Integration of Elymus repens control and post-harvest catch crop growing in organic cropping systems

In Northern Europe, Elymus repens (L.) Gould infestations are traditionally controlled by repeated stubble cultivation in the period from harvest to ploughing in autumn. However, in organic farming, post-harvest tillage is undesirable due to the need for retaining nutrients in the cropping system. The soil is mostly cropped in that period, limiting post-harvest tillage. Two control strategies against E. repens are presented that merge the objectives of achieving a significant reduction of E. repens while having the soil covered with plants during the post-harvest period. Strategy I is an integration of rhizome fragmentation by soil cultivation within two days after harvest in early August with subsequent sowing of a catch crop to suppress shoot growth from the rhizome fragments. Strategy II also includes growing a catch crop but is preceded by a mid-summer fallow period lasting 4-6 weeks where repeated soil cultivations are conducted to fragment, weaken and desiccate the rhizomes. Strategy II controlled 91-90% of the E. repens population while strategy I only controlled up to 40%, mainly because of the weakening and desiccation of rhizomes caused by repeated cultivations. However, the fallow period may lead to undesirable nutrient leaching from sandy soils and the grower will have to desist from growing a profitable maturing crop, aspects that should be counterbalanced against the urgency for E. repens control and other possible control options. Strategy I appears to be more relevant for low infestation levels of E. repens while strategy II would be more appropriate where infestations have become large

Labor Supply of Politicians

We examine the labor supply of politicians using data on Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). We exploit the introduction of a law that equalized MEPs' salaries, which had previously differed by as much as a factor of ten. Doubling an MEP's salary increases the probability of running for reelection by 23 percentage points and increases the logarithm of the number of parties that field a candidate by 29 percent of a standard deviation. A salary increase has no discernible impact on absenteeism or shirking from legislative sessions; in contrast, non-pecuniary motives, proxied by home-country corruption, substantially impact the intensive margin of labor supply. Finally, an increase in salary lowers the quality of elected MEPs, measured by the selectivity of their undergraduate institutions.

Common Couch-grass control with less tillage

Control of Common Couch-grass often conflicts with the need to retain nutrients in organic cropping systems, as it involves intensive tillage in the post-harvest period. Thus, preferably the soil should be cropped through the entire year to prevent nutrient leaching from the root zone. Research has shown that new control strategies may combine the reduction of couch infestations and a soil cover with plants during the post-harvest period. This may have potential for practical implementation

Nye strategier til at bekæmpe kvik

Traditionel bekæmpelse af alm. kvik med sort jord og harvninger om efteråret medfører tab af næringsstoffer fra rodzonen. Derfor burde jorden holdes plantedækket hele året, men så får kvikken for meget spillerum. Bekæmpelse af kvik kan dog godt forenes med ønsket om at holde jorden plantedækket det meste af efteråret

Intraossale infusie

ABSTRACT Intraosseous (IO) infusion is a long existing method to obtain vascular access and has gained renewed interest over the last decade. IO infusion is an easy, safe, rapid and effective alternative method for vascular access in emergency clinical care and prehospital situations. The IO access can be used for administration of fluids, medication, analysis of electrolytes, blood type and blood gasses. The proximal tibia is the most common insertion location. New IO needles (F.A.S.T.1., Bone Injection-Gun and EZ-IO) have been developed over the last decade, to make insertion easier. Guidelines such as the ATLS and ERC are changing and currently recommend the use of IO needles in the emergency setting, in trauma and non-trauma situations, in both children and adults as alternative for peripheral vascular access. This will increase the use of the IO needles in de future. Awareness of indications, contra-indications and complications should therefore be enhanced

Prediction of lethal and synthetically lethal knock-outs in regulatory networks

The complex interactions involved in regulation of a cell's function are captured by its interaction graph. More often than not, detailed knowledge about enhancing or suppressive regulatory influences and cooperative effects is lacking and merely the presence or absence of directed interactions is known. Here we investigate to which extent such reduced information allows to forecast the effect of a knock-out or a combination of knock-outs. Specifically we ask in how far the lethality of eliminating nodes may be predicted by their network centrality, such as degree and betweenness, without knowing the function of the system. The function is taken as the ability to reproduce a fixed point under a discrete Boolean dynamics. We investigate two types of stochastically generated networks: fully random networks and structures grown with a mechanism of node duplication and subsequent divergence of interactions. On all networks we find that the out-degree is a good predictor of the lethality of a single node knock-out. For knock-outs of node pairs, the fraction of successors shared between the two knocked-out nodes (out-overlap) is a good predictor of synthetic lethality. Out-degree and out-overlap are locally defined and computationally simple centrality measures that provide a predictive power close to the optimal predictor.Comment: published version, 10 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables; supplement at http://www.bioinf.uni-leipzig.de/publications/supplements/11-01

Multi-scale effects of nestling diet on breeding performance in a terrestrial top predator inferred from stable isotope analysis

This is the final version of the article. Available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Inter-individual diet variation within populations is likely to have important ecological and evolutionary implications. The diet-fitness relationships at the individual level and the emerging population processes are, however, poorly understood for most avian predators inhabiting complex terrestrial ecosystems. In this study, we use an isotopic approach to assess the trophic ecology of nestlings in a long-lived raptor, the Bonelli's eagle Aquila fasciata, and investigate whether nestling dietary breath and main prey consumption can affect the species' reproductive performance at two spatial scales: territories within populations and populations over a large geographic area. At the territory level, those breeding pairs whose nestlings consumed similar diets to the overall population (i.e. moderate consumption of preferred prey, but complemented by alternative prey categories) or those disproportionally consuming preferred prey were more likely to fledge two chicks. An increase in the diet diversity, however, related negatively with productivity. The age and replacements of breeding pair members had also an influence on productivity, with more fledglings associated to adult pairs with few replacements, as expected in long-lived species. At the population level, mean productivity was higher in those population-years with lower dietary breadth and higher diet similarity among territories, which was related to an overall higher consumption of preferred prey. Thus, we revealed a correspondence in diet-fitness relationships at two spatial scales: territories and populations. We suggest that stable isotope analyses may be a powerful tool to monitor the diet of terrestrial avian predators on large spatio-temporal scales, which could serve to detect potential changes in the availability of those prey on which predators depend for breeding. We encourage ecologists and evolutionary and conservation biologists concerned with the multi-scale fitness consequences of inter-individual variation in resource use to employ similar stable isotope-based approaches, which can be successfully applied to complex ecosystems such as the Mediterranean.Funding for this work was provided by projects CGL2007-64805 and CGL2010-17056 from the ‘‘Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacio´n, Gobierno de Espan˜ a’’, the ‘‘A`rea d’Espais Naturals de la Diputacio´ de Barcelona’’, and Miquel Torres S.A. Fieldwork in France was carried out within the framework of the second National Action Plan for Bonelli’s eagle from the ‘‘Ministe`re franc¸ais de l’E´cologie, de L’E´nergie, du De´veloppement Durable et de la Mer’’ and coordinated by the DREAL LR ‘‘Direction Re´gionale de l’Environnement, de l’Ame´nagement et du Logement-Languedoc-Roussillon’’. J. Resano-Mayor was supported by a predoctoral grant from the ‘‘Departamento de Educacio´n, Gobierno de Navarra; Plan de Formacio´n y de I+D 2008–2009’’, and M. Moleo´n by a postdoctoral grant from the ‘‘Ministerio de Educacio´n, Gobierno de Espan˜ a; Plan Nacional de I+D+i 2008–2011’’. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Supporting breast cancer screening decisions for caregivers of older women with dementia: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) impact a woman's life expectancy and her ability to participate in medical decision-making about breast cancer screening, necessitating the involvement of family caregivers. Making decisions about mammography screening for women with ADRD is stressful. There are no data that suggest that breast cancer screening helps women with ADRD live longer or better. Decision aids may improve the quality of decision-making about mammography for ADRD patients and may inform family caregivers about the risks, benefits, and need for decision-making around mammography screening. METHODS/DESIGN: The Decisions about Cancer Screening in Alzheimer's Disease (DECAD) trial, a randomized controlled clinical trial, will enroll 426 dyads of older women with ADRD (≥75 years) and a family caregiver from clinics and primary-care practices in Indiana to test a novel, evidence-based decision aid. This decision aid includes information about the impact of ADRD on life expectancy, the benefit of mammograms, and the impact on the quality of life for older women with ADRD. Dyads will be randomized to receive the decision aid or active control information about home safety. This trial will examine the effect on the caregiver's decisional conflict (primary outcome) and the caregiver's decision-making self-efficacy (secondary outcome). A second follow-up at 15 months will include a brief, semi-structured interview with the caregiver regarding the patient's experience with mammograms and decision-making about mammograms. At the same time, a review of the patient's electronic medical record (EMR) will look at discussions about mammography with their primary-care physician and mammogram orders, receipt, results, and burden (e.g., additional diagnostic procedures due to false-positive results, identification of an abnormality on the screening exam but further work-up declined, and identification of a clinically unimportant cancer). A third follow-up at 24 months will extract EMR data on mammogram orders, occurrences, results, and the burden of mammograms. DISCUSSION: We hypothesize that caregivers who receive the decision aid will have lower levels of decisional conflict and higher levels of decision-making self-efficacy compared to the control group. We also hypothesize that the DECAD decision aid will reduce mammography use among older women with ADRD