Trends in Dengue Cases Imported into the United States from Pan America 2001–2012

The objective of this study was to improve risk assessments of travel on dengue (DEN) virus (DENV) distribution. We investigated the exposure risk of US citizens traveling to DEN-endemic Pan American countries. The number of DEN cases reported in 51 Pan American countries from 2001 to 2012 was compared to the population of the same countries. The number of US travelers visiting the Pan American countries was categorized by region, and travel-related DEN infections were analyzed. US residents visiting the Dominican Republic exhibited the highest traveler-related DEN incidence. Brazil showed the most DEN cases in its residents (>1 million reported cases in 2010). The number of DEN cases continues to rise as does international travel and the geographic range of potential DENV vectors. DENV risk assessments may be improved by analyzing the possible routes of entry. Underreporting remains an issue for calculating DENV transmission risk by country and region

Revisiting the Tradespace Exploration Paradigm: Structuring the Exploration Process

A number of case applications of tradespace exploration have further extended the types of analyses and knowledge insights that can be gained about tradeoffs between design choices and perceived utility and cost of alternatives. These extensions include application beyond its heritage aerospace domain to the transportation domain, comparing distinct concepts on a common tradespace, considering the impact of changing needs and contexts over time, evaluation of alternatives in a “light effort” manner. In parallel with these case applications, a formalization of the tradespace exploration process has emerged, using a question-driven approach to ensure the knowledge generated is practical and useful to decision makers. These questions are introduced and applied to three example space systems in order to illustrate insights gained in answering the questions. The insights include identifying “good” designs, the strengths and weakness of selected alternatives across a tradespace, limiting constraints and requirements that could allow for less expensive solutions. Additionally, advanced insights include understanding the sensitivities of designs to changes in contexts and needs, and consideration of the differential impact of uncertainty across a set of alternatives with potential opportunities for risk mitigation.Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division (Systems Engineering Advancement Research Initiative (SEAri)

Women, men and coronary heart disease: a review of the qualitative literature

Aim. This paper presents a review of the qualitative literature which examines the experiences of patients with coronary heart disease. The paper also assesses whether the experiences of both female and male patients are reflected in the literature and summarizes key themes. Background. Understanding patients' experiences of their illness is important for coronary heart disease prevention and education. Qualitative methods are particularly suited to eliciting patients' detailed understandings and perceptions of illness. As much previous research has been 'gender neutral', this review pays particular attention to gender. Methods. Published papers from 60 qualitative studies were identified for the review through searches in MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PREMEDLINE, PsychINFO, Social Sciences Citation Index and Web of Science using keywords related to coronary heart disease. Findings. Early qualitative studies of patients with coronary heart disease were conducted almost exclusively with men, and tended to generalize from 'male' experience to 'human' experience. By the late 1990s this pattern had changed, with the majority of studies including women and many being conducted with solely female samples. However, many studies that include both male and female coronary heart disease patients still do not have a specific gender focus. Key themes in the literature include interpreting symptoms and seeking help, belief about coronary 'candidates' and relationships with health professionals. The influence of social roles is important: many female patients have difficulties reconciling family responsibilities and medical advice, while male patients worry about being absent from work. Conclusions. There is a need for studies that compare the experiences of men and women. There is also an urgent need for work that takes masculinity and gender roles into account when exploring the experiences of men with coronary heart disease

Phylogenetic and functional potential links pH and N2O emissions in pasture soils

This work was funded by the New Zealand Government through the New Zealand Fund for Global Partnerships in Livestock Emissions Research to support the objectives of the Livestock Research Group of the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases (Agreement number: 16084) awarded to SEM and the University of Otago.peer-reviewedDenitrification is mediated by microbial, and physicochemical, processes leading to nitrogen loss via N2O and N2 emissions. Soil pH regulates the reduction of N2O to N2, however, it can also affect microbial community composition and functional potential. Here we simultaneously test the link between pH, community composition, and the N2O emission ratio (N2O/(NO + N2O + N2)) in 13 temperate pasture soils. Physicochemical analysis, gas kinetics, 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing, metagenomic and quantitative PCR (of denitrifier genes: nirS, nirK, nosZI and nosZII) analysis were carried out to characterize each soil. We found strong evidence linking pH to both N2O emission ratio and community changes. Soil pH was negatively associated with N2O emission ratio, while being positively associated with both community diversity and total denitrification gene (nir & nos) abundance. Abundance of nosZII was positively linked to pH, and negatively linked to N2O emissions. Our results confirm that pH imposes a general selective pressure on the entire community and that this results in changes in emission potential. Our data also support the general model that with increased microbial diversity efficiency increases, demonstrated in this study with lowered N2O emission ratio through more efficient conversion of N2O to N2.New Zealand Fund for Global Partnerships in Livestock Emissions Researc

Effects of Blood Meal Source on Aedes albopictus Life Table Characteristics and Vector Competence for Dengue Virus

Presented for World Environmental Health Day, September 26, 2016 in Greenville, North Carolina.Commercially available blood can be used as an alternative to live animals to feed mosquitoes; however, the extent to which alternative blood sources affect mosquito vector competence for dengue virus (DENV, familyFlaviviridae, genus Flavivirus) is unknown and may have implications for evaluating results of laboratory vector competence experiments. We aim to improve mosquito colony propagation techniques and inform future research using artificial blood delivery methods to assess vector competence. Objective •To determine the extent to which commercially available blood source affects life table characteristics and vector competence of Aedes albopictusfor DENV

An Anglo-Saxon execution cemetery at Walkington Wold, Yorkshire

This paper presents a re-evaluation of a cemetery excavated over 30 years ago at Walkington Wold in east Yorkshire. The cemetery is characterized by careless burial on diverse alignments, and by the fact that most of the skeletons did not have associated crania. The cemetery has been variously described as being the result of an early post-Roman massacre, as providing evidence for a ‘Celtic’ head cult or as an Anglo-Saxon execution cemetery. In order to resolve the matter, radiocarbon dates were acquired and a re-examination of the skeletal remains was undertaken. It was confirmed that the cemetery was an Anglo-Saxon execution cemetery, the only known example from northern England, and the site is set into its wider context in the paper

High-Resolution Denitrification Kinetics in Pasture Soils Link N2O Emissions to pH, and Denitrification to C Mineralization

peer-reviewedDenitrification in pasture soils is mediated by microbial and physicochemical processes leading to nitrogen loss through the emission of N2O and N2. It is known that N2O reduction to N2 is impaired by low soil pH yet controversy remains as inconsistent use of soil pH measurement methods by researchers, and differences in analytical methods between studies, undermine direct comparison of results. In addition, the link between denitrification and N2O emissions in response to carbon (C) mineralization and pH in different pasture soils is still not well described. We hypothesized that potential denitrification rate and aerobic respiration rate would be positively associated with soils. This relationship was predicted to be more robust when a high resolution analysis is performed as opposed to a single time point comparison. We tested this by characterizing 13 different temperate pasture soils from northern and southern hemispheres sites (Ireland and New Zealand) using a fully automated-high-resolution GC detection system that allowed us to detect a wide range of gas emissions simultaneously. We also compared the impact of using different extractants for determining pH on our conclusions. In all pH measurements, soil pH was strongly and negatively associated with both N2O production index (IN2O) and N2O/(N2O+N2) product ratio. Furthermore, emission kinetics across all soils revealed that the denitrification rates under anoxic conditions (NO+N2O+N2 μmol N/h/vial) were significantly associated with C mineralization (CO2 μmol/h/vial) measured both under oxic (r2 = 0.62, p = 0.0015) and anoxic (r2 = 0.89, p<0.0001) conditions.This work was funded by the New Zealand Government through the New Zealand Fund for Global Partnerships in Livestock Emissions Research to support the objectives of the Livestock Research Group of the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases (Agreement number: 16084) awarded to SEM and the University of Otago

The One-loop Open Superstring Massless Five-point Amplitude with the Non-Minimal Pure Spinor Formalism

We compute the massless five-point amplitude of open superstrings using the non-minimal pure spinor formalism and obtain a simple kinematic factor in pure spinor superspace, which can be viewed as the natural extension of the kinematic factor of the massless four-point amplitude. It encodes bosonic and fermionic external states in supersymmetric form and reduces to existing bosonic amplitudes when expanded in components, therefore proving their equivalence. We also show how to compute the kinematic structures involving fermionic states.Comment: 38 pages, harvmac TeX, v2: fix typo in (4.2) and add referenc

Older people as equal partners in creative design

Active older people want to be actively engaged by contributing their experiences to design better services and products. This paper demonstrates the importance of older peoples engagement in the creative design process in a small study where older people were engaged together with designers in the design of digital devices. Three creative workshops were conducted: the first with designers, the second with designers and older people, and the third with older people only. During the illumination stage of the creative process flexibility and flow were measured with topics and turns. Results show that when older people were working with designers more topics and a higher total number of turns were developed than by older people or designers working on their own, which indicates that they had the highest flexibility of ideas and possibly also the greatest flow