Malta Memorial District Nursing Association

From time immemorial, members of religious orders, both male and female, have nursed the poor in their homes as occasion offered. In Britain, in 1859, an experiment by William Rathbone of Liverpool, led to the establishment in that city of an organised service of trained district nurses, badly needed at the time, because of the poverty and squalour in which the majority existed. This, in due course, led to the founding of the Queen’s Institute of District Nursing (Q.I.D.N.). This in turn, provided the first qualified nurses when MMDNA was founded in 1945, to provide an organised Home Nursing and Midwifery service for the Maltese Islands. MMDNA is now well established and has been entrusted by the Department of Health to provide an important part of the National Health Services for these Islands; MMDNA nurses and midwives visit over a thousand homes a day.peer-reviewe

Grouped periorbital comedones

Comedones (blackheads) grouped or closely packed in the periorbital area of the face, and not associated with acne vulgaris, have been described by Crocker (1884), Thin (1888), Morris (1911) and many others. The following investigation was undertaken in order to establish the incidence of grouped periorbital comedones in adults and observe what other conditions were present in persons having these skin lesions.peer-reviewe

Cows fed hydroponic fodder and conventional diet: effects on milk quality

The technology of green fodder production is especially important in arid and semiarid regions. Hydroponics improves on average the amount of crops in the same space, as traditional soil-based farming and can reduce water consumption compared to traditional farming methods. Limited research has been carried out on the use of hydroponic fodder and milk quality. A comparative study of traditional (Malta farm) and hydroponic fodder (Gozo farm) was conducted in Malta with 20 cows of the Holstein\u2013Friesian breed from two farms. Individual and bulk-tank milk samples were collected once a week for a period of 1 month in order to evaluate physical (pH, conductivity, density, freezing point) and chemical (fat, protein, ash, lactose, solid nonfat) parameters as well as mineral (Zn, Cu, Pb, Ba) content. Milk proximate and physical data were processed by analysis of variance (ANOVA) for repeated measures and an ANOVA procedure with farm and time as effects for minerals. The results indicated differences in fat content and pH, showing higher values (P < 0.05) in milk samples of cows fed with the hydroponic rather than the traditional fodder; a significant time effect (P < 0.001) was found in all qualitative analyses except for lactose and salts. Minerals were in the range as reported elsewhere; Cu and Pb content was significantly higher (P < 0.001) in the Gozo farm than the one in Malta, whereas Zn content showed higher values in Malta (P < 0.001) than Gozo. Although the proximate results were similar for both farms, except for the higher fat content for the Gozo farm, principal component analysis (PCA) revealed that milk quality for the Gozo farm was superior to that of the Malta farm. However, further studies are needed to determine the effects of different hydroponic fodder using a large herd size

An MPEG-7 scheme for semantic content modelling and filtering of digital video

Abstract Part 5 of the MPEG-7 standard specifies Multimedia Description Schemes (MDS); that is, the format multimedia content models should conform to in order to ensure interoperability across multiple platforms and applications. However, the standard does not specify how the content or the associated model may be filtered. This paper proposes an MPEG-7 scheme which can be deployed for digital video content modelling and filtering. The proposed scheme, COSMOS-7, produces rich and multi-faceted semantic content models and supports a content-based filtering approach that only analyses content relating directly to the preferred content requirements of the user. We present details of the scheme, front-end systems used for content modelling and filtering and experiences with a number of users

Analysing user physiological responses for affective video summarisation

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Displays. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2009 Elsevier B.V.Video summarisation techniques aim to abstract the most significant content from a video stream. This is typically achieved by processing low-level image, audio and text features which are still quite disparate from the high-level semantics that end users identify with (the ‘semantic gap’). Physiological responses are potentially rich indicators of memorable or emotionally engaging video content for a given user. Consequently, we investigate whether they may serve as a suitable basis for a video summarisation technique by analysing a range of user physiological response measures, specifically electro-dermal response (EDR), respiration amplitude (RA), respiration rate (RR), blood volume pulse (BVP) and heart rate (HR), in response to a range of video content in a variety of genres including horror, comedy, drama, sci-fi and action. We present an analysis framework for processing the user responses to specific sub-segments within a video stream based on percent rank value normalisation. The application of the analysis framework reveals that users respond significantly to the most entertaining video sub-segments in a range of content domains. Specifically, horror content seems to elicit significant EDR, RA, RR and BVP responses, and comedy content elicits comparatively lower levels of EDR, but does seem to elicit significant RA, RR, BVP and HR responses. Drama content seems to elicit less significant physiological responses in general, and both sci-fi and action content seem to elicit significant EDR responses. We discuss the implications this may have for future affective video summarisation approaches

Nutri-epigenetics and gut microbiota : how birth care, bonding and breastfeeding can influence and be influenced?

Maternal lifestyle is an important factor in the programming of an infant’s epigenome, in particular when considered alongside the mode of birth and choice of feeding method (i.e., breastfeeding or formula feeding). Beginning in utero, and during the first two years of an infant’s life, cells acquire an epigenetic memory of the neonatal exposome which can be influential across the entire lifespan. Parental lifestyle (e.g., malnutrition, alcohol intake, smoke, stress, exposure to xenobiotics and/or drugs) can modify both the maternal and paternal epigenome, leading to epigenetic inheritance in their offspring. This review aims to outline the origin of early life modulation of the epigenome, and to share this fundamental concept with all the health care professionals involved in the development and provision of care during childbirth in order to inform future parents and clinicians of the importance of the this process and the key role it plays in the programming of a child’s health.peer-reviewe

ELVIS: Entertainment-led video summaries

© ACM, 2010. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications, 6(3): Article no. 17 (2010) http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1823746.1823751Video summaries present the user with a condensed and succinct representation of the content of a video stream. Usually this is achieved by attaching degrees of importance to low-level image, audio and text features. However, video content elicits strong and measurable physiological responses in the user, which are potentially rich indicators of what video content is memorable to or emotionally engaging for an individual user. This article proposes a technique that exploits such physiological responses to a given video stream by a given user to produce Entertainment-Led VIdeo Summaries (ELVIS). ELVIS is made up of five analysis phases which correspond to the analyses of five physiological response measures: electro-dermal response (EDR), heart rate (HR), blood volume pulse (BVP), respiration rate (RR), and respiration amplitude (RA). Through these analyses, the temporal locations of the most entertaining video subsegments, as they occur within the video stream as a whole, are automatically identified. The effectiveness of the ELVIS technique is verified through a statistical analysis of data collected during a set of user trials. Our results show that ELVIS is more consistent than RANDOM, EDR, HR, BVP, RR and RA selections in identifying the most entertaining video subsegments for content in the comedy, horror/comedy, and horror genres. Subjective user reports also reveal that ELVIS video summaries are comparatively easy to understand, enjoyable, and informative

Structure based inhibitor design targeting glycogen phosphorylase b. Virtual screening, synthesis, biochemical and biological assessment of novel N-acyl-β-d-glucopyranosylamines

Glycogen phosphorylase (GP) is a validated target for the development of new type 2 diabetes treatments. Exploiting the Zinc docking database, we report the in silico screening of 1888 β- D-glucopyranose-NH-CO-R putative GP inhibitors differing only in their R groups. CombiGlide and GOLD docking programs with different scoring functions were employed with the best performing methods combined in a “consensus scoring” approach to ranking of ligand binding affinities for the active site. Six selected candidates from the screening were then synthesized and their inhibitory potency was assessed both in vitro and ex vivo. Their inhibition constants’ values, in vitro, ranged from 5 to 377 µM while two of them were effective at causing inactivation of GP in rat hepatocytes at low µM concentrations. The crystal structures of GP in complex with the inhibitors were defined and provided the structural basis for their inhibitory potency and data for further structure based design of more potent inhibitors

Optimized methods to measure acetoacetate, 3-hydroxybutyrate, glycerol, alanine, pyruvate, lactate and glucose in human blood using a centrifugal analyser with a fluorimetric attachment

Optimized methods are described for the analysis of glucose, lactate, pyruvate, alanine, glycerol, D-3-hydroxybutyrate and acetoacetate in perchloric acid extracts of human blood using the Cobas Bio centrifugal analyser. Glucose and lactate are measured using the photometric mode and other metabolites using the fluorimetric mode. The intra-assay coefficients of variation ranged from 0.7 to 4.1%, except with very low levels of pyruvate and acetoacetate where the coefficients of variation were 7.1 and 12% respectively. All seven metabolites can be measured in a perchloric acid extract of 20 μl of blood. The methods have been optimized with regard to variation in the perchloric acid content of the samples. These variations arise from the method of sample preparation used to minimize changes occurring in metabolite concentration after venepuncture

Integrated geophysical-petrological modeling of lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary in central Tibet using electromagnetic and seismic data

We undertake a petrologically driven approach to jointly model magnetotelluric (MT) and seismic surface wave dispersion (SW) data from central Tibet, constrained by topographic height. The approach derives realistic temperature and pressure distributions within the upper mantle and characterizes mineral assemblages of given bulk chemical compositions as well as water content. This allows us to define a bulk geophysical model of the upper mantle based on laboratory and xenolith data for the most relevant mantle mineral assemblages and to derive corresponding predicted geophysical observables. One-dimensional deep resistivity models were derived for two groups of MT stations. One group, located in the Lhasa Terrane, shows the existence of an electrically conductive upper mantle layer and shallower conductive upper mantle layer for the other group, located in the Qiangtang Terrane. The subsequent one-dimensional integrated petrological-geophysical modeling suggests a lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary (LAB) at a depth of 80¿120 km with a dry lithosphere for the Qiangtang Terrane. In contrast, for the Lhasa Terrane the LAB is located at about 180 km but the presence of a small amount of water in the lithospheric mantle (<0.02 wt%) is required to fit the longest period MT responses. Our results suggest two different lithospheric configurations beneath the southern and central Tibetan Plateau. The model for the Lhasa Terrane implies underthrusting of a moderately wet Indian plate. The model for the Qiangtang Terrane shows relatively thick and conductive crust and implies thin and dry Tibetan lithosphere.Peer Reviewe