We examined 3,046,538 acute respiratory infection (ARI) encounters with 6,103 national telehealth physicians from January 2019 to October 2021. The antibiotic prescribing rates were 44% for all ARIs; 46% were antibiotic appropriate; 65% were potentially appropriate; 19% resulted from inappropriate diagnoses; and 10% were related to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) diagnosis.

The Pan-STARRS 1 Telescope (PS1) is currently (2009 Aug) undergoing final commissioning efforts and starting to perform initial science observations for the PS1 survey mission. PS1 will greatly expand the known population of Brown Dwarfs, with discovery via photometry, proper-motion, and parallax.

Tick populations were observed on zebu cattle (Bos indicus) over an 18 month period at Patiko in northern Uganda. Monthly collections were made of all stages of ticks from five cattle and six sheep (Ovis aries). Collections of adults of Rhipicephalus appendiculatus Neumann were also made from the ears of about 30 cattle on several occasions. The species recorded on cattle, in order of decreasing abundance, were R. appendiculatus, Amblyomma variegatum (Fabricius), Boophilus decoloratus (Koch) and R. evertsi evertsi Neumann. Far fewer ticks were collected from the sheep. The adults of R. appendiculatus were randomly distributed over the herd. There was a distinct seasonal incidence of R. appendiculatus and A. variegatum on their hosts, which could be related to rainfall and to the emergence of new cohorts during the long rainy season. In addition, adult females of R. appendiculatus were collected daily off the ears of cattle at Entebbe following an infestation with 200 adult males and females. Measurements of the growth of the ticks were used to define the sizes of ‘standard’ ticks which would complete engorgement in the following 24 h. Such ticks provide a means of sampling to estimate the number of ticks engorging daily. Comparison of the frequency distributions of each stage and species in the Patiko collections were then used to infer the sizes of standard ticks for other species.

Research on crop systems and biodiversity conservation in the tropics has mainly been concerned with how low to mid intensity agricultural systems can benefit from adjacent natural habitats by receiving ecosystem services from natural biodiversity. One intensively studied crop in this framework is coffee. Positive effects are relatively easy to quantify by comparing coffee yield and by recording native species diversity. However, a largely overlooked issue is how agricultural areas affect native organisms in adjacent natural habitats, for example through movement of pest species that could impose a risk of degrading these habitats. We give an example from Mauritius, where an introduced coffee pest severely reduces the reproductive success of a threatened endemic plant species. We argue that such effects may be more common than suggested by the literature, especially when crop and native plants are congeneric. In the long term, such negative effects may degrade natural habitats, thereby causing ecosystem services derived from these habitats to decline.

The ALFA mission is designed to map the entire sky at frequencies between approximately 0.3 and 30 MHz with angular resolution limited by interstellar and interplanetary scattering. Most of this region of the spectrum is inaccessible from the ground because of absorption and refraction by the Earth’s ionosphere. A wide range of astrophysical questions concerning solar system, galactic, and extragalactic objects could be answered with high resolution images at low frequencies, where absorption effects and coherent emission processes become important and the synchrotron lifetimes of electrons are comparable to the age of the universe.

The superconducting filaments in (Bi, Pb)2Sr2Ca2Cu3Ox/Ag composite tapes have been imaged directly through the outer silver sheath of an unpolished tape by means of a magneto-optical imaging technique. The images reveal the morphology and alignment of the uppermost layer of filaments located as much as 112 μm below the unpolished tape surface, the depths of these filaments, and the homogeneity of the magnetic flux distribution within these filaments. These results demonstrate that the magneto-optical technique is a valuable nondestructive tool for analyzing (Bi, Pb)2Sr2Ca2Cu3Ox composite tapes.

Specimens of Nb-18 at. % Al were bend-tested at 20° C, 1200° C, and 1600° C, and the deformed microstructures were characterized using TEM to determine phase distributions and slip systems. Material deformed at 20° C showed brittle fracture and was characterized by large grains of a Nb-Al phase showing B2 ordering. Lamellar colonies of heavily dislocated massively transformed Nb3Al (A15) were present at grain boundaries. The slip system for dislocations in Nb3Al, was determined to be {100}/<001>, with defects typically extending in <011> directions. Fracture at 1200° C was ductile, and TEM observations revealed a bcc Nb-Al(ss) matrix with second phase growth of Nb3Al and α -Al2O3. The Nb3Al phase contained total dislocations and slip-induced planar defects on {100} planes terminating in partial dislocations. In tilting experiments, the planar defects exhibited stacking fault contrast consistent with a displacement vector of R=a/4<100>. Fracture at 1600° C was also ductile, and the deformed material consisted of a niobium matrix with equiaxed inclusions of alumina resulting from internal oxidation during deformation. The creep resistance reported previously was attributed to a combination of dispersion hardening of the refractory metal matrix and inherent creep resistance of Nb3Al.