Field Evaluation of Alternative Testing Strategies for the Detection of HIV Infection in Beijing

To identify a cost-efficient altemative antibody testing strategy for screening and confirmation of HIV infection by rapid simple tests （RSTs） and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays （ELISAs）. Methods Four RSTs （RST1, RST2, RST3, and RST4 ） and five ELISAs （ELISA1, ELISA2, ELISA3, ELISA4, and ELISA5） were evaluated in two phases by using banked and serum specimens prospectively collected at regional hospitals and voluntary counseling and testing （VCT） centers in Beijing. A total of 200 banked serum specimens were included in the first phase, including 62 HIV-positive, 127 HIV-negative and 11 indeterminate specimens. All specimens were tested by four RSTs and five ELISAs respectively. The second phase involved prospective testing of 389 routine specimens, including 92 HIV-positive, 287 HIV-negative, and 10 indeterminate specimens. All the specimens were tested by two RSTs （RST2 and RST4） and three ELISAs （ELISA1, ELISA3, and ELISA4）, which were selected for their respective excellent sensitivity and/or specificity. Westem blot （WB） was used as a gold standard for confirming the reactivity of all the specimens. Results Sensitivity, specificity, and efficacy were calculated for each assay in two phases. In the first phase, four assays （ELISA4, RST2, RST3, and RST4） had a specificity of 100%. For the determination of efficacy, ELISA4, RST2, and RST4 were selected in the second phase. ELISA1 and ELISA3 which have a sensitivity of 95.9% and 93.2% respectively also entered this phase. In the second phase, all the five assays （ELISA1, ELISA3, ELISA4, RST2, and RST4） had a sensitivity and specifity of over 90%. ELISA1 had a sensitivity of 99% and ELISA4 a specificity of 99%. Conclusion The sensitivity ELISA1 and the specificit of ELISA4 are comparable to ELISA/WB standard strategy. Application of this alternative testing strategy provides a cost-effective method for determining HIV prevalence in Beijing.

Quantitative Analysis of the Effectiveness of Antigen-and Polymerase Chain Reaction-Based Combination Strategies for Containing COVID-19 Transmission in a Simulated Community

The number of coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19)cases continues to surge,overwhelming healthcare systems and causing excess mortality in many countries.Testing of infectious populations remains a key strategy to contain the COVID-19 outbreak,delay the exponential spread of the disease,and flatten the epidemic curve.Using the Omicron variant outbreak as a background,this study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of testing strategies with different test combinations and frequencies,analyze the factors associated with testing effectiveness,and optimize testing strategies based on these influencing factors.We developed a stochastic,agent-based,discrete-time susceptible–latent–infectious–recovered model simulating a community to estimate the association between three levels of testing strategies and COVID-19 transmission.Antigen testing and its combination strategies were more efficient than polymerase chain reaction(PCR)-related strategies.Antigen testing also showed better performance in reducing the demand for hospital beds and intensive care unit beds.The delay in the turnaround time of test results had a more significant impact on the efficiency of the testing strategy compared to the detection limit of viral load and detection-related contacts.The main advantage of antigen testing strategies is the short turnaround time,which is also a critical factor to be optimized to improve PCR strategies.After modifying the turnaround time,the strategies with less frequent testing were comparable to daily testing.The choice of testing strategy requires consideration of containment goals,test efficacy,community prevalence,and economic factors.This study provides evidence for the selection and optimization of testing strategies in the post-pandemic era and provides guidance for optimizing healthcare resources.

Quality and Testing Standards on Rice Production in China and Development Strategies

China is the biggest country of rice production and consumption in the world;more than 50% of the population feeds chiefly on rice. The quality of rice and its role as a staplefood carry much weight. The rice qualities are those aspects concerning processing, appearance,cooking, nutrition and safety of the product. The study, formulation and implementation of standardson rice qualities and testing bear heavily on the improving of rice qualities, human health,substitution of rice varieties, promoting quality rice production and regulating rice market.

Optimization of dynamic sequential test strategy for equipment health management

Testing is the premise and foundation of realizing equipment health management （EHM）. To address the problem that the static periodic test strategy may cause deficient test or excessive test, a dynamic sequential test strategy （DSTS） for EHM is presented. Considering the situation that equipment health state is not completely observable in reality, a DSTS optimization method based on partially observable semi-Markov decision pro- cess （POSMDP） is proposed. Firstly, an equipment health state degradation model is constructed by Markov process, and the control limit maintenance policy is also introduced. Secondly, POSMDP is formulated in great detail. And then, POSMDP is converted to completely observable belief semi-Markov decision process （BSMDP） through belief state. The optimal equation and the corresponding optimal DSTS, which minimize the long-run ex- pected average cost per unit time, are obtained with BSMDP. The results of application in complex equipment show that the proposed DSTS is feasible and effective.

A fault injection model-oriented testing strategy for component security

A fault injection model-oriented testing strategy was proposed for detecting component vulnerabilities.A fault injection model was defined,and the faults were injected into the tested component based on the fault injection model to trigger security exceptions.The testing process could be recorded by the monitoring mechanism of the strategy,and the monitoring information was written into the security log.The component vulnerabilities could be detected by the detecting algorithm through analyzing the security log.Lastly,some experiments were done in an integration testing platform to verify the applicability of the strategy.The experimental results show that the strategy is effective and operable.The detecting rate is more than 90%for vulnerability components.

A Specification-Based Case Study from Test Class Framework

Testing is a standard method for verification of software performance. Producing efficient and appropriate test case is an important aspect in testing. Specification based testing presents a method to derive test data from software specification. Because of the precision and concision of specification, the test data derived from specification can test the software efficiently and entirely. This paper demonstrates a test class framework(TCF) on a file reading case study, specified using Z notation. This test class framework defines test case sets, providing structure to the testing process. Flexibility is preserved so that many testing strategies can be used.

“Transition States” Testing America's Global Strategy

Elexible variety has all along been a hallmark of America’s global strategy withdifferentiated treatment for specific nations. In the new century, Washingtondivides the major world forces into four categories in light of a comprehensive crite-rion of whether they have been fused into the international system, are going to-ward democracy or benefit world stability. They include: insiders or allies (Europeand Japan), marginalized ones (some underdeveloped African nations), outsidersor "rogues" (Iraq, North Korea) and finally, travelers on the way or "transitionstates". Interpretations by U.S. strategic reports define the "transition states"

Development of a Wireless Environmental Data Acquisition Prototype Adopting Agile Practices: An Experience Report

The traditional software development model commonly named “waterfall” is unable to cope with the increasing functionality and complexity of modern embedded systems. In addition, it is unable to support the ability for businesses to quickly respond to new market opportunities due to changing requirements. As a response, the software development community developed the Agile Methodologies (e.g., extreme Programming, Scrum) which were also adopted by the Embedded System community. However, failures and bad experiences in applying Agile Methodologies to the development of embedded systems have not been reported in the literature. Therefore, this paper contributes a detailed account of our first-time experiences adopting an agile approach in the prototype development of a wireless environment data acquisition system in an academic environment. We successfully applied a subset of the extreme Programming (XP) methodology to our software development using the Python programming language, an experience that demonstrated its benefits in shaping the design of the software and also increasing productivity. We used an incremental development approach for the hardware components and adopted a “cumulative testing” approach. For the overall development process management, however, we concluded that the Promise/Commitment-Based Project Management (PB-PM/CBPM) was better suited. We discovered that software and hardware components of embedded systems are best developed in parallel or near-parallel. We learned that software components that pass automated tests may not survive in the tests against the hardware. Throughout this rapid prototyping effort, factors like team size and our availability as graduate students were major obstacles to fully apply the XP methodology.

On testing for infections during epidemics, with application to Covid-19 in Ontario, Canada

During an epidemic,accurate estimation of the numbers of viral infections in different regions and groups is important for understanding transmission and guiding public health actions.This depends on effective testing strategies that identify a high proportion of infections(that is,provide high ascertainment rates).For the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2,ascertainment rates do not appear to be high in most jurisdictions,but quantitative analysis of testing has been limited.We provide statistical models for studying testing and ascertainment rates,and illustrate them on public data on testing and case counts in Ontario,Canada.

Discussions on Toxic Traditional Chinese Medicine and New Perspectives

Along with the increase in the consumption of traditional Chinese medicine(TCM), the safety of TCM has dramatically attracted the attention and concern of the public. Here, we review previous studies, which focused mainly on the toxicity of toxic TCM and the interpretations for combination, to elaborate on advances and important issues existing in the safety evaluation of TCM, aiming to provide scientific advice for the clinical use. Moreover, we emphasize the importance of a safe evaluation system for TCM based on the material basis for toxicity, which integrates new toxicity testing strategy and is launched under the guidance of TCM theories in future researches.