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Background Sex impacts individuals' response to vaccination. However, most vaccine studies do not report these differences disaggregated by sex. The aim of this study was to assess sex differences in the immunogenicity and efficacy of influenza vaccine. Methods We performed a meta-analysis using phase 3 randomized controlled trial data conducted between 2010 and 2018. Using hemagglutination inhibition antibody titers for each strain, differences in geometric mean ratios (GMRs) were calculated by sex. Risk ratios (RRs) comparing seroconversion proportions were pooled for females and males using random-effects models. Vaccine efficacy (VE) was assessed. Data were analyzed by age group (18–64 vs ≥65 years). Results A total of 33 092 healthy adults from 19 studies were included for immunogenicity analysis, and 6740 from 1 study for VE. Whereas no sex differences in immunogenicity were found in adults <65 years old, older females had a significantly greater chance to seroconvert compared to older males for all strains: RRH1N1 = 1.17 [95% confidence interval {CI}, 1.12–1.23]; RRH3N2 = 1.09 [95% CI, 1.05–1.14]; RRVictoria = 1.23 [95% CI, 1.14–1.31]; RRYamagata = 1.22 [95% CI, 1.14–1.30]. GMRs were also higher in older females for all strains compared to older males. VE in preventing laboratory-confirmed influenza was higher in older females compared to older males with VEs of 27.32% (95% CI, 1.15%–46.56%) and 6.06% (95% CI, −37.68% to 35.90%), respectively. Conclusions Our results suggest a higher immunogenicity and VE in females compared to males in older adults. These differences in immunogenicity and VE support the disaggregation of vaccine data by sex in clinical trials and observational studies. Clinical Trials Registration CRD42018112260. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Community-driven projects have characterized health impacts of Helicobacter pylori (Hp) infection in Indigenous communities in the Northwest Territories (NT) and Yukon (YT), Canada. These projects address concerns expressed by community leaders about the frequent diagnosis of Hp infection and its relation to gastric cancer deaths, perceived to occur with alarming frequency in this region. Previous project results showed a high prevalence of stomach pathologies associated with increased cancer risk among Hp-positive participants at baseline. This follow-up study investigated changes in precancerous stomach pathologies after treatment to eliminate Hp infection among 69 project participants with follow-up data. Most participants who had successful treatment to eliminate Hp at baseline remained infection-free at follow-up and the prevalence of precancerous stomach pathologies was lower at follow-up than baseline. The more frequent improvements in precancerous stomach pathologies observed in participants who were Hp-negative at follow-up relative to those who were Hp-positive at follow-up suggests that treatment to eliminate Hp infection has the potential to reduce stomach cancer risk in participating communities. Community-driven projects have characterized Helicobacter pylori (Hp) infection in Indigenous communities in the Northwest Territories (NT) and Yukon (YT), Canada. These projects address concerns about the frequent diagnosis of Hp infection among community members and its relation to gastric cancer deaths, perceived to occur with alarming frequency in this region. Projects included breath-test screening for Hp infection, gastroscopy with gastric biopsies, and treatment to eliminate Hp infection. Previous project results showed a high prevalence of stomach pathologies associated with increased cancer risk among Hp-positive participants at baseline. This analysis describes changes in precancerous gastric pathologies in project participants who had gastroscopy before baseline treatment during 2008–2013 and again in 2017. Throughout the study period, the same pathologist graded Hp density, active gastritis, chronic gastritis, atrophic gastritis, and intestinal metaplasia using the updated Sydney System. Of 310 participants from three communities with baseline pathology data, 69 had follow-up pathology data. Relative to baseline, the prevalence of Hp infection and precancerous gastric pathology was substantially lower at follow-up; most participants who were Hp-positive at baseline and Hp-negative at follow-up had reduced severity of active, chronic, and/or atrophic gastritis at follow-up. Though follow-up numbers are small, these results yield evidence that successful Hp treatment has the potential to reduce the risk of gastric cancer in Arctic Indigenous communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, numerous machine learning (ML) techniques are being applied in the field of renewable energy (RE). These techniques may not perform well if they do not have enough training data. Additionally, the main assumption in most of the ML algorithms is that the training and testing data are from the same feature space and have similar distributions. However, in many practical applications, this assumption is false. Recently, transfer learning (TL) has been introduced as a promising machine-learning framework to mitigate these issues by preparing extra-domain data so that knowledge may be transferred across domains. This learning technique improves performance and avoids the resource expensive collection and labeling of domain-centric datasets; furthermore, it saves computing resources that are needed for re-training new ML models from scratch. Lately, TL has drawn the attention of researchers in the field of RE in terms of forecasting and fault diagnosis tasks. Owing to the rapid progress of this technique, a comprehensive survey of the related advances in RE is needed to show the critical issues that have been solved and the challenges that remain unsolved. To the best of our knowledge, few or no comprehensive surveys have reviewed the applications of TL in the RE field, especially those pertaining to forecasting solar and wind power, load forecasting, and predicting failures in power systems. This survey fills this gap in RE classification and forecasting problems, and helps researchers and practitioners better understand the state of the art technology in the field while identifying areas for more focused study. In addition, this survey identifies the main issues and challenges of using TL for REs, and concludes with a discussion of future perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing passive cooling solutions limit the short-term thermal output of systems, thereby either limiting instantaneous performance or requiring active cooling solutions. As the temperature of the electronic devices increases, their failure rate increases. That’s why electrical devices should be cooled. Conventional electronic cooling systems usually consist of a metal heat sink coupled to a fan. This paper compares the heat distribution on a heat sink relative to different heat fluxes produced by electronic chips. The benefit of adding a fan is also investigated when high levels of heat generation are expected.

This brief describes a new CMOS current-feedback operational amplifier (CFOA) with an on-chip continuous-time current-mode input offset voltage compensation circuit. The proposed compensation method is based on a combination of two techniques: the error integration and the current feedback. In addition, this method is irrespective of process and temperature parameters because of its fully symmetrical architecture. HSPICE simulations of the designed CMOS CFOA layout show that the input offset voltage could be reduced to less than 1 mV, and a gain of around 112 dB and a power consumption of less than 3 mW are achievable. Index Terms - CMOS analog design, current-feedback op-amp, current-mode technique, offset compensation.