International Study of the Epidemiology of Paediatric Trauma : PAPSA Research Study

Objectives: Trauma is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. The literature on paediatric trauma epidemiology in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is limited. This study aims to gather epidemiological data on paediatric trauma. Methods: This is a multicentre prospective cohort study of paediatric trauma admissions, over 1 month, from 15 paediatric surgery centres in 11 countries. Epidemiology, mechanism of injury, injuries sustained, management, morbidity and mortality data were recorded. Statistical analysis compared LMICs and high-income countries (HICs). Results: There were 1377 paediatric trauma admissions over 31 days; 1295 admissions across ten LMIC centres and 84 admissions across five HIC centres. Median number of admissions per centre was 15 in HICs and 43 in LMICs. Mean age was 7 years, and 62% were boys. Common mechanisms included road traffic accidents (41%), falls (41%) and interpersonal violence (11%). Frequent injuries were lacerations, fractures, head injuries and burns. Intra-abdominal and intra-thoracic injuries accounted for 3 and 2% of injuries. The mechanisms and injuries sustained differed significantly between HICs and LMICs. Median length of stay was 1 day and 19% required an operative intervention; this did not differ significantly between HICs and LMICs. No mortality and morbidity was reported from HICs. In LMICs, in-hospital morbidity was 4.0% and mortality was 0.8%. Conclusion: The spectrum of paediatric trauma varies significantly, with different injury mechanisms and patterns in LMICs. Healthcare structure, access to paediatric surgery and trauma prevention strategies may account for these differences. Trauma registries are needed in LMICs for future research and to inform local policy

Multiwavelength studies of MHD waves in the solar chromosphere: An overview of recent results

The chromosphere is a thin layer of the solar atmosphere that bridges the relatively cool photosphere and the intensely heated transition region and corona. Compressible and incompressible waves propagating through the chromosphere can supply significant amounts of energy to the interface region and corona. In recent years an abundance of high-resolution observations from state-of-the-art facilities have provided new and exciting ways of disentangling the characteristics of oscillatory phenomena propagating through the dynamic chromosphere. Coupled with rapid advancements in magnetohydrodynamic wave theory, we are now in an ideal position to thoroughly investigate the role waves play in supplying energy to sustain chromospheric and coronal heating. Here, we review the recent progress made in characterising, categorising and interpreting oscillations manifesting in the solar chromosphere, with an impetus placed on their intrinsic energetics.Comment: 48 pages, 25 figures, accepted into Space Science Review

Promoting Reuse with Active Reuse Repository Systems

Abstract. Software component-based reuse is diÆcult for software de-velopers to adopt because rst they must know what components exist in a reuse repository and then they must know how to retrieve them easily. This paper describes the concept and implementation of active reuse repository systems that address the above two issues. Active reuse repository systems employ active information delivery mechanisms to deliver potentially reusable components that are relevant to the current development task. They can help software developers reuse components they did not even know existed. They can also greatly reduce the cost of component location because software developers need neither to specify reuse queries explicitly, nor to switch working contexts back and forth between development environments and reuse repository systems.

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Infrastructure: databases, sample banks, methods and facilities for radioecological research

The overarching goal of STAR Work Package 2 "Integration and Infrastructure" is to facilitate the long term sustainable integration of European radioecological research, with an appropriate governance structure. To ensure effective collaboration and integration, an inventory of infrastructure covering radioanalytical equipment and methods, bioinformatic equipment and methods, sample archives, models, expertise and facilities for radioecological research has been created (using an on‐line wiki pages). The infrastructure survey shows that STAR partners and the associated Alliance have a high‐quality infrastructure, extended expertise and competence for radioecological research in Europe. STAR partners have expertise in wide‐ranging areas of radioecology, encompassing the atmospheric dispersion, dosimetry, ecology, ecotoxicology, environmental radiation protection, environmental surveillance, foodstuffs, terrestrial, freshwater and marine radioecology, modelling, radiobiology and radionuclide analytics, emergency preparedness, education and training. Within STAR partners have more than 170 experts are covering these areas. A wide‐ranging expertise is available within STAR partners for radioanalytical methods. Many of the methods are accredited emphasising the remarkably high quality of the partner laboratories. There are also many different holistic bioinformatic equipment and platforms for molecular and biochemical analysisto study (radiation) effects endpoints in Europe. The STAR NoE is highly resourced. The large inventory of specialized facilities and research equipment highlights the ability of the STAR network to perform high‐quality radioecological research. The facilities comprise different kinds of laboratories, such as rooms for: pretreatment of samples, specially constructed experimental systems for radioecological and biological studies and measurement, specialized equipment for radioactivity measurements, radiochemical and biological treatment of samples and organisms. The STAR NoE also holds a large variety of samples from the terrestrial and aquatic environment, and samples from a variety of air samplers collected by a various methods. These samples can be analysed systematically in future to address help address scientific questions in a cost effective manner (e.g. to improve parameter values within WP3 or help meet research requirements outlined in the STAR Strategic Research Agenda see www.star‐radioecology.org). The partners have collected samples during environmental surveillance programmes, within research projects and as a service for customers. Some of the archived samples were collected as early as the 1910s, but most are more recent. Some institutes do not have sample archives of their own, but their samples have been archived elsewhere. Amongst the STAR partners, expertise covers at least 40 different models for radioecological purposes. These covers many challenging fields in area of radioecology like radionuclides atmospheric dispersion, deposition and transport of radioactivity in the aquatic and terrestrial environment. The models are used for calculations of the dose rates, activity concentrations and assessment of risk from ionising radiation. Some of the models are also used for calculating stability diagrams, the equilibrium states, for transport of multiple components, mixed equilibrium and kinetic biogeochemical reactions, as well as various groundwater flow systems, which are designed to simulate aquifer systems. The focus of the models is on human and biota impact assessment. STAR partners are often both users and developers of the models. The SWOT analysis of the STAR infrastructure survey indicated many strengths and opportunities. Most of the strengths are related to integration, knowing and understanding the perspectives of each partner, a wide range of equipment, methods, analytical capacities, and expertise available for common research. This information could also be used for coordination and integration in response to emergencies. In the future, the potential of the infrastructure database is for training and to explore the potential for collaboration between STAR/ALLIANCE and other research organisations, international organizations (e.g. IAEA) and other platforms (NERIS, HERCA, MELODY). The infrastructure database also requires further development, in particular the need for maintenance and updating. The data in the infrastructure wiki pages must be real time