The SBA survey 2008

Most readers will already know that in the late spring of this year the SBA once again conducted a survey of members. This latest survey was a follow-up to the survey conducted in 2006 which produced some interesting results about the pattern of beekeeping in Scotland and the longer term effects of Varroa infestation on managed honeybees in Scotland

Modulation of type IV collagenase and plasminogen activator in a hamster fibrosarcoma by basement membrane components and lung fibroblasts.

The effect of basement membrane components (laminin, fibronectin and type IV collagen) and lung fibroblasts on type IV collagenase and plasminogen activator activity was investigated in a primary HSV-2-induced hamster fibrosarcoma, and its in vivo derived sublines and in vitro derived clones of varying metastatic potential. Fibronectin and type IV collagen were ineffective at influencing the expression of either type IV collagenase or plasminogen activator activity. Laminin, however, at concentrations of 1-10 micrograms ml-1 added to the serum-free culture supernatants, increased the release of type IV collagenase by up to 100% for the parental cell line. Three highly metastatic sublines (two from in vivo origin and one from in vitro cloning) showed increases of up to 300%. Non-metastatic sublines (two from in vivo origin and one from in vitro cloning), however, showed no increase in type IV collagenase activity. Plasminogen activator release from either the parental line cell or its metastatic sublines and clones, was unaffected by the addition of laminin. Addition of tumour cells to lung fibroblast monolayers resulted in an increased expression of PA activity in the supernatant, whilst type IV collagenase activity was reduced

Interventions for preventing delirium in hospitalised non-ICU patients

BACKGROUND: Delirium is a common mental disorder, which is distressing and has serious adverse outcomes in hospitalised patients. Prevention of delirium is desirable from the perspective of patients and carers, and healthcare providers. It is currently unclear, however, whether interventions for preventing delirium are effective. OBJECTIVES: To assess the effectiveness of interventions for preventing delirium in hospitalised non-Intensive Care Unit (ICU) patients. SEARCH METHODS: We searched ALOIS - the Cochrane Dementia and Cognitive Improvement Group's Specialized Register on 4 December 2015 for all randomised studies on preventing delirium. We also searched MEDLINE (Ovid SP), EMBASE (Ovid SP), PsycINFO (Ovid SP), Central (The Cochrane Library), CINAHL (EBSCOhost), LILACS (BIREME), Web of Science core collection (ISI Web of Science), ClinicalTrials.gov and the WHO meta register of trials, ICTRP. SELECTION CRITERIA: We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of single and multi- component non-pharmacological and pharmacological interventions for preventing delirium in hospitalised non-ICU patients. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Two review authors examined titles and abstracts of citations identified by the search for eligibility and extracted data independently, with any disagreements settled by consensus. The primary outcome was incidence of delirium; secondary outcomes included duration and severity of delirium, institutional care at discharge, quality of life and healthcare costs. We used risk ratios (RRs) as measures of treatment effect for dichotomous outcomes; and between group mean differences and standard deviations for continuous outcomes. MAIN RESULTS: We included 39 trials that recruited 16,082 participants, assessing 22 different interventions or comparisons. Fourteen trials were placebo-controlled, 15 evaluated a delirium prevention intervention against usual care, and 10 compared two different interventions. Thirty-two studies were conducted in patients undergoing surgery, the majority in orthopaedic settings. Seven studies were conducted in general medical or geriatric medicine settings.We found multi-component interventions reduced the incidence of delirium compared to usual care (RR 0.69, 95% CI 0.59 to 0.81; seven studies; 1950 participants; moderate-quality evidence). Effect sizes were similar in medical (RR 0.63, 95% CI 0.43 to 0.92; four studies; 1365 participants) and surgical settings (RR 0.71, 95% CI 0.59 to 0.85; three studies; 585 participants). In the subgroup of patients with pre-existing dementia, the effect of multi-component interventions remains uncertain (RR 0.90, 95% CI 0.59 to 1.36; one study, 50 participants; low-quality evidence).There is no clear evidence that cholinesterase inhibitors are effective in preventing delirium compared to placebo (RR 0.68, 95% CI, 0.17 to 2.62; two studies, 113 participants; very low-quality evidence).Three trials provide no clear evidence of an effect of antipsychotic medications as a group on the incidence of delirium (RR 0.73, 95% CI, 0.33 to 1.59; 916 participants; very low-quality evidence). In a pre-planned subgroup analysis there was no evidence for effectiveness of a typical antipsychotic (haloperidol) (RR 1.05, 95% CI 0.69 to 1.60; two studies; 516 participants, low-quality evidence). However, delirium incidence was lower (RR 0.36, 95% CI 0.24 to 0.52; one study; 400 participants, moderate-quality evidence) for patients treated with an atypical antipsychotic (olanzapine) compared to placebo (moderate-quality evidence).There is no clear evidence that melatonin or melatonin agonists reduce delirium incidence compared to placebo (RR 0.41, 95% CI 0.09 to 1.89; three studies, 529 participants; low-quality evidence).There is moderate-quality evidence that Bispectral Index (BIS)-guided anaesthesia reduces the incidence of delirium compared to BIS-blinded anaesthesia or clinical judgement (RR 0.71, 95% CI 0.60 to 0.85; two studies; 2057 participants).It is not possible to generate robust evidence statements for a range of additional pharmacological and anaesthetic interventions due to small numbers of trials, of variable methodological quality. AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: There is strong evidence supporting multi-component interventions to prevent delirium in hospitalised patients. There is no clear evidence that cholinesterase inhibitors, antipsychotic medication or melatonin reduce the incidence of delirium. Using the Bispectral Index to monitor and control depth of anaesthesia reduces the incidence of postoperative delirium. The role of drugs and other anaesthetic techniques to prevent delirium remains uncertain

Diamond-nitrogen-vacancy electronic and nuclear spin-state anticrossings under weak transverse magnetic fields

We report on detailed studies of electronic and nuclear spin states in the diamond-nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center under weak transverse magnetic fields. We numerically predict and experimentally verify a previously unobserved NV hyperfine level anticrossing (LAC) occurring at bias fields of tens of gauss—two orders of magnitude lower than previously reported LACs at ∼ 500 and ∼ 1000 G axial magnetic fields. We then discuss how the NV ground-state Hamiltonian can be manipulated in this regime to tailor the NV's sensitivity to environmental factors and to map into the nuclear spin state.United States. Dept. of Defense. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering (Air Force Contract No. FA8721-05-C-0002)United States. Office of Naval Research (N00014-13-1-0316)United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( Office of the Chief Technologist’s Space Technology Research Fellowship

The evolution of nuclear auxin signalling

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The plant hormone auxin directs many aspects of plant growth and development. To understand the evolution of auxin signalling, we compared the genes encoding two families of crucial transcriptional regulators, <it>AUXIN RESPONSE FACTOR </it>(<it>ARF</it>) and <it>AUXIN/INDOLE-3-ACETIC ACID </it>(<it>Aux/IAA</it>), among flowering plants and two non-seed plants, <it>Physcomitrella patens </it>and <it>Selaginella moellendorffii</it>.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Comparative analysis of the <it>P. patens, S. moellendorffii </it>and <it>Arabidopsis thaliana </it>genomes suggests that the well-established rapid transcriptional response to auxin of flowering plants, evolved in vascular plants after their divergence from the last common ancestor shared with mosses. An N-terminally truncated ARF transcriptional activator is encoded by the genomes of <it>P. patens </it>and <it>S. moellendorffii</it>, and suggests a supplementary mechanism of nuclear auxin signalling, absent in flowering plants. Site-specific analyses of positive Darwinian selection revealed relatively high rates of synonymous substitution in the <it>A. thaliana </it>ARFs of classes IIa (and their closest orthologous genes in poplar) and Ib, suggesting that neofunctionalization in important functional regions has driven the evolution of auxin signalling in flowering plants. Primary auxin responsive gene families (GH3, SAUR, LBD) show different phylogenetic profiles in <it>P. patens</it>, <it>S. moellendorffii </it>and flowering plants, highlighting genes for further study.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The genome of <it>P. patens </it>encodes all of the basic components necessary for a rapid auxin response. The spatial separation of the Q-rich activator domain and DNA-binding domain suggests an alternative mechanism of transcriptional control in <it>P. patens </it>distinct from the mechanism seen in flowering plants. Significantly, the genome of <it>S. moellendorffii </it>is predicted to encode proteins suitable for both methods of regulation.</p

Calculating excitation energies by extrapolation along adiabatic connections

In this paper, an alternative method to range-separated linear-response time-dependent density-functional theory and perturbation theory is proposed to improve the estimation of the energies of a physical system from the energies of a partially interacting system. Starting from the analysis of the Taylor expansion of the energies of the partially interacting system around the physical system, we use an extrapolation scheme to improve the estimation of the energies of the physical system at an intermediate point of the range-separated or linear adiabatic connection where either the electron--electron interaction is scaled or only the long-range part of the Coulomb interaction is included. The extrapolation scheme is first applied to the range-separated energies of the helium and beryllium atoms and of the hydrogen molecule at its equilibrium and stretched geometries. It improves significantly the convergence rate of the energies toward their exact limit with respect to the range-separation parameter. The range-separated extrapolation scheme is compared with a similar approach for the linear adiabatic connection, highlighting the relative strengths and weaknesses of each approach.Comment: to appear in Phys. Rev.