Prenatal Vitamin D Supplementation and Child Respiratory Health: A Randomised Controlled Trial

PMCID: PMC3691177This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

A uniform not uniform : an ethnography of police clothing, performance, gender and subculture in neighbourhood policing

Police officers are distinct and unique actors in public spaces. They experience a peculiar familiarity with wider society: they often do not personally know the citizens in the areas they patrol but everyone knows that they are part of the police by their uniform. Beyond the visual iconography of the basic clothing that police officers wear, the characteristics of ‘the police’ are embedded in everything that police officers use to do their job effectively: clothing, equipment (including discretionary equipment) and vehicles. This thesis examines the construction and communication of the police uniform and how this is conveyed through individual roles, ranks and gender.In recent years the police service has undergone a number of changes with the introduction of neighbourhood policing (NP) being one of the most significant. The arrival of neighbourhood police officers, neighbourhood beat officers and police community support officers have enabled a new position from which to analyse the uniform. Within this context, the thesis utilises an in-depth ethnography to examine the practical and symbolic uses of officer uniforms. The research involved approximately seventeen days on patrol (equating to roughly 140 hours) over a period of four months across four research sites in a northern police force.The findings reveal the strength of dominant policing discourses linked to the uniform, gender, identity and performance show the ways that these discourses are also infused and subverted by different sets of meanings and behaviours. The police constables (PCs) and police community support officers (PCSOs) involved in the study were seen to manoeuvre and navigate these contested discourses and fragmented nature of policing culture through the lens of their uniforms. Using Erving Goffman as a theoretical framework, along with the complementary work of Judith Butler (1993; 1999) and Malcolm Young (1991; 1992), this thesis contributes to the theoretical debate on the influence of the police uniform on the wearer; provides a gendered analysis of how equipment, vehicles and accoutrements are used to feminise and masculinise ‘unisex’ police clothing; and it provides an account of how rituals of purification are used in an attempt to avoid the symbolic, moral and physical contamination of the police occupation. The concluding discussion of the thesis presents a number of contributions in relation to contested binaries and polarities present through the use of occupational uniforms in neighbourhood policing

Tourette's syndrome in famous musicians

Tourette's syndrome (TS) is defined as a disorder characterized by multiple motor tics and at least one vocal tic that have lasted for not less than one year. It is a relatively complex neurobehavioral disorder, in which patients may present with coexistent attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder or other behavioral comorbidities. The musical genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) and the rock star Kurt Cobain (1967-1994) may both have suffered from TS, and some contemporary musicians have had their clinical condition confirmed as TS. Our hypothetical diagnosis of TS in Mozart and Cobain is based on the presence of tics and psychiatric comorbidities. In contemporary musicians, such as Michael Wolff, Nick Van Bloss and James Durbin, TS has often only been diagnosed after a considerable delay. This delay in diagnosis and the controversies surrounding the clinical case of Mozart show how difficult a confirmatory diagnosis of this complex disease is

Protein interaction network of alternatively spliced isoforms from brain links genetic risk factors for autism

Increased risk for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is attributed to hundreds of genetic loci. The convergence of ASD variants have been investigated using various approaches, including protein interactions extracted from the published literature. However, these datasets are frequently incomplete, carry biases and are limited to interactions of a single splicing isoform, which may not be expressed in the disease-relevant tissue. Here we introduce a new interactome mapping approach by experimentally identifying interactions between brain-expressed alternatively spliced variants of ASD risk factors. The Autism Spliceform Interaction Network reveals that almost half of the detected interactions and about 30% of the newly identified interacting partners represent contribution from splicing variants, emphasizing the importance of isoform networks. Isoform interactions greatly contribute to establishing direct physical connections between proteins from the de novo autism CNVs. Our findings demonstrate the critical role of spliceform networks for translating genetic knowledge into a better understanding of human diseases

Performance of IFAT, ELISA, direct parasitological examination and PCR on lymph node aspirates for canine visceral leishmaniasis diagnosis

Canine visceral leishmaniasis (CVL) is endemic in numerous Brazilian regions. The greatest difficulty in controlling the disease is the diagnostic limitation. In the present study, the most common tests employed for visceral leishmaniasis diagnosis were compared: immunofluorescence antibody test (IFAT), immunoenzymatic assay (ELISA), direct parasitological examination and polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Samples of lymph node aspirates and blood were collected from 100 dogs that lived in an endemic area (Bauru city, São Paulo state) and from 100 negative controls from a non-endemic area (Botucatu city, São Paulo state). Specificity of both IFAT and PCR was 100% whereas ELISA was 99%. Sensitivities were 97.77, 93.33 and 91.11% respectively for IFAT, ELISA and PCR

A922 Sequential measurement of 1 hour creatinine clearance (1-CRCL) in critically ill patients at risk of acute kidney injury (AKI)

Meeting abstrac