Comparison of Post-Licensure Safety Surveillance of 13-Valent Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine and 7-Valent Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine: Data from the Vaccine Advere Event Reporting System (Vaers)

Comparison of Post-licensure safety surveillance of 13-Valent Pneumococcal Conjugate vaccine and 7-Valent Pneumococcal Conjugate vaccine: Data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Background: On February 24, 2010, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) licensed a 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (Prevnar 13®, [PCV13]) for use among children aged 6 weeks--71 months. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommended PCV13 routine vaccination of all children aged 2--59 months, children aged 60--71 months with underlying medical conditions, with PCV13 replacing PCV7 for all doses. Methods: We searched case reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a US passive surveillance system, for adverse events (AEs) reported after immunization with PCV13 vaccine from February 24, 2010 through February 24, 2011 for persons vaccinated from February 24, 2010 through December 31, 2010 and compared them with AEs reported by persons who were vaccinated with PCV7. Results: VAERS received 1503 reports of AEs after PCV13; multiple vaccines were given in 79.0% of reports. One hundred eighty (11.9%) were coded as serious, including nineteen reports of death. The most frequently reported symptoms were injection site reactions, fever, irritability and vomiting. Seven hundred fifty-eight (50.4%) reports comprised males. Most reports (37.7%) were from children 1-2 years. Total number of reports received for PCV13 was very similar to those received after vaccination with PCV7. Conclusions: AEs reported to VAERS following 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine were consistent with AEs previously observed in pre-licensure trials. We did not identify any major safety concerns or outcomes

Baysian Flexible Mixture Distribution Modelling of Dichotomous Choice Contingent Valuation with Heterogeneity

This paper considers the performance of a model of mixture normal distributions for dichotomous choice contingent valuation data, which allows the researcher to consider unobserved heterogeneity across the sample. The model is flexible and approaches a semi-parametric model, since any empirical distribution can be represented by augmenting the number of mixture distributions. Bayesian inference allows for simple estimation of the model and is particularly appropriate for conducting inference with finite data sets. The proposed model is compared with other semi-parametric and parametric approaches using Monte Carlo simulation, under alternative assumptions regarding heteroscedasticity and heterogeneity in sample observations. It is found that the mixture normal model reduces bias and improves performance with respect to an alternative semi-parametric model, particularly when the sample is characterized by heterogeneous preferences.Bayesian Econometrics; Mixture of Normals; Choice Experiments

Erratum to: Non-decoupling SUSY in LFV Higgs decays: a window to new physics at the LHC

Journal of High Energy Physics 2015.10 (2015): 192 reproduced by permission of Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA)We wish to thank Andreas Crivellin for his several remarks and discussions on our first (wrong) results for these LR and RL cases which were not showing the decoupling behavior that he was expecting. Our corrected results included here manifest clearly this expected decoupling behavior with the SUSY mass scale mSUS

Poultry Meat Production in the South American Andes

This chapter will explain some of the research carried out in the production of poultry meat in natural hypobaric areas, where the development of industrial poultry farming is not traditional. Relevant aspect of the production of chickens, hens and turkeys for meat purposes will be clarified, as well as their benefits, and characteristics and why it must still be carried out in the Peruvian Andes. Physiological aspects of birds, use of unconventional food; as well as the productive evaluation of poultry species not used intensively, are approached with the purpose of generating and stimulating the obtaining of meat as an economic source for the rural sector and small companies

Biovalorization of Brewery Waste by Applying Anaerobic Digestion

In the food industry, the brewing sector holds a strategic economic position: in the year 2013, the beer production of the EU-28 was equal to 383,553,000 hL. The brewing process includes chemical and biochemical reactions and solid-liquid separations, involving the generation of various residues and by-products, among which the major two fractions are brewer’s spent grain (BSG), and exhausted brewery yeast (BY). Although until today their main use has been for animal feed, in recent years, several studies have investigated the application of anaerobic digestion in order to revalue the brewery wastes. In this work, specific methane production (SMP) and first-order solubilisation (disintegration+ hydrolysis) rates (ksol) for BSG and BY were evaluated. Biomethanation tests were performed in 5-L fed-batch stirred reactors at several substrate/inoculum ratios. The obtained SMP ranged from 0.255 L CH4 g–1 COD for exhausted brewery yeast to 0.284 L CH4 g–1 COD for brewer’s spent grain. The estimated ksol values ranged from 0.224 d–1 for BSG to 0.659 d–1 for BY

Primary intraosseous osteoblastic meningioma

In this case report, we describe a primary osteoblastic intradiploic meningioma with a clinical and radiological appearance simulating osteoma or fibrous dysplasia

Evolutionary conservation of residues in vertebrate DNA polymerase N conferring low fidelity and bypass activity

POLN is a nuclear A-family DNA polymerase encoded in vertebrate genomes. POLN has unusual fidelity and DNA lesion bypass properties, including strong strand displacement activity, low fidelity favoring incorporation of T for template G and accurate translesion synthesis past a 5S-thymine glycol (5S-Tg). We searched for conserved features of the polymerase domain that distinguish it from prokaryotic pol I-type DNA polymerases. A Lys residue (679 in human POLN) of particular interest was identified in the conserved ‘O-helix’ of motif 4 in the fingers sub-domain. The corresponding residue is one of the most important for controlling fidelity of prokaryotic pol I and is a nonpolar Ala or Thr in those enzymes. Kinetic measurements show that K679A or K679T POLN mutant DNA polymerases have full activity on nondamaged templates, but poorly incorporate T opposite template G and do not bypass 5S-Tg efficiently. We also found that a conserved Tyr residue in the same motif not only affects sensitivity to dideoxynucleotides, but also greatly influences enzyme activity, fidelity and bypass. Protein sequence alignment reveals that POLN has three specific insertions in the DNA polymerase domain. The results demonstrate that residues have been strictly retained during evolution that confer unique bypass and fidelity properties on POLN