Background: Persons entering corrections facilities are at high risk for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) because of risky sexual behavior and lack of access to routine screening. Goal: The goal ...of the study was to develop a national picture of STD prevalence in this population. Study Design: We analyzed information on age, race/ethnicity, urethral symptoms (men only), and test results for approximately 85,000 chlamydia, 157,000 gonorrhea, and 293,000 syphilis tests for persons entering 23 jails and 12 juvenile detention centers in 13 US counties from 1996 through 1999. Results: At adult jails in nine counties, the median percentage of persons with reactive syphilis tests by county was 8.2% (range, 0.3-23.8%) for women and 2.5% (range, 1.0-7.8%) for men. At juvenile detention facilities in five counties, the median positivity for chlamydial infection was 15.6% (range, 8.0-19.5%) for adolescent girls and 7.6% (range, 2.8-8.9%) for adolescent boys; the median positivity for gonorrhea was 5.2% (range, 3.4-10.0%) for adolescent girls and 0.9% (range, 0.72.6%) for adolescent boys. Of adolescent boys testing positive for chlamydial infection at three juvenile facilities, approximately 97% did not report symptoms; of adolescent boys positive for gonorrhea, 93% did not report symptoms. Conclusion: STD positivity among persons entering corrections facilities is high. Most chlamydial and gonococcal infections are asymptomatic and would not be detected without routine screening. Monitoring the prevalence of STDs in this population is useful for planning STD prevention activities in corrections facilities and elsewhere in the community.
Due to the relatively recent history of industrial insect farming, there are still no extensive studies on the optimization of insect production chains. In this context, the present work aims to be a ...first step in filling this gap. A tentative set of mathematical models is proposed to take into account three different, conflicting objectives: maximizing economic viability, minimizing environmental impacts, and maximizing societal benefits. The state-of-the-art multi-objective algorithm NSGA-II is used to obtain an approximate Pareto fronts of solutions, that are later analyzed to identify suitable trade-offs. While preliminary, the results are encouraging enough for the computer-assisted design and development of sustainable insect production chains. Future works will take into account more extensive models, able to simulate scenarios in different European countries, and include parts of the chain such as transportation of goods to and from the production facilities.
Arun Joshi is one of those post-Independence Indian novelists in English who chose to explore the angst-ridden psyche of modem man. While his contemporaries like R.P. Jhabvala and Anita Desai ...focussed on themes like East-West encounter and woman question respectively, he felt prompted to respond to the apprehensive situation created by the cataclysmic Second World War. Coincidentally, he was born on 7 July 1939, a couple of months prior to the outbreak of the Second War. In his own persistent manner he endeavoured to creatively exploit this critical situation in his five novels, The Foreigner (1968), The Strange Case of Billy Biswas (1971), The Apprentice (1974), Sahitya Akademi Award winning title The Last Labyrinth (1981) and The City and the River (1990). The critical scholarship grown round his fiction has very perceptively examined the various facets of Joshi's creativity which have earned for him an envious position among his contemporaries. The scholars like C.N. Srinath and Shyam Asnani broadly focus on shift from the external reality to the inner space in his novels while R.K. Srivastava, R.S. Pathak and Hari Mohan Prasad have attempted to place Joshi's novels in Western Existentialist traditions. These critics marginally touch the quality of conflict that informs Arun Joshi's novels, and it is viable to explore this dimension in a full-length doctoral project. The present dissertation is designed as a modest attempt to extricate the nuances of conflicts that invariably grip Joshi's protagonists.
A Machine Learning Approach for Wind Speed Forecasting Krishnaveni, S.; Singh, Jay; Verma, Kartik ...
2021 International Conference on Advance Computing and Innovative Technologies in Engineering (ICACITE),
2021-March-4
Conference Proceeding
Renewable energy production is increasing worldwide. In all the available renewable sources of energy wind energy has a major stake after hydro energy. However, intermittent nature of the wind speed ...is posing a constraint for the production of wind energy as stochastic wind power will de-stabilize the energy grid. The increase in demand of renewable sources of energy makes wind energy manufacturing a good investment in the upcoming future. To scheme an efficient regulation of the wind energy development, prediction of wind speed is quite beneficial. In this study, wind speed is predicted to mitigate and minimize the uncertainty in the production of wind power. So accordingly, four different machine learning techniques are applied and evaluated in this work for the Las Vegas region of U.S.A.
CMS recently assumed responsibility for estimating the Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) error rate from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG). Here, the method used to calculate national, by State, ...and by error type, estimates for the inpatient acute care portion of this rate is presented. For fiscal years (FYs) 1998 and 2000 discharges, national estimates for the net error rate were 2.6 and 2.8 percent, respectively, about $2 billion annually. Wide variation in State rates illustrates that estimates to the State level are essential for targeting and monitoring interventions to reduce improper Medicare inpatient acute care reimbursements.
In ovariectomized rats and Syrian hamsters, progesterone + estradiol treatment mimics the effect of pregnancy on energy balance. However, rats fatten, whereas hamsters lose body fat. Given this ...difference and paucity of information on the contribution of ovarian steroids to alterations in energy balance during pregnancy in laboratory species other than rats, I investigated the effects of pregnancy or progesterone and estradiol treatments (administered via subcutaneous implants) on fat metabolism (lipogenesis and fatty acid uptake) and energy expenditure (running wheel activity and nestbuilding activity) in Syrian hamsters. Fatty acid synthesis/uptake (incorporation of tritium into lipid from ($\sp3$H) $\sb2$O) was reduced in heart, liver, and white adipose tissue of late, but not early, pregnant hamsters. In ovariectomized hamsters, treatment with estradiol or progesterone alone was without effect, while treatment with both steroids decreased fatty acid synthesis/uptake in liver and white adipose tissue. When hamsters were pretreated with Triton WR-1339, which inhibits fatty acid uptake, but not synthesis, progesterone + estradiol treatment suppressed newly synthesized fatty acid levels in liver, not in white adipose tissue, suggesting that hamsters decrease adiposity during pregnancy partially from progesterone + estradiol suppression of hepatic lipogenesis. Pregnant hamsters did not reduce running wheel activity until late gestation, concomitant with substantial increases in conceptus weight. Consistent with this finding, estradiol or progesterone + estradiol treatments did not affect activity levels of ovariectomized hamsters, but ovariectomy also did not have a significant effect on running wheel activity. Running wheel activity varied with estrous cycle day, being increased across the nights prior to and during the time of estrus. Hamsters increased nestbuilding activity under conditions of chronically elevated estradiol or progesterone levels (late gestation, estradiol alone or with progesterone treatments) and increased energy demand (late gestation and cold exposure). Nestbuilding activity was not affected by lactation (characterized by low ovarian steroid levels and high energy demand) or estrous cycle day. In total, these results suggest that pregnant Syrian hamsters decrease adiposity partially from ovarian steroid effects on lipogenesis, but accompanying changes in running wheel activity and nestbuilding activity may be concerted responses to altered ovarian steroid levels, ovarian steroid metabolic effects, and the increased energy expenditure of late gestation.
This article outlines the development, successes, and future directions of the Medicare Peer Review Organization (PRO) program. As established by the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982, ...the purpose of the PRO program is to promote the quality, medical necessity, and appropriateness of services reimbursed through Medicare. We describe the evolution of the PRO program from a retrospective quality review approach, focused on individual events, to a proactive, quality improvement approach. Priorities for future development are described, including the identification of additional clinical areas for attention, improvements in program infrastructure, and broadening the scope of projects to new provider settings.
Business Process Reengineering is a discipline in which extensive research has been done and numbers of methodologies are introduced. But what seems to be lacking in these methodologies is a ...structured approach. In this paper an attempt has been made to study and understand the meaning of Business Process Reengineering and the role of information technology in BPR, different reasons of its failure and few recommendations are proposed for the smooth working of BPR in any large organizations.
