The highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (HPAIV), subtype H5N1 poses a serious threat not only to the poultry industry and wild birds but also to humans. Despite a large number of studies conducted on various aspects of this virus, its transmissibility is still poorly understood. This study quantifies the basic reproductive number (R0) of the global HPAIV H5N1 spread within domestic poultry ...

BACKGROUND The ongoing global efforts to control influenza epidemics and pandemics require high-throughput technologies to detect, quantify, and functionally characterize viral isolates. The 2009 influenza pandemic as well as the recent in-vitro selection of highly transmissible H5N1 variants have only increased existing concerns about emerging influenza strains with significantly enhanced huma...

Rapidly characterizing the amplitude and variability in transmissibility of novel human influenza strains as they emerge is a key public health priority. However, comparison of early estimates of the basic reproduction number during the 2009 pandemic were challenging because of inconsistent data sources and methods. Here, we define and analyze influenza-like-illness (ILI) case data from 2009-20...

Background: Parasite replication is essential for transmission, but is thought to have inevitable virulent effects. The trade-off theory of parasite virulence asserts that parasites balance virulence (the increased death rate of infected hosts), which shortens the infectious period and thus reduces transmission opportunities, against transmissibility (the probability of transmission given a con...

There are indications that livestock-associated MRSA CC398 has a reduced human-to-human transmissibility, limiting its impact on public health and justifying modified control measures. This study determined the transmissibility of MRSA CC398 from livestock veterinarians to their household members in the community as compared to MRSA non-CC398 strains. A one-year prospective cohort study was per...

Abstract In this study, a novel two-degree-of-freedom active-feeder mechanism with disposable roller module for buckling prevention of the catheter tube was developed and analyzed. The phenomenon occurs when flexible part cannot withstand compressive force. Buckling can be prevented using additional parts that support long along tube; however, these passive-type buckling-prevention mechanisms i...

This paper clarifies a necessary condition and a sufficient condition for transmissibility for a given set of general sources and a given general broadcast channel. The approach is based on the informationspectrum methods introduced by Han and Verdú. Moreover, we consider the capacity region of the general broadcast channel with arbitrarily fixed error probabilities if we send independent priva...

The effect of a weak magnetic field on vibration transmissibility was investigated for magnetic elastomers with various volume fractions of magnetic particles. Polyurethane elastomers without magnetic particles exhibited a natural frequency at 53 Hz and were insensitive to a magnetic field of 60 mT. The natural frequency for magnetic elastomers with a volume fraction of 0.23 was 115 Hz at 0 mT,...

In the first International Operational Modal Analysis Conference it was shown for the first time how transmissibility measurements can be used to identify modal parameters. The main advantage of this new technique is that it is no longer necessary to make the assumption that the inputs to the structure are white noise. The unknown operational forces can be arbitrary (colored noise, swept sine, ...

Efficient transmission from human to human is the prerequisite for an influenza virus to cause a pandemic; however, the molecular determinants of influenza virus transmission are still largely unknown. In this study, we explored the molecular basis for transmission of Eurasian avian-like H1N1 (EAH1N1) swine influenza viruses by comparing two viruses that are genetically similar but differ in th...