During 2 successive rainy seasons, January 2008 through May 2008 and November 2008 through March 2009, Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) caused outbreaks in Madagascar. Human and animal infections were confirmed on the northern and southern coasts and in the central highlands. Analysis of partial sequences from RVFV strains showed that all were similar to the strains circulating in Kenya during 20...

This paper describes a distributed dialogue management scheme for speechbased information seeking dialogue. The dialogue management is distributed to several components, supported by a general blackboard-type architecture for speech systems. By breaking down the dialogue management, we can achieve more general solutions and support sophisticated decision making algorithms.

background: job environment is a strong stimulus for creating of emotions and there are several stressful situations which could cause dissatisfaction, low work performance, leave or changing job. the purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between sensations seeking with job stress among emergency medicine workers. methods: in this correlational study, 60 emergency medicine wor...

Mapping in the Homs region of Syria has revealed a hitherto unrecognized staircase of at least 12 gravel terraces of the upper Orontes River. The terrace gravels overlie Pliocene lacustrine marl and have been calcareously cemented into conglomerates, sometimes interbedded with cemented fine-grained alluvium. A tentative dating scheme, based on modelling the regional-scale surface uplift that ha...

An integrated single-tooth modeling scheme is proposed for the 3D dental model acquired by optical digitizers. The cores of the modeling scheme are fusion regions extraction, single tooth shape restoration, and single tooth separation. According to the "valley" shape-like characters of the fusion regions between two adjoining teeth, the regions of the 3D dental model are analyzed and classified...

An optimization methodology for the combination of several green technologies is introduced in this paper. These are smart meters, smart appliances, solar power systems and time-of-use (TOU) pricing. These technologies are collectively and widely utilized in the recent smart grid, which is rolling out all over the world to facilitate greener power generation and distribution. Adaptive particle ...

The third birth transition has a negative impact on the national goal of fertility replacement level (2.1) which is to be achieved by 2010. To identify the factors influencing the demographic phenomenon, a cross sectional as well as community based study consisting of 1397 eligible women was conducted in the four valley districts of Manipur under cluster sampling scheme. Analysing the empirical...