OBJECTIVE This study was to investigate the HIV current situation in Liangshan prefecture, in order to predict prevalence and transmission trends. METHODS Region-specific population, behavior, serosurveillence, and policy/program data (from 1995 to 2010) were gathered from various local and national organizations and applied to the Asian Epidemic Model (AEM) and used to derive estimates of fu...

A large and increasing proportion of teaching in UK universities is being fulfilled by staff on casual, rather than permanent, contracts. This paper examines how the casual affected student satisfaction 2014–15. We find that an increased leads to lower satisfaction, even when controlling for respondent's subject, university faculty. suggests a trade-off between casualisation which could have im...

Today’s Web is full of structured data, but much of it is transmitted in natural language text or binary images that are not conducive to further machine processing by the time it reaches the user’s web browser. Consequently, casual users—those without programming skills—are limited to whatever features that web sites offer. Encountering a few dozens of addresses of public schools listed in a t...

Within organisations, Information Systems are characterised by heterogeneity. The main management tools are different Relational and Object Oriented DataBase Management Systems. Therefore, variety, complexity and lack of integration make it difficult for casual users to query them. This paper presents WDBQS (Web DataBase Query System); a Web-interface for querying distant Relational and Object ...

In 2013, the World Health Organization (WHO) called for joint surveillance of population salt and iodine intakes using urinary analysis. 24-h urine collection is considered the gold standard for salt intake assessment, but there is an emerging consensus that casual urine sampling can provide comparable information for population-level surveillance. Our review covers the use of the urinary sodiu...

This paper is an exploration on why is it possible to have gameplay experiences that are perceived to be simultaneously engaging and frustrating. Particularly, the paper leverages psychological theories on rewards, frustration, and its neurobiology. In the paper (1) distinct types of (positive) frustration are informally classified. (2) The neurobiology of rewards is explained in the casual gam...

This paper presents WDBQL, a visual query language intended for casual users. WDBQL is a Web-based query language. It means that WDBQL implements the Web navigational mechanism to query databases. Such a mechanism has two main advantages: (i) the querying process is really easy to use for casual users and (ii) the querying process hides the semantics of the performed operations. WDBQL allows to...

This paper concerns the design of public displays that project casual awareness information, where passerby’s quickly acquire a sense of who in a small group is around and available. After describing what we mean by casual awareness, we present several prototype designs. In particular, we take awareness information garnered from a small group inhabiting a physical environment and abstract it on...

The value of contact tracing in South Glamorgan for the period May 1987 to December 1989 was assessed. Tuberculosis was diagnosed in six (3.5%) of 170 close contacts. All were young and were detected in the initial screening. Tuberculosis was not found among 441 casual contacts. The value of follow up of contacts after the initial screening and of screening casual contacts in districts with a l...

BACKGROUND Depression is a debilitating illness that is estimated to affect more than 300 million people worldwide. Although there has been some success in treatment of this illness with pharmaceuticals and behavioral techniques like cognitive behavioral therapy, these are often costly and have stigma associated with them. The purpose of this study was to test whether a prescribed regimen of ca...