Physical therapist assistant cluster /

Agency partners: Illinois State Board of Education, Illinois Community College Board, Illinois Board of Higher Education, Illinois Dept. of Commerce and Community Affairs, Illinois Dept. of Employment Security.

Planning guide for wastewater cluster systems in Illinois /

Project no. 84/2002.

Plastics molding cluster /

Project staff: Steven Kopinski, Ronald Engstrom, Louis Reifschneider.

Press operations cluster /

Agency partners: Illinois State Board of Education, Illinois Community College Board, Illinois Board of Higher Education, Illinois Dept. of Commerce and Community Affairs, Illinois Dept. of Employment Security.

Swine production cluster /

These standards will guide workforce preparation program providers in defining content for their programs, and employers in establishing the skills and standards necessary for job acquisition.

Telecommunications technician cluster /

Project staff: Doug Dougherty, John Kopatz, Kris Kersey.

Welding cluster /

Project staff: Steven Kopinski, Ronald Engstrom, Rick Polanin.

Burritt, our alma mater : an attractive little book of facts and fiction, bringing up memories that cluster round Spencer's hills [with] letters from abroad by the late president, W. N. Billingsley /

Mode of access: Internet.

A cluster of tuberculosis associated with use of a marijuana water pipe

SETTING: New cases of pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) were noted in a cluster of young Caucasian males, an unusual ethnic group for this disease in Queensland, Australia. It was noted that marijuana water pipe ('bong') smoking was common amongst cases and contacts. OBJECTIVE: To report this cluster of TB and to investigate whether shared use of a marijuana water pipe was associated with transmission of TB. DESIGN: All contacts were identified and screened according to standard protocols. Cases were asked to list contacts with whom they had shared a marijuana water pipe. RESULTS: Five cases of open pulmonary TB were identified clinically and on sputum culture, and all isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis were identical on typing. Of 149 contacts identified, 114 (77%) completed screening, and 57 (50%) had significant tuberculin skin test (TST) reactions on follow-up. Of 45 contacts who had shared a marijuana water pipe with a case, 29 (64%) had a significant TST reaction. CONCLUSION: Sharing a marijuana water pipe with a case of pulmonary TB was associated with transmission of TB (OR 2.22, 95% CI 0.96-5.17), although the most important risk factor for acquiring TB infection in this cluster was close household contact with a case (OR 4.91, 95% CI 1.13-20.70).

Mixture modelling for cluster analysis

Cluster analysis via a finite mixture model approach is considered. With this approach to clustering, the data can be partitioned into a specified number of clusters g by first fitting a mixture model with g components. An outright clustering of the data is then obtained by assigning an observation to the component to which it has the highest estimated posterior probability of belonging; that is, the ith cluster consists of those observations assigned to the ith component (i = 1,..., g). The focus is on the use of mixtures of normal components for the cluster analysis of data that can be regarded as being continuous. But attention is also given to the case of mixed data, where the observations consist of both continuous and discrete variables.

We all stand together: Using cluster associations to create worldwide presence for SMEs

This paper examines the potential for cluster associations to act globally on behalf of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) utilising networked internet-based capabilities to trade globally. The slow up-take of such new technology and the problems involved is also becoming of increased interest to policymakers. This paper argues that cluster associations with low power-dependence and decentralised structures are better able to provide the necessary support that networks of SMEs require to utilise the technology.

Optical quantum computation using cluster states

We propose an approach to optical quantum computation in which a deterministic entangling quantum gate may be performed using, on average, a few hundred coherently interacting optical elements (beam splitters, phase shifters, single photon sources, and photodetectors with feedforward). This scheme combines ideas from the optical quantum computing proposal of Knill, Laflamme, and Milburn [Nature (London) 409, 46 (2001)], and the abstract cluster-state model of quantum computation proposed by Raussendorf and Briegel [Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 5188 (2001)].

Cluster analysis of high-dimensional data: A case study

Normal mixture models are often used to cluster continuous data. However, conventional approaches for fitting these models will have problems in producing nonsingular estimates of the component-covariance matrices when the dimension of the observations is large relative to the number of observations. In this case, methods such as principal components analysis (PCA) and the mixture of factor analyzers model can be adopted to avoid these estimation problems. We examine these approaches applied to the Cabernet wine data set of Ashenfelter (1999), considering the clustering of both the wines and the judges, and comparing our results with another analysis. The mixture of factor analyzers model proves particularly effective in clustering the wines, accurately classifying many of the wines by location.

The ABC transporter gene in the sirodesmin biosynthetic gene cluster of Leptosphaeria maculans is not essential for sirodesmin production but facilitates self-protection

Epipolythiodioxopiperazine toxins are secreted by a range of fungi, including Leptosphaeria maculans, which produces sirodesmin, and Aspergillus fumigatus, which produces gliotoxin. The L. maculans biosynthetic gene cluster for sirodesmin includes an ABC transporter gene, sirA. Disruption of this gene led to increased secretion of sirodesmin into the medium and an altered ratio of sirodesmin to its immediate precursor. The transcription pattern of a peptide synthetase that catalyses an early step in sirodesmin biosynthesis was elevated in the sirA mutant by 47% over a 7-day period. This was consistent with the finding that the transporter mutant had elevated sirodesmin levels. Despite increased production of sirodesmin, the sit-A mutant was more sensitive to both sirodesmin and gliotoxin. The putative gliotoxin transporter gene, gliA, (a major facilitator superfamily transporter) from A.fumigatus complemented the tolerance of the L. maculans sirA mutant to gliotoxin, but not to sirodesmin. The results indicate that SirA contributes to self-protection against sirodesmin in L. maculans and suggest a transporter other than SirA is primarily responsible for efflux of endogenously produced sirodesmin. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.