Site Distribution at the Edge of the Palaeolithic World: A Nutritional Niche Approach

This paper presents data from the English Channel area of Britain and Northern France on the spatial distribution of Lower to early Middle Palaeolithic pre-MIS5 interglacial sites which are used to test the contention that the pattern of the richest sites is a real archaeological distribution and not of taphonomic origin. These sites show a marked concentration in the middle-lower reaches of river valleys with most being upstream of, but close to, estimated interglacial tidal limits. A plant and animal database derived from Middle-Late Pleistocene sites in the region is used to estimate the potentially edible foods and their distribution in the typically undulating landscape of the region. This is then converted into the potential availability of macronutrients (proteins, carbohydrates, fats) and selected micronutrients. The floodplain is shown to be the optimum location in the nutritional landscape (nutriscape). In addition to both absolute and seasonal macronutrient advantages the floodplains could have provided foods rich in key micronutrients, which are linked to better health, the maintenance of fertility and minimization of infant mortality. Such places may have been seen as ‘good (or healthy) places’ explaining the high number of artefacts accumulated by repeated visitation over long periods of time and possible occupation. The distribution of these sites reflects the richest aquatic and wetland successional habitats along valley floors. Such locations would have provided foods rich in a wide range of nutrients, importantly including those in short supply at these latitudes. When combined with other benefits, the high nutrient diversity made these locations the optimal niche in northwest European mixed temperate woodland environments. It is argued here that the use of these nutritionally advantageous locations as nodal or central points facilitated a healthy variant of the Palaeolithic diet which permitted habitation at the edge of these hominins’ range.

Chronology of the site of Grotte du Renne, Arcy-sur-Cure, France: implications for Neanderthal symbolic behaviour

Higham et al (2010) published a large series of new dates from the key French Palaeolithic site of the Grotte du Renne at Arcy-sur-Cure. The site is important because it is one of only two sites in Europe in which Châtelperronian lithic remains co-occur with Neanderthal human remains. A large series of dates from the Mousterian, Châtelperronian, Aurignacian and Gravettian levels of the site was obtained. The 14C results showed great variability, which Higham et al (2010) interpreted as most likely to be due to mixing of archaeological material in the site. In contrast, Caron et al (2011) suggested that the site stratigraphy is well preserved and that the problem with the variability in the radiocarbon ages was due to unremoved contamination in the dated bone. In this paper we address their critique of the original Higham et al (2010) paper

Elucidating the mechanism and active site of the cyclohexanol dehydrogenation on copper-based catalysts: A density functional theory study

Abstract The dehydrogenation of cyclohexanol to cyclohexanone is very important in the manufacture of nylon. Copper-based catalysts are the most popular catalysts for this reaction, and on these catalysts the reaction mechanism and active site are in debate. In order to elucidate the mechanism and active site of the cyclohexanol dehydrogenation on copper-based catalysts, density functional theory with dispersion corrections were performed on up to six facets of copper in two different oxidation states: monovalent copper and metallic copper. By calculating the surface energies of these facets, Cu(111) and Cu2O(111) were found to be the most stable facets for metallic copper and for monovalent copper, respectively. On these two facets, all the possible elementary steps in the dehydrogenation pathway of cyclohexanol were calculated, including the adsorption, dehydrogenation, hydrogen coupling and desorption. Two different reaction pathways for dehydrogenation were considered on both surfaces. It was revealed that the dehydrogenation mechanisms are different on these two surfaces: on Cu(111) the hydrogen belonging to the hydroxyl is removed first, then the hydrogen belonging to the carbon is subtracted, while on Cu2O(111) the hydrogen belonging to the carbon is removed followed by the subtraction of the hydrogen in the hydroxyl group. Furthermore, by comparing the energy profiles of these two surfaces, Cu2O(111) was found to be more active for cyclohexanol dehydrogenation than Cu(111). In addition, we found that the coordinatively unsaturated copper sites on Cu2O(111) are the reaction sites for all the steps. Therefore, the coordinatively unsaturated copper site on Cu2O(111) is likely to be the active site for cyclohexanol dehydrogenation on the copper-based catalysts.

A potentiometric biosensor for rapid on-site disease diagnostics

Quantitative point-of-care (POC) devices are the next generation for serological disease diagnosis. Whilst pathogen serology is typically performed by centralized laboratories using Enzyme-Linked ImmunoSorbent Assay (ELISA), faster on-site diagnosis would infer improved disease management and treatment decisions. Using the model pathogen Bovine Herpes Virus-1 (BHV-1) this study employs an extended-gate field-effect transistor (FET) for direct potentiometric serological diagnosis. BHV-1 is a major viral pathogen of Bovine Respiratory Disease (BRD), the leading cause of economic loss ($2 billion annually in the US only) to the cattle and dairy industry. To demonstrate the sensor capabilities as a diagnostic tool, BHV-1 viral protein gE was expressed and immobilized on the sensor surface to serve as a capture antigen for a BHV-1-specific antibody (anti-gE), produced in cattle in response to viral infection. The gE-coated immunosensor was shown to be highly sensitive and selective to anti-gE present in commercially available anti-BHV-1 antiserum and in real serum samples from cattle with results being in excellent agreement with Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) and ELISA. The FET sensor is significantly faster than ELISA (<10 min), a crucial factor for successful disease intervention. This sensor technology is versatile, amenable to multiplexing, easily integrated to POC devices, and has the potential to impact a wide range of human and animal diseases.

Novel functional interaction between the plasma membrane Ca2+ pump 4b and the proapoptotic tumor suppressor Ras-associated factor 1 (RASSF1)

Plasma membrane calmodulin-dependent calcium ATPases (PMCAs) are enzymatic systems implicated in the extrusion of calcium from the cell. We and others have previously identified molecular interactions between the cytoplasmic COOH-terminal end of PMCA and PDZ domain-containing proteins. These interactions suggested a new role for PMCA as a modulator of signal transduction pathways. The existence of other intracellular regions in the PMCA molecule prompted us to investigate the possible participation of other domains in interactions with different partner proteins. A two-hybrid screen of a human fetal heart cDNA library, using the region 652-840 of human PMCA4b (located in the catalytic, second intracellular loop) as bait, revealed a novel interaction between PMCA4b and the tumor suppressor RASSF1, a Ras effector protein involved in H-Ras-mediated apoptosis. Immunofluorescence co-localization, immunoprecipitation, and glutathione S-transferase pull-down experiments performed in mammalian cells provided further confirmation of the physical interaction between the two proteins. The interaction domain has been narrowed down to region 74-123 of RASSF1C (144-193 in RASSF1A) and 652-748 of human PMCA4b. The functionality of this interaction was demonstrated by the inhibition of the epidermal growth factor-dependent activation of the Erk pathway when PMCA4b and RASSF1 were co-expressed. This inhibition was abolished by blocking PMCA/RASSSF1 association with an excess of a green fluorescent protein fusion protein containing the region 50-123 of RASSF1C. This work describes a novel protein-protein interaction involving a domain of PMCA other than the COOH terminus. It suggests a function for PMCA4b as an organizer of macromolecular protein complexes, where PMCA4b could recruit diverse proteins through interaction with different domains. Furthermore, the functional association with RASSF1 indicates a role for PMCA4b in the modulation of Ras-mediated signaling.

A two-site, population-based study of barriers to cataract surgery in rural china.

PURPOSE: China has among the lowest cataract surgical rates in Asia. This study was conducted to identify barriers to cataract surgery in rural China. METHODS: All subjects having undergone cataract surgery and persons with presenting visual acuity <or=6/60 (in Yangjiang) or <or=6/18 (in Handan) in >or=1 eye due to nonsurgically treated cataract were identified in two population-based studies in southern (Yangjiang) and northern (Handan) China. The subjects were administered a questionnaire assessing attitudes in four areas constituting potential barriers to surgery: knowledge about cataract, perceptions of local surgical quality, transportation and cost, and available resources. RESULTS: Interviews were completed on 71% to 86% of eligible subjects in both sites. Interviewed subjects did not differ significantly from nonrespondents with regard to age, sex, and presenting acuity in the better-seeing eye. A total of 214 (80.4%) nonsurgical and 131 (76.6%) surgical participants were interviewed, with a mean age of 71.8 +/- 8.0 and 73.7 +/- 7.4 years, respectively (P > 0.1). Among the nonsurgical subjects, 67.8% were blind (presenting vision, <or=6/60) in >or=1 eye due to cataract, whereas among the surgical participants, 25.2% remained blind in the eye that had undergone surgical removal of the cataract. In a multivariate analysis adjusted for age, sex, and site, increased knowledge and higher estimates of the quality of surgery were associated with having had surgery, whereas cost and transportation scores were not. CONCLUSIONS: Lack of knowledge about cataract and concerns about the quality of local services appear to be the principal barriers to cataract surgery in rural China.

An Ultrasonic Relaxation Study of 1-Alkyl-3-Methylmidazolium-Based Room Temperature Ionic Liquids: Probing the Role of Alkyl Chain Length in the Cation

Ultrasound absorption spectra of four 1-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide were determined as a function of the alkyl chain length on the cation from 1-propyl- to 1-hexyl- from 293.15 to 323.15 K at ambient pressure. Herein, the ultrasound absorption measurements were carried out using a standard pulse technique within a frequency range from 10 to 300 MHz. Additionally the speed of sound, density and viscosity have been measured. The presence of strong dissipative processes during the ultrasound wave propagation was found experimentally, i.e. relaxation processes in the megahertz range were observed for all compounds over the whole temperature range. The relaxation spectra (both relaxation amplitude and relaxation frequency) were shown to be dependent on the alkyl side chain length of the 1-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium ring. In most cases, a single Debye model described the absorption spectra very well. However, a comparison of the determined spectra with the spectra of a few other imidazolium-based ionic liquids reported in the literature (in part recalculated in this work) shows that the complexity of the spectra increases rapidly with the elongation of the alkyl chain length on the cation. This complexity indicates that both the volume viscosity and the shear viscosity are involved in relaxation processes even in relatively low frequency ranges. As a consequence, the sound velocity dispersion is present at relatively low megahertz frequencies.

Effect of cation structure on the oxygen solubility and diffusivity in a range of bis{(trifluoromethyl)sulfonyl}imide anion based ionic liquids for lithium-air battery electrolytes

This paper reports on the solubility and diffusivity of dissolved oxygen in a series of ionic liquids (ILs) based on the bis{(trifluoromethyl)sulfonyl}imide anion with a range of related alkyl and ether functionalised cyclic alkylammonium cations. Cyclic voltammetry has been used to observe the reduction of oxygen in ILs at a microdisk electrode and chronoamperometric measurements have then been applied to simultaneously determine both the concentration and the diffusion coefficient of oxygen in the different ILs. The viscosity of the ILs and the calculated molar volume and free volume is also reported. It is found that, within this class of ILs, the oxygen diffusivity generally increases with decreasing viscosity of the neat IL. An inverse relationship between oxygen solubility and IL free volume is reported for the two IL families implying oxygen is not simply occupying the available empty space. In addition, it is reported that the introduction of ether-group into the IL cation structure promotes the diffusivity of dissolved oxygen but reduces the solubility of the gas.

The Influence of Cation Structure on the Chemical-Physical Properties of Protic Ionic Liquids

In this study we investigated the influence of five different cations on the physical-chemical properties of protic ionic liquids (PILs) based on bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (TFSI-). We showed that the viscosities, ionic conductivities, densities and thermal properties of these PIL are strongly affected by the structure of the protic cation. Furthermore, the influence of the cation structure on the lithium coordination was investigated by Raman spectroscopy for all investigated PIL-based electrolytes for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). This investigation clearly demonstrates, that the lithium average coordination number in PIL-based electrolytes is strongly affected by (ring) size and the number of protons on the cations structure and, more importantly, it might be significantly lower (more than 60 of that of electrolytes containing aprotic ionic liquids (AILs). Electrochemical performances of these PILs-based electrolytes were then also investigated to dress some conclusion on their applicability for LIB.

Continuing the fight in reducing the risk of surgical site infections in the perioperative environment

Assessing risk has become part of the process of supporting patients andmaintaining safety in the healthcare setting. The risk of healthcare associatedinfections (HCAIs) has long been well documented and surgical site infection (SSI)is recognised as one of the most prevalent (Tanner & Khan 2008, Wilson 2013a).

Project Management within an Urban Site Context: Issues considering External Stakeholders

Large construction projects create numerous hazards, making it one of the most dangerous industries in which to work. This element of risk increases in urban areas and can have a negative impact on the external stakeholders associated with the project, along with their surrounding environments. The aim of this paper is to identify and document, in an urban context, the numerous issues encountered by on-site project managers from external stakeholders and how they affect a construction project. In addressing this aim, the core objective is to identify what issues are involved in the management of these stakeholders. In order to meet this requirement, a qualitative methodology encompassing an informative literature review followed by five individual case study interviews. The data gathered is assessed qualitatively using mind mapping software. A number of issues are identified which have an impact on the external stakeholders involved, and also how they affected proceedings on site. Collectively the most commonly occurring issues are environmental, legal, health and safety and communication issues. These ranged from road closures and traffic disruption to noise, dust and vibrations from site works. It is anticipated that the results of this study will assist and aid project managers in identifying issues considering external stakeholders, particularly on urban construction projects. A wide range of issues can develop depending on the complexity and nature of each project, but this research will illustrate and reinforce to project managers, that identifying issues early, effective communication and appropriate liaising can be used to manage the issues considering external stakeholders.