Detection of enteric parasite DNA in household and bed dust samples: potential for infection transmission.

BACKGROUND: Enteric parasites are transmitted in households but few studies have sampled inside households for parasites and none have used sensitive molecular methods. METHODS: We collected bed and living room dust samples from households of children participating in a clinical trial of anthelmintic treatment in rural coastal Ecuador. Dust was examined for presence of DNA specific for 11 enteric parasites (Ascaris lumbricoides, Trichuris trichiura, Ancylostoma duodenale, Necator americanus, Strongyloides stercoralis, Toxocara canis and T. cati, Giardia lamblia, Blastocystis hominis, Cryptosporidium spp., and Entamoeba histolytica) by quantitative PCR (qPCR). RESULTS: Of the 38 households sampled, 37 had positive dust for at least one parasite and up to 8 parasites were detected in single samples. Positivity was greatest for B. hominis (79% of household samples) indicating a high level of environmental fecal contamination. Dust positivity rates for individual pathogens were: S. stercoralis (52%), A. lumbricoides (39%), G. lamblia (39%), Toxocara spp. (42%), hookworm (18%) and T. trichiura (8%). DNA for Cryptosporidium spp. and E. histolytica was not detected. Bed dust was more frequently positive than floor samples for all parasites detected. Positivity for A. lumbricoides DNA in bed (adjusted OR: 10.0, 95% CI: 2.0-50.1) but not floor dust (adjusted OR: 3.6, 95% CI: 0.3-37.9) was significantly associated with active infections in children. CONCLUSIONS: To our knowledge, this is the first use of qPCR on environmental samples to detect a wide range of enteric pathogen DNA. Our results indicate widespread contamination of households with parasite DNA and raise the possibility that beds, under conditions of overcrowding in a humid tropical setting, may be a source of transmission

Algunas soluciones aproximadas para diseños split-plot con matrices de covarianza arbitrarias

El presente trabajo revisa con cierto detalle diversos tipos de análisis para diseños split-plot que carecen del mismo número de unidades experimentales dentro de cada grupo y en los que se incumple el supuesto de esfericidad multimuestral. Específicamente, adoptando el enfoque multivariado de aproximar los grados de libertad desarrollado por Johansen (1980) y el procedimiento de aproximación general mejorada corregida basado en Huynh (1980) se muestra cómo obtener análisis robustos y poderosos a la hora de probar los efectos principales y la interacción, así como hipótesis de comparaciones múltiples relacionadas con estos efectos, tanto si se cuenta con una simple variable dependiente asociada con cada una de las medidas repetidas como si se cuenta con más de una

On the Wandering Property in Dirichlet spaces

We show that in a scale of weighted Dirichlet spaces Dα, including the Bergman space, given any finite Blaschke product B there exists an equivalent norm in Dα such that B satisfies the wandering subspace property with respect to such norm. This extends, in some sense, previous results by Carswell et al. (Indiana Univ Math J 51(4):931–961, 2002). As a particular instance, when B(z)=zk and |α|≤log(2)log(k+1), the chosen norm is the usual one in Dα

Space-Efficient Representations of Raster Time Series

Financiado para publicación en acceso aberto: Universidade da Coruña/CISUG[Abstract] Raster time series, a.k.a. temporal rasters, are collections of rasters covering the same region at consecutive timestamps. These data have been used in many different applications ranging from weather forecast systems to monitoring of forest degradation or soil contamination. Many different sensors are generating this type of data, which makes such analyses possible, but also challenges the technological capacity to store and retrieve the data. In this work, we propose a space-efficient representation of raster time series that is based on Compact Data Structures (CDS). Our method uses a strategy of snapshots and logs to represent the data, in which both components are represented using CDS. We study two variants of this strategy, one with regular sampling and another one based on a heuristic that determines at which timestamps should the snapshots be created to reduce the space redundancy. We perform a comprehensive experimental evaluation using real datasets. The results show that the proposed strategy is competitive in space with alternatives based on pure data compression, while providing much more efficient query times for different types of queries.The data used in this study were acquired as part of the mission of NASA’s Earth Science Division and archived and distributed by the Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center (DISC). Funding: CITIC, as Research Center accredited by Galician University System, is funded by “Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Universidade from Xunta de Galicia”, supported in an 80% through ERDF Funds, ERDF Operational Programme Galicia 2014-2020, and the remaining 20% by “Secretaría Xeral de Universidades” (Grant ED431G 2019/01). This work was also supported by Xunta de Galicia/FEDER-UE under Grants [IG240.2020.1.185; IN852A 2018/14]; Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades under Grants [TIN2016-78011-C4-1-R; RTC-2017-5908-7; PID2019- 105221RB-C41/AEI/10.13039/501100011033]; ANID - Millennium Science Initiative Program - Code ICN17_002; Programa Iberoamericano de Ciencia y Tecnología para el Desarrollo (CYTED) [Grant No. 519RT0579]Xunta de Galicia; ED431G 2019/01Xunta de Galicia; IG240.2020.1.185Xunta de Galicia; IN852A 2018/14Chile. Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo; ICN17_00

A tripartite filter design for seamless pedestrian navigation using recursive 2-means clustering and Tukey update

Mobile devices are desired to guide users seamlessly to diverse destinations indoors and outdoors. The positioning fixing subsystems often provide poor quality measurements with gaps in an urban environment. No single position fixing technology works continuously. Many sensor fusion variations have been previously trialed to overcome this challenge, including the particle filter that is robust and the Kalman filter which is fast. However, a lack exists, of context aware, seamless systems that are able to use the most fit sensors and methods in the correct context. A novel adaptive and modular tripartite navigation filter design is presented to enable seamless navigation. It consists of a sensor subsystem, a context inference and a navigation filter blocks. A foot-mounted inertial measurement unit (IMU), a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and Ultrawideband (UWB) positioning systems were used in the evaluation implementation of this design. A novel recursive 2-means clustering method was developed to track multiple hypotheses when there are gaps in position fixes. The closest hypothesis to a new position fix is selected when the gap ends. Moreover, when the position fix quality measure is not reliable, a fusion approach using a Tukey-style particle filter measurement update is introduced. Results show the successful operation of the design implementation. The Tukey update improves accuracy by 5% and together with the clustering method the system robustness is enhanced