Transitions in social complexity along elevational gradients reveal a combined impact of season length and development time on social evolution.

Eusociality is taxonomically rare, yet associated with great ecological success. Surprisingly, studies of environmental conditions favouring eusociality are often contradictory. Harsh conditions associated with increasing altitude and latitude seem to favour increased sociality in bumblebees and ants, but the reverse pattern is found in halictid bees and polistine wasps. Here, we compare the life histories and distributions of populations of 176 species of Hymenoptera from the Swiss Alps. We show that differences in altitudinal distributions and development times among social forms can explain these contrasting patterns: highly social taxa develop more quickly than intermediate social taxa, and are thus able to complete the reproductive cycle in shorter seasons at higher elevations. This dual impact of altitude and development time on sociality illustrates that ecological constraints can elicit dynamic shifts in behaviour, and helps explain the complex distribution of sociality across ecological gradients.

CAT (Curator Archiving Tool): improving access to web archives

PADICAT is the web archive created in 2005 in Catalonia (Spain ) by the Library of Catalonia (BC ) , the National Library of Catalonia , with the aim of collecting , processing and providing permanent access to the digital heritage of Catalonia . Its harvesting strategy is based on the hybrid model ( of massive harvesting . SPA top level domain ; selective compilation of the web site output of Catalan organizations; focused harvesting of public events) . The system provides open access to the whole collection , on the Internet . We consider necessary to complement the current search for new and visualization software with open source software tool, CAT ( Curator Archiving Tool) , composed by three modules aimed to effectively managing the processes of human cataloguing ; to publish directories where the digital resources and special collections ; and to offer statistical information of added value to end users. Within the framework of the International Internet Preservation Consortium meeting ( Vienna 2010) , the progress in the development of this new tool, and the philosophy that has motivated his design, are presented to the international community.

A measure of the intensity of response to alcohol to screen for alcohol use disorders in primary care.

Alcohol-dependent subjects tend to report lower level of response to alcohol (LR) in the years before the disorder developed, compared to control subjects. The Self-Rating of the Effects of alcohol (SRE) score is a quick and valid retrospective estimate of LR. This study examined the associations between alcohol abuse or dependence and early experience of alcohol as measured on retrospective SRE score (relating to the first five times alcohol was imbibed), and the presence of alcohol abuse or dependence, in patients attending primary care. Higher Early SRE score (i.e. greater early tolerance of alcohol) was obtained in patients with an alcohol-related diagnosis than in patients without those diagnoses. Using a cut-off of 2 on the Early SRE score, the Early SRE score could discriminate between patients with and without an alcohol diagnosis with moderate to high sensitivity (84%) and modest specificity (57%).

The Changing Face of the Epidemiology of Tuberculosis due to Molecular Strain Typing: A Review

About one third of the world population is infected with tubercle bacilli, causing eight million new cases of tuberculosis (TB) and three million deaths each year. After years of lack of interest in the disease, World Health Organization recently declared TB a global emergency and it is clear that there is need for more efficient national TB programs and newly defined research priorities. A more complete epidemiology of tuberculosis will lead to a better identification of index cases and to a more efficient treatment of the disease. Recently, new molecular tools became available for the identification of strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis), allowing a better recognition of transmission routes of defined strains. Both a standardized restriction-fragment-length-polymorphism-based methodology for epidemiological studies on a large scale and deoxyribonucleic acids (DNA) amplification-based methods that allow rapid detection of outbreaks with multidrug-resistant (MDR) strains, often characterized by high mortality rates, have been developed. This review comments on the existing methods of DNA-based recognition of M. tuberculosis strains and their peculiarities. It also summarizes literature data on the application of molecular fingerprinting for detection of outbreaks of M. tuberculosis, for identification of index cases, for study of interaction between TB and infection with the human immunodeficiency virus, for analysis of the behavior of MDR strains, for a better understanding of risk factors for transmission of TB within communities and for population-based studies of TB transmission within and between countries

Is the absence of spiritual well-being at the facit-sp equivalent to spiritual distress in older patients?

Objective: Although initially developed to assess spiritual well-being,the FACIT-Sp is increasingly used to assess the other end of the spectrum,i.e. spiritual distress. This study intends to investigate whether theFACIT-Sp could really contribute to this aim in older patients. Method:Patients (N=135, 81.47.1 years, 68.3% women) aged 65 years and over,with MMSE score>19, admitted consecutively in post-acute rehabilitationwere enrolled. The FACIT-Sp (12 items, score 0 to 48, high spiritualwell-being defined as score_36) was administered and commentswere systematically retrieved. Results: Overall, 32(23.7%) patients hadhigh spiritual well-being. FACIT-Sp internal consistency was good(Cronbach's 0.85) and a confirmatory factorial analysis was consistentwith Meaning and Faith proposed subscales. Qualitative analysisshowed that negative answers (score=0) to "My illness has strengthenedmy faith or spiritual beliefs" (N=76/135) could equally reflect theabsence of impact (49/76, 64.5%) or a negative impact (religious struggle,27/76, 35.5%) of illness on faith. However, former patients had significantlyhigher FACIT-Sp scores than the latter (30.35.6 vs 20.97.9,P<.001). Similarly, among patients (N=73/135) with negative answers(score<3) to "I feel a sense of purpose in my life" those mentioning their"old age" to explain their answer (N=34/73, 46.6%) had higher FACITSpscores than those who did not (26.47.7 vs 22.58.1,P=.02). Conclusion:The FACIT-Sp identifies older people with high spiritual wellbeingbut could underestimate well-being in some older patients. Lowscores on some items could have very different meanings and interpretationof FACIT-Sp global scores below the usual cut-off should becautious.

Warming experiments underpredict plant phenological responses to climate change.

Warming experiments are increasingly relied on to estimate plant responses to global climate change. For experiments to provide meaningful predictions of future responses, they should reflect the empirical record of responses to temperature variability and recent warming, including advances in the timing of flowering and leafing. We compared phenology (the timing of recurring life history events) in observational studies and warming experiments spanning four continents and 1,634 plant species using a common measure of temperature sensitivity (change in days per degree Celsius). We show that warming experiments underpredict advances in the timing of flowering and leafing by 8.5-fold and 4.0-fold, respectively, compared with long-term observations. For species that were common to both study types, the experimental results did not match the observational data in sign or magnitude. The observational data also showed that species that flower earliest in the spring have the highest temperature sensitivities, but this trend was not reflected in the experimental data. These significant mismatches seem to be unrelated to the study length or to the degree of manipulated warming in experiments. The discrepancy between experiments and observations, however, could arise from complex interactions among multiple drivers in the observational data, or it could arise from remediable artefacts in the experiments that result in lower irradiance and drier soils, thus dampening the phenological responses to manipulated warming. Our results introduce uncertainty into ecosystem models that are informed solely by experiments and suggest that responses to climate change that are predicted using such models should be re-evaluated.

A Laboratory-based Approach to Biological Control of Snails

Development of Schistosoma mansoni in the intermediate host Biomphalaria glabrata is influenced by a number of parasite and snail genes. Understanding the genetics involved in this complex host/parasite relationship may lead to an often discussed approach of introducing resistant B. glabrata into the field as a means of biological control for the parasite. For the snail, juvenile susceptibility to the parasite is controlled by at least four genes, whereas one gene seems to be responsible for adult nonsusceptibility. Obtaining DNA from F2 progeny snails from crosses between parasite-resistant and-susceptible snails, we have searched for molecular markers that show linkage to either the resistant or susceptible phenotype. Both restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) and random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) approaches have been used. To date, using a variety of snail and heterologous species probes, no RFLP marker has been found that segregates with either the resistant or susceptible phenotype in F2 progeny snails. More promising results however have been found with the RAPD approach, where a 1.3 kb marker appears in nearly all resistant progeny, and a 1.1 kb marker appears in all susceptible progeny

Evidentiation of Paramyosin (Sm-97) as a Modulating Antigen on Granulomatous Hypersensitivity to Schistosoma mansoni Eggs

A Schistosoma mansoni adult worm anionic fraction (PIII) has previously been shown to protect mice against challenge infection and to reduce pulmonary and hepatic granulomatous hypersensitivity. Serum from PIII-immunized rabbit was used to screen a lgt11 cDNA library from S. mansoni adult worm in order to identify antigens capable of modulating granulomatous hypersensitivity. We obtained four clones with 400 (Sm-III.11), 900 (Sm-III.16), 1100 (Sm-III.10) and 1300 (Sm-III.12) bp of length. All clone-specific antibodies were able to recognize most of the PIII components. The sequence analysis showed that these clones presented high homology with S. mansoni paramyosin (Sm-97). These findings ascribe a new function to this antigen with an important role in modulation of granulomatous hypersensitivity to S. mansoni eggs

Could Hyperglycaemia and Troponin I predict outcome in intensive care after congenital heart surgery in children?

Objective: To establish if hyperglycaemia and cardiac Troponin I (cTnI) after congenital heart surgery on cardiopulmonary bypass in children could predict outcome in intensive care unit. Methods: retrospective cohort study including 274 children (mean age 4.6 years; range 0 - 17 years-old). CTnI and glucose values were retrieved from our database. Integrated values (area under the curve (AUC)) were calculated for evaluation of sustained hyperglycaemia and then normalised per hour (48h-Gluc/h). Maximal cTnI, fi rst glucose value (Gluc1) and 48h-Gluc/h were then correlated with duration of mechanical ventilation, ICU stay and mortality using cut-off values. Results: The mean duration of mechanical ventilation was 5.1 ± 7.2 days and ICU stay was 11.0 ± 13.3 days, 11 patients (3.9%) died. Hyperglycaemia (>6.1 mmol/l) was present in 68% of children at admission and was sustained in 85% for 48 hours. The mean value of Gluc1 (7.3 ± 2.7 vs. 11.8 ± 6.4 mmol/l, p < 0.0001), 48h-Gluc/h (7.4 ± 1.4 vs. 9.9 ± 4.6 mmol/l/h, p < 0.0001) and cTnI max (16.7 ± 21.8 vs. 59.2 ± 41.4 mcg/l, p < 0.0001) were signifi cantly lower in survivors vs. non survivors. Cut-off values and odds ratio are summarised in Table 1. Analyses for duration of mechanical ventilation and for length of stay in ICU are depicted in Table 2. Conclusions: Hyperglycaemia is frequent after cardiopulmonary bypass and sustained in the fi rst 48 hours. Admission glycaemia and cTnI max are associated with a high risk of mortality, prolonged duration of mechanical ventilation and prolonged length of stay in ICU.

Sharpened lower bounds for cut elimination

We present sharpened lower bounds on the size of cut free proofs for first-order logic. Prior lower bounds for eliminating cuts from a proof established superexponential lower bounds as a stack of exponentials, with the height of the stack proportional to the maximum depth d of the formulas in the original proof. Our new lower bounds remove the constant of proportionality, giving an exponential stack of height equal to d − O(1). The proof method is based on more efficiently expressing the Gentzen-Solovay cut formulas as low depth formulas.

Semi-supervised segmentation of ultrasound images based on patch representation and continuous min cut.

Ultrasound segmentation is a challenging problem due to the inherent speckle and some artifacts like shadows, attenuation and signal dropout. Existing methods need to include strong priors like shape priors or analytical intensity models to succeed in the segmentation. However, such priors tend to limit these methods to a specific target or imaging settings, and they are not always applicable to pathological cases. This work introduces a semi-supervised segmentation framework for ultrasound imaging that alleviates the limitation of fully automatic segmentation, that is, it is applicable to any kind of target and imaging settings. Our methodology uses a graph of image patches to represent the ultrasound image and user-assisted initialization with labels, which acts as soft priors. The segmentation problem is formulated as a continuous minimum cut problem and solved with an efficient optimization algorithm. We validate our segmentation framework on clinical ultrasound imaging (prostate, fetus, and tumors of the liver and eye). We obtain high similarity agreement with the ground truth provided by medical expert delineations in all applications (94% DICE values in average) and the proposed algorithm performs favorably with the literature.

Does history of falling predict length of stay in post-scute geriatric rehabilitation?

Objectives: To investigate the associations between falls before¦hospital admission, falls during hospitalization, and length of stay in¦elderly people admitted to post-acute geriatric rehabilitation.¦Method: History of falling in the previous 12 months before admission¦was recorded among 249 older persons (mean age 82.3 ± 7.4 years,¦69.1% women) consecutively admitted to post-acute rehabilitation. Data¦on medical, functional and cognitive status were collected upon¦admission. Falls during hospitalization and length of stay were recorded¦at discharge.¦Results: Overall, 92 (40.4%) patients reported no fall in the 12 months¦before admission; 63(27.6%) reported 1 fall, and 73 (32.0%) reported¦multiple falls. Previous falls occurrence (one or more falls) was¦significantly associated with in-stay falls (19.9% of previous fallers fell¦during the stay vs 7.6% in patients without history of falling, P = .01),¦and with a longer length of stay (22.4 ± 10.1 days vs 27.1 ± 14.3 days,¦P = .01). In multivariate robust regression controlling for gender, age,¦functional and cognitive status, history of falling remained significantly¦associated with longer rehabilitation stay (2.8 days more than non¦fallers in single fallers, p = .05, and 3.3 days in multiple fallers, p = .0.1).¦Conclusion: History of falling in the 12 months prior to post acute¦geriatric rehabilitation is independently associated with a longer¦rehabilitation length of stay. Previous fallers also have an increased risk¦of falling during rehabilitation stay. This suggests that hospital fall¦prevention measures should particularly target these high risk patients.

Major depressive disorders in the general hospital: how to implement guidelines.

OBJECTIVE: An implementation study that evaluated the impact of previously adopted guidelines on the clinical practice of medical residents was conducted to improve the recognition and treatment of major depressive disorders (MDDs) in hospitalized patients with somatic diseases. METHODS: Guidelines were implemented in two wards (ENT and oncology) using intranet diffusion, interactive sessions with medical residents, and support material. Discharge letters of 337 and 325 patients, before and after the intervention, respectively, were checked for statement of diagnosis or treatment of MDDs and, in a post hoc analysis, for any mention about psychiatric management. RESULTS: No difference was found in the number of diagnosed or treated MDDs before and after the intervention. However, significantly more statements about psychological status (29/309 vs. 13/327) and its management (36/309 vs. 19/327) were observed after the intervention (P<.01). CONCLUSION: The intervention was not successful in improving the management of MDDs. However, a possible effect on general psychological aspects of medical diseases was observed.

Length of hospital stay and postdischarge mortality in patients with pulmonary embolism: a statewide perspective

BACKGROUND: The optimal length of stay (LOS) for patients with pulmonary embolism (PE) is unknown. Although reducing LOS is likely to save costs, the effects on patient safety are unclear. We sought to identify patient and hospital factors associated with LOS and assess whether LOS was associated with postdischarge mortality. METHODS: We evaluated patients discharged with a primary diagnosis of PE from 186 acute care hospitals in Pennsylvania (January 2000 through November 2002). We used discrete survival models to examine the association between (1) patient and hospital factors and the time to discharge and (2) LOS and postdischarge mortality within 30 days of presentation, adjusting for patient and hospital factors. RESULTS: Among 15 531 patient discharges with PE, the median LOS was 6 days, and postdischarge mortality rate was 3.3%. In multivariate analysis, patients from Philadelphia were less likely to be discharged on a given day (odds ratio [OR], 0.82; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.73-0.93), as were black patients (OR, 0.88; 95% CI, 0.82-0.94).The odds of discharge decreased notably with greater patient severity of illness and in patients without private health insurance. Adjusted postdischarge mortality was significantly higher for patients with an LOS of 4 days or less (OR, 1.55; 95% CI, 1.21-2.00) relative to those with an LOS of 5 to 6 days. CONCLUSIONS: Several hospital and patient factors were independently associated with LOS. Patients with a very short LOS had greater postdischarge mortality relative to patients with a typical LOS, suggesting that physicians may inappropriately select patients with PE for early discharge who are at increased risk of complications

Molecular identification of similar species of the genus Biomphalaria (Mollusca: Planorbidae) determined by a polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism

The freshwater snails Biomphalaria straminea, B. intermedia, B. kuhniana and B. peregrina, are morphologically similar; based on this similarity the first three species were therefore grouped in the complex B. straminea. The morphological identification of these species is based on characters such as vaginal wrinkling, relation between prepuce: penial sheath:deferens vas and number of muscle layers in the penis wall. In this study the polymerase chain reaction restriction fragment length polymorphism technique was used for molecular identification of these molluscs. This technique is based on the amplification of the internal transcribed spacer regions ITS1 e ITS2 of the ribosomal RNA gene and subsequent digestion of these fragments by restriction enzymes. Six enzymes were tested: Dde I, Mnl I, Hae III, Rsa I, Hpa II e Alu I. The restriction patterns obtained with DdeI presented the best profile for separation of the four species of Biomphalaria. The profiles obtained with all the enzymes were used to estimate the genetic distances among the species through analysis of common banding patterns.