Background: Human Malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles. Transmission is a complex phenomenon involving biological and environmental factors of humans, parasites and mosquitoes. Among more than 500 anopheline species, only a few species from different branches of the mosquito evolutionary tree transmit malaria, suggesting that their vectorial capacity has evolved independently.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related mortality in Australia. Screening using low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) can reduce lung cancer mortality. The feasibility of screening in Australia is unknown.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis paper reports on a systematic review of qualitative research about vaginal practices in sub-Saharan Africa, which used meta-ethnographic methods to understand their origins, their meanings for the women who use them, and how they have evolved in time and place. We included published documents which were based on qualitative methods of data collection and analysis and contained information on vaginal practices. After screening, 16 texts were included which dated from 1951 to 2008.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAccurate systolic and diastolic pressure estimation, using automated blood pressure measurement, is difficult to achieve when the transduced signals are contaminated with noise or interference, such as movement artifact. This study presents an algorithm for automated signal quality assessment in blood pressure measurement by determining the feasibility of accurately detecting systolic and diastolic pressures when corrupted with various levels of movement artifact. The performance of the proposed algorithm is compared to a manually annotated reference scoring (RS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnnu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc
June 2012
A significant portion of government health care funding is spent treating falls-related injuries among older adults. This cost is set to rise due to population aging in developed societies. Wearable sensors systems, often comprised of triaxial accelerometers and/or gyroscopes, have proven useful for real-time falls detection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnnu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc
June 2012
Falls are a prominent problem facing older adults and a common cause of hospitalized injuries. Accurate falls-risk assessment and classification of falls-risk levels will provide useful information for the prevention of future falls. This study presents a triaxial accelerometer (TA) based two-class classifier, which discriminates between multiple fallers and non-multiple fallers, using a directed-routine (DR) movement test.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Quantitative transcriptome data for the malaria-transmitting mosquito Anopheles gambiae covers a broad range of biological and experimental conditions, including development, blood feeding and infection. Web-based summaries of differential expression for individual genes with respect to these conditions are a useful tool for the biologist, but they lack the context that a visualisation of all genes with respect to all conditions would give. For most organisms, including A.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVectorBase (http://www.vectorbase.org) is a NIAID-supported bioinformatics resource for invertebrate vectors of human pathogens.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLinking phenotypic with genotypic diversity has become a major requirement for basic and applied genome-centric biological research. To meet this need, a comprehensive database backend for efficiently storing, querying and analyzing large experimental data sets is necessary. Chado, a generic, modular, community-based database schema is widely used in the biological community to store information associated with genome sequence data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives/hypothesis: The aim of this study is to elucidate transcriptional changes that occur in response to tympanic membrane (TM) perforation in rats and to infer key genes and molecular events in the healing process.
Study Design: A prospective cohort study of 393 male Sprague-Dawley (Rattus norvegicus) rats.
Methods: Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly allocated into either control or perforation groups spanning a 7-day time period.
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October 2011
Purpose: The potential contributions of behavioral and verbal liabilities to social risk were examined by comparing peer victimization levels in children with specific language impairment (SLI) to those in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and typically developing (TD) children.
Method: Sixty children (age range: 7-8 years) participated in the study. Standardized verbal measures and parent ratings of behavioral difficulties were combined with children's self-reports of their school and peer environments to examine the risk for negative peer experiences associated with clinical status.
Commercial 0.5 kW Yb-doped fiber amplifiers have been characterized and found to be suitable for coherent beam combining. Eight such fiber amplifiers have been coherently combined in a tiled-aperture configuration with 78% combining efficiency and total output power of 4 kW.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChicken meat and eggs contaminated with Salmonella result in economic losses in the poultry industry and potential human infection. Intestinal parasites have been shown to lead to a reduction in the utilization of nutrients and performance in poultry. This study provides insight into the immune responses used by hens of 3 genetically distinct chicken lines (broiler, Leghorn, and Fayoumi) in the presence and absence of Salmonella Enteritidis infection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSystemic vascular resistance (SVR) classification is useful for the diagnosis and prognosis of critical pathophysiological conditions, with the ability to identify patients with abnormally high or low SVR of immense clinical value. In this study, a supervised classifier, based on Bayes' rule, is employed to classify a heterogeneous group of intensive care unit patients (N = 48) as being below (SVR < 900 dyn s cm(-5)), within (900 ⩽ SVR ⩽ 1200 dyn s cm(-5)) or above (SVR > 1200 dyn s cm(-5)) the clinically accepted range for normal SVR. Features derived from the finger photoplethysmogram (PPG) waveform and other routine cardiovascular measurements (heart rate and mean arterial pressure) were used as inputs to the classifier.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe utricle is the enlarged portion of the membranous labyrinth of the inner ear and is essential for balance. It comprises of fine hair cells (mechanoreceptors), supporting cells and calcareous otoliths. Utricle cells are considered to be post-mitotic and possess a limited capacity for regeneration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe effect of dietary supplementation of immunomodulators on in vitro chicken heterophil function was investigated using three diverse genetic lines of chickens (broiler, Fayoumi, and Leghorn). Dietary supplementation with β-glucan, ascorbic acid, and corticosterone was fed from 8 to 11 weeks of age. Heterophil function was evaluated weekly during supplementation using phagocytosis, bacterial killing, and heterophil extracellular traps (HETs)-DNA release.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInjurious falls are a prevalent and serious problem faced by a growing elderly population. Accurate assessment and long-term monitoring of falls-risk could prove useful in the prevention of falls, by identifying those at risk of falling early so targeted intervention may be prescribed. Previous studies have demonstrated the feasibility of using triaxial accelerometry to estimate the risk of a person falling in the near future, by characterizing their movement as they execute a restricted sequence of predefined movements in an unsupervised environment, termed a directed routine.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVaccines, antibiotics, and other therapeutic agents used to combat disease in poultry generate recurring costs and the potential of residues in poultry products. Enhancing the immune response using alternative approaches such as selection for increased disease resistance or dietary immunomodulation may be effective additions to the portfolio of strategies the industry applies in poultry health management. The objective of this study was to characterize the effects of dietary supplementation with 3 immunomodulators [ascorbic acid, 1,3-1,6 β-glucans from baker's yeast, and corticosterone] on cytokine gene expression in the spleen of 3 distinct genetic lines of chickens.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHeterophils, the avian polymorphonuclear leukocyte and the counterpart of mammalian neutrophils, generate the primary innate response to pathogens in chickens. Heterophil performance against pathogens is associated with host disease resistance, and heterophil gene expression and function are under genetic control. To characterize the genomic basis of heterophil function, heterophils from F(13) advanced intercross chicken lines (broiler × Leghorn and broiler × Fayoumi) were assayed for phagocytosis and killing of Salmonella enteritidis, oxidative burst, and extracellular trap production.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhen clinicians are operating under a Life Participation Approach to Aphasia (LPAA) while treating persons with aphasia (PWAs), one measurement used to quantify outcomes is quality of life (QOL). Studies of QOL after stroke have identified multiple factors as cause agents. There is not an extensive body of research in the literature that compares the extent of aphasia and QOL and no literature as to how this applies in an LPAA.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe have demonstrated active coherent beam combination (CBC) of up to 218 semiconductor amplifiers with 38.5 W cw output using up to eleven one-dimensional 21-element individually addressable diode amplifier arrays operating at 960 nm. The amplifier array elements are slab-coupled-optical-waveguide semiconductor amplifiers (SCOWAs) set up in a master-oscillator-power-amplifier configuration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPulse oximetry has been extensively used to estimate oxygen saturation in blood, a vital physiological parameter commonly used when monitoring a subject's health status. However, accurate estimation of this parameter is difficult to achieve when the fundamental signal from which it is derived, the photoplethysmograph (PPG), is contaminated with noise artifact induced by movement of the subject or the measurement apparatus. This study presents a novel method for automatic rejection of artifact contaminated pulse oximetry waveforms, based on waveform morphology analysis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSilk fibroin films are promising materials for a range of biomedical applications. To understand the effects of casting solvents on film properties, we used water (W), formic acid (FA), and trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) as solvents. We characterized molecular weight, secondary structure, mechanical properties, and degradation behavior of cast films.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGenetic line and diet affect chicken heterophil activity and gene expression, and the combination of these factors can enhance disease resistance. This study evaluated the effects of immune modulating diets on heterophil/lymphocyte (H/L) ratio and heterophil chemokine expression in distinct genetic lines. Fayoumi and Leghorn chickens were fed a basal diet or immune modulating diets enhanced with β-glucans, ascorbic acid, or corticosterone.
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