High-throughput procedure for tick surveys of tick-borne encephalitis virus and its application in a national surveillance study in Switzerland

Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE), a viral infection of the central nervous system, is endemic in many Eurasian countries. In Switzerland, TBE risk areas have been characterized by geographic mapping of clinical cases. Since mass vaccination should significantly decrease the number of TBE cases, alternative methods for exposure risk assessment are required. We established a new PCR-based test for the detection of TBE virus (TBEV) in ticks. The protocol involves an automated, high-throughput nucleic acid extraction method (QIAsymphony SP system) and a one-step duplex real-time reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) assay for the detection of European subtype TBEV, including an internal process control. High usability, reproducibility, and equivalent performance for virus concentrations down to 5 x 10(3) viral genome equivalents/microl favor the automated protocol compared to the modified guanidinium thiocyanate-phenol-chloroform extraction procedure. The real-time RT-PCR allows fast, sensitive (limit of detection, 10 RNA copies/microl), and specific (no false-positive test results for other TBEV subtypes, other flaviviruses, or other tick-transmitted pathogens) detection of European subtype TBEV. The new detection method was applied in a national surveillance study, in which 62,343 Ixodes ricinus ticks were screened for the presence of TBE virus. A total of 38 foci of endemicity could be identified, with a mean virus prevalence of 0.46%. The foci do not fully agree with those defined by disease mapping. Therefore, the proposed molecular test procedure constitutes a prerequisite for an appropriate TBE surveillance. Our data are a unique complement of human TBE disease case mapping in Switzerland.

No surgical innovation without evaluation: the IDEAL recommendations

Surgery and other invasive therapies are complex interventions, the assessment of which is challenged by factors that depend on operator, team, and setting, such as learning curves, quality variations, and perception of equipoise. We propose recommendations for the assessment of surgery based on a five-stage description of the surgical development process. We also encourage the widespread use of prospective databases and registries. Reports of new techniques should be registered as a professional duty, anonymously if necessary when outcomes are adverse. Case series studies should be replaced by prospective development studies for early technical modifications and by prospective research databases for later pre-trial evaluation. Protocols for these studies should be registered publicly. Statistical process control techniques can be useful in both early and late assessment. Randomised trials should be used whenever possible to investigate efficacy, but adequate pre-trial data are essential to allow power calculations, clarify the definition and indications of the intervention, and develop quality measures. Difficulties in doing randomised clinical trials should be addressed by measures to evaluate learning curves and alleviate equipoise problems. Alternative prospective designs, such as interrupted time series studies, should be used when randomised trials are not feasible. Established procedures should be monitored with prospective databases to analyse outcome variations and to identify late and rare events. Achievement of improved design, conduct, and reporting of surgical research will need concerted action by editors, funders of health care and research, regulatory bodies, and professional societies.

Volunteering in sport clubs

Volunteers are the most important resource for non-profit sport clubs seeking to bolster their viability (e.g. sporting programs). Although many people do voluntary work in sport clubs, stable voluntary engagement can no longer be granted. This difficulty is confirmed by existing research across various European countries. From a club management point of view, a detailed understanding of how to attract volunteers and retain them in the long term is becoming a high priority. The purpose of this study is (1) to analyse the influence of individual characteristics and corresponding organisational conditions on volunteering in sports clubs as well as (2) to examine the decision-making processes in relation to implement effective strategies for recruiting volunteers. For the first perspective a multi-level framework for the investigation of the factors of voluntary engagement in sports clubs is developed. The individual and context factors are estimated in different multi-level models based on a sample of n = 1,434 sport club members from 36 sport clubs in Switzerland. Results indicate that volunteering is not just an outcome of individual characteristics such as lower workloads, higher income, children belonging to the sport club, longer club memberships, or a strong commitment to the club. It is also influenced by club-specific structural conditions; volunteering is more probable in rural sports clubs whereas growth-oriented goals in clubs have a destabilising effect. Concerning decision-making processes an in-depth analysis of recruitment practices for volunteers was conducted in nine selected sport clubs (case study design) based on the garbage can model. Results show that the decision-making processes are generally characterised by a reactive approach in which dominant actors try to handle personnel problems of recruitment in the administration and sport domains through routine formal committee work and informal networks. In addition, it proved possible to develop a typology that deliver an overview of different decision-making practices in terms of the specific interplay of the relevant components of process control (top-down vs. bottom-up) and problem processing (situational vs. systematic). Based on the findings some recommendations for volunteer management in sport clubs are worked out.

Policy Change in Comparative Contexts: Applying the Advocacy Coalition Framework Outside of Western Europe and North America

The advocacy coalition framework (ACF) is one of the most frequently applied theories of the policy process. Most applications have been in Western Europe and North America. This article provides an overview of the ACF, summarizes existing applications outside of Western Europe and North America, and introduces the special issue that features applications of the ACF in the Philippines, China, India, and Kenya. This article concludes with an argument for the continued application of the ACF outside of Western Europe and North America and a research agenda for overcoming challenges in using the ACF in comparative public policy research.

How do sport clubs recruit volunteers? Analyzing and developing a typology of decision-making processes on recruiting volunteers in sport clubs.

Effective strategies for recruiting volunteers who are prepared to make a long-term commitment to formal positions are essential for the survival of voluntary sport clubs. This article examines the decision-making processes in relation to these efforts. Under the assumption of bounded rationality, the garbage can model is used to grasp these decision-making processes theoretically and access them empirically. Based on case study framework an in-depth analysis of recruitment practices was conducted in nine selected sport clubs. Results showed that the decision-making processes are generally characterized by a reactive approach in which dominant actors try to handle personnel problems of recruitment in the administration and sport domains through routine formal committee work and informal networks. In addition, it proved possible to develop a typology that deliver an overview of different decision-making practices in terms of the specific interplay of the relevant components of process control (top-down vs. bottom-up) and problem processing (situational vs. systematic).

Methane emissions from floodplains in the Amazon Basin: challenges in developing a process-based model for global applications

Tropical wetlands are estimated to represent about 50% of the natural wetland methane (CH4) emissions and explain a large fraction of the observed CH4 variability on timescales ranging from glacial–interglacial cycles to the currently observed year-to-year variability. Despite their importance, however, tropical wetlands are poorly represented in global models aiming to predict global CH4 emissions. This publication documents a first step in the development of a process-based model of CH4 emissions from tropical floodplains for global applications. For this purpose, the LPX-Bern Dynamic Global Vegetation Model (LPX hereafter) was slightly modified to represent floodplain hydrology, vegetation and associated CH4 emissions. The extent of tropical floodplains was prescribed using output from the spatially explicit hydrology model PCR-GLOBWB. We introduced new plant functional types (PFTs) that explicitly represent floodplain vegetation. The PFT parameterizations were evaluated against available remote-sensing data sets (GLC2000 land cover and MODIS Net Primary Productivity). Simulated CH4 flux densities were evaluated against field observations and regional flux inventories. Simulated CH4 emissions at Amazon Basin scale were compared to model simulations performed in the WETCHIMP intercomparison project. We found that LPX reproduces the average magnitude of observed net CH4 flux densities for the Amazon Basin. However, the model does not reproduce the variability between sites or between years within a site. Unfortunately, site information is too limited to attest or disprove some model features. At the Amazon Basin scale, our results underline the large uncertainty in the magnitude of wetland CH4 emissions. Sensitivity analyses gave insights into the main drivers of floodplain CH4 emission and their associated uncertainties. In particular, uncertainties in floodplain extent (i.e., difference between GLC2000 and PCR-GLOBWB output) modulate the simulated emissions by a factor of about 2. Our best estimates, using PCR-GLOBWB in combination with GLC2000, lead to simulated Amazon-integrated emissions of 44.4 ± 4.8 Tg yr−1. Additionally, the LPX emissions are highly sensitive to vegetation distribution. Two simulations with the same mean PFT cover, but different spatial distributions of grasslands within the basin, modulated emissions by about 20%. Correcting the LPX-simulated NPP using MODIS reduces the Amazon emissions by 11.3%. Finally, due to an intrinsic limitation of LPX to account for seasonality in floodplain extent, the model failed to reproduce the full dynamics in CH4 emissions but we proposed solutions to this issue. The interannual variability (IAV) of the emissions increases by 90% if the IAV in floodplain extent is accounted for, but still remains lower than in most of the WETCHIMP models. While our model includes more mechanisms specific to tropical floodplains, we were unable to reduce the uncertainty in the magnitude of wetland CH4 emissions of the Amazon Basin. Our results helped identify and prioritize directions towards more accurate estimates of tropical CH4 emissions, and they stress the need for more research to constrain floodplain CH4 emissions and their temporal variability, even before including other fundamental mechanisms such as floating macrophytes or lateral water fluxes.

The Emergence of Formal Control Specificity in Information Systems Outsourcing: A Process-View

Information systems (IS) outsourcing projects often fail to achieve initial goals. To avoid project failure, managers need to design formal controls that meet the specific contextual demands of the project. However, the dynamic and uncertain nature of IS outsourcing projects makes it difficult to design such specific formal controls at the outset of a project. It is hence crucial to translate high-level project goals into specific formal controls during the course of a project. This study seeks to understand the underlying patterns of such translation processes. Based on a comparative case study of four outsourced software development projects, we inductively develop a process model that consists of three unique patterns. The process model shows that the performance implications of emergent controls with higher specificity depend on differences in the translation process. Specific formal controls have positive implications for goal achievement if only the stakeholder context is adapted, while they are negative for goal achievement if in the translation process tasks are unintendedly adapted. In the latter case projects incrementally drift away from their initial direction. Our findings help to better understand control dynamics in IS outsourcing projects. We contribute to a process theoretic understanding of IS outsourcing governance and we derive implications for control theory and the IS project escalation literature.

On degeneracy and invariances of random fields paths with applications in Gaussian process modelling

We study pathwise invariances and degeneracies of random fields with motivating applications in Gaussian process modelling. The key idea is that a number of structural properties one may wish to impose a priori on functions boil down to degeneracy properties under well-chosen linear operators. We first show in a second order set-up that almost sure degeneracy of random field paths under some class of linear operators defined in terms of signed measures can be controlled through the two first moments. A special focus is then put on the Gaussian case, where these results are revisited and extended to further linear operators thanks to state-of-the-art representations. Several degeneracy properties are tackled, including random fields with symmetric paths, centred paths, harmonic paths, or sparse paths. The proposed approach delivers a number of promising results and perspectives in Gaussian process modelling. In a first numerical experiment, it is shown that dedicated kernels can be used to infer an axis of symmetry. Our second numerical experiment deals with conditional simulations of a solution to the heat equation, and it is found that adapted kernels notably enable improved predictions of non-linear functionals of the field such as its maximum.

Layer-by-layer grown scalable redox-active ruthenium-based molecular multilayer thin films for electrochemical applications and beyond

Here we report the first study on the electrochemical energy storage application of a surface-immobilized ruthenium complex multilayer thin film with anion storage capability. We employed a novel dinuclear ruthenium complex with tetrapodal anchoring groups to build well-ordered redox-active multilayer coatings on an indium tin oxide (ITO) surface using a layer-by-layer self-assembly process. Cyclic voltammetry (CV), UV-Visible (UV-Vis) and Raman spectroscopy showed a linear increase of peak current, absorbance and Raman intensities, respectively with the number of layers. These results indicate the formation of well-ordered multilayers of the ruthenium complex on ITO, which is further supported by the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis. The thickness of the layers can be controlled with nanometer precision. In particular, the thickest layer studied (65 molecular layers and approx. 120 nm thick) demonstrated fast electrochemical oxidation/reduction, indicating a very low attenuation of the charge transfer within the multilayer. In situ-UV-Vis and resonance Raman spectroscopy results demonstrated the reversible electrochromic/redox behavior of the ruthenium complex multilayered films on ITO with respect to the electrode potential, which is an ideal prerequisite for e.g. smart electrochemical energy storage applications. Galvanostatic charge–discharge experiments demonstrated a pseudocapacitor behavior of the multilayer film with a good specific capacitance of 92.2 F g−1 at a current density of 10 μA cm−2 and an excellent cycling stability. As demonstrated in our prototypical experiments, the fine control of physicochemical properties at nanometer scale, relatively good stability of layers under ambient conditions makes the multilayer coatings of this type an excellent material for e.g. electrochemical energy storage, as interlayers in inverted bulk heterojunction solar cell applications and as functional components in molecular electronics applications.

Fine control of drug delivery for cochlear implant applications

Cochlear implants are neuroprostheses that are inserted into the inner ear to directly electrically stimulate the auditory nerve, thus replacing lost cochlear receptors, the hair cells. The reduction of the gap between electrodes and nerve cells will contribute to technological solutions simultaneously increasing the frequency resolution, the sound quality and the amplification of the signal. Recent findings indicate that neurotrophins (NTs) such as brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) stimulate the neurite outgrowth of auditory nerve cells by activating Trk receptors on the cellular surface (1–3). Furthermore, small-size TrkB receptor agonists such as di-hydroxyflavone (DHF) are now available, which activate the TrkB receptor with similar efficiency as BDNF, but are much more stable (4). Experimentally, such molecules are currently used to attract nerve cells towards, for example, the electrodes of cochlear implants. This paper analyses the scenarios of low dose aspects of controlled release of small-size Trk receptor agonists from the coated CI electrode array into the inner ear. The control must first ensure a sufficient dose for the onset of neurite growth. Secondly, a gradient in concentration needs to be maintained to allow directive growth of neurites through the perilymph-filled gap towards the electrodes of the implant. We used fluorescein as a test molecule for its molecular size similarity to DHF and investigated two different transport mechanisms of drug dispensing, which both have the potential to fulfil controlled low-throughput drug-deliverable requirements. The first is based on the release of aqueous fluorescein into water through well-defined 60-μm size holes arrays in a membrane by pure osmosis. The release was both simulated using the software COMSOL and observed experimentally. In the second approach, solid fluorescein crystals were encapsulated in a thin layer of parylene (PPX), hence creating random nanometer-sized pinholes. In this approach, the release occurred due to subsequent water diffusion through the pinholes, dissolution of the fluorescein and then release by out-diffusion. Surprisingly, the release rate of solid fluorescein through the nanoscopic scale holes was found to be in the same order of magnitude as for liquid fluorescein release through microscopic holes.