Pertussis: more boosters needed?

Parental Tdap boosters and infant pertussis: a case-control study.

BACKGROUND Although recommended for almost a decade, evidence for field effectiveness of vaccinating close adult contacts of newborn infants against pertussis ("cocooning") is lacking. We evaluated the impact of a government-funded cocoon program during a pertussis epidemic in New South Wales, Australia. METHODS We matched all New South Wales laboratory-confirmed pertussis cases aged <4 month...

Protocol boosters

This paper describes a new methodology for protocol design, using incremental construction of the protocol from elements called “protocol boosters” on an as-needed basis. Protocol boosters allow: (1) dynamic protocol customization to heterogeneous environments, and (2) rapid protocol evolution. Unlike alternative adaptation approaches, such as link layer, conversion, and termination protocols, ...

A Narrative Review of Norovirus Gastroenteritis: More Global Attention Is Needed

Noroviruses (NoVs), an important pathogenic agent of foodborne illness, lead to acute and chronic gastroenteritis in humans of all ages and to travelers’ diarrhea. Many genotypes exist in nature; GII.4 is widely known as the most predominant. Outbreaks mostly occur in semi-closed settings. Although the disease is self-limited to person, many cases have resulted in death, which has raised more c...

Potential Boosters?

Wrapping Boosters against Noise

Wrappers have recently been used to obtain parameter optimizations for learning algorithms. In this paper we investigate the use of a wrapper for estimating the correct number of boosting ensembles in the presence of class noise. Contrary to the naive approach that would be quadratic in the number of boosting iterations, the incremental algorithm described is linear. Additionally, directly usin...