Strongyloidiasis in a nonagenarian who previously worked in conservancy services

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Prevalence of influenza vaccination and associated factors among Chinese nursing home health care workers

BACKGROUND: Influenza vaccination (IV) in nursing home health care workers (nHCWs) can reduce mortality of nursing home older adults. There is no study examining the prevalence of IV in Chinese nHCWs ...postprin

Effectiveness of influenza vaccination in institutionalised older adults: a systematic review

This journal suppl. entitled: 19th Medical Research Conference; Department of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Queen Mary Hospital, Hong KongBACKGROUND: Influenza infection is common among institutionalised older adults. Many non-randomised observational studies on influenza vaccination suggested that it could reduce influenza-related hospitalizations and mortality in institutionalised older adults. Criticism regarding the effectiveness of influenza vaccine estimated by non-randomised observational studies includes the frailty selection bias and use of non-specific outcome like all-cause mortality. A systematic review of studies of influenza vaccination in institutionalized older adults to ...postprin

A randomised controlled trial to compare immunogenicity between intramuscular and intradermal trivalent influenza vaccination in nursing home older adults

BACKGROUND: Immunosenescence in older adults contributes to unsatisfactory immunogenicity towards influenza vaccine. Intradermal (ID) administration of influenza vaccine has been suggested to improve immunogenicity but there is no study regarding the immunogenicity of ID influenza vaccination in nursing home older adults ...postprin

Comparing effectiveness between intramuscular and intradermal trivalent influenza vaccination in nursing home residents: a randomised controlled trial

Oral PresentationBACKGROUND: There is no study comparing clinical effectiveness between intradermal (ID) and intramuscular (IM) administration of influenza vaccination in nursing home older adults ...postprin

All-electric all-semiconductor spin field-effect transistors.

The spin field-effect transistor envisioned by Datta and Das opens a gateway to spin information processing. Although the coherent manipulation of electron spins in semiconductors is now possible, the realization of a functional spin field-effect transistor for information processing has yet to be achieved, owing to several fundamental challenges such as the low spin-injection efficiency due to resistance mismatch, spin relaxation and the spread of spin precession angles. Alternative spin transistor designs have therefore been proposed, but these differ from the field-effect transistor concept and require the use of optical or magnetic elements, which pose difficulties for incorporation into integrated circuits. Here, we present an all-electric and all-semiconductor spin field-effect transistor in which these obstacles are overcome by using two quantum point contacts as spin injectors and detectors. Distinct engineering architectures of spin-orbit coupling are exploited for the quantum point contacts and the central semiconductor channel to achieve complete control of the electron spins (spin injection, manipulation and detection) in a purely electrical manner. Such a device is compatible with large-scale integration and holds promise for future spintronic devices for information processing.We thank C.-W. Chang, C.-C. Cheng, M. Fletcher, S. N. Holmes, C.-T. Liang, S.-T. Lo and J. R. Petta for discussion and/or technical assistance on device fabrication and measurements. This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology (Taiwan), the Headquarters of University Advancement at the National Cheng Kung University, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UK).This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available at http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v10/n1/full/nnano.2014.296.htm

Local adverse effect of intradermal administration of influenza vaccination is an indicator of satisfactory immunogenicity

BACKGROUND: There are few studies concerning the association between immunogenicity of intradermal (ID) administration of influenza vaccination and adverse effect of vaccination ...postprin

Hippocampal Desynchronization of Functional Connectivity Prior to the Onset of Status Epilepticus in Pilocarpine-Treated Rats

Status epilepticus (SE), a pro-epileptogenic brain insult in rodent models of temporal lobe epilepsy, is successfully induced by pilocarpine in some, but not all, rats. This study aimed to identify characteristic alterations within the hippocampal neural network prior to the onset of SE. Sixteen microwire electrodes were implanted into the left hippocampus of male Sprague-Dawley rats. After a 7-day recovery period, animal behavior, hippocampal neuronal ensemble activities, and local field potentials (LFP) were recorded before and after an intra-peritoneal injection of pilocarpine (350 mg/kg). The single-neuron firing, population neuronal correlation, and coincident firing between neurons were compared between SE (n = 9) and nonSE rats (n = 12). A significant decrease in the strength of functional connectivity prior to the onset of SE, as measured by changes in coincident spike timing between pairs of hippocampal neurons, was exclusively found in SE rats. However, single-neuron firing and LFP profiles did not show a significant difference between SE and nonSE rats. These results suggest that desynchronization in the functional circuitry of the hippocampus, likely associated with a change in synaptic strength, may serve as an electrophysiological marker prior to SE in pilocarpine-treated rats

Snapshot Provisioning of Cloud Application Stacks to Face Traffic Surges

Traffic surges, like the Slashdot effect, occur when a web application is overloaded by a huge number of requests, potentially leading to unavailability. Unfortunately, such traffic variations are generally totally unplanned, of great amplitude, within a very short period, and a variable delay to return to a normal regime. In this report, we introduce PeakForecast as an elastic middleware solution to detect and absorb a traffic surge. In particular, PeakForecast can, from a trace of queries received in the last seconds, minutes or hours, to detect if the underlying system is facing a traffic surge or not, and then estimate the future traffic using a forecast model with an acceptable precision, thereby calculating the number of resources required to absorb the remaining traffic to come. We validate our solution by experimental results demonstrating that it can provide instantaneous elasticity of resources for traffic surges observed on the Japanese version of Wikipedia during the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in March 2011.Les pics de trafic, tels que l'effet Slashdot, apparaissent lorsqu'une application web doit faire face un nombre important de requêtes qui peut potentiellement entraîner une mise hors service de l'application. Malheureusement, de telles variations de traffic sont en général totalement imprévues et d'une grande amplitude, arrivent pendant une très courte période de temps et le retour à un régime normal prend un délai variable. Dans ce rapport, nous présentons PeakForecast qui est une solution intergicielle élastique pour détecter et absorber les pics de trafic. En particulier, PeakForecast peut, à partir des traces de requêtes reçues dans les dernières secondes, minutes ou heures, détecter si le système sous-jacent fait face ou non à un pic de trafic, estimer le trafic futur en utilisant un modèle de prédiction suffisamment précis, et calculer le nombre de ressources nécessaires à l'absorption du trafic restant à venir. Nous validons notre solution avec des résultats expérimentaux qui démontrent qu'elle fournit une élasticité instantanée des ressources pour des pics de trafic qui ont été observés sur la version japonaise de Wikipedia lors de l'accident nucléaire de Fukushima Daiichi en mars 2011

Controlled spatial separation of spins and coherent dynamics in spin-orbit-coupled nanostructures.

The spatial separation of electron spins followed by the control of their individual spin dynamics has recently emerged as an essential ingredient in many proposals for spin-based technologies because it would enable both of the two spin species to be simultaneously utilized, distinct from most of the current spintronic studies and technologies wherein only one spin species could be handled at a time. Here we demonstrate that the spatial spin splitting of a coherent beam of electrons can be achieved and controlled using the interplay between an external magnetic field and Rashba spin-orbit interaction in semiconductor nanostructures. The technique of transverse magnetic focusing is used to detect this spin separation. More notably, our ability to engineer the spin-orbit interactions enables us to simultaneously manipulate and probe the coherent spin dynamics of both spin species and hence their correlation, which could open a route towards spintronics and spin-based quantum information processing