Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD BioMed Central
Résumé : International audience
BACKGROUND: In a malaria-endemic area the distribution of patients is neither constant in time nor homogeneous in space. The WHO recommends the stratification of malaria risk on a fine geographical scale. In the village of Cacao in French Guiana, the study of the spatial and temporal distribution of malaria cases, during an epidemic, allowed a better understanding of the environmental factors promoting malaria transmission. METHODS: A dynamic cohort of 839 persons living in 176 households (only people residing permanently in the village) was constituted between January 1st, 2002 and December 31st, 2007.The information about the number of inhabitants per household, the number of confirmed cases of Plasmodium vivax and house GPS coordinates were collected to search for spatial or temporal clustering using Kurlldorff's statistical method. RESULTS: Of the 839 persons living permanently in the village of Cacao, 359 persons presented at least one vivax malaria episode between 2002 and 2007. Five temporal clusters and four spatial clusters were identified during the study period. In all temporal clusters, April was included. Two spatial clusters were localized at the north of the village near the Comté River and two others localized close to orchards. CONCLUSION: The spatial heterogeneity of malaria in the village may have been influenced by environmental disturbances due to local agricultural policies: deforestation, cultures of fresh produce, or drainage of water for agriculture. This study allowed generating behavioural, entomological, or environmental hypotheses that could be useful to improve prevention campaigns.
ISSN: 1475-2875

inserm-00849010
http://www.hal.inserm.fr/inserm-00849010
http://www.hal.inserm.fr/inserm-00849010/document
http://www.hal.inserm.fr/inserm-00849010/file/2013_Basurko_-_Deforestation_agriculture_and_farm_jobs_a_good_recipe_for_Plasmodium_vivax_in_French_Guiana.pdf
DOI : 10.1186/1475-2875-12-90

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD BioMed Central
Résumé : International audience
Background: Heterogeneous patterns of malaria transmission are thought to be driven by factors including host genetics, distance to mosquito breeding sites, housing construction, and socio-behavioural characteristics. Evaluation of local transmission epidemiology to characterize malaria risk is essential for planning malaria control and elimination programmes. The use of geographical information systems (GIS) techniques has been a major asset to this approach. To assess time and space distribution of malaria disease in Bandiagara, Mali, within a transmission season, data were used from an ongoing malaria incidence study that enrolled 300 participants aged under six years old ". Methods: Children's households were georeferenced using a handheld global position system. Clinical malaria was defined as a positive blood slide for Plasmodium falciparum asexual stages associated with at least one of the following signs: headache, body aches, fever, chills and weakness. Daily rainfall was measured at the local weather station. Landscape features of Bandiagara were obtained from satellite images and field survey. QGIS™ software was used to map malaria cases, affected and non-affected children, and the number of malaria episodes per child in each block of Bandiagara. Clusters of high or low risk were identified under SaTScan W software according to a Bernoulli model. Results: From June 2009 to May 2010, 296 clinical malaria cases were recorded. Though clearly temporally related to the rains, Plasmodium falciparum occurrence persisted late in the dry season. Two " hot spots " of malaria transmission also found, notably along the Yamé River, characterized by higher than expected numbers of malaria cases, and high numbers of clinical episodes per child. Conversely, the northeastern sector of the town had fewer cases despite its proximity to a large body of standing water which was mosquito habitat. Conclusion: These results confirm the existence of a marked spatial heterogeneity of malaria transmission in Bandiagara, providing support for implementation of targeted interventions. Background Malaria is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the world, with an estimated 3.3 billion people at risk of malaria [1]. The incidence of malaria worldwide is estimated to be 216 million cases per year, with 81% of these cases occurring in sub-Saharan Africa. Malaria kills approximately 655,000 people per year; 91% of deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa [1], mostly in children under five years of age. In Mali, West Africa, malaria represents 36.5% of consultation motives in health center, it is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality children of less than five years of age and the first reason of anaemia in pregnant women [2]. Malaria transmission is seasonal. Malaria parasite transmission and clinical disease are characterized by important microgeographic variation, often between adjacent villages, households or families [3-8]. This local heterogeneity is driven by a variety of factors including human genetics [9,10], distance to potential breeding sites [11,12], housing construction
ISSN: 1475-2875

hal-01307672
https://hal-amu.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01307672
https://hal-amu.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01307672/document
https://hal-amu.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01307672/file/1475-2875-12-82.pdf
DOI : 10.1186/1476-072X-2-5

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Elsevier
Résumé : International audience
Studies of paleomagnetic fields during polarity transitions recorded over the past few million years frequently suggest a configurational persistence consistent with long-lived mantle control over the pattern of flux emanating from Earth's fluid core. Fundamental to an understanding of the core-mantle dynamics involved is the question of the spatial-temporal nature of the physical conditions at the base of the mantle that may be responsible. Our analysis of the field during a mid-Cenozoic, reverse-to-normal (R-N) polarity change, recorded in a continuous sequence of lava flows in southeastern Queensland, Australia, provides strong evidence that the time span over which local mantle features retain such an influence is far longer than had thus far been observed. Specifically. the reversal is dominated by two sequential groupings of transitional magnetic vector directions, each associated with a clustering of virtual geomagnetic poles (VGPs) at locations common to several more youthful reversal datasets from about the globe. Our Ar-40/Ar-39 age determinations indicate that these Australian lavas erupted 25.56 +/- 0.48 Ma, strongly suggesting that the characteristic time for invariant control by the mantle over flux emerging from the outer core is at least on order of a few tens of Myr. The availability of transitional paleomagnetic data from still earlier times within the Cenozoic may further delineate this duration and, perhaps, provide a means to track changes in the pattern of long-standing concentrations of magnetic flux at the core-mantle boundary. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
ISSN: 0031-9201

hal-00411919
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00411919
DOI : 10.1016/j.pepi.2008.07.012

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD
Résumé : International audience
We present the principle and the main steps of a new method for the visuo-spatial analysis of geometrical sketches recorded online. Visuo-spatial analysis is a necessary step for multi-level analysis. Multi-level analysis simultaneously allows classification, comparison or clustering of the constituent parts of a pattern according to their visuo-spatial properties, their procedural strategies, their structural or temporal parameters, or any combination of two or more of those parameters. The first results provided by this method concern the comparison of sketches to some perfect patterns of simple geometrical figures and the measure of dissimilarity between real sketches. The mean rates of good decision higher than 95% obtained are promising in both cases.
Proceedings of the 2010 International Conference on Image Processing, Computer Vision, & Pattern Recognition

Droits : info:eu-repo/semantics/OpenAccess
hal-00514929
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00514929
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00514929/document
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00514929/file/IPCV2010_-_RRP.pdf
ARXIV : 1305.1520

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD
Résumé : International audience
In this paper we describe the various steps of a method using local descriptors in order to classify freehand sketches, which are drawn in an unconstrained manner and recorded online. Our final objective is to simultaneously allow classification, comparison or clustering of those elements according to their Visuo spatial properties, their realization strategies, their structural or temporal parameters, or any combination of two or more of those parameters. The context and the motivation of this work-in-progress are described. First, we'll explain the detection step: we decided to use a mixed segmentation process. Indeed recognition methods based on local descriptor are not fully adapted to our types of shapes and to the one-line context. Later, we will show how we plan to give a global perception of the shape to our local descriptor by using segmentation results. Then we will introduce the local descriptor and how it is computing. Next we'll explain how we calculate the dissimilarity between two descriptors. Finally, we'll describe the approach we have chosen to determine the dissimilarity between shapes represented by sets of local descriptors.
Proceedings of the 14th Biennial Conference of the International Graphonomics Society

hal-00514930
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00514930