No abstract

The purpose of this study was to understand the seasonal, geographical and clinical characteristics of Taiwanese patients hospitalized for non-typhoidal Salmonella (NTS) infections and their economic burden. Hospital data obtained from the Taiwan National Health Insurance (NHI) database between 2006 and 2008 were analysed. Infants had the highest annual incidence of 525 cases/100 000 person-years. Elderly patients aged >70 years had the highest in-hospital mortality rate (2·6%). Most (82·6%) gastroenteritis occurred in children aged <10 years. Septicaemia, pneumonia, arthritis and osteomyelitis occurred mainly in patients aged >50 years. A median medical cost for NTS-associated hospitalizations was higher for patients with septicaemia than for those with gastroenteritis. Seasonal variation of NTS-associated hospitalizations was correlated with temperature in different areas of Taiwan. In summary, infants had a high incidence of NTS-associated hospitalizations. However, the elderly had a higher in-hospital mortality rate and more invasive NTS infections than children.

The buck converter is frequently introduced in the industry to maintain the stability of the voltage output when having the interference suddenly. In order to promote the robustness of the buck converter, a novel hybrid H2 model following control (HHMFC) is developed based on digital redesign sliding mode control in this paper. First, we design the H2 model following SMC in the continue-time domain. Then, by using the digital redesign approach, the continuous SMC is redesigned to a corresponding discrete-time SMC and the proposed HHMFC is achieved. Finally, we apply the developed HHMFC to realize a robust buck converter. With both the simulation and experiment results, we can conclude that the proposed HHMFC can easily and successfully apply to the practical realization for the buck converter with better robustness performance.