Molecular epidemiological studies on avian pathogenic Escherichia coli associated with septicemia in chickens in India.

Bacterial septicemia causes huge economic losses in the poultry industry and there is no systematic research available in India on the connection of various pathogens associated with septicemia. The present molecular epidemiological study was conducted to investigate the association of different bacterial and immunosuppressive viral pathogens in septicemia suspected chickens. A total of 443 chicken carcasses with septicemic conditions from 71 different flocks were included in this study.

Entropy-rate clustering: cluster analysis via maximizing a submodular function subject to a matroid constraint.

We propose a new objective function for clustering. This objective function consists of two components: the entropy rate of a random walk on a graph and a balancing term. The entropy rate favors formation of compact and homogeneous clusters, while the balancing function encourages clusters with similar sizes and penalizes larger clusters that aggressively group samples.