We identified a period of 7-13 days after the onset of illness as the critical stage in SFTS progression. A sustained serum viral load may indicate that disease conditions will worsen and lead to death.

Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome bunyavirus is a newly discovered bunyavirus with high pathogenicity to human. The transmission model has been largely uncharacterized. Investigation on a cluster of severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome cases provided evidence of person-to-person transmission through blood contact to the index patient with high serum virus load.

No abstract

No abstract

BackgroundPeripheral blood leucopenia and thrombocytopenia are the main manifestations in severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) patients. However, the underlying causes are poorly understood. Therefore, we aimed to investigate cytology of bone marrow samples collected from SFTS patients. Methods10 SFTS patients were identified by typical clinical manifestations, detection of peripheral blood leucopenia and thrombocytopenia, and nucleic acid-based detection of the newly identified bunyavirus. SFTS patients, along with 10 participants with acute aplastic anemia and 10 healthy volunteers were enrolled in this study after written informed consent to undergo bone marrow cytological examination.ResultsWe observed similar bone marrow properties in SFTS patients and healthy volunteers, significantly different from the characteristics observed in acute aplastic anemia patients.ConclusionSimilarities between bone marrow samples collected from SFTS patients and healthy volunteers suggest that peripheral blood leucopenia and thrombocytopenia do not result from bone marrow cell plasticity.

Crash severity, as a major concern in the routing and scheduling of hazardous material shipments, has caused great loss of lives and property damage every year. Although abundant studies have been conducted to identify the relationship between different factors on crash severity, the analysis of the severity of hazard material transportation (HMT) crashes is very limited. Factors including road, vehicle, driver, and environment are not well considered in previous studies. This article analyzed the influence of various factors on HMT crash severity using Highway Safety Information System data. The random forest combined with the ordered logistic model is used for factor analysis. The results showed that annual average daily traffic, fatigues/asleep, number of lanes, speeding, adverse weather, and light are the six most important factors affecting HMT crash severity. Different from the non-HMT crashes, driver factor (e.g., driver age, gender, and drug/alcohol influence) was found to be not significantly related to crash severity. Speeding should be strictly forbidden for HMT drivers, considering the potential increased crash severity. Increasing the level of lighting can help reduce the number of severe crashes. The corresponding recommendations were provided based on the regression results.

No abstract

The connected vehicle environment is significant for the future road network. For constructing the connected vehicle environment, real-time data acquirement is always the prerequisite. Recently, using Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR)-based roadside infrastructures are becoming a prevalent method of obtaining real-time traffic data. However, the collected raw data from LiDAR cannot usually be used directly. The steps of data processing, like background filtering and object detection, are necessary. The processed data can then be employed in different applications. This paper proposed a novel layer-based searching method that is established with the help of the point distribution features to distinguish moving objects from the point cloud. It aimed to address the unexpected influence of factors such as congested situations and package loss. The new approach was also evaluated compared with the state-of-the-art methods by applying field data. The results showed that the proposed method is more effective than other methods. This method may be applicable to other types of rotating LiDAR for improving the background filtering performance.