RECOVERING FROM A WORST-CASE SCENARIO: SHOULD NEW ZEALAND IMPLEMENT A DISASTER RECOVERY ACT?

In response to the February 2011 earthquake, Parliament enacted the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act. This emergency legislation provided the executive with extreme powers that extended well beyond the initial emergency response and into the recovery phase. Although New Zealand has the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002, it was unable to cope with the scale and intensity of the Canterbury earthquake sequence. Considering the well-known geological risk facing the Wellington region, this paper will consider whether a standalone “Disaster Recovery Act” should be established to separate an emergency and its response from the recovery phase. Currently, Government policy is to respond reactively to a disaster rather than proactively. In a major event, this typically involves the executive being given the ability to make rules, regulations and policy without the delay or oversight of normal legislative process. In the first part of this paper, I will canvas what a “Disaster Recovery Act” could prescribe and why there is a need to separate recovery from emergency. Secondly, I will consider the shortfalls in the current civil defence recovery framework which necessitates this kind of heavy governmental response after a disaster. In the final section, I will examine ho

Tactile to visual number priming in the left intraparietal cortex of sighted Braille readers

Numbers can be presented in different notations and sensory modalities. It is currently debated to what extent these formats overlap onto a single representation. We asked whether such an overlap exists between symbolic numbers represented in two sensory modalities: Arabic digits and Braille numbers. A unique group of sighted Braille readers underwent extensive Braille reading training and was tested in an fMRI repetition-suppression paradigm with tactile Braille digit primes and visual Arabic digit targets. Our results reveal cross-modal priming: compared to repetition of two different quantities (e.g., Braille "5" and Arabic "2"), repetition of the same quantity presented in two modalities (e.g., Braille "5" and Arabic "5") led to a reduction of activation in several sub-regions of the Intraparietal Sulcus (IPS), a key cortical region for magnitude processing. Thus, in sighted Braille readers, the representations of numbers read by sight and by touch overlap to a degree sufficient to cause repetition suppression. This effect was modulated by the numerical prime-probe distance. Altogether this indicates that the left parietal cortex hosts neural assemblies that are sensitive to numerical information from different notations (number words or Arabic digits) and modalities (tactile and visual)

A shared code for Braille and Arabic digits revealed by cross-modal priming in sighted Braille readers

Quantities can be represented by different formats (e.g. symbolic or non-symbolic) and conveyed via differentmodalities (e.g. tactile or visual). Despite different priming curves: V-shape and step-shape for place and sum-mation coded representation, respectively, the occurrence of priming effect supports the notion of differentformat overlap on the same mental number line. However, little is known about tactile-visual overlap of sym-bolic numerosities i.e. Braille numbers to Arabic digits on the magnitude number representation. Here, in apriming experiment, we tested a unique group of sighted Braille readers to investigate whether tactile Brailledigits would activate a place-coding type of mental number representation (V-shape), analogous to othersymbolic formats. The primes were either tactile Braille digits presented on a Braille display or number wordspresented on a computer screen. The targets were visually presented Arabic digits, and subjects performed anaming task. Our results reveal a V-shape priming function for both prime formats: tactile Braille and writtenwords representing numbers, with strongest priming for primes of identical value (e.g."four"and"4"), and asymmetrical decrease of priming strength for neighboring numbers, which indicates that the observed priming isdue to identity priming. We thus argue that the magnitude information is processed according to a sharedphonological code, independent of the input modality

Characterization of HIV‐1 drug resistance among patients with failure of second‐line combined antiretroviral therapy in central Ethiopia

Background As a consequence of the improved availability of combined antiretroviral therapy (cART) in resource-limited countries, an emergence of HIV drug resistance (HIVDR) has been observed. We assessed the prevalence and spectrum of HIVDR in patients with failure of second-line cART at two HIV clinics in central Ethiopia. Methods HIV drug resistance was analysed in HIV-1-infected patients with virological failure of second-line cART using the geno2pheno application. Results Among 714 patients receiving second-line cART, 44 (6.2%) fulfilled the criteria for treatment failure and 37 were eligible for study inclusion. Median age was 42 years [interquartile range (IQR): 20-45] and 62.2% were male. At initiation of first-line cART, 23 (62.2%) were WHO stage III, mean CD4 cell count was 170.6 (range: 16-496) cells/mu L and median (IQR) HIV-1 viral load was 30 220 (7963-82 598) copies/mL. Most common second-line cART regimens at the time of failure were tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF)-lamivudine (3TC)-ritonavir-boosted atazanavir (ATV/r) (19/37, 51.4%) and zidovudine (ZDV)-3TC-ATV/r (9/37, 24.3%). Genotypic HIV-1 resistance testing was successful in 35 (94.6%) participants. We found at least one resistance mutation in 80% of patients and 40% carried a protease inhibitor (PI)-associated mutation. Most common mutations were M184V (57.1%), Y188C (25.7%), M46I/L (25.7%) and V82A/M (25.7%). High-level resistance against the PI ATV (10/35, 28.6%) and lopinavir (LPV) (5/35, 14.3%) was reported. As expected, no resistance mutations conferring integrase inhibitor resistance were detected. Conclusions We found a high prevalence of resistance mutations, also against PIs (40%), as the national standard second-line cART components. Resistance testing before switching to second- or third-line cART is warranted