Social Contact Patterns in Vietnam and Implications for the Control of Infectious Diseases

BACKGROUND: The spread of infectious diseases from person to person is determined by the frequency and nature of contacts between infected and susceptible members of the population. Although there is a long history of using mathematical models to understand these transmission dynamics, there are still remarkably little empirical data on contact behaviors with which to parameterize these models. Even starker is the almost complete absence of data from developing countries. We sought to address this knowledge gap by conducting a household based social contact diary in rural Vietnam. METHODS AND FINDINGS: A diary based survey of social contact patterns was conducted in a household-structured community cohort in North Vietnam in 2007. We used generalized estimating equations to model the number of contacts while taking into account the household sampling design, and used weighting to balance the household size and age distribution towards the Vietnamese population. We recorded 6675 contacts from 865 participants in 264 different households and found that mixing patterns were assortative by age but were more homogenous than observed in a recent European study. We also observed that physical contacts were more concentrated in the home setting in Vietnam than in Europe but the overall level of physical contact was lower. A model of individual versus household vaccination strategies revealed no difference between strategies in the impact on R(0). CONCLUSIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE: This work is the first to estimate contact patterns relevant to the spread of infections transmitted from person to person by non-sexual routes in a developing country setting. The results show interesting similarities and differences from European data and demonstrate the importance of context specific data

Genome sequences of a novel Vietnamese bat bunyavirus

To document the viral zoonotic risks in Vietnam, fecal samples were systematically collected from a number of mammals in southern Vietnam and subjected to agnostic deep sequencing. We describe here novel Vietnamese bunyavirus sequences detected in bat feces. The complete L and S segments from 14 viruses were determined

Hydrogen Storage Materials for Mobile and Stationary Applications: Current State of the Art

One of the limitations to the widespread use of hydrogen as an energy carrier is its storage in a safe and compact form. Herein, recent developments in effective high-capacity hydrogen storage materials are reviewed, with a special emphasis on light compounds, including those based on organic porous structures, boron, nitrogen, and aluminum. These elements and their related compounds hold the promise of high, reversible, and practical hydrogen storage capacity for mobile applications, including vehicles and portable power equipment, but also for the large scale and distributed storage of energy for stationary applications. Current understanding of the fundamental principles that govern the interaction of hydrogen with these light compounds is summarized, as well as basic strategies to meet practical targets of hydrogen uptake and release. The limitation of these strategies and current understanding is also discussed and new directions proposed

A922 Sequential measurement of 1 hour creatinine clearance (1-CRCL) in critically ill patients at risk of acute kidney injury (AKI)

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CAUCHY PROBLEMS FOR FUNCTIONAL EVOLUTION INCLUSIONS INVOLVING ACCRETIVE OPERATORS

Abstract. We study the existence and stability of solutions for a class of nonlinear functional evolution inclusions involving accretive operators. Our approach is employing the fixed point theory for multivalued maps and using estimates via the Hausdorff measure of noncompactness. 1

Existence of solutions for a nonlinear degenerate elliptic system

In this paper, we study the existence of solutions for degenerate elliptic systems. We use the sub-super solution method, and the existence of classical and weak solutions. Some sub-supersolutions are constructed explicitly, when the nonlinearities have critical or supercritical growth

Existence and continuity of global attractors for a degenerate semilinear parabolic equation

In this article, we study the existence and the upper semicontinuity with respect to the nonlinearity and the shape of the domain of global attractors for a semilinear degenerate parabolic equation involving the Grushin operator