A web-based tool for teaching pharmacy practice competency

Aims to implement and assess the effectiveness of the Strathclyde Computerized Randomized Interactive Prescription Tutor (SCRIPT) in teaching a competency-based undergraduate pharmacy course. Data on students' access to SCRIPT, collected by quantitative electronic data capture, were analyzed to determine student usage patterns and correlations between usage and grades in class assessments. Data on students' perceptions were collected by electronic questionnaire and semistructured interviews. Teaching staff members also were interviewed. Two hundred forty-three students accessed SCRIPT a median of 23 times each. Students accessed SCRIPT predominantly at times outside normal teaching hours and tended to access the tool more often in the 48 hours preceding class assessments. Feedback from students indicated overall satisfaction with the tool to compliment the timetabled teaching sessions but highlighted that more specific feedback on the examples was required. All staff comments were positive. Students and teaching staff members valued SCRIPT as a tool to compliment teaching of the competency-based pharmacy practice classes in the MPharm degree

Iron, silicate, and light co-limitation of three Southern Ocean diatom species

The effect of combined iron, silicate, and light co-limitation was investigated in the three diatom species Actinocyclus sp. Ehrenberg, Chaetoceros dichaeta Ehrenberg, and Chaetoceros debilis Cleve, isolated from the Southern Ocean (SO). Growth of all species was co-limited by iron and silicate, reflected in a significant increase in the number of cell divisions compared to the control. Lowest relative Si uptake and drastic frustule malformation was found under iron and silicate co-limitation in C. dichaeta, while Si limitation in general caused cell elongation in both Chaetoceros species. Higher light intensities similar to SO surface conditions showed a negative impact on growth of C. dichaeta and Actinocyclus sp. and no effect on C. debilis. This is in contrast to the assumed light limitation of SO diatoms due to deep wind driven mixing. Our results suggest that growth and species composition of Southern Ocean diatoms is influenced by a sensitive interaction of the abiotic factors, iron, silicate, and light

Seagrass can mitigate negative ocean acidification effects on calcifying algae

The ultimate effect that ocean acidification (OA) and warming will have on the physiology of calcifying algae is still largely uncertain. Responses depend on the complex interactions between seawater chemistry, global/local stressors and species-specific physiologies. There is a significant gap regarding the effect that metabolic interactions between coexisting species may have on local seawater chemistry and the concurrent effect of OA. Here, we manipulated CO2 and temperature to evaluate the physiological responses of two common photoautotrophs from shallow tropical marine coastal ecosystems in Brazil: the calcifying alga Halimeda cuneata, and the seagrass Halodule wrightii. We tested whether or not seagrass presence can influence the calcification rate of a widespread and abundant species of Halimeda under OA and warming. Our results demonstrate that under elevated CO2, the high photosynthetic rates of H. wrightii contribute to raise H. cuneata calcification more than two-fold and thus we suggest that H. cuneata populations coexisting with H. wrightii may have a higher resilience to OA conditions. This conclusion supports the more general hypothesis that, in coastal and shallow reef environments, the metabolic interactions between calcifying and non-calcifying organisms are instrumental in providing refuge against OA effects and increasing the resilience of the more OA-susceptible species.E.B. would like to thank the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoas de Nível Superior (CAPES) for Masters funding. Funding for this project came from the Synergism grant (CNPq 407365/2013-3). We extend our thanks to the Brazil-based Projeto Coral Vivo and its sponsor PetroBras Ambiental for providing the Marine Mesocosm structure and experimental assistance.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Multifaceted contributions : health workers and smallpox eradication in India

Smallpox eradication in South Asia was a result of the efforts of many grades of health-workers. Working from within the confines of international organisations and government structures, the role of the field officials, who were of various nationalities and also drawn from the cities and rural enclaves of the countries in these regions, was crucial to the development and deployment of policies. However, the role of these personnel is often downplayed in official histories and academic histories, which highlight instead the roles played by a handful of senior officials within the World Health Organization and the federal governments in the sub-continent. This article attempts to provide a more rounded assessment of the complex situation in the field. In this regard, an effort is made to underline the great usefulness of the operational flexibility displayed by field officers, wherein lessons learnt in the field were made an integral part of deploying local campaigns; careful engagement with the communities being targeted, as well as the employment of short term workers from amongst them, was an important feature of this work

Thermodynamic characteristics of the classical n-vector magnetic model in three dimensions

The method of calculating the free energy and thermodynamic characteristics of the classical n-vector three-dimensional (3D) magnetic model at the microscopic level without any adjustable parameters is proposed. Mathematical description is perfomed using the collective variables (CV) method in the framework of the $\rho^4$ model approximation. The exponentially decreasing function of the distance between the particles situated at the N sites of a simple cubic lattice is used as the interaction potential. Explicit and rigorous analytical expressions for entropy,internal energy, specific heat near the phase transition point as functions of the temperature are obtained. The dependence of the amplitudes of the thermodynamic characteristics of the system for $T>T_c$ and $T<T_c$ on the microscopic parameters of the interaction potential are studied for the cases $n=1,2,3$ and $n\to\infty$. The obtained results provide the basis for accurate analysis of the critical behaviour in three dimensions including the nonuniversal characteristics of the system.Comment: 25 pages, 5 figure

Transgenic expression of the dicotyledonous pattern recognition receptor EFR in rice leads to ligand-dependent activation of defense responses

Plant plasma membrane localized pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) detect extracellular pathogen-associated molecules. PRRs such as Arabidopsis EFR and rice XA21 are taxonomically restricted and are absent from most plant genomes. Here we show that rice plants expressing EFR or the chimeric receptor EFR::XA21, containing the EFR ectodomain and the XA21 intracellular domain, sense both Escherichia coli- and Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo)-derived elf18 peptides at sub-nanomolar concentrations. Treatment of EFR and EFR::XA21 rice leaf tissue with elf18 leads to MAP kinase activation, reactive oxygen production and defense gene expression. Although expression of EFR does not lead to robust enhanced resistance to fully virulent Xoo isolates, it does lead to quantitatively enhanced resistance to weakly virulent Xoo isolates. EFR interacts with OsSERK2 and the XA21 binding protein 24 (XB24), two key components of the rice XA21-mediated immune response. Rice-EFR plants silenced for OsSERK2, or overexpressing rice XB24 are compromised in elf18-induced reactive oxygen production and defense gene expression indicating that these proteins are also important for EFR-mediated signaling in transgenic rice. Taken together, our results demonstrate the potential feasibility of enhancing disease resistance in rice and possibly other monocotyledonous crop species by expression of dicotyledonous PRRs. Our results also suggest that Arabidopsis EFR utilizes at least a subset of the known endogenous rice XA21 signaling components

Search for squarks and gluinos with the ATLAS detector in final states with jets and missing transverse momentum using √s=8 TeV proton-proton collision data

A search for squarks and gluinos in final states containing high-p T jets, missing transverse momentum and no electrons or muons is presented. The data were recorded in 2012 by the ATLAS experiment in s√=8 TeV proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, with a total integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb−1. Results are interpreted in a variety of simplified and specific supersymmetry-breaking models assuming that R-parity is conserved and that the lightest neutralino is the lightest supersymmetric particle. An exclusion limit at the 95% confidence level on the mass of the gluino is set at 1330 GeV for a simplified model incorporating only a gluino and the lightest neutralino. For a simplified model involving the strong production of first- and second-generation squarks, squark masses below 850 GeV (440 GeV) are excluded for a massless lightest neutralino, assuming mass degenerate (single light-flavour) squarks. In mSUGRA/CMSSM models with tan β = 30, A 0 = −2m 0 and μ > 0, squarks and gluinos of equal mass are excluded for masses below 1700 GeV. Additional limits are set for non-universal Higgs mass models with gaugino mediation and for simplified models involving the pair production of gluinos, each decaying to a top squark and a top quark, with the top squark decaying to a charm quark and a neutralino. These limits extend the region of supersymmetric parameter space excluded by previous searches with the ATLAS detector

Measurement of the cross-section and charge asymmetry of WW bosons produced in proton-proton collisions at s=8\sqrt{s}=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents measurements of the $W^+ \rightarrow \mu^+\nu$ and $W^- \rightarrow \mu^-\nu$ cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 20.2~\mbox{fb^{-1}}. The precision of the cross-section measurements varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the 1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between them.Comment: 38 pages in total, author list starting page 22, 5 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2017-13

Observation of associated near-side and away-side long-range correlations in √sNN=5.02 TeV proton-lead collisions with the ATLAS detector

Two-particle correlations in relative azimuthal angle (Δϕ) and pseudorapidity (Δη) are measured in √sNN=5.02  TeV p+Pb collisions using the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The measurements are performed using approximately 1  μb-1 of data as a function of transverse momentum (pT) and the transverse energy (ΣETPb) summed over 3.1<η<4.9 in the direction of the Pb beam. The correlation function, constructed from charged particles, exhibits a long-range (2<|Δη|<5) “near-side” (Δϕ∼0) correlation that grows rapidly with increasing ΣETPb. A long-range “away-side” (Δϕ∼π) correlation, obtained by subtracting the expected contributions from recoiling dijets and other sources estimated using events with small ΣETPb, is found to match the near-side correlation in magnitude, shape (in Δη and Δϕ) and ΣETPb dependence. The resultant Δϕ correlation is approximately symmetric about π/2, and is consistent with a dominant cos⁡2Δϕ modulation for all ΣETPb ranges and particle pT

The Caenorhabditis elegans Gene mfap-1 Encodes a Nuclear Protein That Affects Alternative Splicing

RNA splicing is a major regulatory mechanism for controlling eukaryotic gene expression. By generating various splice isoforms from a single pre–mRNA, alternative splicing plays a key role in promoting the evolving complexity of metazoans. Numerous splicing factors have been identified. However, the in vivo functions of many splicing factors remain to be understood. In vivo studies are essential for understanding the molecular mechanisms of RNA splicing and the biology of numerous RNA splicing-related diseases. We previously isolated a Caenorhabditis elegans mutant defective in an essential gene from a genetic screen for suppressors of the rubberband Unc phenotype of unc-93(e1500) animals. This mutant contains missense mutations in two adjacent codons of the C. elegans microfibrillar-associated protein 1 gene mfap-1. mfap-1(n4564 n5214) suppresses the Unc phenotypes of different rubberband Unc mutants in a pattern similar to that of mutations in the splicing factor genes uaf-1 (the C. elegans U2AF large subunit gene) and sfa-1 (the C. elegans SF1/BBP gene). We used the endogenous gene tos-1 as a reporter for splicing and detected increased intron 1 retention and exon 3 skipping of tos-1 transcripts in mfap-1(n4564 n5214) animals. Using a yeast two-hybrid screen, we isolated splicing factors as potential MFAP-1 interactors. Our studies indicate that C. elegans mfap-1 encodes a splicing factor that can affect alternative splicing.National Natural Science Foundation (China) (Grant 30971639)United States. National Institutes of Health (Grant GM24663