Land snail diversity in a threatened limestone district near Istanbul, Turkey

The limestone meadows located to the north­-northwest of Istanbul, Turkey, are in danger of being overrun by the rapidly expanding city. Past surveys showed that these habitats harbor rare plant species, including endemics to Turkey. To further evaluate the conservation value of these habitats, especially in terms of the often neglected invertebrates, one limestone area to the north of Küçükçekmece Lake and surrounding Sazlidere Dam was surveyed for land snails. Our findings strengthen the case for the protection of these unique habitats. Twenty­-four species of land snails were identified in the survey area. Of these, 21 are native to Turkey, including three whose type location is Istanbul. In addition, two species that are at or near the limits of their ranges are considered to represent peripheral populations that may be especially worth conserving. Although the area surrounding Sazlidere Dam is under protection, the other limestone habitats are severely threatened by ongoing development

Diversidad de los caracoles terrestres en una zona caliza amenazada cercana a Estambul, Turquía

The limestone meadows located to the north–northwest of Istanbul, Turkey, are in danger of being overrun by the rapidly expanding city. Past surveys showed that these habitats harbor rare plant species, including endemics to Turkey. To further evaluate the conservation value of these habitats, especially in terms of the often neglected invertebrates, one limestone area to the north of Küçükçekmece Lake and surrounding Sazlidere Dam was surveyed for land snails. Our findings strengthen the case for the protection of these unique habitats. Twenty–four species of land snails were identified in the survey area. Of these, 21 are native to Turkey, including three whose type location is Istanbul. In addition, two species that are at or near the limits of their ranges are considered to represent peripheral populations that may be especially worth conserving. Although the area surrounding Sazlidere Dam is under protection, the other limestone habitats are severely threatened by ongoing development.Las praderas calcáreas situadas al NNO de Estambul están en peligro de ser rápidamente invadidas por la ciudad en expansión. Estudios anteriores demostraron que estos hábitats albergan especies vegetales raras, incluyendo algunos endemismos turcos. Con objeto de seguir evaluando el valor conservativo de dichos hábitats, en especial en cuanto a los invertebrados, a menudo ignorados, se han estudiado los caracoles terrestres de una zona calcárea al norte del lago Küçükçekmece y alrededor de la presa Sazlidere. Nuestros descubrimientos enfatizan la necesidad de una política de protección de estos hábitats únicos. En el área estudiada se identificaron 24 especies de caracoles terrestres. De ellas, 21 son nativas de Turquía, incluyendo tres cuya localización tipo es Estambul. Además, se considera que dos especies que se hallan en o cerca de los límites de su zona de distribución representan poblaciones periféricas especialmente merecedoras de conservación. A pesar de que la zona que rodea a la presa Sazlidere está protegida, el resto de los hábitats calcáreos está muy amenazado por el creciente desarrollo

Utilization of the Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaborative as an Evaluation Framework for Student Participation in a Community-Engaged Project

Purpose: Interprofessional education is a foundational component of many health professions educational programs as it contributes to the goals of the Quadruple Aim by prioritizing collaborative and streamlined quality healthcare. Furthermore, student engagement in interprofessional educational activities provides opportunities to better understand their own and others’ health profession disciplines. The purpose of this project was to utilize Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaborative (CIHC) to evaluate a framework for student engagement in a community-engaged project focused on reducing barriers to care in people living with type 1 diabetes in rural communities. Methods: As members of an interprofessional, type 1 diabetes, community-engaged research team, students from various graduate and pre-health professions programs participated a variety of activities as research assistants to increase their competency as future healthcare practitioners. These activities included research capacity building, interprofessional collaborations, patient and community interactions, and interprofessional healthcare research. Utilizing the CIHC Framework, the learners reflected and assessed their interprofessional competency, growth, professional identify, and understanding of interprofessional collaboration while providing suggestions for future students participating in interprofessional health sciences research. Findings: Learners found the CIHC to be a robust tool for reflecting on their abilities to provide care in an interprofessional team. The community engagement projects heightened their abilities in role clarification, team functioning, and collaborative leadership which were determined by the group to be some of the most essential skills for entering an interprofessional healthcare workforce. Conclusions: Use of the CIHC framework was an effective method to guide learner progress in developing interprofessional skills within a community engagement project. Reflection on achievement of CIHC domains assists learners in identification of growth in professional identity and understanding of interprofessional collaboration

Interoperability and FAIRness through a novel combination of Web technologies

Data in the life sciences are extremely diverse and are stored in a broad spectrum of repositories ranging from those designed for particular data types (such as KEGG for pathway data or UniProt for protein data) to those that are general-purpose (such as FigShare, Zenodo, Dataverse or EUDAT). These data have widely different levels of sensitivity and security considerations. For example, clinical observations about genetic mutations in patients are highly sensitive, while observations of species diversity are generally not. The lack of uniformity in data models from one repository to another, and in the richness and availability of metadata descriptions, makes integration and analysis of these data a manual, time-consuming task with no scalability. Here we explore a set of resource-oriented Web design patterns for data discovery, accessibility, transformation, and integration that can be implemented by any general- or special-purpose repository as a means to assist users in finding and reusing their data holdings. We show that by using off-the-shelf technologies, interoperability can be achieved atthe level of an individual spreadsheet cell. We note that the behaviours of this architecture compare favourably to the desiderata defined by the FAIR Data Principles, and can therefore represent an exemplar implementation of those principles. The proposed interoperability design patterns may be used to improve discovery and integration of both new and legacy data, maximizing the utility of all scholarly outputs

Longitudinal borehole functionality in 15 rural Ghanaian towns from three groundwater quality clusters

OBJECTIVE: In sub-Saharan Africa, 45% of the rural population uses boreholes (BHs). Despite recent gains in improved water access and coverage, parallel use of unimproved sources persists. Periodic infrastructure disrepair contributes to non-exclusive use of BHs. Our study describes functionality of BHs in 2014, 2015, and 2016 in 15 rural towns in the Eastern Region of Ghana sourced from three groundwater quality clusters (high iron, high salinity, and control). We also assess factors affecting cross-sectional and longitudinal functionality using logistic regression. RESULTS: BH functionality rates ranged between 81 and 87% and were similar across groundwater quality clusters. Of 51 BHs assessed in all three years, 34 (67%) were consistently functional and only 3 (6%) were consistently broken. There was a shift toward proactive payment for water over the course of the study in the control and high-salinity clusters. Payment mechanism, population served, presence of nearby alternative water sources, and groundwater quality cluster were not significant predictors of cross-sectional or longitudinal BH functionality. However, even in the high iron cluster, where water quality is poor and no structured payment mechanism for water exists, BHs are maintained, showing that they are important community resources

Ultralong Copper Phthalocyanine Nanowires with New Crystal Structure and Broad Optical Absorption

The development of molecular nanostructures plays a major role in emerging organic electronic applications, as it leads to improved performance and is compatible with our increasing need for miniaturisation. In particular, nanowires have been obtained from solution or vapour phase and have displayed high conductivity, or large interfacial areas in solar cells. In all cases however, the crystal structure remains as in films or bulk, and the exploitation of wires requires extensive post-growth manipulation as their orientations are random. Here we report copper phthalocyanine (CuPc) nanowires with diameters of 10-100 nm, high directionality and unprecedented aspect ratios. We demonstrate that they adopt a new crystal phase, designated eta-CuPc, where the molecules stack along the long axis. The resulting high electronic overlap along the centimetre length stacks achieved in our wires mediates antiferromagnetic couplings and broadens the optical absorption spectrum. The ability to fabricate ultralong, flexible metal phthalocyanine nanowires opens new possibilities for applications of these simple molecules

Sonoluminescing air bubbles rectify argon

The dynamics of single bubble sonoluminescence (SBSL) strongly depends on the percentage of inert gas within the bubble. We propose a theory for this dependence, based on a combination of principles from sonochemistry and hydrodynamic stability. The nitrogen and oxygen dissociation and subsequent reaction to water soluble gases implies that strongly forced air bubbles eventually consist of pure argon. Thus it is the partial argon (or any other inert gas) pressure which is relevant for stability. The theory provides quantitative explanations for many aspects of SBSL.Comment: 4 page

Decomposition of 1,1-Dichloroethane and 1,1-Dichloroethene in an electron beam generated plasma reactor

An electron beam generated plasma reactor is used to decompose low concentrations (100–3000 ppm) of 1,1-dichloroethane and 1,1-dichloroethene in atmospheric pressure air streams. The energy requirements for 90% and 99% decomposition of each compound are reported as a function of inlet concentration. Dichloroethene decomposition is enhanced by a chlorine radical propagated chain reaction. The chain length of the dichloroethene reaction is estimated to increase with dichloroethene concentration from 10 at 100 ppm initial dichloroethene concentration to 30 at 3000 ppm. Both the dichloroethane and dichloroethene reactions seem to be inhibited by electron scavenging decomposition products. A simple analytic expression is proposed for fitting decomposition data where inhibition effects are important and simple first order kinetics are not observed

Fully Dynamic Maintenance of Arc-Flags in Road Networks

International audienceThe problem of finding best routes in road networks can be solved by applying Dijkstra's shortest paths algorithm. Unfortunately, road networks deriving from real-world applications are huge yielding unsustainable times to compute shortest paths. For this reason, great research efforts have been done to accelerate Dijkstra's algorithm on road networks. These efforts have led to the development of a number of speed-up techniques, as for example Arc-Flags, whose aim is to compute additional data in a preprocessing phase in order to accelerate the shortest paths queries in an on-line phase. The main drawback of most of these techniques is that they do not work well in dynamic scenarios. In this paper we propose a new algorithm to update the Arc-Flags of a graph subject to edge weight decrease operations. To check the practical performances of the new algorithm we experimentally analyze it, along with a previously known algorithm for edge weight increase operations, on real-world road networks subject to fully dynamic sequences of operations. Our experiments show a significant speed-up in the updating phase of the Arc-Flags, at the cost of a small space and time overhead in the preprocessing phase