In recent years the availability of geolocation data has increased considerably and can be found in various portable devices such as smartphones. These devices are intended for navigation in general, but can be used to carry out topographical surveys that do not require high accuracy of the surveyed data. To verify the applicability and accuracy of these devices we conducted the topographic survey in an area of approximately 5 ha using a GPS with RTK technology as reference, a Commercial Navigation Receiver (RNC) and a popular brand smartphone with the mobile applications C7 GPS Data and GPS Essentials previously installed. The GPS RNC showed the best planimetric results and the Smartphone with C7 GPS Data obtained the best result altimetric. None of the receivers analyzed showed high accuracy in results obtained. However, they can be used for tasks where high precision is not required.

In December 2019, cases of severe coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) infection rapidly progressed to acute respiratory failure. This study aims to assess the association between the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and the incidence of severe COVID-19 infection. A retrospective cohort study was conducted on 210 patients with COVID-19 infection who were admitted to the Central Hospital of Wuhan from 27 January 2020 to 9 March 2020. Peripheral blood samples were collected and examined for lymphocyte subsets by flow cytometry. Associations between tertiles of NLR and the incidence of severe illness were analysed by logistic regression.

Of the 210 patients with COVID-19, 87 were diagnosed as severe cases. The mean NLR of the severe group was higher than that of the mild group (6.6 vs. 3.3, P < 0.001). The highest tertile of NLR (5.1–19.7) exhibited a 5.9-fold (95% CI 1.3–28.5) increased incidence of severity relative to that of the lowest tertile (0.6–2.5) after adjustments for age, diabetes, hypertension and other confounders. The number of T cells significantly decreased in the severe group (0.5 vs. 0.9, P < 0.001). COVID-19 might mainly act on lymphocytes, particularly T lymphocytes. NLR was identified as an early risk factor for severe COVID-19 illness. Patients with increased NLR should be admitted to an isolation ward with respiratory monitoring and supportive care.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has resulted in a global pandemic, and there is limited data on effective therapies. Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) vaccine, a live-attenuated strain derived from an isolate of Mycobacterium bovis and originally designed to prevent tuberculosis, has shown some efficacy against infection with unrelated pathogens. In this study, we reviewed 120 consecutive adult patients (≥18 years old) with COVID-19 at a major federally qualified health centre in Rhode Island, United States from 19 March to 29 April 2020. Median age was 39.5 years (interquartile range, 27.0–50.0), 30% were male and 87.5% were Latino/Hispanics. Eighty-two (68.3%) patients had BCG vaccination. Individuals with BCG vaccination were less likely to require hospital admission during the disease course (3.7% vs. 15.8%, P = 0.019). This association remained unchanged after adjusting for demographics and comorbidities (P = 0.017) using multivariate regression analysis. The finding from our study suggests the potential of BCG in preventing more severe COVID-19.

We present a statistical framework for generating predicted dynamic networks based on the observed evolution of social relationships in a population. The framework includes a novel and flexible procedure to sample dynamic networks given a probability distribution on evolving network properties; it permits the use of a broad class of approaches to model trends, seasonal variability, uncertainty, and changes in population composition. Current methods do not account for the variability in the observed historical networks when predicting the network structure; the proposed method provides a principled approach to incorporate uncertainty in prediction. This advance aids in the designing of network-based interventions, as development of such interventions often requires prediction of the network structure in the presence and absence of the intervention. Two simulation studies are conducted to demonstrate the usefulness of generating predicted networks when designing network-based interventions. The framework is also illustrated by investigating results of potential interventions on bill passage rates using a dynamic network that represents the sponsor/co-sponsor relationships among senators derived from bills introduced in the U.S. Senate from 2003 to 2016.

In mainland China, the clinical, epidemiological and genetic features of non-O1/non-O139 Vibrio cholerae (NOVC) bacteraemia have been scarcely investigated. Herein, we describe a patient with NOVC bacteraemia diagnosed in our hospital and present a retrospective analysis of literature reports of 32 other cases in China, detailing the clinical epidemiology, antibiotic resistance and molecular characteristics of isolates. Most patients were male (84.8%; median age, 53 years) and had predisposing factors, such as cirrhosis, malignant tumours, blood diseases and diabetes. In addition to fever, gastroenteritis was the most frequent presenting symptom. The mortality rate during hospitalisation was 12.1%. NOVC bacteraemia cases were more common in June–August, with the majority in coastal provinces and the Yangtze River basin. Only 42.4% of cases were attributed to consumption of marine (aquatic) products. Tetracycline, third-generation cephalosporins, and fluoroquinolones were the most effective antimicrobial agents, and the highest frequencies of resistance were recorded for ampicillin/sulbactam (37.5%), amoxicillin/clavulanic acid (33.3%), ampicillin (29.2%) and sulfamethoxazole (20%). Multi-drug resistant isolates were not detected. Limited data indicate that ctxAB and tcpA genes were absent in all NOVC isolates but other putative virulence genes (hlyA, toxR, hap and rtxA) were common. Ten multilocus sequence types were identified with marked genetic heterogeneity between different isolates. As clinical manifestations of NOVC bacteraemia may vary widely, and isolates exhibit genetic diversity, clinicians and public health experts should be alerted to the possibility of infection with this pathogen because of the high prevalence of liver disease in China.

This abstract relates to the following paper: Daniels, N., Cosma, C., Llewellyn, A., Banks, D., Morris, H., Copeland, J., & Djarlijeva, E. (2020). E-cigarettes: No smoke without fire? British Actuarial Journal, 25, E12. doi:10.1017/S1357321720000112.

Evaluation of neural activity during natural behaviours is essential for understanding how the brain works. Here we show that neuron-specific self-evoked firing patterns are modulated by an object’s presence, at the electrosensory lobe neurons of tethered-moving Gymnotus omarorum. This novel preparation shows that electrosensory signals in these pulse-type weakly electric fish are not only encoded in the number of spikes per electric organ discharge (EOD), as is the case in wave-type electric fish, but also in the spike timing pattern after each EOD, as found in pulse-type Mormyroidea. Present data suggest that pulsant electrogenesis and spike timing coding of electrosensory signals developed concomitantly in the same species, and evolved convergently in African and American electric fish.

Recently, the asymptotic mean value of the height for a birth-and-death process is given in Videla [Videla, L.A. (2020)]. We consider the asymptotic variance of the height in the case when the number of states tends to infinity. Further, we prove that the heights exhibit a cutoff phenomenon and that the normalized height converges to a degenerate distribution.

Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has presented an unprecedented challenge to the health-care system across the world. The current study aims to identify the determinants of illness severity of COVID-19 based on ordinal responses. A retrospective cohort of COVID-19 patients from four hospitals in three provinces in China was established, and 598 patients were included from 1 January to 8 March 2020, and divided into moderate, severe and critical illness group. Relative variables were retrieved from electronic medical records. The univariate and multivariate ordinal logistic regression models were fitted to identify the independent predictors of illness severity. The cohort included 400 (66.89%) moderate cases, 85 (14.21%) severe and 113 (18.90%) critical cases, of whom 79 died during hospitalisation as of 28 April. Patients in the age group of 70+ years (OR = 3.419, 95% CI: 1.596–7.323), age of 40–69 years (OR = 1.586, 95% CI: 0.824–3.053), hypertension (OR = 3.372, 95% CI: 2.185–5.202), ALT >50 μ/l (OR = 3.304, 95% CI: 2.107–5.180), cTnI >0.04 ng/ml (OR = 7.464, 95% CI: 4.292–12.980), myohaemoglobin>48.8 ng/ml (OR = 2.214, 95% CI: 1.42–3.453) had greater risk of developing worse severity of illness. The interval between illness onset and diagnosis (OR = 1.056, 95% CI: 1.012–1.101) and interval between illness onset and admission (OR = 1.048, 95% CI: 1.009–1.087) were independent significant predictors of illness severity. Patients of critical illness suffered from inferior survival, as compared with patients in the severe group (HR = 14.309, 95% CI: 5.585–36.659) and in the moderate group (HR = 41.021, 95% CI: 17.588–95.678). Our findings highlight that the identified determinants may help to predict the risk of developing more severe illness among COVID-19 patients and contribute to optimising arrangement of health resources.

We report a family cluster of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection involving five patients in a family cluster in Dazhou, China, including the epidemiological, clinical, laboratory and radiological findings. Three-generation transmission was observed. Through epidemiological investigation, we observed asymptomatic transmission to a cohabiting family member, as well as person-to-person transmission of SARS-CoV-2 outside Wuhan city. The asymptomatic transmission demonstrated here provides evidence that there could be a greater risk of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) spread. This cluster also demonstrated that COVID-19 is transmissible during the incubation period of an asymptomatic person. Early isolation and treatment, stressing prevention of cluster outbreaks, could help prevent further spread of the epidemic.

Pulsed-xenon-ultraviolet light (PX-UVL) is increasingly used as a supplemental disinfection method in healthcare settings. We undertook a systematic search of the literature through several databases and conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate the efficacy of PX-UVL in reducing healthcare-associated infections. Eleven studies were included in the systematic review and nine in the meta-analysis. Pooled analysis of seven studies with before-after data indicated a statistically significant reduction of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) rates with the use of the PX-UVL (incidence rate ratio (IRR): 0.73, 95% CI 0.57–0.94, I2 = 72%, P = 0.01), and four studies reported a reduction of risk of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections (IRR: 0.79, 95% CI 0.64–0.98, I2 = 35%, P = 0.03). However, a further four trials found no significant reduction in vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) infection rates (IRR: 0.80, 95% CI 0.63–1.01, I2 = 60%, P = 0.06). The results for CDI and MRSA proved unstable on sensitivity analysis. Meta-regression analysis did not demonstrate any influence of study duration or intervention duration on CDI rates. We conclude that the use of PX-UVL, in addition to standard disinfection protocols, may help to reduce the incidence of CDI and MRSA but not VRE infection rates. However, the quality of evidence is not high, with unstable results and wide confidence intervals, and further high-quality studies are required to supplement the current evidence.

U.S., UK, and European municipalities are increasingly experimenting with data as an instrument for social policy. This movement pertains often to the design of municipal data warehouses, dashboards, and predictive analytics, the latter mostly to identify risk of fraud. This transition to data-driven social policy, captured by the term “digital welfare state,” almost completely takes place out of political and social view, and escapes democratic decision making. In this article, I zoom in on The Netherlands and show in detail how sound data governance is lacking at three levels: data experiments and practices take place in a so-called “institutional void” without any clear democratic mandate; moreover, they are often based on disputable quality of data and analytic models; and they tend to transgress the recent EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) about privacy and data protection. I also assess that key stakeholders in this data transition, that is the citizens whose data are used, are not actively informed let alone invited to participate. As a result, a practice of top-down monitoring, containment and control is evolving despite the desire of civil servants in this domain to do “good” with data. I explore several data and policy alternatives in the conclusion to contribute to a higher quality and more democratic usage of data in the digital welfare state.

Chest CT evaluation is often vital to determine patients suspected of COVID-19 pneumonia. The aim of this study was to determine the evolution of lung abnormalities evaluated by quantitative CT techniques in patients with COVID-19 infection from initial diagnosis to recovery. This retrospective study included 16 patients with COVID-19 infection from 30 January 2020 through 11 March 2020. Repeat chest CT examinations were obtained for three or more scans per patient. We measured total volume and mean CT value of lung lesions in each patient per scan, and then calculated the mass, which equals to volume × (CT value + 1000). Dynamic evolution of chest CT imaging as a function of time was fitted by non-linear regression model in terms of mass, volume and CT value, respectively. According to the fitting curves, we redefined the evolution of lung abnormalities: progressive stage (0–5 days), infection emerged and rapidly aggravated; peak stage (5–15 days), the greatest severity at approximate 7–8 days after onset; and absorption stage (15–30 days), the lesions slowly and gradually resolved.

From 21 January 2020 to 9 February 2020, three family clusters involving 31 patients with coronavirus disease 2019 were identified in Wenzhou, China. The epidemiological and clinical characteristics of the family cluster patients were analysed and compared with those of 43 contemporaneous sporadic cases. The three index cases transmitted the infection to 28 family members 2–10 days before illness onset. Overall, 28 of the 41 sporadic cases and three of 31 patients in the family clusters came back from Wuhan (65.12 vs. 9.68%, P< 0.001). In terms of epidemiological characters and clinical symptoms, no significant differences were observed between the family cluster and sporadic cases. However, the lymphocyte counts of sporadic cases were significantly lower than those of family cluster cases ((1.32 ± 0.55) × 109/l vs. (1.63 ± 0.70) × 109/l, P = 0.037), and the proportion of hypoalbuminaemia was higher in sporadic cases (18/43, 41.86%) than in the family clusters (6/31, 19.35%) (P < 0.05). Within the family cluster, the second- and third-generation cases had milder clinical manifestations, without severe conditions, compared with the index and first-generation cases, indicating that the virulence gradually decreased following passage through generations within the family clusters. Close surveillance, timely recognition and isolation of the suspected or latent patient is crucial in preventing family cluster infection.

The pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has posed serious challenges. It is vitally important to further clarify the epidemiological characteristics of the COVID-19 outbreak for future study and prevention and control measures. Epidemiological characteristics and spatial−temporal analysis were performed based on COVID-19 cases from 21 January 2020 to 1 March 2020 in Shandong Province, and close contacts were traced to construct transmission chains. A total of 758 laboratory-confirmed cases were reported in Shandong. The sex ratio was 1.27: 1 (M: F) and the median age was 42 (interquartile range: 32–55). The high-risk clusters were identified in the central, eastern and southern regions of Shandong from 25 January 2020 to 10 February 2020. We rebuilt 54 transmission chains involving 209 cases, of which 52.2% were family clusters, and three widespread infection chains were elaborated, occurring in Jining, Zaozhuang and Liaocheng, respectively. The geographical and temporal disparity may alert public health agencies to implement specific measures in regions with different risk, and should attach importance on how to avoid household and community transmission.

Actuarial ratemaking is usually performed at product and guarantee level, meaning that each product and guarantee is considered in isolation. Moreover, independence between policyholders is generally assumed. In this paper, we propose a multivariate Poisson mixture, with random effects correlated using a hierarchical structure, to accommodate for the dependence that may exist between unobserved risk factors across Home and Motor insurance and between policyholders from the same household. The hierarchical structure accounts for the fact that Home insurance covers the whole household, whereas Motor insurance policies are subscribed by specific policyholders within the household. The model allows to periodically correct the a priori expected claim frequencies using the reported number of claims in any of the considered products. Applications show that the impact of the number of claims reported in Motor insurance on the number of claims expected in Home insurance is larger than the other way around. Moreover, an out-of-sample analysis validates an improved predictive power. Also, the model allows to identify more rapidly the riskiest households.

BPIFA2 (PSP, SPLUNC2, C20orf70) is a major salivary protein of uncertain physiological function. BPIFA2 is downregulated in salivary glands of spontaneously hypertensive rats, pointing to a role in blood pressure regulation. This study used a novel Bpifa2 knockout mouse model to test the role of BPIFA2 in sodium preference and blood pressure. Blood pressure did not differ between wild-type male and female mice but was significantly lower in male knockout mice compared to male wild-type mice. In contrast, blood pressure was increased in female knockout mice compared to female wild-type mice. Female wild-type mice showed a significant preference for 0.9% saline compared to male mice. This difference was reduced in the knockout mice. BPIFA2 is an LPS-binding protein but it remains to be determined if the reported effects are mediated by the LPS-binding activity of BPIFA2.

We develop a model of strategic network formation of collaborations to analyze the consequences of an understudied but consequential form of heterogeneity: differences between actors in the form of their production functions. We also address how this interacts with resource heterogeneity, as a way to measure the impact actors have as potential partners on a collaborative project. Some actors (e.g., start-up firms) may exhibit increasing returns to their investment into collaboration projects, while others (e.g., established firms) may face decreasing returns. Our model provides insights into how actor heterogeneity can help explain well-observed collaboration patterns. We show that if there is a direct relation between increasing returns and resources, start-ups exclude mature firms and networks become segregated by types of production function, portraying dominant group architectures. On the other hand, if there is an inverse relation between increasing returns and resources, networks portray core-periphery architectures, where the mature firms form a core and start-ups with low-resources link to them.

Hubei province in China has had the most confirmed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases and has reported sustained transmission of the disease. Although Lu'an city is adjacent to Hubei province, its community transmission was blocked at the early stage, and the impact of the epidemic was limited. Therefore, we summarised the overall characteristics of the entire epidemic course in Lu'an to help cities with a few imported cases better contain the epidemic. A total of 69 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 11 asymptomatic carriers were identified in Lu'an during the epidemic from 12 January to 21 February 2020. Fifty-two (65.0%) cases were male, and the median age was 40 years. On admission, 56.5% of cases had a fever as the initial symptom, and pneumonia was present in 89.9% of cases. The mean serial interval and the mean duration of hospitalisation were 6.5 days (95% CI: 4.8–8.2) and 18.2 days (95% CI: 16.8–19.5), respectively. A total of 16 clusters involving 60 cases (17 first-generation cases and 43 secondary cases) were reported during the epidemic. We observed that only 18.9% (7/37) index cases resulted in community transmission during the epidemic in Lu'an, indicating that the scale of the epidemic was limited to a low level in Lu'an city. An asymptomatic carrier caused the largest cluster, involving 13 cases. Spread of COVID-19 by asymptomatic carriers represents an enormous challenge for countries responding to the pandemic.