Environmental monitoring of Mycobacterium bovis in badger feces and badger sett soil by real-time PCR, as confirmed by immunofluorescence, immunocapture, and cultivation

Real-time PCR was used to detect and quantify Mycobacterium bovis cells in naturally infected soil and badger faeces. Immunomagnetic capture, immunofluorescence and selective culture confirmed species identification and cell viability. These techniques will prove useful for monitoring M. bovis in the environment and for elucidating transmission routes between wildlife and cattle

The nonlinear time-dependent response of isotactic polypropylene

Tensile creep tests, tensile relaxation tests and a tensile test with a constant rate of strain are performed on injection-molded isotactic polypropylene at room temperature in the vicinity of the yield point. A constitutive model is derived for the time-dependent behavior of semi-crystalline polymers. A polymer is treated as an equivalent network of chains bridged by permanent junctions. The network is modelled as an ensemble of passive meso-regions (with affine nodes) and active meso-domains (where junctions slip with respect to their positions in the bulk medium with various rates). The distribution of activation energies for sliding in active meso-regions is described by a random energy model. Adjustable parameters in the stress--strain relations are found by fitting experimental data. It is demonstrated that the concentration of active meso-domains monotonically grows with strain, whereas the average potential energy for sliding of junctions and the standard deviation of activation energies suffer substantial drops at the yield point. With reference to the concept of dual population of crystalline lamellae, these changes in material parameters are attributed to transition from breakage of subsidiary (thin) lamellae in the sub-yield region to fragmentation of primary (thick) lamellae in the post-yield region of deformation.Comment: 29 pages, 12 figure

Impact of meningitis on intelligence and development: A systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: We undertook a systematic review and meta-analysis to address the question "what is the impact of meningitis on IQ and development." METHODS: Search: conducted using standardized search terms across Medline, PsychInfo and EMBASE to 06/2014. Eligibility: human studies of any infectious aetiology of meningitis reporting IQ or infant developmental age or stage outcomes. Quality: Centre for Evidence Based Medicine, Oxford, quality tools. Analysis: random effects meta-analysis by organism. RESULTS: 39 studies were included in the review, 34 providing data on IQ (2015 subjects) and 12 on developmental delay (382 subjects). Across all bacterial organisms, meningitis survivors had a mean IQ 5.50 (95% CI: -7.19, -3.80; I2 = 47%, p = 0.02) points lower than controls. IQ was significantly lower than controls for Neisseria meningitides (NM: 5 points) and Haemophilus influenzae b (Hib: 6 points) but not in viral meningitis, with only single studies included for Streptococcus pneumoniae (SP) and group B streptococcus (GBS). The pooled relative risk (RR) for low IQ (IQ<70) in survivors of bacterial meningitis compared with controls was 4.99 (95% CI: 3.17, 7.86) with no significant heterogeneity (I2 = 49%, p = 0.07). Developmental delay of approximately 0.5SD was reported in studies of bacterial meningitis but no delay in the only study of viral meningitis. CONCLUSIONS: We found moderate evidence that surviving bacterial meningitis has a deleterious impact on IQ and development but no evidence that viral meningitis had meaningful cognitive impacts. Survivors of bacterial meningitis should be routinely offered screening for cognitive deficits and developmental delay in addition to hearing loss

The Physiologic Effects of Multiple Simultaneous Electronic Control Device Discharges

Objectives: Law enforcement and military personnel use electronic control devices to control non-compliant and actively resistive subjects. The TASER® Shockwave is a new electronic control device designed specifically as an area denial device capable of delivering multiple simultaneous discharges. This is the first study to examine the effects of multiple simultaneous device discharges in humans.Methods: Volunteers were exposed to multiple (two to three), simultaneous 5-second discharges from the Shockwave device to the chest, back, chest to abdomen, or thighs. Blood was analyzed before and after discharge for pH, lactate, potassium, creatine kinase (CK), and troponin. Continuous spirometry was performed before, during, and after the discharge. In addition, electrocardiograms (ECGs) before and after discharge were recorded, and echocardiography was used to determine the rhythm during discharge.Results: Small elevations of lactate occurred. Moderate increases in CK at 24 hours occurred and appeared to be related to the number of simultaneous discharges. There was a trend to a decrease in minute ventilation in the volunteers exposed to two simultaneous discharges, but it did not reach statistical significance. ECG changes only reflected an increase in vagal tone, and there was no evidence of capture by echocardiography. Five-second, simultaneous, multiple exposures to the TASER Shockwave device were reasonably tolerated by our human volunteers.Conclusion: Our study suggests that this device may have a reasonable risk/benefit ratio when used to protect an area from a threat. [West J Emerg Med. 2010; 11(1):49-56]

Effects of rapid thermal annealing on GaAs 1-x

The effects of rapid thermal annealing on the optical and structural properties of GaAs1-xBix alloys for x ranging from 0.022 to 0.065 were investigated. At room temperature, the annealed GaAs1-xBix showed modest improvement (∼3 times) in photoluminescence (PL) while the PL peak wavelength remained relatively unchanged. It was found that bismuth related defects are not easily removed by annealing and the PL improvement may be dominated by the reduction of other types of defects including arsenic and gallium related defects. Also, the optimum annealing temperature is Bi composition dependent. For samples with x &lt; 0.048, the optimum annealing temperature is 700 °C but reduces to 600 °C for higher compositions

Fairness-enhancing interventions in stream classification

The wide spread usage of automated data-driven decision support systems has raised a lot of concerns regarding accountability and fairness of the employed models in the absence of human supervision. Existing fairness-aware approaches tackle fairness as a batch learning problem and aim at learning a fair model which can then be applied to future instances of the problem. In many applications, however, the data comes sequentially and its characteristics might evolve with time. In such a setting, it is counter-intuitive to "fix" a (fair) model over the data stream as changes in the data might incur changes in the underlying model therefore, affecting its fairness. In this work, we propose fairness-enhancing interventions that modify the input data so that the outcome of any stream classifier applied to that data will be fair. Experiments on real and synthetic data show that our approach achieves good predictive performance and low discrimination scores over the course of the stream.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures. To appear in the proceedings of 30th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications, Linz, Austria August 26 - 29, 201