Effectiveness of an influenza vaccine programme for care home staff to prevent death, morbidity, and health service use among residents: cluster randomised controlled trial

Objective To determine whether vaccination of care home staff against influenza indirectly protects residents.Design Pair matched cluster randomised controlled trial.Setting Large private chain of UK care homes during the winters of 2003-4 and 2004-5.Participants Nursing home staff (n = 1703) and residents (n = 2604) in 44 care homes (22 intervention homes and 22 matched control homes).Interventions Vaccination offered to staff in intervention homes but not in control homes.Main outcome measures The primary outcome was all cause mortality of residents. Secondary outcomes were influenza-like illness and health service use in residents.Results In 2003-4 vaccine coverage in full time staff was 48.2% (407/884) in intervention homes and 5.9% (51/859) in control homes. In 2004-5 uptake rates were 43.2% (365/844) and 3.5% (28/800). National influenza rates were substaritially below average in 2004-5. In the 2003-4 period of influenza activity significant decreases were found in mortality of residents in intervention homes compared with control homes (rate difference - 5.0 per 100 residents, 95% confidence interval - 7.0 to - 2.0) and in influenza-like illness (P = 0.004), consultations with general practitioners for influenza-like illness (P = 0.008), and admissions to hospital with influenza-like illness (P = 0.009). No significant differences were found in 2004-5 or during periods of no influenza activity in 2003-4.Conclusions Vaccinating care home staff against influenza can prevent deaths, health service use, and influenza-like illness in residents during periods of moderate influenza activity

From quantum fusiliers to high-performance networks

Our objective was to design a quantum repeater capable of achieving one million entangled pairs per second over a distance of 1000km. We failed, but not by much. In this letter we will describe the series of developments that permitted us to approach our goal. We will describe a mechanism that permits the creation of entanglement between two qubits, connected by fibre, with probability arbitrarily close to one and in constant time. This mechanism may be extended to ensure that the entanglement has high fidelity without compromising these properties. Finally, we describe how this may be used to construct a quantum repeater that is capable of creating a linear quantum network connecting two distant qubits with high fidelity. The creation rate is shown to be a function of the maximum distance between two adjacent quantum repeaters.Comment: 2 figures, Comments welcom

Comparison of the tetrahedron method to smearing methods for the electronic density of states

The electronic density of states (DOS) highlights fundamental properties of materials that oftentimes dictate their properties, such as the band gap and Van Hove singularities. In this short note, we discuss how sharp features of the density of states can be obscured by smearing methods (such as the Gaussian and Fermi smearing methods) when calculating the DOS. While the common approach to reach a "converged" density of states of a material is to increase the discrete k-point mesh density, we show that the DOS calculated by smearing methods can appear to converge but not to the correct DOS. Employing the tetrahedron method for Brillouin zone integration resolves key features of the density of states far better than smearing methods

Lake Acidification in the United Kingdom II. A preliminary report to the Department of the Environment under Contract PECD 7/10/167

This report summarises progress made in Department of the Environment project PECD 7/10/167 - "causes and extent of lake acidification in the United Kingdom". It includes data and results available at the present time and indicates where work is still in progress. We expect that all work will be completed on schedule and that a final report will be issued shortly after completion of the contract (March 31st 1990)

The Surface Waters Acidification Project Palaeolimnology Programme: modern diatom/lake-water chemistry data-set

In 1983, when the Surface Waters Acidification Programme (SWAP) was announced, we were asked to design and implement a palaeolimnology sub-project involving scientists from Sweden, Norway, and the UK. Our aim was to reconstruct the acidification history of a range of sites in the three countries and to identify and evaluate the various alternative causes of lake acidification. The results of the project have been published recently (Battarbee et al. 1990, Renberg and Battarbee 1990). Although a comprehensive range of palaeolimnological methods and approaches was used in the study we recognised diatom analysis as central to the entire project. We consequently committed considerable effort to improving our diatom methodology and we were especially concerned with the pursuit of a common approach to diatom taxonomy and pH reconstruction. This effort centred on the creation and analysis of a large data-set of surface-sediment diatom assemblages and associated environmental variables from 170 sites representing the full range of lake types in the acid-sensitive and acidified regions of the three countries

Institutional leadership—the historical case study of a religious organisation

In this chapter, I discuss institutional leadership vis-à-vis the value of poverty. To do so, I analyse how poverty has been conceptualised within a Catholic religious organisation, the Jesuits. The chapter shows that, in the Jesuit case, poverty is not strictly defined. Instead, poverty results from the constant dialogue between the individual Jesuit and their leader. This means that the understanding of what constitutes poverty is neither explicit nor implicit. The chapter contributes to our understanding of institutional leadership as the promotion and protection of values, as per Selznick’s classical definition. However, we discuss a less known part of Selznick’s work in which the ambiguous character of values is highlighted. In this sense, and after the Jesuit case, we advance the possibility that the promotion and protection of institutional values by institutional leaders does not necessarily imply the definition of what a value is. As values are not defined beforehand but the result of a constant dialogue between the leader and their followers, institutional leadership can be revisited and freed from the heroic view that has long characterised it

Cell walls of the dimorphic fungal pathogens Sporothrix schenckii and Sporothrix brasiliensis exhibit bilaminate structures and sloughing of extensive and intact layers

This work was supported by the Fundação Carlos Chagas de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ), grants E-26/202.974/2015 and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), grants 229755/2013-5, Brazil. LMLB is a senior research fellow of CNPq and Faperj. NG acknowledged support from the Wellcome Trust (Trust (097377, 101873, 200208) and MRC Centre for Medical Mycology (MR/N006364/1). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Protein Pattern Formation

Protein pattern formation is essential for the spatial organization of many intracellular processes like cell division, flagellum positioning, and chemotaxis. A prominent example of intracellular patterns are the oscillatory pole-to-pole oscillations of Min proteins in \textit{E. coli} whose biological function is to ensure precise cell division. Cell polarization, a prerequisite for processes such as stem cell differentiation and cell polarity in yeast, is also mediated by a diffusion-reaction process. More generally, these functional modules of cells serve as model systems for self-organization, one of the core principles of life. Under which conditions spatio-temporal patterns emerge, and how these patterns are regulated by biochemical and geometrical factors are major aspects of current research. Here we review recent theoretical and experimental advances in the field of intracellular pattern formation, focusing on general design principles and fundamental physical mechanisms.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figures, review articl