Behaviour of Brent geese Branta bernicla hrota and wigeon Anas penelope feeding on intertidal Zostera spp

Mixed flocks of pale-bellied Brent geese (Branta bernicla hrota) and wigeon (Anas penelope L.) feeding on intertidal Zostera spp were studied during October 1993 with respect to tidal position, feeding method and duration, and competitive: interactions within and between species. Owing to many disturbance incidents affecting the use of the site by wildfowl, only complete data on flow tides were presented. Brent geese fed over a greater period of the tidal cycle than wigeon. Differences in feeding methods indicated that Brent geese exploited the rhizomes, which are energetically more profitable than the shoot on which wigeon fed. Aggressive interactions were recorded within species but there were no records of aggression between species. More subtle competition for space, however, may have occurred during feeding. Brent geese could reach Zostera spp For a short period after increasing depth of water prevented access by wigeon. However, individual wigeon were observed foraging near feeding Brent geese, picking up the scraps oi material discarded by the latter, and small numbers of wigeon may benefit from the presence of the geese. These benefits for some individual wigeon are not considered to compensate for the disadvantages to the latter species population as a whole in feeding on poorer-quality food for a shorter period of the tidal cycle. This disadvantage is likely to have contributed to the decline in the wigeon population on Strangford Lough, Co. Down, while numbers of Brent geese have been maintained at a high level.

Accuracy of LightCycler® SeptiFast for the detection and identification of pathogens in the blood of patients with suspected sepsis: a systematic review protocol

Background: There is growing interest in the potential utility of molecular diagnostics in improving the detection of life-threatening infection (sepsis). LightCycler® SeptiFast is a multipathogen probebased real-time PCR system targeting DNA sequences of bacteria and fungi present in blood samples within a few hours. We report here the protocol of the first systematic review of published clinical diagnostic accuracy studies of this technology when compared with blood culture in the setting of suspected sepsis. Methods/design: Data sources: the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE), the Health Technology Assessment Database (HTA), the NHS Economic Evaluation Database (NHSEED), The Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, EMBASE, ISI Web of Science, BIOSIS Previews, MEDION and the Aggressive Research Intelligence Facility Database (ARIF). Study selection: diagnostic accuracy studies that compare the real-time PCR technology with standard culture results performed on a patient's blood sample during the management of sepsis. Data extraction: three reviewers, working independently, will determine the level of evidence, methodological quality and a standard data set relating to demographics and diagnostic accuracy metrics for each study. Statistical analysis/data synthesis: heterogeneity of studies will be investigated using a coupled forest plot of sensitivity and specificity and a scatter plot in Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC) space. Bivariate model method will be used to estimate summary sensitivity and specificity. The authors will investigate reporting biases using funnel plots based on effective sample size and regression tests of asymmetry. Subgroup analyses are planned for adults, children and infection setting (hospital vs community) if sufficient data are uncovered. Dissemination: Recommendations will be made to the Department of Health (as part of an open-access HTA report) as to whether the real-time PCR technology has sufficient clinical diagnostic accuracy potential to move forward to efficacy testing during the provision of routine clinical care.

Intravenous tolerance effectively overcomes enhanced pro-inflammatory responses and EAE severity in the absence of IL-12 receptor signaling

Intravenous (i.v.) administration of autoantigen effectively induces Ag-specific tolerance against experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE). We and others have shown enhanced EAE severity in mice lacking IL-12 or its receptor, strongly suggesting an immunoregulatory effect of IL-12 signaling. To examine the role of IL-12 responsiveness in autoantigen-induced tolerance in EAE, we administered autoantigen i.v. in two distinct treatment regimes to wildtype and IL-12Rβ2(-/-) mice, immunized to develop EAE. Administration at the induction phase suppressed EAE in wildtype and IL-12Rβ2(-/-) mice however the effect was somewhat less potent in the absence of IL-12Rβ2. Expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as IFN-γ, IL-17 and IL-2, was inhibited in wild-type tolerized mice but less so in IL-12Rβ2(-/-) mice. I.v. antigen was also effective in suppressing disease in both genotypes when given during the clinical phase of disease with similar CNS inflammation, demyelination and peripheral inflammatory cytokine profiles observed in both genotypes. There was however a mild impact of a lack of IL-12 signaling on Treg induction during tolerance induction compared to WT mice in this treatment regime. These findings show that the enhanced severity of EAE that occurs in the absence of IL-12 signaling can be effectively overcome by i.v. autoantigen, indicating that this therapeutic effect is not primarily mediated by IL-12 and that i.v. tolerance could be a powerful approach in suppressing severe and aggressive MS.

Protective qualities of surface treatments for concrete

Surface treatments are used as part of either a maintenance programme or repair work. In both cases, they provide additional protection to the concrete by either arresting or reducing the penetration of aggressive substances from the environment, Numerous materials are available for this purpose and their inherent generic properties differ considerably. Quite often this poses difficulties to practising engineers when selecting a surface treatment for a specific situation, In this review an attempt is made to explain the protective aspects of various surface treatments so that their selection can be made easier, The basic aspects of surface treatments are discussed: function, classification and performance requirements.

Effect of increasing dietary folate on red-cell folate: Implications for prevention of neural tube defects

Background Recommendations by the UK Department of Health suggest that protection from neural tube defects (NTD) can be achieved through intakes of an extra 400 mu g daily of folate/folic acid as natural food, foods fortified with folic acid, or supplements. The assumption is that all three routes of intervention would have equal effects on folate status.

Methods We assessed the effectiveness of these suggested routes of intervention in optimising folate status. 62 women were recruited from the University staff and students to take part in a 3-month intervention study. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the following five groups: folic acid supplement (400 mu g/day; I); folic-acid-fortified foods (an additional 400 mu g/day; II); dietary folate (an additional 400 mu g/day; III); dietary advice (IV), and control (V). Responses to intervention were assessed as changes in red-cell folate between preintervention and postintervention values.

Findings 41 women completed the intervention study. Red-cell folate concentrations increased significantly over the 3 months in the groups taking folic acid supplements (group I) or food fortified with folic acid (group II) only (p<0.01 for both groups). By contrast, although aggressive intervention with dietary folate (group III) or dietary advice (group IV) significantly increased intake of food folate (p<0.001 and p<0.05, respectively), there was no significant change in folate status.

Interpretation We have shown that compared with supplements and fortified food, consumption of extra folate as natural food folate is relatively ineffective at increasing folate status. We believe that advice to women to consume folate-rich foods as a means to optimise folate status is misleading.

Right to War in the Islamic Tradition:Jihad and its Compatibility with Modern International Law (will be submitted to the publisher in April 2014)

In the last century, Islam drew the world’s attention though such phenomena as the Islamic revolution in Iran, the fierce Muslim resistance against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the assassination of Egypt’s President Sadat by a radical Islamic group. But it was when Osama Bin Laden and his organization Al Qaeda were established to have been behind the 11 September attacks in the US, the age-old images of Islam, the fanatical and belligerent religion threatening what the Western world stands for, were revitalized. The impact of 9/11 attacks was so great that even balanced portrayals of Islam were eclipsed by stereotypical images of a fundamental, anti-Western and warmongering religion that bore the hallmarks of medieval prejudices and rhetoric. The popular image tailored for the Western audience reflected Islam as monolithic, intrinsically aggressive, and determined to engage in religious wars against the interests and values of the Western civilisation.
This book intends to help reduce, at least to a reasonable degree, the impact of sweeping, and at times tendentious, generalisations about Islamic laws of warfare. The main purpose of this book is to place the legal, cultural and historical practices of Islamic wars in their broader socio-political contexts, thereby establishing that there has been no undisputed understanding of what defensive or aggressive warfare entails in Islam, whether in doctrine or in practice.

Management of Barrett's esophagus in the UK: Overtreated and underbiopsied but improved by the introduction of a national randomized trial

OBJECTIVES: To assess the variation in practice of Barrett's esophagus (BE) management in comparison with accepted international guidelines before and after the introduction of a large BE randomized controlled trial (RCT) with protocols including those of tissue sampling.
DESIGN: A validated anonymized questionnaire was sent to 401 senior attending gastroenterologists asking for details of their current management of BE, especially histological sampling. Of the 228 respondents, 57 individuals (each from a different center) were in the first group to enter the ASPirin Esomeprazole (BE) Chemoprevention Trial (AspECT), and we assessed change in practice in these centers.
RESULTS: Ninety percent of specialists did not take adequate biopsies for histological diagnosis. Furthermore, 74% would consider aggressive surgical resection for prevalent cases of high-grade dysplasia in BE as their first-line choice despite the associated perioperative mortality. Ninety-two percent claim their lack of adherence to guidelines is because there is a need for stronger evidence for surveillance and medical interventions. Effect of the AspECT trial: Those clinicians in centers where the AspECT trial has started have improved adherence to ACG guidelines compared with their previous practice (P < 0.05). BE patients now get 18.8% more biopsies compared with previous practice, and 37.7% if the patient is entered into the AspECT trial (P < 0.01).
CONCLUSIONS: This large study indicates both wide variation in practice and poor compliance with guidelines. Because optimal histology is arguably the most important facet of BE management, the improvement in practice in centers taking part in the AspECT trial indicates an additional value of large international RCTs.

Electrical Based Sensors and Remote Monitoring System for Assessing the Corrosion Related Activity in Concrete at Hangzhou Bay Bridge

Concrete structures in marine environments are subjected to cyclic wetting and drying, corrosion of reinforcement due to chloride ingress and biological deterioration. In order to assess the quality of concrete and predict the corrosion activity of reinforcing steel in concrete in this environment, it is essential to monitor the concrete continuously right from the construction phase to the end of service life of the structure. In this paper a novel combination of sensor techniques which are integrated in a sensor probe is used to monitor the quality of cover concrete and corrosion of the reinforcement. The integrated sensor probe was embedded in different concrete samples exposed to an aggressive marine environment at the Hangzhou Bay Bridge in China. The sensor probes were connected to a monitoring station, which enabled the access and control of the data remotely from Belfast, UK. The initial data obtained from the monitoring station reflected the early age properties of the concretes and distinct variations in these properties were observed with different concrete types.

Renal replacement treatment for diabetic nephropathy in Northern Ireland 1979-1987

Twenty-three patients with end-stage renal failure due to diabetic nephropathy received renal replacement treatment. All patients had insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. Nineteen transplants were performed in seventeen patients. Two-year graft survival for all transplants was 74% with a two-year patient survival post-transplantation of 81%. Overall two-year patient survival was 73%, compared with 82% in non-diabetic patients receiving renal replacement treatment. In diabetic patients accepted for treatment there was a high incidence of non-renal complications, particularly vascular disease. An aggressive approach to the treatment of vascular disease in these patients may improve overall survival rates.

Improved prognosis for congenital nephrotic syndrome of the Finnish type in Irish families

Congenital nephrotic syndrome of the Finnish type is a rare autosomal recessive disease with a high infant mortality without aggressive treatment. The biochemical basis of the disease is not understood fully but the disease locus has been mapped recently to chromosome 19q12-q13.1 in Finnish families. This paper describes the clinical features and outcome of 20 patients in Ireland with congenital nephrotic syndrome of the Finnish type who have presented since 1980. Before 1987, all infants died by the age of 3 years. After the introduction of daily intravenous albumin infusion, nutritional support, elective bilateral nephrectomy, and renal transplantation, mortality in the past decade has fallen to 30%, with no deaths in the past five years. Genetic linkage analysis was performed in six families in whom DNA was available and the locus responsible was mapped to the same region on chromosome 19 as in Finnish families, suggesting that Irish families share the same disease locus.

Collectives of diagnostic biomarkers identify high-risk subpopulations of hematuria patients: exploiting heterogeneity in large-scale biomarker data

Background: Ineffective risk stratification can delay diagnosis of serious disease in patients with hematuria. We applied a systems biology approach to analyze clinical, demographic and biomarker measurements (n = 29) collected from 157 hematuric patients: 80 urothelial cancer (UC) and 77 controls with confounding pathologies.

Methods: On the basis of biomarkers, we conducted agglomerative hierarchical clustering to identify patient and biomarker clusters. We then explored the relationship between the patient clusters and clinical characteristics using Chi-square analyses. We determined classification errors and areas under the receiver operating curve of Random Forest Classifiers (RFC) for patient subpopulations using the biomarker clusters to reduce the dimensionality of the data.

Results: Agglomerative clustering identified five patient clusters and seven biomarker clusters. Final diagnoses categories were non-randomly distributed across the five patient clusters. In addition, two of the patient clusters were enriched with patients with ‘low cancer-risk’ characteristics. The biomarkers which contributed to the diagnostic classifiers for these two patient clusters were similar. In contrast, three of the patient clusters were significantly enriched with patients harboring ‘high cancer-risk” characteristics including proteinuria, aggressive pathological stage and grade, and malignant cytology. Patients in these three clusters included controls, that is, patients with other serious disease and patients with cancers other than UC. Biomarkers which contributed to the diagnostic classifiers for the largest ‘high cancer- risk’ cluster were different than those contributing to the classifiers for the ‘low cancer-risk’ clusters. Biomarkers which contributed to subpopulations that were split according to smoking status, gender and medication were different.

Conclusions: The systems biology approach applied in this study allowed the hematuric patients to cluster naturally on the basis of the heterogeneity within their biomarker data, into five distinct risk subpopulations. Our findings highlight an approach with the promise to unlock the potential of biomarkers. This will be especially valuable in the field of diagnostic bladder cancer where biomarkers are urgently required. Clinicians could interpret risk classification scores in the context of clinical parameters at the time of triage. This could reduce cystoscopies and enable priority diagnosis of aggressive diseases, leading to improved patient outcomes at reduced costs. © 2013 Emmert-Streib et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

The biology of habitat dominance; can microbes behave as weeds?

Competition between microbial species is a product of, yet can lead to a reduction in, the microbial diversity of specific habitats. Microbial habitats can resemble ecological battlefields where microbial cells struggle to dominate and/or annihilate each other and we explore the hypothesis that (like plant weeds) some microbes are genetically hard-wired to behave in a vigorous and ecologically aggressive manner. These 'microbial weeds' are able to dominate the communities that develop in fertile but uncolonized - or at least partially vacant - habitats via traits enabling them to out-grow competitors; robust tolerances to habitat-relevant stress parameters and highly efficient energy-generation systems; avoidance of or resistance to viral infection, predation and grazers; potent antimicrobial systems; and exceptional abilities to sequester and store resources. In addition, those associated with nutritionally complex habitats are extraordinarily versatile in their utilization of diverse substrates. Weed species typically deploy multiple types of antimicrobial including toxins; volatile organic compounds that act as either hydrophobic or highly chaotropic stressors; biosurfactants; organic acids; and moderately chaotropic solutes that are produced in bulk quantities (e.g. acetone, ethanol). Whereas ability to dominate communities is habitat-specific we suggest that some microbial species are archetypal weeds including generalists such as: Pichia anomala, Acinetobacter spp. and Pseudomonas putida; specialists such as Dunaliella salina, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Lactobacillus spp. and other lactic acid bacteria; freshwater autotrophs Gonyostomum semen and Microcystis aeruginosa; obligate anaerobes such as Clostridium acetobutylicum; facultative pathogens such as Rhodotorula mucilaginosa, Pantoea ananatis and Pseudomonas aeruginosa; and other extremotolerant and extremophilic microbes such as Aspergillus spp., Salinibacter ruber and Haloquadratum walsbyi. Some microbes, such as Escherichia coli, Mycobacterium smegmatis and Pseudoxylaria spp., exhibit characteristics of both weed and non-weed species. We propose that the concept of nonweeds represents a 'dustbin' group that includes species such as Synodropsis spp., Polypaecilum pisce, Metschnikowia orientalis, Salmonella spp., and Caulobacter crescentus. We show that microbial weeds are conceptually distinct from plant weeds, microbial copiotrophs, r-strategists, and other ecophysiological groups of microorganism. Microbial weed species are unlikely to emerge from stationary-phase or other types of closed communities; it is open habitats that select for weed phenotypes. Specific characteristics that are common to diverse types of open habitat are identified, and implications of weed biology and open-habitat ecology are discussed in the context of further studies needed in the fields of environmental and applied microbiology.

Occupational stress in the chef profession

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to consider the occupational stress experienced by chefs and the moderating influence of coping behaviour and locus of control on stress outcomes. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 40 working chefs were surveyed. They were asked to complete an occupational stress questionnaire, the General Health Questionnaire. Differences were
sought between gender and locus of control and stress measures, and correlations were carried out between key variables. Findings – The reported stress was markedly higher than in previous research. Excessive workload,
feeling undervalued and communication issues were common and bullying and threats of violence were present for some. Unexpectedly, locus of control was unable to predict stress experiences. Explanations were offered, such as the possibility that those who perceive they have a strong sense of control may believe that this, paradoxically, affords them the opportunity to engage in unhealthy behaviours. Research limitations/implications – Limitations of the research include the influence of the wider environment, specifically the history of political violence in the province, and its possible effect on stress outcomes. However, this may be negated by the many positive effects peace has brought over the last decade. In drawing conclusions it is important to note the limitations of the sample size and the self-reporting nature of survey responses. Further research could usefully incorporate well-being as well as stress measures, including physiological ones. It would be worth exploring further how one’s sense of control affects perceptions of stress and, in turn, the coping behaviours engaged in. Practical implications – Practical implications include the need for managers and head chefs to provide more feedback to employees, to validate their good work and to foster a supportive working environment. Norms in the working environment endorsing aggressive behaviour must be challenged.
Staff appraisals should consider the need to have work that involves variety and challenge, especially where changes involve increases in workload. Originality/value – This paper identifies some important ingredients to reduce distress and it will be of value to chefs and other kitchen staff and, more broadly, to those involved in people management.

Bilateral non-contiguous atypical papillary glioneuronal tumor:case report

Papillary glioneuronal tumor (PGNT) was first described as a distinct clinic-pathological entity by Komori et al. in 1998. Since then it has been included as a mixed neuronal-glial tumor in the revised WHO (2007) classification of central nervous system tumors. On brain imaging, it appears as a demarcated, solid to cystic, contrast-enhancing mass usually located in the temporal lobe. Histologically, it is considered a biphasic tumor characterized by small cuboidal GFAP-positive astrocytes around hyalinised blood vessels and synaptophysin-positive interpapillary collections of neurocytes, large neurons and intermediate-sized "ganglioid cells". Although they are generally regarded as benign WHO Grade I tumors, recent reports have described more pathologically aggressive features. To date, these reports have all been single lesions.

Bilateral non-contiguous atypical papillary glioneuronal tumor: case report

Papillary glioneuronal tumor (PGNT) was first described as a distinct clinic-pathological entity by Komori et al. in 1998. Since then it has been included as a mixed neuronal-glial tumor in the revised WHO (2007) classification of central nervous system tumors. On brain imaging, it appears as a demarcated, solid to cystic, contrast-enhancing mass usually located in the temporal lobe. Histologically, it is considered a biphasic tumor characterized by small cuboidal GFAP-positive astrocytes around hyalinised blood vessels and synaptophysin-positive interpapillary collections of neurocytes, large neurons and intermediate-sized "ganglioid cells". Although they are generally regarded as benign WHO Grade I tumors, recent reports have described more pathologically aggressive features. To date, these reports have all been single lesions.