The geography of large-scale land acquisitions: Analysing socio-ecological patterns of target contexts in the global South

This paper analyses local geographical contexts targeted by transnational large-scale land acquisitions (>200 ha per deal) in order to understand how emerging patterns of socio-ecological characteristics can be related to processes of large-scale foreign investment in land. Using a sample of 139 land deals georeferenced with high spatial accuracy, we first analyse their target contexts in terms of land cover, population density, accessibility, and indicators for agricultural potential. Three distinct patterns emerge from the analysis: densely populated and easily accessible croplands (35% of land deals); remote forestlands with lower population densities (34% of land deals); and moderately populated and moderately accessible shrub- or grasslands (26% of land deals). These patterns are consistent with processes described in the relevant case study literature, and they each involve distinct types of stakeholders and associated competition over land. We then repeat the often-cited analysis that postulates a link between land investments and target countries with abundant so-called “idle” or “marginal” lands as measured by yield gap and available suitable but uncultivated land; our methods differ from the earlier approach, however, in that we examine local context (10-km radius) rather than countries as a whole. The results show that earlier findings are disputable in terms of concepts, methods, and contents. Further, we reflect on methodologies for exploring linkages between socioecological patterns and land investment processes. Improving and enhancing large datasets of georeferenced land deals is an important next step; at the same time, careful choice of the spatial scale of analysis is crucial for ensuring compatibility between the spatial accuracy of land deal locations and the resolution of available geospatial data layers. Finally, we argue that new approaches and methods must be developed to empirically link socio-ecological patterns in target contexts to key determinants of land investment processes. This would help to improve the validity and the reach of our findings as an input for evidence-informed policy debates.

Paracetamol for perioperative analgesia. Old substance - new insights

Since paracetamol was first synthesized in 1878 it has become one of the most popular and widely used drugs for the first-line treatment of fever and pain. The reasons for this popularity are a wide variety of formulations, an assumed positive safety record and the wide availability as an over-the-counter drug. However, recently several studies questioned the positive risk-benefit ratio of paracetamol for postoperative pain by observing several possible adverse effects and limitations. The aim of the present review is to give an update of the recent literature on the efficacy of paracetamol for postoperative pain and on the value of the clinical relevance of different adverse effects of paracetamol. Finally, based on the current findings the authors try to assess the role of paracetamol for the treatment of postoperative pain.

Operative Treatment of Acute Fractures of the Tarsal Navicular Body: Midterm Results With a New Classification.

BACKGROUND Treatment of displaced tarsal navicular body fractures usually consists of open reduction and internal fixation. However, there is little literature reporting results of this treatment and correlation to fracture severity. METHODS We report the results of 24 patients treated in our institution over a 12-year period. Primary outcome measurements were Visual-Analogue-Scale Foot and Ankle score (VAS-FA), AOFAS midfoot score, and talonavicular osteoarthritis at final follow-up. According to a new classification system reflecting talonavicular joint damage, 2-part fractures were classified as type I, multifragmentary fractures as type II, and fractures with talonavicular joint dislocation and/or concomitant talar head fractures as type III. Spearman's coefficients tested this classification's correlation with the primary outcome measurements. Mean patient age was 33 (range 16-61) years and mean follow-up duration 73 (range 24-159) months. RESULTS Average VAS-FA score was 74.7 (standard deviation [SD] 16.9), and average AOFAS midfoot score was 83.8 (SD = 12.8). Final radiographs showed no talonavicular arthritis in 5 patients, grade 1 in 7, grade 2 in 3, grade 3 in 6, and grade 4 in 1 patient. Two patients had secondary or spontaneous talonavicular fusion. Spearman coefficients showed strong correlation of the classification system with VAS-FA score (r = -0.663, P < .005) and talonavicular arthritis (r = 0.600, P = .003), and moderate correlation with AOFAS score (r = -.509, P = .011). CONCLUSION At midterm follow-up, open reduction and internal fixation of navicular body fractures led to good clinical outcome but was closely related to fracture severity. A new classification based on the degree of talonavicular joint damage showed close correlation to clinical and radiologic outcome. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE Level IV, retrospective case series.

Overcoming Liability of Newness through Socialization : How Legitimation Strategies of a New Venture evolve

Liability of newness, the tendency of new ventures to die early after market entry, results from lacking legitimacy in their new cultural context and according failure to acquire resources. Based on a longitudinal case study on repeated resource acquisition attempts of a new venture, we found that overcoming liability of newness depended on the socialization of the new venture to the normative environment on which it depended on for resources. Over time and across repeated resource acquisition attempts, socialization - the process of learning the use of legitimate symbols and their culturally contingent meanings - enabled the new venture to become the skillful cultural operator on which legitimation and resource acquisition was contingent. From our data, 'Accumulating a repertoire of legitimate symbols' and 'Assimilating the evaluations of resource-holders' emerged as the two primary mechanisms for new venture socialization. The study's contributions to related literature and its broader theoretical implications are discussed

Refractions of Canada in European Literature and Culture

Ever since the first exploratory expeditions in the early modern period, North America has epitomized to Europeans a promise and the hope for the fulfilment of great expectations, be it of more freedom, greater wealth, social liberation or religious tolerance. While numerous features in this dialogic intercontinental relationship will hold true for North America in its entirety, the vast northern territories which we know as Canada today began to emerge early on as a specific iconic location in European mind-maps, and they definitely acquired a distinctive profile after the formation of the USA. As a rich source of cultural exchange and an important partner in political and economic cooperation Canada has come to occupy an important position in the cultural discourses of many European nations. It is these refractions and images of Canada which this volume thoroughly explores in European literature and culture. The contributions include literature, philosophy, language, life-writing and the concept of 'Heimat' (homeland) as well as the cultural impact of the World Wars. While there is an emphasis on literary texts, other fields of cultural representation are also included.

Hole in the Head: a Play, Accompanied by a Conspectus of Knowledge, Both Repressed and Researched, that Directly Influenced the Playwright in Her Development of a New Work

"Hole in the Head" is a play about a woman who wakes up. Maude wakes up in the first act, and in every subsequent scene she undergoes some form of physical or emotional awakening as characters walk in and out of her front door."Hole in the Head" is accompanied by an introduction that attempts to understand the interplay between creativity and academia through an analysis of theatre, feminist and queer theory, and science.

Influenza vaccination as a primary or secondary prevention for cardiovascular diseases: A systematic review of the literature

Background: Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. CVD mainly comprise of coronary heart disease and stroke and were ranked first and fourth respectively amongst leading causes of death in the United States. Influenza (flu) causes annual outbreaks and pandemics and is increasingly recognized as an important trigger for acute coronary syndromes and stroke. Influenza vaccination is an inexpensive and effective strategy for prevention of influenza related complications in high risk individuals. Though it is recommended for all CVD patients, Influenza vaccine is still used at suboptimal levels in these patients owing to prevailing controversy related to its effectiveness in preventing CVD. This review was undertaken to critically assess the effectiveness of influenza vaccination as a primary or secondary prevention method for CVD. ^ Methods: A systematic review was conducted using electronic databases OVID MEDLINE, PUBMED (National Library of Medicine), EMBASE, GOOGLE SCHOLAR and TRIP (Turning Research into Practice). The study search was limited to peer-reviewed articles published in English language from January 1970 through May 2012. The case control studies, cohort studies and randomized controlled trials related to influenza vaccination and CVD, with data on at least one of the outcomes were identified. In the review, only population-based epidemiologic studies in all ethnic groups and of either sex and with age limitation of 30 yrs or above, with clinical CVD outcomes of interest were included. ^ Results: Of the 16 studies (8 case control studies, 6 cohort studies and 2 randomized controlled trials) that met the inclusion criteria, 14 studies reported that there was a significant benefit in u influenza vaccination as primary or secondary prevention method for preventing new cardiovascular events. In contrary to the above findings, two studies mentioned that there was no significant benefit of vaccination in CVD prevention. ^ Conclusion: The available body of evidence in the review elucidates that vaccination against influenza is associated with reduction in the risk of new CVD events, hospitalization for coronary heart disease and stroke and as well as the risk of death. The study findings disclose that the influenza vaccination is very effective in CVD prevention and should be encouraged for the high risk population. However, larger and more future studies like randomized control trials are needed to further evaluate and confirm these findings. ^

The wine hedonic price models in the "Old and New World": : state of the art

The basic hedonic hypothesis is that goods are valued for their utility-bearing characteristics and not for the good itself. Each attribute can be evaluated by consumers when making a purchasing decision and an implicit price can be identified for each of them. Thus, the observed price of a certain good can be analyzed as the sum of the implicit prices paid for each quality attribute. Literature has reported hedonic models estimates in the case of wines, which are excellent examples of differentiated goods worldwide.The impact of different wine attributes (intrinsic or extrinsic) on consumers’ willingness to pay has been analyzed with dissimilar results. Wines coming from "New World" producers seem to be appreciated for different attributes than wines produced in the "Old World". Moreover, "Old and New World" consumers seem to value differently the wine’s characteristics. To our knowledge, no cross country analysis has been done dealing with "New World" wines in "Old World" countries, leaving an important gap in understanding underlying attributes influencing buying decisions.

Patient-based Literature Retrieval and Integration: A Use Case for Diabetes and arterial Hypertension

Specialized search engines such as PubMed, MedScape or Cochrane have increased dramatically the visibility of biomedical scientific results. These web-based tools allow physicians to access scientific papers instantly. However, this decisive improvement had not a proportional impact in clinical practice due to the lack of advanced search methods. Even queries highly specified for a concrete pathology frequently retrieve too many information, with publications related to patients treated by the physician beyond the scope of the results examined. In this work we present a new method to improve scientific article search using patient information. Two pathologies have been used within the project to retrieve relevant literature to patient data and to be integrated with other sources. Promising results suggest the suitability of the approach, highlighting publications dealing with patient features and facilitating literature search to physicians.

A new boundary condition solved with B.I.E.M.

Among the classical operators of mathematical physics the Laplacian plays an important role due to the number of different situations that can be modelled by it. Because of this a great effort has been made by mathematicians as well as by engineers to master its properties till the point that nearly everything has been said about them from a qualitative viewpoint. Quantitative results have also been obtained through the use of the new numerical techniques sustained by the computer. Finite element methods and boundary techniques have been successfully applied to engineering problems as can be seen in the technical literature (for instance [ l ] , [2], [3] . Boundary techniques are especially advantageous in those cases in which the main interest is concentrated on what is happening at the boundary. This situation is very usual in potential problems due to the properties of harmonic functions. In this paper we intend to show how a boundary condition different from the classical, but physically sound, is introduced without any violence in the discretization frame of the Boundary Integral Equation Method. The idea will be developed in the context of heat conduction in axisymmetric problems but it is hoped that its extension to other situations is straightforward. After the presentation of the method several examples will show the capabilities of modelling a physical problem.

CDAPubMed: a browser extension to retrieve EHR-based biomedical literature

Over the last few decades, the ever-increasing output of scientific publications has led to new challenges to keep up to date with the literature. In the biomedical area, this growth has introduced new requirements for professionals, e.g., physicians, who have to locate the exact papers that they need for their clinical and research work amongst a huge number of publications. Against this backdrop, novel information retrieval methods are even more necessary. While web search engines are widespread in many areas, facilitating access to all kinds of information, additional tools are required to automatically link information retrieved from these engines to specific biomedical applications. In the case of clinical environments, this also means considering aspects such as patient data security and confidentiality or structured contents, e.g., electronic health records (EHRs). In this scenario, we have developed a new tool to facilitate query building to retrieve scientific literature related to EHRs. Results: We have developed CDAPubMed, an open-source web browser extension to integrate EHR features in biomedical literature retrieval approaches. Clinical users can use CDAPubMed to: (i) load patient clinical documents, i.e., EHRs based on the Health Level 7-Clinical Document Architecture Standard (HL7-CDA), (ii) identify relevant terms for scientific literature search in these documents, i.e., Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), automatically driven by the CDAPubMed configuration, which advanced users can optimize to adapt to each specific situation, and (iii) generate and launch literature search queries to a major search engine, i.e., PubMed, to retrieve citations related to the EHR under examination. Conclusions: CDAPubMed is a platform-independent tool designed to facilitate literature searching using keywords contained in specific EHRs. CDAPubMed is visually integrated, as an extension of a widespread web browser, within the standard PubMed interface. It has been tested on a public dataset of HL7-CDA documents, returning significantly fewer citations since queries are focused on characteristics identified within the EHR. For instance, compared with more than 200,000 citations retrieved by breast neoplasm, fewer than ten citations were retrieved when ten patient features were added using CDAPubMed. This is an open source tool that can be freely used for non-profit purposes and integrated with other existing systems.