Chiral rings and GSO projection in Orbifolds

The GSO projection in the twisted sector of orbifold background is sometimes subtle and incompatible descriptions are found in literatures. Here, from the equivalence of partition functions in NSR and GS formalisms, we give a simple rule of GSO projection for the chiral rings of string theory in \C^r/\Z_n, $r=1,2,3$. Necessary constructions of chiral rings are given by explicit mode analysis.Comment: 24 page

Prevalence, virulence genes and Antimicrobial Resistance of Shiga-toxigenic E.coli in diarrhoea patients from Kitale, Kenya

Introduction: Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) are among the most important causes of food-borne diseases. They cause illnesses ranging from mild diarrhea to more severe conditions that may progress to hemorrhagic colitis (HC) and hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). The burden of STEC in patients with diarrheal illness in Kitale county referral hospital, Trans-Nzoia County had not been established.Objectives: To determine the prevalence of STEC, its associated virulence genes and antimicrobial resistance among patients seeking treatment for diarrhoeal illness at Kitale County Referral Hospital.Methods: Stool samples from patients seeking treatment for diarrheal illness and had consented to participate in the study were collected and cultured for enteric bacteria. Suspect E.coli isolates were further identified using conventional biochemical methods. Conventional multiplex PCR targeting Shiga toxins (stx1, stx2, hlyA and attaching and effacing mechanisms (eaeA) were used to detect STEC virulence markers responsible for the Pathogenicity of STEC infection among other E.coli pathotypes.Results: A total of 295 participants were enrolled; median age 120 months (IQR: 36-312). 39 %( 115) were children aged <5yearsof whom 54% (160) were females. The prevalence of pathogenic E.coli was 19%56/295 and STEC was the most prevalent among E.coli pathotypes at5.4%16/295. The Stx2 gene and the Stx1/Stx2/hlyAcombination were the most prevalent in the STEC strains. The virulence genes (Stx1, Stx2, eaeA* and HlyA*)were observed in 13, 19, 9 and 14 in STEC isolates respectively.The most common gene was Stx2 and combinations of (Stx1+Stx2+hlyA)genes. Antimicrobial resistance to commonly prescribed antibiotics: chloramphenicol, ampicillin 10μg, erythromycin15μg, gentamicin10μg, ciprofloxacin 5μg, tetracycline 30μg, Trimethoprim/Sulfamethoxazole 25 μg, Cefotaxime 30 μg, furazolidine (8μg) and nalidixic acid 30 μg. were observed for all E.coli isolates except one (1.8%; 95% CI=0.1-9.6%). No isolates among STEC showed resistance to Furazolidine drug. However, Trimethoprim / Sulphurmethoxazole) was the drug which exhibited the highest resistance at (94%, 95% CI 70 to 99%).Conclusion and recommendation: Prevalence of STEC was 5.4%, (Stx1/Stx2/hlyA) virulence genes combination was the most common. High resistance to commonly prescribed antibiotics were observed in E.coli isolates and may be an existing problem that needs to be further research investigation.Keywords: Shiga-Toxigenic Escherichia coli (STEC), antimicrobial resistance, Kitale County referral hospitalAfr J Health Sci. 2017; 30(2):105-11

Autonomous stochastic resonance in fully frustrated Josephson-junction ladders

We investigate autonomous stochastic resonance in fully frustrated Josephson-junction ladders, which are driven by uniform constant currents. At zero temperature large currents induce oscillations between the two ground states, while for small currents the lattice potential forces the system to remain in one of the two states. At finite temperatures, on the other hand, oscillations between the two states develop even below the critical current; the signal-to-noise ratio is found to display array-enhanced stochastic resonance. It is suggested that such behavior may be observed experimentally through the measurement of the staggered voltage.Comment: 6 pages, 11 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.

A minimally invasive lens-free computational microendoscope

Ultra-miniaturized microendoscopes are vital for numerous biomedical applications. Such minimally invasive imagers allow for navigation into hard-to-reach regions and observation of deep brain activity in freely moving animals. Conventional solutions use distal microlenses. However, as lenses become smaller and less invasive, they develop greater aberrations and restricted fields of view. In addition, most of the imagers capable of variable focusing require mechanical actuation of the lens, increasing the distal complexity and weight. Here, we demonstrate a distal lens-free approach to microendoscopy enabled by computational image recovery. Our approach is entirely actuation free and uses a single pseudorandom spatial mask at the distal end of a multicore fiber. Experimentally, this lensless approach increases the space-bandwidth product, i.e., field of view divided by resolution, by threefold over a best-case lens-based system. In addition, the microendoscope demonstrates color resolved imaging and refocusing to 11 distinct depth planes from a single camera frame without any actuated parts.R21 EY028436 - NEI NIH HHS; R21 EY028381 - NEI NIH HHSPublished versio

Towards Transparent Linguistic Analysis of Dutch Newspaper Article Genres using Machine Learning

Systematic study of genre in newspapers sheds light on the development of journalism discourse. The genre conventions that can be discerned in a newspaper text signal the underlying discursive norms and practices of journalism as a profession. Historical newspapers are increasingly becoming available thanks to digital newspaper archives (in the Netherlands available through Delpher.nl), providing the opportunity for large-scale empirical research. However, the digital archives do not contain fine-grained genre information that is required for this purpose. Therefore, we use machine learning to automatically assign genre labels to newspaper articles.Machine learning facilitates substantial improvements to the outcomes of existing research by providing increased amounts of enriched data. However, the decision-making process of the machine learning pipeline needs to be verified. Our previous findings (Bilgin et al., 2018) show that accuracy scores alone are not enough to assess the performance of these pipelines and that making an informed choice not only empowers optimal study of the historical development of genre, but also increases the trustworthiness of the results. This work shows that employing a transparent approach driven by model interpretability facilitates fair comparison as well as validation of the underlying decision-making criteria of the machine learning pipelines. The criteria are presented in the form of important features, creating insights on interactions between genre-related linguistic features and bag-of-words features.</p

Religious Freedom Restoration Acts and Sexual Minority Population Health in the United States

Religious freedom restoration acts (RFRAs) in the United States potentially facilitate discrimination against lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals (i.e., sexual minorities). In the current investigation, we explored whether a population health metric among sexual minority adults changed over time based on the presence, absence, or introduction of a state RFRA. Data are from 21 of the United States that gathered sexual orientation data from population-based samples of noninstitutionalized adults in the 2015 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (CDC, 2015, 2016). The analytic sample included 4,911 sexual minority individuals. Time was measured in 4 3-month quarters (i.e., Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4). For each state, the prevalence of sexual minority adults reporting =14 unhealthy days/30 days was calculated. Only Indiana (the only state in the sample that passed an RFRA in 2015) exhibited significant increasing proportions over time of sexual minority adults reporting =14 unhealthy days (Q1 = 24.5%, Q2 = 34.8%, Q3 = 41.2%, Q4 = 59.5%; β = 0.50, SE = 0.23, p = .037). Post hoc analyses revealed that unhealthy days did not increase for heterosexual adults in Indiana. Indiana's RFRA could have contributed to the increasing prevalence of unhealthy days among sexual minority adults in that state during 2015. Public health surveillance tools are needed to expedite analyses of the impact of laws on minority population health

Spatial temporal modelling of tuberculosis in Kenya using small area estimation

Tuberculosis, a highly infectious disease which is transmitted within and between communities when infected and susceptible individuals interact. Tuberculosis at present is a major public health problem and continues to take toll on the most productive members of the community. An understanding of disease spread dynamics of infectious diseases continues to play a critical role in design of disease control strategies. Modeling of Tuberculosis is useful in understanding disease dynamics as it will guide the importance of basic science as well as public policy, prevention and control of the emerging infectious disease and modeling the spread of the disease. This study sought to establish how long under different frameworks will TB disease recede to extinction. In this study, deterministic and stochastic models for the trends of tuberculosis cases over time in Kenya were developed. Susceptible Infective (SI), Susceptible Infective and Recovered (SIR) and Susceptible Exposed Infective and Recovered (SEIR) models were considered. These models were modified in order to fit the data more precisely (age structure and predisposing factors of the incident cases). The SIR and SEIR model with non-linear incidence rates were further looked at and the stability of their solutions were evaluated. The results indicate that both deterministic and stochastic models can give not only an insight but also an integral description of TB transmission dynamics. Both deterministic and stochastic models fit well to the Kenyan TB epidemic model however with varying time periods. The models show that for deterministic model the number of infected individuals increases dramatically within three years and begins to fall quickly when the transmissible acts are 10 and 15 and falls to close to zero by 15 years but when the transmissible act is 5 the number infected peaks by the 11th year and declines to zero by year 31, while for stochastic models the number infected falls exponentially but when the transmissible acts is 15 the decline is slow and will get to zero by the 53rd year while for 10 transmissible acts to declines to zero by the 18th year. The other transmissible acts (1, 3, 5) decline to zero by the 9th year. From this study we conclude that if the national control program continues with the current interventions it could take them up to the next 31 years to bring the infection numbers to zero if the deterministic model is considered, while in the stochastic model with accelerated interventions and high recovery rate and assuming that there is no change in the risk factors it could take them up to 11 years to bring the infections to zero

A measurement of the tau mass and the first CPT test with tau leptons

We measure the mass of the tau lepton to be 1775.1+-1.6(stat)+-1.0(syst.) MeV using tau pairs from Z0 decays. To test CPT invariance we compare the masses of the positively and negatively charged tau leptons. The relative mass difference is found to be smaller than 3.0 10^-3 at the 90% confidence level.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, Submitted to Phys. Letts.

First Measurement of Z/gamma* Production in Compton Scattering of Quasi-real Photons

We report the first observation of Z/gamma* production in Compton scattering of quasi-real photons. This is a subprocess of the reaction e+e- to e+e-Z/gamma*, where one of the final state electrons is undetected. Approximately 55 pb-1 of data collected in the year 1997 at an e+e- centre-of-mass energy of 183 GeV with the OPAL detector at LEP have been analysed. The Z/gamma* from Compton scattering has been detected in the hadronic decay channel. Within well defined kinematic bounds, we measure the product of cross-section and Z/gamma* branching ratio to hadrons to be (0.9+-0.3+-0.1) pb for events with a hadronic mass larger than 60 GeV, dominated by (e)eZ production. In the hadronic mass region between 5 GeV and 60 GeV, dominated by (e)egamma* production, this product is found to be (4.1+-1.6+-0.6) pb. Our results agree with the predictions of two Monte Carlo event generators, grc4f and PYTHIA.Comment: 18 pages, LaTeX, 5 eps figures included, submitted to Physics Letters