Fruit and vegetable consumption in Malaysia: a count system approach

Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Mechanisms of the evolutionary arms race between Vibrio cholerae and Vibriophage clinical isolates

This review highlights recent findings on the evolutionary arms race between the causative agent of cholera Vibriocholerae and virulent bacteriophages (phages) ICP1, ICP2, and ICP3 isolated from cholera patient stool samples. We discussmechanisms of phage resistance such as a unique phage-inhibitory chromosomal island and mutations that affect phage receptorexpression. We also discuss the molecular characterization of ICP1 and its unique CRISPR-Cas system, which it uses to combatthe phage-inhibitory chromosomal island. The role of phages in the life cycle of V. cholerae has been increasingly recognized andinvestigated in the past decade. This article will review hypotheses as to how the predator-prey relationship may have an impacton infections within individuals and on the self-limiting nature of cholera epidemics. In addition, we put forth a strategy of usingphages as an intervention to reduce household transmission of cholera within a community

HSPES membrane electrode assembly

An improved fuel cell electrode, as well as fuel cells and membrane electrode assemblies that include such an electrode, in which the electrode includes a backing layer having a sintered layer thereon, and a non-sintered free-catalyst layer. The invention also features a method of forming the electrode by sintering a backing material with a catalyst material and then applying a free-catalyst layer

A short note on the presence of spurious states in finite basis approximations

The genesis of spurious solutions in finite basis approximations to operators which possess a continuum and a point spectrum is discussed and a simple solution for identifying these solutions is suggested

Predictive Efficiency Analysis : A Study of U.S. Hospitals

Workshop 2015 -Advances in DEA Theory and Applications (December 1-2, 2015)Healthcare costs are higher in the U.S. then anywhere else in the world. A significant portion of the costs are generated in hospitals. We investigate both the efficiency and the effectiveness of U.S. community hospitals using the Agency for healthcare Research and Quality’s Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project 2009-2011 Nationwide Inpatient Sample, a data set which contains all discharges from an approximate 20% sample of hospitals. Here efficiency is the productivity of the hospital measured relative to the most productive hospitals and effectiveness is how closely the hospital produced relative to the forecasted services needed. We find the effectiveness levels are slightly higher than the efficiency levels in both 2010 and 2011 indicating that hospitals are producing closer to the forecasted level than the actual service level needed. Further, both efficiency and effectiveness levels are low indicating a large variability in the level of resources hospitals use to provide the same set of services. The low effectiveness scores indicate that many hospitals have a high level of resources even relative to the forecasted demand providing some evidence for a medical arms race.The workshop is supported by JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science), Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B), #25282090, titled “Studies in Theory and Applications of DEA for Forecasting Purpose.本研究はJSPS科研費 基盤研究(B) 25282090の助成を受けたものです

An Integrated Transportation use Modeling System for Indiana; Implementation Report and User\u27s Manual

The principle objective of this research was to develop an integrated model to represent the interrelationships between land use and transportation, subject to the requirements of the ISTEA of 1991 and the CAAA of 1990. The integrated model includes two major parts: a land-use allocation module and a travel demand module. An interface module has also been built to transform data between these two modules. The land-use allocation module consists of a residential location model, an employment location model, a land use potential model, and a land consumption model. One unique feature of the residential and employment location models is that they simultaneously estimate passenger movement by work-to-home, home-to-shop and work-to-shop trips between zones before entering the travel demand module. Then the TRANPLAN-based travel demand module carries trip generation and trip distribution stages for estimating home-based school, home-based other, non-home-based, external-internal and external-external trips. The land consumption model, which is significantly different from the LANCON procedure of DRAM/EMPAL, is based on micro-economic theory to simulate the profit-maximizing behavior of housing or landowners over time. The major purpose of the land consumption model is to satisfy the need to reach a balance between demand and supply in the housing market during each time period. The land consumption model is also influenced by Anas’s work in CATLAS, which did not deal with employment location, but simultaneously considers housing location and employment location. The integrated model can be used to evaluate land use policies and transportation policies. Tests run for the Lafayette area have demonstrated that the model can be used to quantify positive and negative effects of long range transportation and land use plans. The final report has two parts. Part I is the technical report that describes how the Indiana Transportation Land Use Modeling System (ITLUMS) was developed. Part II is a separate user’s guide, which describes the FORTRAN programs that make up ITLUMS, the sequence in which the programs must be run, and the format of the input files needed by the ITLUMS programs