Walk well:a randomised controlled trial of a walking intervention for adults with intellectual disabilities: study protocol

Background - Walking interventions have been shown to have a positive impact on physical activity (PA) levels, health and wellbeing for adult and older adult populations. There has been very little work carried out to explore the effectiveness of walking interventions for adults with intellectual disabilities. This paper will provide details of the Walk Well intervention, designed for adults with intellectual disabilities, and a randomised controlled trial (RCT) to test its effectiveness. Methods/design - This study will adopt a RCT design, with participants allocated to the walking intervention group or a waiting list control group. The intervention consists of three PA consultations (baseline, six weeks and 12 weeks) and an individualised 12 week walking programme. A range of measures will be completed by participants at baseline, post intervention (three months from baseline) and at follow up (three months post intervention and six months from baseline). All outcome measures will be collected by a researcher who will be blinded to the study groups. The primary outcome will be steps walked per day, measured using accelerometers. Secondary outcome measures will include time spent in PA per day (across various intensity levels), time spent in sedentary behaviour per day, quality of life, self-efficacy and anthropometric measures to monitor weight change. Discussion - Since there are currently no published RCTs of walking interventions for adults with intellectual disabilities, this RCT will examine if a walking intervention can successfully increase PA, health and wellbeing of adults with intellectual disabilities

Post-orogenic shoshonitic magmas of the Yzerfontein pluton, South Africa: the 'smoking gun' of mantle melting and crustal growth during Cape granite genesis?

The post-orogenic Yzerfontein pluton, in the Saldania Belt of South Africa was constructed through numerous injections of shoshonitic magmas. Most magma compositions are adequately modelled as products of fractionation, but the monzogranites and syenogranites may have a separate origin. A separate high-Mg mafic series has a less radiogenic mantle source. Fine-grained magmatic enclaves in the intermediate shoshonitic rocks are autoliths. The pluton was emplaced between 533 ± 3 and 537 ± 3 Ma (LASF-ICP-MS U–Pb zircon), essentially synchronously with many granitic magmas of the Cape Granite Suite (CGS). Yzerfontein may represent a high-level expression of the mantle heat source that initiated partial melting of the local crust and produced the CGS granitic magmas, late in the Saldanian Orogeny. However, magma mixing is not evident at emplacement level and there are no magmatic kinships with the I-type granitic rocks of the CGS. The mantle wedge is inferred to have been enriched during subduction along the active continental margin. In the late- to post-orogenic phase, the enriched mantle partially melted to produce heterogeneous magma batches, exemplified by those that formed the Yzerfontein pluton, which was further hybridized through minor assimilation of crustal materials. Like Yzerfontein, the small volumes of mafic rocks associated with many batholiths, worldwide, are probably also lowvolume, high-level expressions of crustal growth through the emplacement of major amounts of mafic magma into the deep crust.IS

Monitoring veld burns using satellite imagery

No Abstract. African Journal of Range and Forage Science Vol. 18 (1)1983: pp.131_13

Immigrants and Refugees: From Social Disaffection to Perceived Threat

Immigrants and refugees are today represented as a threat by a significant number of Europeans and constitute a topic that divides Governments and is at the centre of the agenda of new European extreme right-wing. This chapter presents a new approach and innovative hypotheses about the factors underlying the representation of immigrants and refugees as a threat, and their role in legitimizing discrimination, social inequalities and the development of anti-immigrant and anti-refugee public policies. Our approach is based on the hypothesis that immigrants and refugees are perceived as a threat to individual and collective life projects, particularly by those experiencing a sense of social disaffection (i.e., a generalized feeling that conjointly expresses dissatisfaction with life, perception of lack of control over life and distrust of the social system’s nuclear institutions). Using new data from the European Social Survey, we propose an analytical model specifying the correlates of threat perceptions and the mediating role of threat on the relationship between social disaffection and opposition to immigration and refugees in Europe. Results have shown that the sense of threat is related to right-wing political positioning, exclusive national identity, anti-universalistic values and, more importantly, with the sense of social disaffection. Significantly, threat perceptions play a legitimating role in the relationship between social disaffection and opposition to immigration and to hosting refugees. We further discuss the theoretical and socio-political implications of our approach to the study of threat in the context of contemporary social dynamics.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Same-admission versus interval cholecystectomy for mild gallstone pancreatitis (PONCHO): a multicentre randomised controlled trial

Background In patients with mild gallstone pancreatitis, cholecystectomy during the same hospital admission might reduce the risk of recurrent gallstone-related complications, compared with the more commonly used strategy of interval cholecystectomy. However, evidence to support same-admission cholecystectomy is poor, and concerns exist about an increased risk of cholecystectomy-related complications with this approach. In this study, we aimed to compare same-admission and interval cholecystectomy, with the hypothesis that same-admission cholecystectomy would reduce the risk of recurrent gallstone-related complications without increasing the difficulty of surgery. Methods For this multicentre, parallel-group, assessor-masked, randomised controlled superiority trial, inpatients recovering from mild gallstone pancreatitis at 23 hospitals in the Netherlands (with hospital discharge foreseen within 48 h) were assessed for eligibility. Adult patients (aged >= 18 years) were eligible for randomisation if they had a serum C-reactive protein concentration less than 100 mg/L, no need for opioid analgesics, and could tolerate a normal oral diet. Patients with American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) class III physical status who were older than 75 years of age, all ASA class IV patients, those with chronic pancreatitis, and those with ongoing alcohol misuse were excluded. A central study coordinator randomly assigned eligible patients (1: 1) by computer-based randomisation, with varying block sizes of two and four patients, to cholecystectomy within 3 days of randomisation (same-admission cholecystectomy) or to discharge and cholecystectomy 25-30 days after randomisation (interval cholecystectomy). Randomisation was stratified by centre and by whether or not endoscopic sphincterotomy had been done. Neither investigators nor participants were masked to group assignment. The primary endpoint was a composite of readmission for recurrent gallstone-related complications (pancreatitis, cholangitis, cholecystitis, choledocholithiasis needing endoscopic intervention, or gallstone colic) or mortality within 6 months after randomisation, analysed by intention to treat. The trial was designed to reduce the incidence of the primary endpoint from 8% in the interval group to 1% in the same-admission group. Safety endpoints included bile duct leakage and other complications necessitating re-intervention. This trial is registered with Current Controlled Trials, number ISRCTN72764151, and is complete. Findings Between Dec 22, 2010, and Aug 19, 2013, 266 inpatients from 23 hospitals in the Netherlands were randomly assigned to interval cholecystectomy (n= 137) or same-admission cholecystectomy (n= 129). One patient from each group was excluded from the final analyses, because of an incorrect diagnosis of pancreatitis in one patient (in the interval group) and discontinued follow-up in the other (in the same-admission group). The primary endpoint occurred in 23 (17%) of 136 patients in the interval group and in six (5%) of 128 patients in the same-admission group (risk ratio 0.28, 95% CI 0.12-0.66; p= 0.002). Safety endpoints occurred in four patients: one case of bile duct leakage and one case of postoperative bleeding in each group. All of these were serious adverse events and were judged to be treatment related, but none led to death. Interpretation Compared with interval cholecystectomy, same-admission cholecystectomy reduced the rate of recurrent gallstone-related complications in patients with mild gallstone pancreatitis, with a very low risk of cholecystectomy-related complications