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Ô nhiễm môi trường nước đang gia tăng nhanh chóng và phức tạp trong những năm gần đây. Dự đoán chất lượng nước nhằm cung cấp thông tin nhanh chóng và kịp thời về tình trạng ô nhiễm nguồn nước là rất cần thiết. Trong nghiên cứu này, khả năng dự đoán chất lượng nước được so sánh bằng phương pháp mạng nơ ron perceptron nhiều lớp và phương pháp lý thuyết xám tập trung khả năng dự đoán nhanh và độ chính xác góp phần nâng cao hiệu quả công tác dự đoán chất lượng nước. Dữ liệu nghiên cứu được thu thập tại 23 điểm quan trắc chất lượng nước Sông Đồng Nai từ 2010 – 2014 tại Sở Tài nguyên và Môi trường tỉnh Đồng Nai và Bình Dương dùng để dự đoán chỉ số chất lượng nước (WQI). Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy cả hai phương pháp cho kết quả dự đoán tốt chất lượng nước. Chỉ số chất lượng nước được dự đoán bằng mạng nơ ron có độ chính xác cao hơn (RMSE =2,88, R2 = 0,987 và P = 0) so với phương pháp dự đoán bằng lý thuyết xám (RMSE =7,84, R2 = 0,879 và P = 0).

In France, surveillance of bronchiolitis is based on a pilot network of hospital emergency departments. The study was a 1-year observational study (2007—2008) carried out in a central region of metropolitan France. The hospitalization rate for bronchiolitis was 17∙7/1000 children aged <1 year and the estimated prevalence of bronchiolitis ranged from 17∙7% to 34∙4% in children aged <1 year. Such a network constitutes a valuable tool to estimate the dynamic and the burden of infant bronchiolitis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although methods were proposed for eliminating sun glint effects from airborne and satellite images over coral reef environments, a method was not proposed previously for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) image data. De-glinting in UAV image analysis may improve coral distribution mapping accuracy result compared with an uncorrected image classification technique. The objective of this research was to determine accuracy of coral reef habitat classification maps based on glint correction methods proposed by Lyzenga et al., Joyce, Hedley et al., and Goodman et al. The UAV imagery collected from the coral-dominated Pulau Bidong (Peninsular Malaysia) on 20 April 2016 was analyzed in this study. Images were pre-processed with the following two strategies: Strategy-1 was the glint removal technique applied to the whole image, while Strategy-2 used only the regions impacted by glint instead of the whole image. Accuracy measures for the glint corrected images showed that the method proposed by Lyzenga et al. following Strategy-2 could eliminate glints over the branching coral—Acropora (BC), tabulate coral—Acropora + Montipora (TC), patch coral (PC), coral rubble (R), and sand (S) with greater accuracy than the other four methods using Strategy-1. Tested in two different coral environments (Site-1: Pantai Pasir Cina and Site-2: Pantai Vietnam), the glint-removed UAV imagery produced reliable maps of coral habitat distribution with finer details. The proposed strategies can potentially be used to remove glint from UAV imagery and may improve usability of glint-affected imagery, for analyzing spatiotemporal changes of coral habitats from multi-temporal UAV imagery.

Shahar S, Aziz AF, Ismail SNA, et al. The effect of Polygonum minus extract on cognitive and psychosocial parameters according to mood status among middle-aged women: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Clin Interv Aging. 2015;10:1505–1520.This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief of Clinical Interventions in Aging. It was brought to the attention of the Editorial team by the authors that there were a number of reporting errors in the Methods, Results and Figures 3–5. Due to the extent of the inaccuracies, the scientific validity of the data, and hence the conclusions, are questionable.This retraction relates to

Taking the curved continuous rigid frame bridges (CRFBs) with high piers as research object, the construction stability of four different styles of main piers were analyzed by finite element (FE) method in three construction stages including the segment 0 stage, largest cantilever stage, and finished bridge stage. Rules governing the stabilities of bridges with various pier styles, height, and slenderness ratio were established. At different construction stages, pier type and pier height affect structural stability differently. Wind loads have little influence on structural stability at any construction stage, and accidental events influence the stability of bridges more than normal construction loads. There is a nonlinear power relationship of fixed functional type between the stability safety factor (SSF) and slenderness ratio in all four pier styles; this power relationship can be used to predict the stability of a new pier.

Rural houses are susceptible to roof blown off and severe damage during a windstorm event due to the lack of engineering considerations. The aim of this paper is to conduct a post windstorm evaluation on the damaged rural houses located in the northern region of Peninsula Malaysia. Several activities were involved during the post windstorm survey including site visualization, site measurement and interview. Critical aspects including types of damages, types of houses, gap height, overhang length, roof geometry, roof pitch, roof cladding and terrain category were analysed using a simple bar chart. It is anticipated that the presence of kitchen house influences the overall stability of the rural houses due to the formation of gap height.

The objective of the study was to determine the effects of dietary supplementation of fermented extruded corn stover on back fat thickness, reproductive performance and serum hormone in sows during late pregnancy. A total of 48 pregnant sows (24 Landrace and 24 Yorkshire) were randomly assigned into four experimental treatment groups (0%, 10%, 15% and 20% fermented extruded corn stover). Back fat thickness results showed that no significant differences on control group compared to each fermented treatment groups (P>0.05) at 55 and 105 days of gestation, respectively. Reproductive performance results demonstrated that control group had a lower litter size per head than 10% fermented extruded corn stover group (P<0.05), respectively. The results showed that leptin hormone was higher in control group than 10%, 15% and 20% treatment groups (P<0.05), respectively. Our findings suggested that 10% fermented extruded corn stover increased the litter size per head in pregnant sows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Genomic islands (GIs) are clusters of alien genes in some bacterial genomes, but not be seen in the genomes of other strains within the same genus. The detection of GIs is extremely important to the medical and environmental communities. Despite the discovery of the GI associated features, accurate detection of GIs is still far from satisfactory. Results In this paper, we combined multiple GI-associated features, and applied and compared various machine learning approaches to evaluate the classification accuracy of GIs datasets on three genera: Salmonella, Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, and their mixed dataset of all three genera. The experimental results have shown that, in general, the decision tree approach outperformed better than other machine learning methods according to five performance evaluation metrics. Using J48 decision trees as base classifiers, we further applied four ensemble algorithms, including adaBoost, bagging, multiboost and random forest, on the same datasets. We found that, overall, these ensemble classifiers could improve classification accuracy. Conclusions We conclude that decision trees based ensemble algorithms could accurately classify GIs and non-GIs, and recommend the use of these methods for the future GI data analysis. The software package for detecting GIs can be accessed at http://www.esu.edu/cpsc/che_lab/software/GIDetector/.

Abstract Background The Hedgehog Signaling Pathway is one of signaling pathways that are very important to embryonic development. The participation of inhibitors in the Hedgehog Signal Pathway can control cell growth and death, and searching novel inhibitors to the functioning of the pathway are in a great demand. As the matter of fact, effective inhibitors could provide efficient therapies for a wide range of malignancies, and targeting such pathway in cells represents a promising new paradigm for cell growth and death control. Current research mainly focuses on the syntheses of the inhibitors of cyclopamine derivatives, which bind specifically to the Smo protein, and can be used for cancer therapy. While quantitatively structure-activity relationship (QSAR) studies have been performed for these compounds among different cell lines, none of them have achieved acceptable results in the prediction of activity values of new compounds. In this study, we proposed a novel collaborative QSAR model for inhibitors of the Hedgehog Signaling Pathway by integration the information from multiple cell lines. Such a model is expected to substantially improve the QSAR ability from single cell lines, and provide useful clues in developing clinically effective inhibitors and modifications of parent lead compounds for target on the Hedgehog Signaling Pathway. Results In this study, we have presented: (1) a collaborative QSAR model, which is used to integrate information among multiple cell lines to boost the QSAR results, rather than only a single cell line QSAR modeling. Our experiments have shown that the performance of our model is significantly better than single cell line QSAR methods; and (2) an efficient feature selection strategy under such collaborative environment, which can derive the commonly important features related to the entire given cell lines, while simultaneously showing their specific contributions to a specific cell-line. Based on feature selection results, we have proposed several possible chemical modifications to improve the inhibitor affinity towards multiple targets in the Hedgehog Signaling Pathway. Conclusions Our model with the feature selection strategy presented here is efficient, robust, and flexible, and can be easily extended to model large-scale multiple cell line/QSAR data. The data and scripts for collaborative QSAR modeling are available in the Additional file 1. Additional file 1 The data and scripts for collaborative QSAR modeling. Click here for file

Abstract Background Few data are available on prescriber adherence to tuberculosis (TB) treatment guidelines. In particular, excessively long treatment carries a risk of avoidable adverse effects and represents a waste of healthcare resources. We examined factors potentially associated with excessively long treatment. Methods We reviewed the medical records of patients diagnosed with TB in 2004 in the eastern Paris region. Sociodemographic and clinical factors associated with excessively long treatment were identified by logistic regression analyses. Based on contemporary guidelines, excessively long treatment was defined as more than 6 months of a four-drug regimen for thoracic TB with full sensitive strains, and more than 12 months for patients with extrathoracic TB. Results Analyses concerned 478 patients with a median age of 36.0 ± 13.5 years, of whom 48% were living in precarious conditions (i.e. poor living conditions and/or no health insurance), 80% were born abroad, and 17% were HIV-seropositive. TB was restricted to the chest in 279 patients (isolated pulmonary, pleuropulmonary, and isolated pleural TB in 245, 13, and 21 patients, respectively), exclusively extrathoracic in 115 patients, and mixed in the remaining 84 patients. Treatment was prescribed by a chest specialist in 211 cases (44.1%) and 295 patients (61.7%) were managed in a single institution. The treatment duration complied with contemporary guidelines in 316 cases (66.1%) and was excessively long in 162 cases (33.9%). The median duration of excessively long treatment was 313 days (IQR: 272-412). In multivariate analysis, isolated thoracic TB, previous TB, HIV infection, a prescriber other than a chest specialist, and management in more than one healthcare center during treatment were independently associated with excessively lengthy treatment. Conclusion One-third of TB patients received excessively long treatment, reflecting inadequate awareness of management guidelines or unwillingness to implement them.

An abstract of the article "Mortality of hospital or community-acquired Legionnaires' disease (LD): a prospective study ," by C. Chidiac, and colleagues is presented.

The article describes a case of ultrasound identification of reactive lymphadenopathy in a 54-year-old man. When he presented to the emergency department, the patient complained of worsening pain, swelling of the right leg and a lump in the groin which had developed over the past 4 days after an 8-hour car trip. An examination of his right lower extremity revealed pitting edema to the midthigh and an ulceration on the lateral aspect of the fifth metatarsal phalangeal joint.

Objective In France, tuberculosis surveillance is based on mandatory notification (MN) of cases. However, the MN does not allow the full description of cases, and underreporting limits data interpretation. Aiming at better describing the cases of tuberculosis, the hospital record database (PMSI) was analyzed. Patients and method Incident cases of active pulmonary tuberculosis identified in 2010 in France in the PMSI were included and their characteristics were compared with those of the cases identified through the MN. Results In 2010, 5158 incident cases of pulmonary tuberculosis were identified in the PMSI. The mean duration of hospitalization was higher for cases considered contagious — at least one positive test result on pulmonary sample — (22 vs 13 days, P < 0.001). Among all cases, 5% were infected by HIV. Death was reported for 4% of cases. The number of pulmonary TB cases reported in the MN was 3781 in 2010. PMSI data by sex, region of residence and month of diagnosis were similar with those of the MN but patients were older in the PMSI (52 vs 47 years, P < 0.001). Considering the PMSI as exhaustive, sensitivity of the MN was estimated at 73.3% in 2010. Conclusion PMSI data were compatible with those of the MN and the estimation of the sensitivity was close to other French studies. PMSI can be considered as an interesting tool aiming at improving our knowledge about tuberculosis (TB) cases and strengthening awareness where the sensitivity of the MN is low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]