COMMUNITY RESPONSE TO ROAD TRAFFIC NOISE IN HANOI-PART I : OUTLINE OF SOCIAL SURVEY AND NOISE MEASUREMENT

Joint Research on Environmental Science and Technology for the Eart

Challenges in diagnosing scrub typhus among hospitalized patients with undifferentiated fever at a national tertiary hospital in northern Vietnam

BACKGROUND: Scrub typhus (ST) is a leading cause of non-malarial febrile illness in Southeast Asia, but evidence of its true disease burden is limited because of difficulties of making the clinical diagnosis and lack of adequate diagnostic tests. To describe the epidemiology and clinical characteristics of ST, we conducted an observational study using multiple diagnostic assays at a national tertiary hospital in Hanoi, Vietnam. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We enrolled 1,127 patients hospitalized with documented fever between June 2012 and May 2013. Overall, 33 (2.9%) patients were diagnosed with ST by PCR and/or screening of ELISA for immunoglobulin M (IgM) with confirmatory tests: 14 (42.4%) were confirmed by indirect immunoperoxidase assay (IIP), and 19 (57.6%) were by IIP and PCR. Living by farming, conjunctival injection, eschar, aspartate aminotransferase elevation, and alanine aminotransferase elevation were significantly associated with ST cases (adjusted odds ratios (aORs): 2.8, 3.07, 48.8, 3.51, and 4.13, respectively), and having a comorbidity and neutrophilia were significantly less common in ST cases (aORs: 0.29 and 0.27, respectively). The majority of the ST cases were not clinically diagnosed with rickettsiosis (72.7%). Dominant IIP reactions against a single antigen were identified in 15 ST cases, whereas indistinguishably high reactions against multiple antigens were seen in 11 ST cases. The most frequently observed dominant IIP reaction was against Karp antigen (eight cases) followed by Gilliam (four cases). The highest diagnostic accuracy of IgM ELISA in acute samples was 78%. In a phylogenetic analysis of the 56-kDa type-specific antigen gene, the majority (14 cases) were located in the Karp-related branch followed by the Gilliam-related (two cases), Kato-related (two cases), and TA763-related clades (one case). CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Both the clinical and laboratory diagnoses of ST remain challenging at a tertiary hospital. Implementation of both serological and nucleic acid amplification assays covering endemic O. tsutsugamushi strains is essential

A SOCIAL SURVEY ON COMMUNITY RESPONSE TO ROAD TRAFFIC NOISE IN HANOI

Joint Research on Environmental Science and Technology for the Eart

A Late Eocene- Oligocene through-flowing river between the Upper Yangtze and South China Sea

We test the hypothesis of a major Paleogene river draining the SE Tibetan Plateau and the central modern Yangtze Basin that then flowed South to the South China Sea. We test this model using U Pb dated detrital zircon grains preserved in Paleogene sedimentary rocks in northern Vietnam and SW China. We applied a series of statistical tests to compare the U-Pb age spectra of the rocks in order to highlight differences and similarities between them and with potential source bedrocks. Monte Carlo mixing models imply that erosion was dominantly derived from the Indochina and Songpan-Garzê Blocks and to a lesser extent the Yangtze Craton. Some of the zircon populations indicate local erosion and sedimentation, but others show close similarity both within northern Vietnam, as well as more widely in the Eocene Jianchuan, Paleocene-Oligocene Simao and Oligocene-Miocene Yuanjiang basins of China. The presence of younger (<200 Ma) zircons from the Qamdo Block of Tibet are less easily explicable in terms of recycling by erosion of older sedimentary rocks and imply a regional drainage linking SE Tibet and the South China Sea in the Late Eocene-Oligocene. Detrital zircons from offshore in the South China Sea showed initial local erosion, but with a connection to a river stretching to SE Tibet in the Late Oligocene. A change from regional to local sources in the Early Miocene in the Yuanjiang Basin indicates the timing of disruption of the old drainage driven by regional plateau uplift

Reduced basis approximation and a posteriori error estimation for parametrized parabolic PDEs; Application to real-time Bayesian parameter estimation

In this paper we consider reduced basis approximation and a posteriori error estimation for linear functional outputs of affinely parametrized linear and non-linear parabolic partial differential equations. The essential ingredients are Galerkin projection onto a low-dimensional space associated with a smooth ``parametric manifold'' --- dimension reduction; efficient and effective Greedy and POD-Greedy sampling methods for identification of optimal and numerically stable approximations --- rapid convergence; rigorous and sharp a posteriori error bounds (and associated stability factors) for the linear-functional outputs of interest --- certainty; and Offline-Online computational decomposition strategies --- minimum marginal cost for high performance in the real-time/embedded (e.g., parameter estimation, control) and many-query (e.g., design optimization, uncertainty quantification, multi- scale) contexts. In this paper we first present reduced basis approximation and a posteriori error estimation for general linear parabolic equations and subsequently for a nonlinear parabolic equation, the incompressible Navier-- Stokes equations. We then present results for the application of our (parabolic) reduced basis methods to Bayesian parameter estimation: detection and characterization of a delamination crack by transient thermal analysis

A Robust Adaptive Control using Fuzzy Neural Network for Robot Manipulators with Dead-Zone

In this paper, a robust-adaptive-fuzzy-neural-network controller (RAFNNs) bases on dead zone compensator for industrial robot manipulators (RM) is proposed to dead the unknown model and external disturbance. Here, the unknown dynamics of the robot system is deal by using fuzzy neural network to approximate the unknown dynamics. The online training laws and estimation of the dead-zone are determined by Lyapunov stability theory and the approximation theory. In this proposal, the robust sliding-mode-control (SMC) is constructed to optimize parameter vectors, solve the approximation error and higher order terms. Therefore, the stability, robustness, and desired tracking performance of RAFNNs for RM are guaranteed. The simulations and experiments performed on three-link RM are provided in comparison with neural-network (NNs) and proportional-integral-derivative (PID) to demonstrate the robustness and effectiveness of the RAFNNs

Reduced Basis Approximation and a Posteriori Error Estimation for the Parametrized Unsteady Boussinesq Equations

In this paper we present reduced basis (RB) approximations and associated rigorous a posteriori error bounds for the parametrized unsteady Boussinesq equations. The essential ingredients are Galerkin projection onto a low-dimensional space associated with a smooth parametric manifold — to provide dimension reduction; an efficient proper orthogonal decomposition–Greedy sampling method for identification of optimal and numerically stable approximations — to yield rapid convergence; accurate (online) calculation of the solution-dependent stability factor by the successive constraint method — to quantify the growth of perturbations/residuals in time; rigorous a posteriori bounds for the errors in the RB approximation and associated outputs — to provide certainty in our predictions; and an offline–online computational decomposition strategy for our RB approximation and associated error bound — to minimize marginal cost and hence achieve high performance in the real-time and many-query contexts. The method is applied to a transient natural convection problem in a two-dimensional "complex" enclosure — a square with a small rectangle cutout — parametrized by Grashof number and orientation with respect to gravity. Numerical results indicate that the RB approximation converges rapidly and that furthermore the (inexpensive) rigorous a posteriori error bounds remain practicable for parameter domains and final times of physical interest.United States. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Grant FA9550-07-1-0425)United States. Department of Defense. Office of the Secretary of Defense (United States. Air Force Office of Scientific Research Grant FA9550-09-1-0613