Village Baseline Study – Site Analysis Report for My Loi, Ky Anh district, Ha Tinh province – Viet Nam

Data collection for the Village Baseline Study (VBS) of My Loi village in the CCAFS benchmark site of central Viet Nam took place on 17- 19 October 2014. Focus group discussions were conducted separately for 45 men and 45 women villagers.. The VBS had three main topics: map of (1) community resources, (2) organizational landscapes, and (3) information networks. A seminar was held in December 2014 to seek participants’ feedback. My Loi village has experienced multiple extreme weather events (temperature and water stresses, storms and typhoons) throughout the years. The main constraints for agricultural development and livelihoods are limited water resources and poor conditions of irrigation systems, which are challenges to improving the agricultural production situation. Moreover, sand and rock mining have caused water pollution, erosion on riverbanks and loss of farmland area. Another constraint is marketing, as villagers are not aware of any organization involved in finding outlets for agricultural products. The potentials for developing innovative climate-smart solutions in the village are several: farmers have experiences and are interested in trying new varieties and adjusting farming calendars to improve the situation. Livestock expansion and agroforests/reforestation hold opportunities for improving household incomes. Furthermore, at least half of the organisations identified in the region are working to address food security issues

"Eigentlich müsste man sich auf 'ne Vorlesung vorbereiten wie ein Sportler auf sein Spiel." - Annäherungen an Grundhaltungen zur Lehre

Im vorliegenden Artikel werden zwei an der Technischen Universität Braunschweig erprobte Wege beschrieben, sich über subjektive Äußerungen Hochschullehrender ihren lehrbezogenen Grundhaltungen zu nähern. Neben den beiden Konzepten werden erste Ergebnisse/Erkenntnisse vorgestellt, Möglichkeiten skizziert, diese in hochschuldidaktischen Curricula zu berücksichtigen, und weitere Forschungsfragen und Vorgehensweisen beschrieben, die zu einem vertieften Verständnis für die Rolle Lehrender im System Hochschule beitragen können. 21.06.2013 | Alice Busch-Karrenberg, Thomas Czerwionka (Braunschweig), Thanh-Thu Phan Tan (Hannover) & Birgit Schaefer-Scholz (Braunschweig

A Pilot Study on Nurse-Led Rounds: Preliminary Data on Patient Contact Time

IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY. Ward rounding has been a historical clinical method of inter-professional collaboration to support inpatient care through the sharing of mental models by exchanging information and discussing plans of care, treatment goals, and discharge plans for the patient. The extant literature reports that rounds are frequently led by doctors with infrequent nurse-physician collaboration and patients’ interactions with doctors during ward rounds tend to be brief. OBJECTIVE. To explore the effects of nurse-led morning ward rounds on patient contact time. DESIGN. An ethnographic prospective observational study comparing nurse-led and physician-led rounds. SETTING. A General Medicine ward at the National University Hospital in Singapore. INTERVENTION. A pilot intervention of nurse-led ward rounds for one week in June 2014. In the pilot intervention, nurses used the SPICES mnemonic to present their patients’ conditions to the clinical teams during morning rounds. MEASURES AND ANALYSES. Two observers shadowed the clinical teams for 57 patients. The amount of time that the clinical teams spent at the bedside of each patient was recorded. RESULTS. The results showed that the average time spent with patients at the bedside was significantly longer for nurse-led rounds compared to physician-led rounds. Also, the average time spent with patients at the bedside trended down toward the end of the 2-hour morning round time for resident-led ward rounds but it remained relatively consistent with an upward trend near the end of the 2-hour morning round for nurse-led rounds. CONCLUSION. The preliminary data suggests that quality time spent with patients at the bedside during morning rounds may be improved by nurse-led rounds

Bilateral renal artery stenosis and epidermal nevus syndrome in a child

Epidermal nevus syndrome is a rare congenital sporadic neuro-ectodermic disorder, characterized by the presence of epidermal nevi in association with various developmental abnormalities of the skin, eyes, nervous, skeletal, cardiovascular and urogenital systems. We describe a 5-year-old boy with conjunctival lipodermoid, cervical and facial sebaceous nevi who presented at 3 years of age with hypertension due to bilateral renal artery stenosis together with multiple vascular anomalies (aorta, celiac trunk, superior mesenteric artery) as shown by magnetic resonance angiography. Systemic arterial hypertension was difficult to control despite combined anti-hypertensive drugs and the surgical repair of the aortic coarctation

Chemical reactions at the graphitic step-edge: changes in product distribution of catalytic reactions as a tool to explore the environment within carbon nanoreactors

A series of explorative cross-coupling reactions have been developed to investigate the local nanoscale environment around catalytically active Pd(II)complexes encapsulated within hollow graphitised nanofiber (GNF). Two new fullerene-containing and fullerene-free Pd(II)Salen catalysts have been synthesised, and their activity and selectivity towards different substrates has been explored in nanoreactors. The catalysts not only show a significant increase in activity and stability upon heterogenisation at the graphitic step-edges inside the GNF channel, but also exhibit a change in selectivity affected by the confinement which alters the distribution of isomeric products of the reaction. Furthermore, the observed selectivity changes reveal unprecedented details regarding the location and orientation of the catalyst molecules inside the GNF nanoreactor, inaccessible by any spectroscopic or microscopic techniques, thus shedding light on the precise reaction environment inside the molecular catalyst-GNF nanoreactor. Keywords: nanoreactor, catalysis, fullerene, salen, cross-couplin

A dynamic T cell–limited checkpoint regulates affinity-dependent B cell entry into the germinal center

Entry into the germinal center requires antigen-bearing B cells to compete for cognate T cell help at the T–B border

Population genomics of <i>Escherichia coli</i> in livestock-keeping households across a rapidly developing urban landscape

Quantitative evidence for the risk of zoonoses and the spread of antimicrobial resistance remains lacking. Here, as part of the UrbanZoo project, we sampled Escherichia coli from humans, livestock and peri-domestic wildlife in 99 households across Nairobi, Kenya, to investigate its distribution among host species in this rapidly developing urban landscape. We performed whole-genome sequencing of 1,338 E. coli isolates and found that the diversity and sharing patterns of E. coli were heavily structured by household and strongly shaped by host type. We also found evidence for inter-household and inter-host sharing and, importantly, between humans and animals, although this occurs much less frequently. Resistome similarity was differently distributed across host and household, consistent with being driven by shared exposure to antimicrobials. Our results indicate that a large, epidemiologically structured sampling framework combined with WGS is needed to uncover strain-sharing events among different host populations in complex environments and the major contributing pathways that could ultimately drive the emergence of zoonoses and the spread of antimicrobial resistance