Detection of glucocorticoid bioactivity in bovine urine samples using a reporter gene assay.

The illegal use of anabolic substances in the meat producing industry is an ongoing problem due to the continual production of new synthetic compounds and/or the practice of low-level cocktail administration to avoid detection by the surveillance schemes of EU member states National Plan surveillance systems.

We present a highly sensitive reporter gene assay and sample extraction procedure based on a two step solid phase extraction and high performance liquid chromatography, developed for the detection of glucocorticoid abuse in bovine urine. The assay is capable of detecting compounds with glucocorticoid bioactivity and is extremely sensitive with an EC50 of 0.79 ng mL-1 for dexamethasone. New or unknown compounds with glucocorticoid bioactivity and low-level cocktail mixtures are detectable by this assay.

Cross-reactivity data for a range of 11ß-hydroxyglucocorticoids has been provided. This assay shows low interference from the 11-keto prohormones and other steroidal hormones. The assay may be suitable for application in other matrices such as hair. In conclusion this screening assay offers advantages over existing analytical techniques.

Understanding Everyday Homes of Urban Communities: The Case of Local Streets (Hawari) of Old Cairo

This paper aims at investigating architectural and urban heritage from the socio-cultural point of view, which stands on the human asset of traditional sites such as the hawari of old Cairo. It analyzes the social practice of everyday life in one of the oldest Cairene hawari, Haret al-Darb al-Asfar. The focus is on architectural and spatial organization of outdoor and indoor spaces that coordinate the spatial practices of local community. A daily monitoring of people’s activities and interviews was conducted in an investigation of how local people perceive their built environment between the house’s interior and the outdoor shared space. It emerges that people construct their own field of private spheres according to complex patterns of daily activities that are not in line with the classical segregation between private and public in Islamic cities. This paper reports that the harah is basically a construct of social spheres that are organized spatially by the flexible development of individual buildings over time and in response to changes in individuals’ needs and capabilities. In order to achieve sustainability in old urban quarters, the paper concludes, the focus should be directed towards the local organization of activities and a comprehensive upgrading of deteriorating buildings to match the changing needs of current population.

Revisioning assessment through a children’s rights approach: implications for policy, process and practice

The linkage between the impact of assessment and compliance with children’s rights is a connection, which although seemingly obvious, is nonetheless rarely made, particularly by governments, which, as signatories to the relevant human rights treaties, have the primary responsibility for ensuring that educational practice is compatible with international children’s rights standards. While some jurisdictions are explicit about an adherence to children’s rights frameworks in general policy documentation, such a commitment rarely features when the focus is on assessment and testing. Thus, in spite of significant public and academic attention given to the consequences of assessment for children and governments committed to working within children’s rights standards, the two are rarely considered together. This paper examines the implications for the policy, process and practice of assessment in light of international human rights standards. Three key children’s rights principles and standards are used as a critical lens to examine assessment policy and practice: (1) best interests; (2) non-discrimination; and (3) participation. The paper seeks new insights into the complexities of assessment practice from the critical perspective of children’s rights and argues that such standards not only provide a convenient benchmark for developing, implementing and evaluating assessment practices, but also acknowledge the significance of assessment in the delivery of children’s rights to, in and through education more generally.

Managing Risk: From Regulation to the Reintegration of Sexual Offenders

In the last number of years the management of the dangerous in the community, particularly sex offenders, has generated enormous concern. This concern has been reflected at a number of different levels - in media and popular responses to the risk posed by released sex offenders in the community and in official discourses where an abundance of legislation and policy reforms have been enacted within a relatively short period of time. This analysis seeks to critically evaluate these developments within the context of contemporary criminal justice policy and practice in relation to the management of sex offenders in the community. The article analyses the contemporary focus on risk management or preventative governance which underpins the current regulatory framework and has been reflected in both the sentencing options and in control in the community initiatives for sex offenders. In this respect, the article highlights the gap between policy and practice in terms of the effective risk management of sex offenders. Given the failure of the traditional justice system with respect to these types of offences, it will be argued that the retributive framework could usefully be supplemented by the theory and practice of reintegrative or restorative community justice, and public education in particular, in order to better manage the risk presented by sex offenders in the community.

A 50,000-year record of Late Pleistocene tropical vegetation and human impact in lowland Borneo.

There has been considerable uncertainty about the nature of Pleistocene environments colonised by the first modern humans in Island SE Asia, and about the vegetation of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) in the region. Here, the palynology from a series of exposures in the Great Cave of Niah, Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo, spanning a period from ca. 52,000 to 5000 BP is described. Vegetation during this period was climate-driven and often highly unstable. Interstadials are marked by lowland forest, sometimes rather dry and at times by mangroves. Stadials are indicated by taxa characteristic of open environments or, as at the LGM, by highly disturbed rather open forest. Stadials are also characterised by taxa now restricted to 1000-1600 m above sea level, suggesting temperature declines of ca 7-9 C relative to present, by comparison with modern lapse rates. The practice of biomass burning appears associated with the earliest human activity in the cave.

Fabrication and Ms Conduct: Scrutinising Practice Through Feminist Theory

This paper describes a collaborative practice, between an architect (the author) and a textile designer; its outcomes and the critical theoretical and feminist contexts from which the practice evolved and to which it still responds. The practice advocates the interweaving of more than the yarns, material and cultures on which it is physically based, but also the intertwining of theory and technology as a means to advance architectural practice. This is done in response to Ahrentzen’s charge to feminist scholars and practitioners to ‘embrace not only the abstract conceptual nature of much postmodernist theorizing but also that derived from the serious “hanging out”, looking at, listening to, scrutinising and theorizing lived experiences of the everyday’, in this instance the everyday practice of combining concrete and textiles.

Confined site construction: An empirical analysis of factors impacting health and safety management

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify, clarify and tabulate the various managerial issues encountered, to aid in the management of the complex health and safety concerns which occur within a confined construction site environment.

Design/methodology/approach – This is achieved through conducting extensive qualitative and qualitative research in the form of case studies, interviews and questionnaire survey.

Findings – The leading managerial issues in the management of health and safety on a confined construction site are found to be: “Difficulty to move materials around site safely”; “Lack of adequate room for the effective handling of materials”; “Difficulty in ensuring site is tidy and all plant and materials are stored safely”; “Close proximity of individuals to operation of large plant and machinery”; and joint fifth “Difficulty in ensuring proper arrangement and collection of waste materials on-site” along with “Difficulty in controlling hazardous materials and equipment on site”.

Practical implications – The resulting implication for practice of these results can be summarised by identifying that with sustained development of urban centres on a global scale, coupled with the increasing complexity of architectural designs, the majority of on-site project management professionals are faced with the onerous task of completing often intricate designs within a limited spatial environment, under strict health and safety parameters.

Originality/value – The subsequent value of the findings are such that just as on-site management professionals successfully identify the various managerial issues highlighted, the successful management of health and safety on a confined construction site is attainable.

Modelling and fixed bed column adsorption of Cr(VI) onto orthophosphoric acid-activated lignin

The advantage of using an available and abundant residual biomass, such as lignin, as a raw material for activated carbons is that it provides additional economical interest to the technical studies. In the current investigation, a more complete understanding of adsorption of Cr(VI) from aqueous systems onto H PO -acid activated lignin has been achieved via microcolumns, which were operated under various process conditions. The practice of using microcolumn is appropriate for defining the adsorption parameters and for screening a large number of potential adsorbents. The effects of solution pH (2-8), initial metal ion concentration (0.483-1.981 mmol·L ), flow rate (1.0-3.1 cm ·min ), ionic strength (0.01-0.30 mmol·L ) and adsorbent mass (0.11-0.465 g) on Cr(VI) adsorption were studied by assessing the microcolumn breakthrough curve. The microcolumn data were fitted by the Thomas model, the modified Dose model and the BDST model. As expected, the adsorption capacity increased with initial Cr(VI) concentration. High linear flow rates, pH values and ionic strength led to early breakthrough of Cr(VI). The model constants obtained in this study can be used for the design of pilot scale adsorption process. © 2012 Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China (CIESC) and Chemical Industry Press (CIP).

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.

Justice as Improvisation:The Law of the Extempore

Justice as Improvisation: The Law of the Extempore theorises the relationship between justice and improvisation through the case of the New York City cabaret laws. Discourses around improvisation often imprison it in a quasi-ethical relationship with the authentic, singular ‘other’. The same can be said of justice. This book interrogates this relationship by highlighting the parallels between the aporetic conception of justice advanced by the late French philosopher Jacques Derrida and the nuanced approach to improvisation pursued by musicians and theorists alike in the new and emerging interdisciplinary field of Critical Studies in Improvisation (CSI). Justice as Improvisation re-imagines justice as a species of improvisation through the formal structure of the most basic of legal mechanisms, judicial decision-making, offering law and legal theory a richer, more concrete, understanding of justice. Not further mystery or mystique, but a negotiation between abstract notions of justice and the everyday practice of judging. Improvisation in judgment calls for ongoing, practical decision-making as the constant negotiation between the freedom of the judge to take account of the otherness or singularity of the case and the existing laws or rules that both allow for and constrain that freedom. Yes, it is necessary to judge, yes, it is necessary to decide, but to judge well, to decide justly, that is a music lesson perhaps best taught by critical improvisation scholars.

Catheter-related bloodstream infection in adult haematology patients:Catheter removal practice and outcome

The aim of the present study was to describe the practice of central venous catheter (CVC) removal and outcomes of catheter-related bloodstream infection (CR-BSI) in adult haematology patients. Patients were identified retrospectively according to diagnosis coding of inpatient episodes and evaluated when, on examination of medical records, there had been evidence of sepsis with strong clinical suspicion that the source was the CVC. Demographic and bacteriological data, as well as therapeutic measures and clinical outcomes, were recorded. One hundred and three patient episodes were evaluated. The most frequent type of CVC was the Hickman catheter and the most frequently isolated pathogen was coagulase-negative staphylococci. Twenty-five percent of episodes were managed with catheter removal. Treatment failure, defined as recurrence of infection within 90 days or mortality attributed to sepsis within 30 days, occurred significantly more frequently in the group managed without catheter removal (52.5% versus 4%, P

Optimizing the balance between false positive and false negative error probabilities of confirmatory methods for the detection of veterinary drug residues

GC-MS data on veterinary drug residues in bovine urine are used for controlling the illegal practice of fattening cattle. According to current detection criteria, peak patterns of preferably four ions should agree within 10 or 20% from a corresponding standard pattern. These criteria are rigid, rather arbitrary and do not match daily practice. A new model, based on multivariate modeling of log peak abundance ratios, provides a theoretical basis for the identification of analytes and optimizes the balance between the avoidance of false positives and false negatives. The performance of the model is demonstrated on data provided by five laboratories, each supplying GC-MS measurements on the detection of clenbuterol, dienestrol and 19 beta-nortestosterone in urine. The proposed model shows a better performance than confirmation by using the current criteria and provides a statistical basis for inspection criteria in terms of error probabilities.