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India accounts for 22% of the 453,000 global rotavirus deaths among children5 years annually. The Indian Rotavirus Strain Surveillance Network provides clinicians and public health partners with valuable rotavirus disease surveillance data. Our analysis offers policy-makers an update on rotavirus disease burden with emphasis on regional shifts in rotavirus strain epidemiology in India.Children5 years requiring hospitalization for acute gastroenteritis were selected from 10 representative hospitals in 7 cities throughout India between November 2005 through June 2009. We used a modified World Health Organization protocol for rotavirus surveillance; stool specimens were collected and tested for rotavirus using enzyme immunoassay and reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction.A total of 7285 stool specimens collected were tested for rotavirus, among which 2899 (40%) were positive for rotavirus. Among the 2899 rotavirus detections, a G-type could not be determined for 662 (23%) and more than one G type was detected in 240 (8%). Of 1997 (69%) patients with only one G-type, the common types were G1 (25%), G2 (21%), G9 (13%), and G12 (10%). The proportion of rotavirus infections attributed to G12 infections rose from 8% to 39% in the Northern region and from 8% to 24% in the Western region.This study highlights the large, ongoing burden of rotavirus disease in India, as well as interesting regional shifts in rotavirus strain epidemiology, including an increasing detection of G12 rotavirus strains in some regions. While broad heterotypic protection from rotavirus vaccination is expected based on pre- and post-licensure data from other settings, effectiveness assessments and rotavirus strain monitoring after vaccine introduction will be important.

Ages of Some Detrital Monazites by the Lead-Alpha Method of Geochronology

A new iris recognition system based on Wavelet Packet Analysis is described. The most unique phenotypic feature visible in a person's face is the detailed texture of each eye's iris. The visible texture of a person's iris is encoded into a compact sequence of 2-D wavelet packet coefficients, which generate an “iris code”. Two different iris codes are compared using exclusively OR comparisons. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-resolution approach based on Wavelet Packet Transform (WPT) for iris texture analysis and recognition. The development of this approach is motivated by the observation that dominant frequencies of iris texture are located in the low and middle frequency channels. With an adaptive threshold, WPT sub images coefficients are quantized into 1, 0 or −1 as iris signature. This signature presents the local information of different irises. By using different wavelet packets the size of the iris signature of code attained was 1080 bits. The signature of the new iris pattern is compared against the stored pattern after computing the signature of new iris pattern. Identification is performed by computing the hamming distance.

BACKGROUND Current, nationally representative data on rotavirus disease burden and rotavirus strains in India are needed to understand the potential health benefits of rotavirus vaccination. METHODS The Indian Rotavirus Strain Surveillance Network was established with 4 laboratories and 10 hospitals in 7 different regions of India. At each hospital, children aged