Tackling concentrated worklessness: integrating governance and policy across and within spatial scales

Spatial concentrations of worklessness remained a key characteristic of labour markets in advanced industrial economies, even during the period of decline in aggregate levels of unemployment and economic inactivity evident from the late 1990s to the economic downturn in 2008. The failure of certain localities to benefit from wider improvements in regional and national labour markets points to a lack of effectiveness in adopted policy approaches, not least in relation to the governance arrangements and policy delivery mechanisms that seek to integrate residents of deprived areas into wider local labour markets. Through analysis of practice in the British context, we explore the difficulties of integrating economic and social policy agendas within and across spatial scales to tackle problems of concentrated worklessness. We present analysis of a number of selected case studies aimed at reducing localised worklessness and identify the possibilities and constraints for effective action given existing governance arrangements and policy priorities to promote economic competitiveness and inclusion

Feline Immunodeficiency Virus Integration in B-Cell Lymphoma Identifies a Candidate Tumor Suppressor Gene on Human Chromosome 15q151

Infection with immunosuppressive lentiviruses is associated with increased cancer risk,but most studies have implicated indirect mechanisms as the tumor cells generally lack integrated viral sequences.An exception wasfound in a B-cell lymphoma (Q254) where the tumor cells contained a single integrated feline immunodeficiency virus genome. Additional analysis now indicates that feline immunodeficiency virus integration in lymphoma Q254 resulted in promoter insertion and truncation of a conserved gene on feline chromosome B3, whereas the unaffected allele of the gene appeared to be transcriptionally down-regulated. The orthologous human gene (FLJ12973), is expressed ubiquitously and encodes a WD-repeat protein with structural similarity to DDB2, the small subunit of the xeroderma pigmentosum XP-E complex. Moreover, the gene is located within a region of frequent tumor-specific deletions on chromosome 15q15. These observations demonstrate the direct mutagenic potential of the lentiviruses and identify a new candidate tumor suppressor gene

The statement that folate supraphysiological levels in uremic patients do not cause harm should not go unchallenged

Diversity within the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) reflects the immunological fitness of a population. MHC-linked microsatellite markers provide a simple and inexpensive method for studying MHC diversity in large scale studies. We have developed six MHC-linked microsatellite markers in the domestic cat and used these, in conjunction with five neutral microsatellites, to assess MHC diversity in domestic mixed breed (n = 129) and purebred Burmese (n = 61) cat populations in Australia. The MHC of outbred Australian cats is polymorphic (average allelic richness = 8.52) while the Burmese population has much significantly lower MHC diversity (average allelic richness = 6.81; P<0.01). The MHC-linked microsatellites along with MHC cloning and sequencing demonstrated moderate MHC diversity in cheetahs (n = 13) and extremely low diversity in Gir lions (n = 13). Our MHC-linked microsatellite markers have potential future use in diversity and disease studies in other populations and breeds of cats as well as in wild felid species

Incorporating Breast Cancer Recurrence Events Into Population-Based Cancer Registries Using Medical Claims: Cohort Study.

BACKGROUND: There is a need for automated approaches to incorporate information on cancer recurrence events into population-based cancer registries. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to determine the accuracy of a novel data mining algorithm to extract information from linked registry and medical claims data on the occurrence and timing of second breast cancer events (SBCE). METHODS: We used supervised data from 3092 stage I and II breast cancer cases (with 394 recurrences), diagnosed between 1993 and 2006 inclusive, of patients at Kaiser Permanente Washington and cases in the Puget Sound Cancer Surveillance System. Our goal was to classify each month after primary treatment as pre- versus post-SBCE. The prediction feature set for a given month consisted of registry variables on disease and patient characteristics related to the primary breast cancer event, as well as features based on monthly counts of diagnosis and procedure codes for the current, prior, and future months. A month was classified as post-SBCE if the predicted probability exceeded a probability threshold (PT); the predicted time of the SBCE was taken to be the month of maximum increase in the predicted probability between adjacent months. RESULTS: The Kaplan-Meier net probability of SBCE was 0.25 at 14 years. The month-level receiver operating characteristic curve on test data (20% of the data set) had an area under the curve of 0.986. The person-level predictions (at a monthly PT of 0.5) had a sensitivity of 0.89, a specificity of 0.98, a positive predictive value of 0.85, and a negative predictive value of 0.98. The corresponding median difference between the observed and predicted months of recurrence was 0 and the mean difference was 0.04 months. CONCLUSIONS: Data mining of medical claims holds promise for the streamlining of cancer registry operations to feasibly collect information about second breast cancer events

Recruitment of a critically endangered sawfish into a riverine nursery depends on natural flow regimes

The freshwater sawfish (Pristis pristis) was recently listed as the most Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) animal. The Fitzroy River in the remote Kimberley region of north-western Australia represents a significant stronghold for the species, which uses the freshwater reaches of the river as a nursery. There is also mounting pressure to develop the water resources of the region for agriculture that may substantially affect life history dynamics of sawfish in this system. However, the relationship between hydrology and population dynamics of freshwater sawfish was unknown. We used standardized catch data collected over 17 years to determine how wet season volume influences recruitment of freshwater sawfish into their riverine nursery. Negligible recruitment occurred in years with few days of high flood levels (above 98th percentile of cease-to-flow stage height), and relatively high recruitment occurred in years with 14 or more days of high flood levels. This relationship is indicative of a distinct boom-or-bust cycle, whereby freshwater sawfish rely almost entirely on the few years with large wet season floods, and the brief periods of highest water levels within these years, to replenish juvenile populations in the Fitzroy River nursery. This has direct implications for sustainable water resource management for the Fitzroy River basin in order to preserve one of the last known intact nursery habitats for this globally threatened species

Macular pigment and ocular biometry

This study is designed to investigate the relationship between macular pigment optical density (MPOD) and ocular biometric parameters. The following details were recorded for 180 healthy subjects: demographic profile; best-corrected visual acuity; refractive status; ocular biometric parameters [axial length (AL), anterior chamber depth (ACD), lens thickness (LT) and vitreous chamber depth (VCD)]; ocular dominance; MPOD; serum lutein (L) and zeaxanthin (Z). The mean MPOD (+/- SD) was 0.307 (0.155) and 0.305 (0.149) in the right and left eyes, respectively. No demonstrable relationship was observed between MPOD and AL, ACD or VCD [AL: r = 0.091, p = 0.225; ACD: r = 0.091, p = 0.227; VCD: r = 0.146, p = 0.051]. There was a significant and inverse relationship between LT and MPOD (r = -0.204; p = 0.008), which was attenuated to non-significance after correction for age and height (r = -0.058; p = 0.466). This study fails to identify an association between MPOD and ocular biometric parameters. This is an important negative finding, which allows investigators to study MP, and its relationship with potentially important variables, without the need to correct for ocular biontetric parameters. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Miniature exoplanet radial velocity array I: design, commissioning, and early photometric results

The MINiature Exoplanet Radial Velocity Array (MINERVA) is a US-based observational facility dedicated to the discovery and characterization of exoplanets around a nearby sample of bright stars. MINERVA employs a robotic array of four 0.7 m telescopes outfitted for both high-resolution spec- troscopy and photometry, and is designed for completely autonomous operation. The primary science program is a dedicated radial velocity survey and the secondary science objective is to obtain high precision transit light curves. The modular design of the facility and the flexibility of our hardware allows for both science programs to be pursued simultaneously, while the robotic control software provides a robust and efficient means to carry out nightly observations. In this article, we describe the design of MINERVA including major hardware components, software, and science goals. The telescopes and photometry cameras are characterized at our test facility on the Caltech campus in Pasadena, CA, and their on-sky performance is validated. New observations from our test facility demonstrate sub-mmag photometric precision of one of our radial velocity survey targets, and we present new transit observations and fits of WASP-52b—a known hot-Jupiter with an inflated radius and misaligned orbit. The process of relocating the MINERVA hardware to its final destination at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in southern Arizona has begun, and science operations are expected to commence within 2015