourteen studies satisfied the inclusion criteria (human brucellosis and quantification of DALYs). One study reported estimates at the global level, the rest were national or subnational assessments. Data regarding different methodological choices were extracted, including detailed assessments of the adopted disease models. Most studies retrieved brucellosis epidemiological data from administrative registries. Incidence data were often estimated on the basis of laboratory-confirmed tests. Not all studies included mortality estimates (Years of Life Lost) in their assessments due to lack of data or the assumption that brucellosis is not a fatal disease. Only two studies used a model with variable health states and corresponding disability weights. The rest used a simplified singular health state approach. Wide variation was seen in the duration chosen for brucellosis, ranging from 2 weeks to 4.5 years, irrespective of the whether a chronic state was included. Conclusion Available brucellosis burden of disease assessments vary widely in their methodology and assumptions. Further research is needed to better characterize the clinical course of brucellosis and to estimate case-fatality rates. Additionally, reporting of methodological choices should be improved to enhance transparency and comparability of estimates. These steps will increase the value of these estimates for policy makers

The economic impacts of foot and mouth disease – What are they, how big are they and where do they occur?

AbstractAlthough a disease of low mortality, the global impact of foot and mouth disease (FMD) is colossal due to the huge numbers of animals affected. This impact can be separated into two components: (1) direct losses due to reduced production and changes in herd structure; and (2) indirect losses caused by costs of FMD control, poor access to markets and limited use of improved production technologies. This paper estimates that annual impact of FMD in terms of visible production losses and vaccination in endemic regions alone amount to between US$6.5 and 21 billion. In addition, outbreaks in FMD free countries and zones cause losses of >US$1.5 billion a year.FMD impacts are not the same throughout the world:1.FMD production losses have a big impact on the world's poorest where more people are directly dependent on livestock. FMD reduces herd fertility leading to less efficient herd structures and discourages the use of FMD susceptible, high productivity breeds. Overall the direct losses limit livestock productivity affecting food security.2.In countries with ongoing control programmes, FMD control and management creates large costs. These control programmes are often difficult to discontinue due to risks of new FMD incursion.3.The presence, or even threat, of FMD prevents access to lucrative international markets.4.In FMD free countries outbreaks occur periodically and the costs involved in regaining free status have been enormous.FMD is highly contagious and the actions of one farmer affect the risk of FMD occurring on other holdings; thus sizeable externalities are generated. Control therefore requires coordination within and between countries. These externalities imply that FMD control produces a significant amount of public goods, justifying the need for national and international public investment.Equipping poor countries with the tools needed to control FMD will involve the long term development of state veterinary services that in turn will deliver wider benefits to a nation including the control of other livestock diseases

Livestock trade networks for guiding animal health surveillance

BACKGROUND: Trade in live animals can contribute to the introduction of exotic diseases, the maintenance and spread endemic diseases. Annually millions of animals are moved across Europe for the purposes of breeding, fattening and slaughter. Data on the number of animals moved were obtained from the Directorate General Sanco (DG Sanco) for 2011. These were converted to livestock units to enable direct comparison across species and their movements were mapped, used to calculate the indegrees and outdegrees of 27 European countries and the density and transitivity of movements within Europe. This provided the opportunity to discuss surveillance of European livestock movement taking into account stopping points en-route. RESULTS: High density and transitivity of movement for registered equines, breeding and fattening cattle, breeding poultry and pigs for breeding, fattening and slaughter indicates that hazards have the potential to spread quickly within these populations. This is of concern to highly connected countries particularly those where imported animals constitute a large proportion of their national livestock populations, and have a high indegree. The transport of poultry (older than 72 hours) and unweaned animals would require more rest breaks than the movement of weaned animals, which may provide more opportunities for disease transmission. Transitivity is greatest for animals transported for breeding purposes with cattle, pigs and poultry having values of over 50%. CONCLUSIONS: This paper demonstrated that some species (pigs and poultry) are traded much more frequently and at a larger scale than species such as goats. Some countries are more vulnerable than others due to importing animals from many countries, having imported animals requiring rest-breaks and importing large proportions of their national herd or flock. Such knowledge about the vulnerability of different livestock systems related to trade movements can be used to inform the design of animal health surveillance systems to facilitate the trade in animals between European member states. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12917-015-0354-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Social Cognitive Role of Schizophrenia Candidate Gene GABRB2

10.1371/journal.pone.0062322PLoS ONE84

Occupational cancer in Britain: Statistical methodology

An approach using the attributable fraction (AF) has been developed to estimate the current burden of occupational cancer in Britain. The AF combines the relative risk (RR) associated with exposure with the proportion exposed. For each cancer–exposure pairing, the RR is selected from key epidemiological literature such as an industry, or population-based study, meta-analysis or review. The CARcinogen EXposure (CAREX) database provides point estimates for the number of workers exposed to a range of carcinogens; alternative sources are national surveys such as the Labour Force Survey and Census of Employment. The number of workers exposed are split between high and low exposure levels matched to appropriate RRs from the literature. The relevant period for cancer development during which exposure occurred is defined as the risk exposure period (REP). Estimation of the numbers ever exposed over the REP takes into account the changes in the number of people employed in primary and manufacturing industry and service sectors in Britain where appropriate, and adjustment is made for staff turnover over the period and for life expectancy. National estimates of the population ever of working age during the REP are used for the proportion denominator. Strategies have been developed to combine exposure AFs correctly while avoiding double counting and minimising bias. The AFs are applied to national cancer deaths and registrations to obtain occupation-attributable cancer numbers. The methods are adaptable for other diseases and other geographies, and are also adaptable to more sophisticated modelling if better exposure and dose–response data are available

An Overview of the 2014 ALMA Long Baseline Campaign

A major goal of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is to make accurate images with resolutions of tens of milliarcseconds, which at submillimeter (submm) wavelengths requires baselines up to ~15 km. To develop and test this capability, a Long Baseline Campaign (LBC) was carried out from September to late November 2014, culminating in end-to-end observations, calibrations, and imaging of selected Science Verification (SV) targets. This paper presents an overview of the campaign and its main results, including an investigation of the short-term coherence properties and systematic phase errors over the long baselines at the ALMA site, a summary of the SV targets and observations, and recommendations for science observing strategies at long baselines. Deep ALMA images of the quasar 3C138 at 97 and 241 GHz are also compared to VLA 43 GHz results, demonstrating an agreement at a level of a few percent. As a result of the extensive program of LBC testing, the highly successful SV imaging at long baselines achieved angular resolutions as fine as 19 mas at ~350 GHz. Observing with ALMA on baselines of up to 15 km is now possible, and opens up new parameter space for submm astronomy.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables; accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters; this version with small changes to affiliation

Estimating the incidence of lung cancer attributable to occupational exposure in Iran

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Objective</p> <p>The aim of this study was to estimate the fraction of lung cancer incidence in Iran attributed to occupational exposures to the well-established lung cancer carcinogens, including silica, cadmium, nickel, arsenic, chromium, diesel fumes, beryllium, and asbestos.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Nationwide exposure to each of the mentioned carcinogens was estimated using workforce data from the Iranian population census of 1995, available from the International Labor Organization (ILO) website. The prevalence of exposure to carcinogens in each industry was estimated using exposure data from the CAREX (CARcinogen EXposure) database, an international occupational carcinogen information system kept and maintained by the European Union. The magnitude of the relative risk of lung cancer for each carcinogen was estimated from local and international literature. Using the Levin modified population attributable risk (incidence) fraction, lung cancer incidence (as estimated by the Tehran Population-Based Cancer Registry) attributable to workplace exposure to carcinogens was estimated.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The total workforce in Iran according to the 1995 census identified 12,488,020 men and 677,469 women. Agriculture is the largest sector with 25% of the male and 0.27% of female workforce. After applying the CAREX exposure estimate to each sector, the proportion exposed to lung carcinogens was 0.08% for male workers and 0.02% for female workers. Estimating a relative risk of 1.9 (95% CI of 1.7–2.1) for high exposure and 1.3 (95% CI 1.2–1.4) for low exposure, and employing the Levin modified formula, the fraction of lung cancer attributed to carcinogens in the workplace was 1.5% (95% CI of 1.2–1.9) for females and 12% (95% CI of 10–15) for males. These fractions correspond to an estimated incidence of 1.3 and 0.08 cases of lung cancer per 100,000 population for males and females, respectively.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The incidence of lung cancer due to occupational exposure is low in Iran and, as in other countries, more lung cancer is due to occupational exposure among males than females.</p

A roadmap of strain in doped anatase TiO2

Anatase titanium oxide is important for its high chemical stability and photocatalytic properties, however, the latter are plagued by its large band gap that limits its activity to only a small percentage of the solar spectrum. In that respect, straining the material can reduce its band gap increasing the photocatalytic activity of titanium oxide. We apply density functional theory with the introduction of the Hubbard + U model, to investigate the impact of stress on the electronic structure of anatase in conjunction with defect engineering by intrinsic defects (oxygen/titanium vacancies and interstitials), metallic dopants (iron, chromium) and non-metallic dopants (carbon, nitrogen). Here we show that both biaxial and uniaxial strain can reduce the band gap of undoped anatase with the use of biaxial strain being marginally more beneficial reducing the band gap up to 2.96 eV at a tensile stress of 8 GPa. Biaxial tensile stress in parallel with doping results in reduction of the band gap but also in the introduction of states deep inside the band gap mainly for interstitially doped anatase. Dopants in substitutional positions show reduced deep level traps. Chromium-doped anatase at a tensile stress of 8 GPa shows the most significant reduction of the band gap as the band gap reaches 2.4 eV