1,157 research outputs found
'restore to us the necessary BLIZZARDS' : early twentieth-century visions of climatic change
Prompted by Wyndham Lewis’s call in BLAST for a ‘USEFUL LITTLE CHEMIST’ to ‘restore to us the necessary BLIZZARDS’, this paper considers the conceptions of climate and climatic change – natural and anthropogenic – that were in circulation in the early twentieth century. Engaging with the writing of scientists, journalists, novelists, and avant-garde polemicists, it examines early twentieth-century iterations of the notion that climate determines culture, the period’s awareness of past climatic changes, the theories advanced to explain these changes, and the attitudes taken towards the possibility of human-induced climatic change.PostprintPeer reviewe
Radiological and mid- to long-term patient-reported outcome after stabilization of traumatic thoraco-lumbar spinal fractures using an expandable vertebral body replacement implant
Background
For the treatment of unstable thoraco-lumbar burst fractures, a combined posterior and anterior stabilization instead of a posterior-only instrumentation is recommend in the current literature due to the instability of the anterior column. Data on restoring the bi-segmental kyphotic endplate angle (BKA) with expandable vertebral body replacements (VBR) and on the mid- to long-term patient-reported outcome measures (PROM) is sparse.
Methods
A retrospective cohort study of patients with traumatic thoraco-lumbar spinal fractures treated with an expandable VBR implant (Obelisc™, Ulrich Medical, Germany) between 2001 and 2015 was conducted. Patient and treatment characteristics were evaluated retrospectively. Radiological data acquisition was completed pre- and postoperatively, 6 months and at least 2 years after the VBR surgery. The BKA was measured and fusion-rates were assessed. The SF-36, EQ-5D and ODI questionnaires were evaluated prospectively.
Results
Ninety-six patients (25 female, 71 male; age: 46.1 ± 12.8 years) were included in the study. An AO Type A4 fracture was seen in 80/96 cases (83.3%). Seventy-three fractures (76.0%) were located at the lumbar spine. Intraoperative reduction of the BKA in n = 96 patients was 10.5 ± 9.4° (p < 0.01). A loss of correction of 1.0 ± 2.8° at the first follow-up (t1) and of 2.4 ± 4.0° at the second follow-up (t2) was measured (each p < 0.05). The bony fusion rate was 97.9%. The total revision rate was 4.2%. Fifty-one patients (53.1% of included patients; age: 48.9 ± 12.4 years) completed the PROM questionnaires after 106.4 ± 44.3 months and therefore were assigned to the respondent group. The mean ODI score was 28.2 ± 18.3%, the mean EQ-5D VAS reached 60.7 ± 4.1 points. Stratified SF-36 results (ISS < and ≥ 16) were lower compared to a reference population.
Conclusion
The treatment of traumatic thoraco-lumbar fractures with an expandable VBR implant lead to a high rate of bony fusion. A significant correction of the BKA could be achieved and no clinically relevant loss of reduction occurred during the follow-up. Even though health related quality of life did not reach the normative population values, overall satisfactory results were reported
A Community in Life and Death: The Late Neolithic Megalithic Tomb at Alto de Reinoso (Burgos, Spain)
The analysis of the human remains from the megalithic tomb at Alto de Reinoso represents
the widest integrative study of a Neolithic collective burial in Spain. Combining archaeology,
osteology, molecular genetics and stable isotope analysis (87Sr/86Sr, δ15N, δ13C) it provides
a wealth of information on the minimum number of individuals, age, sex, body height,
pathologies, mitochondrial DNA profiles, kinship relations, mobility, and diet. The grave was
in use for approximately one hundred years around 3700 cal BC, thus dating from the Late
Neolithic of the Iberian chronology. At the bottom of the collective tomb, six complete and
six partial skeletons lay in anatomically correct positions. Above them, further bodies represented
a subsequent and different use of the tomb, with almost all of the skeletons exhibiting
signs of manipulation such as missing skeletal parts, especially skulls. The megalithic
monument comprised at least 47 individuals, including males, females, and subadults,
although children aged 0–6 years were underrepresented. The skeletal remains exhibited a
moderate number of pathologies, such as degenerative joint diseases, healed fractures,
cranial trauma, and a low intensity of caries. The mitochondrial DNA profiles revealed a pattern
pointing to a closely related local community with matrilineal kinship patterns. In some
cases adjacent individuals in the bottom layer showed familial relationships. According to
their strontium isotope ratios, only a few individuals were likely to have spent their early
childhood in a different geological environment, whilst the majority of individuals grew up locally. Carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis, which was undertaken to reconstruct the dietary
habits, indicated that this was a homogeneous group with egalitarian access to food.
Cereals and small ruminants were the principal sources of nutrition. These data fit in well
with a lifestyle typical of sedentary farming populations in the Spanish Meseta during this
period of the Neolithi
Test-retest reliability of the ABILHAND Questionnaire in persons with chronic stroke.
To be able to evaluate recovery, effects of rehabilitation interventions and changes over time, reliable and valid outcome measures are needed. The ABILHAND Questionnaire is a measure of self-reported ability to perform complex daily hand activities. It is commonly used in stroke rehabilitation, but data about the measurement variability are missing
Ancient DNA from European Early Neolithic Farmers Reveals Their Near Eastern Affinities
The first farmers from Central Europe reveal a genetic affinity to modern-day populations from the Near East and Anatolia, which suggests a significant demographic input from this area during the early Neolithic
Cleavage at a V(D)J recombination signal requires only RAG1 and RAG2 proteins and occurs in two steps
Formation of double-strand breaks at recombination signal sequences is an
early step in V(D)J recombination. Here we show that purified RAG1 and
RAG2 proteins are sufficient to carry out this reaction. The cleavage
reaction can be divided into two distinct steps. First, a nick is
introduced at the 5' end of the signal sequence. The other strand is then
broken, resulting in a hairpin structure at the coding end and a blunt,
5'-phosphorylated signal end. The hairpin is made as a direct consequence
of the cleavage mechanism. Nicking and hairpin formation each require the
presence of a signal sequence and both RAG proteins
Massive migration from the steppe is a source for Indo-European languages in Europe
We generated genome-wide data from 69 Europeans who lived between 8,000-3,000
years ago by enriching ancient DNA libraries for a target set of almost four
hundred thousand polymorphisms. Enrichment of these positions decreases the
sequencing required for genome-wide ancient DNA analysis by a median of around
250-fold, allowing us to study an order of magnitude more individuals than
previous studies and to obtain new insights about the past. We show that the
populations of western and far eastern Europe followed opposite trajectories
between 8,000-5,000 years ago. At the beginning of the Neolithic period in
Europe, ~8,000-7,000 years ago, closely related groups of early farmers
appeared in Germany, Hungary, and Spain, different from indigenous
hunter-gatherers, whereas Russia was inhabited by a distinctive population of
hunter-gatherers with high affinity to a ~24,000 year old Siberian6 . By
~6,000-5,000 years ago, a resurgence of hunter-gatherer ancestry had occurred
throughout much of Europe, but in Russia, the Yamnaya steppe herders of this
time were descended not only from the preceding eastern European
hunter-gatherers, but from a population of Near Eastern ancestry. Western and
Eastern Europe came into contact ~4,500 years ago, as the Late Neolithic Corded
Ware people from Germany traced ~3/4 of their ancestry to the Yamnaya,
documenting a massive migration into the heartland of Europe from its eastern
periphery. This steppe ancestry persisted in all sampled central Europeans
until at least ~3,000 years ago, and is ubiquitous in present-day Europeans.
These results provide support for the theory of a steppe origin of at least
some of the Indo-European languages of Europe
System size and centrality dependence of the balance function in A+A collisions at sqrt[sNN]=17.2 GeV
Electric charge correlations were studied for p+p, C+C, Si+Si, and centrality selected Pb+Pb collisions at sqrt[sNN]=17.2 GeV with the NA49 large acceptance detector at the CERN SPS. In particular, long-range pseudorapidity correlations of oppositely charged particles were measured using the balance function method. The width of the balance function decreases with increasing system size and centrality of the reactions. This decrease could be related to an increasing delay of hadronization in central Pb+Pb collisions
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