Participatory epidemiological study on the burden of rabies in animals and humans in three districts of Buno Bedele Zone, West Ethiopia

Rabies is one of the priority zoonotic diseases and a major public health challenge in Ethiopia. Dog plays an important role in the transmission of the disease to humans. With this point in mind, this study was conducted in selected districts of Buno Bedele Zone namely Bedele, Gechi, and Dabo Hana districts, Western Oromia regional state from December 2019 to April 2020. The objective of the study was to know the status and burden of rabies in the community using the participatory approach and retrospective record assessment from animal and human health facilities. Twelve interview meetings were conducted in 12 Kebeles, which involved 156 informants. In this survey authors learned that dogs were the species most affected by rabies followed by cattle, human, cat, equine, and shoats. Accordingly, rabies in dog had an average score of 64 out of 100 with a range of 50-80. Besides, rabies outbreak was frequently noted between June to October in the study areas. Slaughter and sharing of the meat for household consumption was the most common practice taken to salvage bitten cattle. As per the available record in the study area, the estimated rabies cases incidence was 1.75 bovines, 18 dogs, 2.37 equines, 2.28 cats, and 0.37 shoats per 10,000 animals annually. The annual average post-exposure rabies vaccinations records were 75, 39, and 63 in Bedele, Dabo Hana, and Gechi districts, respectively. On the other hand, the average annual rabies death in humans was 2.2, 1.4, and 1.8 in Bedele, Dabo Hana, and Gechi districts, respectively. In general, this study shows that rabies is a disease that worth serious attention in the study areas

Examining a possible association between human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccination and migraine: results of a cohort study in the Netherlands

Since the introduction of the bivalent human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine in the Netherlands, migraine has been reported as a notable event in the passive safety surveillance system. Research on the association between HPV vaccination and migraine is needed. Therefore, potential migraine cases in 2008–2010 were selected from a group of general practitioners and linked to the vaccination registry. Data were analysed in three ways: (i) incidences of migraine postvaccination (2009/2010) were compared to pre-vaccination incidences (2008); (ii) in a cohort, incidence rates of migraine in vaccinated and unvaccinated girls were compared and (iii) in a self-controlled case series analysis, the relative incidence of migraine in potentially high-risk periods was compared to non-high-risk periods. Incidence rates of migraine for 12- to 16-year-old girls and boys postvaccination were slightly higher than pre-vaccination incidence rates. Incidence rate ratios (IRRs) for vaccinated compared to unvaccinated girls were not statistically significantly higher. Furthermore, the RR for migraine in the high-risk period of 6 weeks following each dose versus non-high-risk period was 4.3 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.69–26.6) for certain migraine. Conclusion: Using different methods, no statistically significant association between HPV vaccination and incident migraine was found. However, the number of cases was low; to definitively exclude the risk, an increased sample size is needed

Effector-triggered defence against apoplastic fungal pathogens

Copyright 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). hR gene-mediated host resistance against apoplastic fungal pathogens is not adequately explained by the terms pathogen-associated molecular pattern (PAMP)-triggered immunity (PTI) or effector-triggered immunity (ETI). Therefore, it is proposed that this type of resistance is termed ‘effector-triggered defence’ (ETD). Unlike PTI and ETI, ETD is mediated by R genes encoding cell surface-localised receptor-like proteins (RLPs) that engage the receptor-like kinase SOBIR1. In contrast to this extracellular recognition, ETI is initiated by intracellular detection of pathogen effectors. ETI is usually associated with fast, hypersensitive host cell death, whereas ETD often triggers host cell death only after an elapsed period of endophytic pathogen growth. In this opinion, we focus on ETD responses against foliar fungal pathogens of cropsPeer reviewe

Block-Diagonalization and f-electron Effects in Tight-Binding Theory

We extend a tight-binding total energy method to include f-electrons, and apply it to the study of the structural and elastic properties of a range of elements from Be to U. We find that the tight-binding parameters are as accurate and transferable for f-electron systems as they are for d-electron systems. In both cases we have found it essential to take great care in constraining the fitting procedure by using a block-diagonalization procedure, which we describe in detail.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure

Nowcasting pandemic influenza A/H1N1 2009 hospitalizations in the Netherlands

During emerging epidemics of infectious diseases, it is vital to have up-to-date information on epidemic trends, such as incidence or health care demand, because hospitals and intensive care units have limited excess capacity. However, real-time tracking of epidemics is difficult, because of the inherent delay between onset of symptoms or hospitalizations, and reporting. We propose a robust algorithm to correct for reporting delays, using the observed distribution of reporting delays. We apply the algorithm to pandemic influenza A/H1N1 2009 hospitalizations as reported in the Netherlands. We show that the proposed algorithm is able to provide unbiased predictions of the actual number of hospitalizations in real-time during the ascent and descent of the epidemic. The real-time predictions of admissions are useful to adjust planning in hospitals to avoid exceeding their capacity

VLBI-observation of ‘Huygens’ probe

JIVE -Joint Institute for Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) in Europe -has managed under ESA contract the VLBI data acquisition of a stabile carrier-signal from Huygens' probe during landing on Titan in January 2004, using ~17 radio telescopes. Evaluation and investigation of the data is included in the same ESA contract. The scenario was described in a previous ICATT Conference (van 't Klooster, 2005). This presentation provides some published information of Huygens descent-trajectory as derived by JIVE. VLBI can be used for special radio-physical investigations, accurate Doppler information is a by-product. VLBI is applied now and in space-missions to come: probes, landers or spacecrafts for navigational, scientific or even telemetry tasks

17 Radio telescopes observing the Huygens signal coming from 1200.000.000 kilometer distance

The Huygens Probe landed 14 January 2005 on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. During and after the landing, Huygens transmitted data to Cassini, which acted as data relay station flying nearby Titan. There were two transmission channels. One of the two channels was very stable in frequency: it was locked to an on-board ultra stabile oscillator (USO). Reception of its carrier signal of this transmission from Huygens has been possible with Earth-based radio telescopes at 1200.000.000 kilometre distance. Frequency stability permitted to process signals received at different radio telescopes with Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) techniques. Exploitation of the latter techniques permits to retrieve the Huygens trajectory through the Titan atmosphere and actual landing location with superb resolution. The scenario for the VLBI experiment is outlined, the direct signal reception at two large radio telescopes is indicated and related descriptive information is given. Post-processing of VLBI data is ongoing at the time of writing in Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE). Good progress can be indicated