In this study, a method for developing a quantitative prediction of river bank erosion in Bien Hoa district in Dong Nai River is presented. The river bank erosion hazard index (BEHI) was estimated to ...assess the stability of the river bank erosion in consultation with bank height, bank slope, rooting depth, rooting density and surface protection. The estimated BEHI of Dong Nai River in Bien Hoa district are high which indicates the riverbank instability. The estimated BEHI along the left bank is about 25-30. The satellite data of LANSAT TM 5, LANDSAT ETM 7 for the year 1995, 2005 and 2015 were used to assess the nature of shifting of the river bank and to estimate the land loss from river bank. All the derived images were transported on GIS environment to extract the course of the river. 13 sites were considered along the Dong Nai River in Bien Hoa District to estimate the leftward shifting of the bank line and to assess the shifting distance of the river bank line. There is a strong relationship between bank instability BEHI, shifting distance of the bank line and eroded bank area in this study.
Adenoid hypertrophy is a pathological hyperplasia of the adenoids, which may cause snoring and apnea, as well as impede breathing during sleep. The lateral cephalogram is commonly used by dentists to ...screen for adenoid hypertrophy, but it is tedious and time-consuming to measure the ratio of adenoid width to nasopharyngeal width for adenoid assessment. The purpose of this study was to develop a screening tool to automatically evaluate adenoid hypertrophy from lateral cephalograms using deep learning. We proposed the deep learning model VGG-Lite, using the largest data set (1,023 X-ray images) yet described to support the automatic detection of adenoid hypertrophy. We demonstrated that our model was able to automatically evaluate adenoid hypertrophy with a sensitivity of 0.898, a specificity of 0.882, positive predictive value of 0.880, negative predictive value of 0.900, and F1 score of 0.889. The comparison of model-only and expert-only detection performance showed that the fully automatic method (0.07 min) was about 522 times faster than the human expert (36.6 min). Comparison of human experts with or without deep learning assistance showed that model-assisted human experts spent an average of 23.3 min to evaluate adenoid hypertrophy using 100 radiographs, compared to an average of 36.6 min using an entirely manual procedure. We therefore concluded that deep learning could improve the accuracy, speed, and efficiency of evaluating adenoid hypertrophy from lateral cephalograms.
Background. Penicillium marneffei is an important human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)—associated opportunistic pathogen in Southeast Asia. The epidemiology and the predictors of penicilliosis outcome ...are poorly understood. Methods. We performed a retrospective study of culture-confirmed incident penicilliosis admissions during 1996-2009 at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam. Seasonality of penicilliosis was assessed using cosinor models. Logistic regression was used to assess predictors of death or worsening disease based on 10 predefined covariates, and Cox regression was performed to model time-to-antifungal initiation. Results. A total of 795 patients were identified; hospital charts were obtainable for 513 patients (65%). Cases increased exponentially and peaked in 2007 (156 cases), mirroring the trends in AIDS admissions during the study period. A highly significant seasonality for penicilliosis (P < .001) but not for cryptococcosis (P = .63) or AIDS admissions (P = .83) was observed, with a 27% (95% confidence interval, 14%—41%) increase in incidence during rainy months. All patients were HIV infected; the median CD4 cell count (62 patients) was 7 cells/μL (interquartile range, 4-24 cells/μL). Hospital outcome was an improvement in 347 (68%), death in 101 (20%), worsening in 42 (8%), and nonassessable in 23 (5%) cases. Injection drug use, shorter history, absence of fever or skin lesions, elevated respiratory rates, higher lymphocyte count, and lower platelet count independently predicted poor outcome in both complete-case and multiple-imputation analyses. Time-to-treatment initiation was shorter for patients with skin lesions (hazard ratio, 3.78; 95% confidence interval, 2.96-4.84; P < .001). Conclusions. Penicilliosis incidence correlates with the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Viet nam. The number of cases increases during rainy months. Injection drug use, shorter history, absence of fever or skin lesions, respiratory difficulty, higher lymphocyte count, and lower platelet count predict poor in-hospital outcome.
Steam reforming of bio-oil was an available low carbon technology to produce biomass-syngas. In this article, a series of catalysts have been prepared; the activity of catalysts was examined in a ...fluidized bed reactor. In these tests, carbon conversion, the mole fraction of H
2
, the mole of CO, and the ratio of H
2
/CO were taken as an index of the catalyst activity and the nickel/modified dolomite catalyst was chosen as the best catalyst for the bio-oil steam reforming to prepare biomass-syngas. The effects of reaction conditions, such as reaction temperature, steam-to-carbon mole ratio (S/C), and weight hourly space velocity (WHSV), on catalytic reforming were studied and the results indicated that the optimum conditions were obtained at 700°C, S/C was 14, and WHSV was 0.5 h
−1
. The mole ratio of H
2
/CO was more than 2 and carbon conversion was near 80% at the optimum conditions.
1. Determining the functional significance of species diversity in natural enemy assemblages is a key step towards prediction of the likely impact of biodiversity loss on natural pest control ...processes. While the biological control literature contains examples in which increased natural enemy diversity hinders pest control, other studies have highlighted mechanisms where pest suppression is promoted by increased enemy diversity. 2. This study aimed to test whether increased predator species diversity results in higher rates of predation on two key, but contrasting, insect pest species commonly found in the rice ecosystems of south-east Asia. 3. Glasshouse experiments were undertaken in which four life stages of a planthopper (Nilaparvata lugens) and a moth (Marasmia patnalis) were caged with single or three-species combinations of generalist predators. 4. Generally, predation rates of the three-species assemblages exceeded expectation when attacking M. patnalis, but not when attacking N. lugens. In addition, a positive effect of increased predator species richness on overall predation rate was found with M. patnalis but not with N. lugens. 5. The results are consistent with theoretical predictions that morphological and behavioural differentiation among prey life stages promotes functional complementarity among predator species. This indicates that emergent species diversity effects in natural enemy assemblages are context dependent; they depend not only on the characteristics of the predators species, but on the identity of the species on which they prey.
Steam reforming of biomass derived bio-oil liquid products was an available low carbon technology to produce sustainable hydrogen fuel. In this article, a series of nickel-based catalysts have been ...prepared. To examine the catalytic steam reforming behaviors over these catalysts in a fixed bed reactor system, several typical oxygen-containing chemicals, including acetic acids, furfural, cyclopentanone, and meta-cresol, that were proved to be contained in the bio-oil feedstock, were first selected as model starting materials. In these tests, yields for hydrogen were taken as an index of the catalyst activity and the catalyst that exhibited the maximum activity by hydrogen yields was then used for the bio-oil steam reforming studies. In this work, it was concluded that the catalyst activity reached a maximum hydrogen yield of 90.56% and decreased in an order of Ni/MgO-La
2
O
3
-Al
2
O
3
> Ni/MgO-Al
2
O
3
≈ Ni/La
2
O
3
-Al
2
O
3
> Ni/Al
2
O
3
. The yield of hydrogen for steam reforming of the whole fraction of the bio-oil reached 70% under 800°C and it only lowered 10%, after 10 hours on stream in a stability test.
Abstract
Background
Talaromycosis is an invasive mycosis endemic in Southeast Asia and causes substantial morbidity and mortality in individuals with advanced human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) ...disease. Current diagnosis relies on isolating Talaromyces marneffei in cultures, which takes up to 14 days and is detectable only during late-stage infection, leading to high mortality.
Methods
In this retrospective case-control study, we assessed the accuracy of a novel Mp1p antigen-detecting enzyme immunoassay (EIA) in stored plasma samples of 372 patients who had culture-proven talaromycosis from blood or sterile body fluids (reference standard) and 517 individuals without talaromycosis (338 healthy volunteers; 179 with other infections). All participants were recruited between 2011 and 2017 in Vietnam.
Results
Of cases and controls, 66.1% and 75.4%, respectively, were male; the median age was 33 and 37, respectively. All cases were HIV infected; median CD4 count was 10 cells/μL. At an optical density cutoff of 0.5, the specificity was 98.1% (95% CI, 96.3%–99.0%); the sensitivity was superior to blood culture (86.3% 95% CI, 82.3%–89.5% vs 72.8% 95% CI, 68.0%–77.2%) (P < .001, McNemar test). The time to diagnosis was 6 hours vs 6.6 ± 3.0 days for blood culture. Paired plasma and urine testing in the same patients (n = 269) significantly increased sensitivity compared to testing plasma alone or testing urine alone (P < .001 and P = .02, respectively, McNemar test).
Conclusions
The Mp1p EIA is highly specific and is superior in sensitivity and time to diagnosis compared to blood culture for the diagnosis of talaromycosis. Paired plasma and urine testing further increases sensitivity, introducing a new tool for rapid diagnosis, enabling early treatment and potentially reducing mortality.
The novel Mp1p enzyme immunoassay is superior in sensitivity compared to standard BACTEC blood culture and substantially shortens time to diagnosis of talaromycosis. This is a novel non-culture-based tool for rapid diagnosis, enabling early treatment and potentially reducing mortality.
The new spiro compound 1-carbonyl-3-methoxy-2,4-diene-spiro5,7-14,15-dihydroxynaphthalene (
1
) and four known compounds calycosin (
2
), psoracinol (
3
), octadecyl caffeate (
4
), ...(–)-syringaresinol (
5
) were isolated from the aerial part of Caragana acanthophylla. The molecular structures were determined using PMR,
13
C NMR, 2D, and mass spectra.
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