3,410 research outputs found
Spreading of Persistent Infections in Heterogeneous Populations
Up to now, the effects of having heterogeneous networks of contacts have been
studied mostly for diseases which are not persistent in time, i.e., for
diseases where the infectious period can be considered very small compared to
the lifetime of an individual. Moreover, all these previous results have been
obtained for closed populations, where the number of individuals does not
change during the whole duration of the epidemics. Here, we go one step further
and analyze, both analytically and numerically, a radically different kind of
diseases: those that are persistent and can last for an individual's lifetime.
To be more specific, we particularize to the case of Tuberculosis' (TB)
infection dynamics, where the infection remains latent for a period of time
before showing up and spreading to other individuals. We introduce an
epidemiological model for TB-like persistent infections taking into account the
heterogeneity inherent to the population structure. This sort of dynamics
introduces new analytical and numerical challenges that we are able to sort
out. Our results show that also for persistent diseases the epidemic threshold
depends on the ratio of the first two moments of the degree distribution so
that it goes to zero in a class of scale-free networks when the system
approaches the thermodynamic limit.Comment: 12 pages and 2 figures. Revtex format. Submitted for publication
Pathogen-specific risk of chronic gastrointestinal disorders following bacterial causes of foodborne illness
BACKGROUND: The US CDC estimates over 2 million foodborne illnesses are annually caused by 4 major enteropathogens: non-typhoid Salmonella spp., Campylobacter spp., Shigella spp. and Yersinia enterocoltica. While data suggest a number of costly and morbid chronic sequelae associated with these infections, pathogen-specific risk estimates are lacking. We utilized a US Department of Defense medical encounter database to evaluate the risk of several gastrointestinal disorders following select foodborne infections. METHODS: We identified subjects with acute gastroenteritis between 1998 to 2009 attributed to Salmonella (nontyphoidal) spp., Shigella spp., Campylobacter spp. or Yersinia enterocolitica and matched each with up to 4 unexposed subjects. Medical history was analyzed for the duration of military service time (or a minimum of 1Â year) to assess for incident chronic gastrointestinal disorders. Relative risks were calculated using modified Poisson regression while controlling for the effect of covariates. RESULTS: A total of 1,753 pathogen-specific gastroenteritis cases (Campylobacter: 738, Salmonella: 624, Shigella: 376, Yersinia: 17) were identified and followed for a median of 3.8Â years. The incidence (per 100,000 person-years) of PI sequelae among exposed was as follows: irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), 3.0; dyspepsia, 1.8; constipation, 3.9; gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), 9.7. In multivariate analyses, we found pathogen-specific increased risk of IBS, dyspepsia, constipation and GERD. CONCLUSIONS: These data confirm previous studies demonstrating risk of chronic gastrointestinal sequelae following bacterial enteric infections and highlight additional preventable burden of disease which may inform better food security policies and practices, and prompt further research into pathogenic mechanisms
Tailoring the surface charge of dextran-based polymer coated SPIONs for modulated stem cell uptake and MRI contrast
Tracking stem cells in vivo using non-invasive techniques is critical to evaluate the efficacy and safety of stem cell therapies. Superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) enable cells to be tracked using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), but to obtain detectable signal cells need to be labelled with a sufficient amount of iron oxide. For the majority of SPIONs, this can only be obtained with the use of transfection agents, which can adversely affect cell health. Here, we have synthesised a library of dextran-based polymer coated SPIONs with varying surface charge from −1.5 mV to +18.2 mV via a co-precipitation approach and investigated their ability to be directly internalised by stem cells without the need for transfection agents. The SPIONs were colloidally stable in physiological solutions. The crystalline phase of the particles was confirmed with powder X-ray diffraction and their magnetic properties were characterised using SQUID magnetometry and magnetic resonance. Increased surface charge led to six-fold increase in uptake of particles into stem cells and higher MRI contrast, with negligible change in cell viability. Cell tracking velocimetry was shown to be a more accurate method for predicting MRI contrast of stem cells compared to measuring iron oxide uptake through conventional bulk iron quantification
Some basement rocks from Bear Mountain to the Housatonic Highlands
Guidebook for field trips in western Massachusetts, northern Connecticut and adjacent areas of New York: 67th annual meeting October 10, 11, and 12, 1975: Trip A-1; C-
Measurements of one-point statistics in 21 cm intensity maps via foreground avoidance strategy
Measurements of the one-point probability distribution function and
higher-order moments (variance, skewness, and kurtosis) of the high-redshift 21
cm fluctuations are among the most direct statistical probes of the
non-Gaussian nature of structure formation and evolution during reionization.
However, contamination from astrophysical foregrounds and instrument
systematics pose significant challenges in measuring these statistics in real
observations. In this work, we use forward modelling to investigate the
feasibility of measuring 21 cm one-point statistics through a foreground
avoidance strategy. Leveraging the well-known characteristic of foreground
contamination in which it occupies a wedge-shape region in k-space, we apply a
foreground wedge-cut filter that removes the contaminated modes from a mock
data set based on the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) instrument,
and measure the one-point statistics from the image-space representation of the
remaining non-contaminated modes. We experiment with wedge-cutting over
different frequency bandwidths and varying degrees of removal that correspond
to different assumptions on the extent of the foreground sources on the sky and
leakage from the Fourier Transform window function. We find that the centre of
the band is the least biased from wedge-cutting while the edges of the band are
unusable due to being highly down-weighted by the window function. Based on
this finding, we introduce a rolling filter method that allows reconstruction
of an optimal wedge-cut 21~cm intensity map over the full bandwidth using
outputs from wedge-cutting over multiple sub-bands. We perform Monte Carlo
simulations to show that HERA should be able to measure the rise in skewness
and kurtosis near the end of reionization with the rolling wedge-cut method if
foreground leakage from the Fourier transform window function can be
controlled.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, submitted to MNRA
Variability in remission in family therapy for anorexia nervosa.
ObjectiveThe evolution toward more stringent conceptualizations of remission in family therapy for adolescent anorexia nervosa (AN) has, with time, introduced variability in outcomes across randomized controlled trials (RCTs). An examination of remission across the history of research on family therapy for AN shows that earlier studies adopted lenient definitions and generally yielded higher rates of remission than studies of the past decade that have used stricter definitions of remission. In this study, we investigate the reactivity of remission rates to the application of different definitions of remission used within the family therapy for AN literature, within a single RCT data set.MethodWe conducted a secondary analysis of data from a single-site RCT which compared the relative efficacy of two formats of family therapy in a sample of 106 Australian adolescents with AN. Using end-of-treatment data, we compared remission rates using 11 definitions of remission that have been used in studies of family therapy for AN spanning more than three decades.ResultsWe found wide variability in remission rates (21.7-87.7%; Cochran's Q χ2 (10, N = 106) = 303.55, p = .000], depending on which definition of remission was applied. As expected, more lenient criteria produced higher remission rates than more stringent definitions.DiscussionApplying different criteria of remission to a single data set illustrates the impact of changing how remission is defined. Failure to consider the greater stringency of remission criteria in recent studies could result in false inferences concerning the efficacy of family therapy for AN over time
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Compressively sampling the optical transmission matrix of a multimode fibre
The measurement of the optical transmission matrix (TM) of an opaque material is an advanced form of space-variant aberration correction. Beyond imaging, TM-based methods are emerging in a range of fields, including optical communications, micro-manipulation, and computing. In many cases, the TM is very sensitive to perturbations in the configuration of the scattering medium it represents. Therefore, applications often require an up-to-the-minute characterisation of the fragile TM, typically entailing hundreds to thousands of probe measurements. Here, we explore how these measurement requirements can be relaxed using the framework of compressive sensing, in which the incorporation of prior information enables accurate estimation from fewer measurements than the dimensionality of the TM we aim to reconstruct. Examples of such priors include knowledge of a memory effect linking the input and output fields, an approximate model of the optical system, or a recent but degraded TM measurement. We demonstrate this concept by reconstructing the full-size TM of a multimode fibre supporting 754 modes at compression ratios down to ∼5% with good fidelity. We show that in this case, imaging is still possible using TMs reconstructed at compression ratios down to ∼1% (eight probe measurements). This compressive TM sampling strategy is quite general and may be applied to a variety of other scattering samples, including diffusers, thin layers of tissue, fibre optics of any refractive profile, and reflections from opaque walls. These approaches offer a route towards the measurement of high-dimensional TMs either quickly or with access to limited numbers of measurements
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