Seasonal Changes in Protein Degradabilities of Sandhills Native Range and Subirrigated Meadow Diets and Application of a Metabolizable Protein System

Meadow and range diets increased in digestibility, crude protein. and escape protein during periods of active growth

Genotyping of Entamoeba species in South Africa: diversity, stability, and transmission patterns within families.

Using a recently described polymerase chain reaction-based DNA typing method for Entamoeba histolytica and E. dispar, we investigated the genetic diversity of these species in a geographically restricted region of South Africa. Patterns were stable over time in the same infection, and, with few exceptions, infected family members carried the same strain. However, both species exhibited remarkable variation, with no 2 family groups being infected with the same strain of E. histolytica. Mixed infections were rare. The results indicate that this typing method will be useful in identifying epidemiological linkage between infections

Spitzer, Near-Infrared, and Submillimeter Imaging of the Relatively Sparse Young Cluster, Lynds 988e

We present {\it Spitzer} images of the relatively sparse, low luminosity young cluster L988e, as well as complementary near-infrared (NIR) and submillimeter images of the region. The cluster is asymmetric, with the western region of the cluster embedded within the molecular cloud, and the slightly less dense eastern region to the east of, and on the edge of, the molecular cloud. With these data, as well as with extant H$\alpha$ data of stars primarily found in the eastern region of the cluster, and a molecular $^{13}$CO gas emission map of the entire region, we investigate the distribution of forming young stars with respect to the cloud material, concentrating particularly on the differences and similarities between the exposed and embedded regions of the cluster. We also compare star formation in this region to that in denser, more luminous and more massive clusters already investigated in our comprehensive multi-wavelength study of young clusters within 1 kpc of the Sun.Comment: 21 pages, 6 tables, 13 figures. Full resolution figures at: http://astro.pas.rochester.edu/~tom/Preprints/L988e.pd

Effects of Prebreeding Body Weight or Progestin Exposure Before Breeding on Beef Heifer Performance Through the Second Breeding Season

Two experiments evaluated prebreeding target BW or progestin exposure for heifers developed lighter than traditional recommendations. Experiment 1 evaluated the effects of the system on heifer performance through subsequent calving and rebreeding over 3 yr. Heifers (229 kg) were assigned randomly to be developed to 55% of mature BW (299 kg) before a 45-d breeding season (intensive, INT; n = 119) or 50% of mature BW (272 kg) before a 60-d breeding season (relaxed, RLX; n = 142). Prebreeding and pregnancy diagnosis BW were greater (P ≤ 0.006) for INT than RLX heifers. Overall pregnancy rate did not differ (88.4%; P = 0.51), but RLX heifers had later calving dates (7 d; P \u3c 0.001) and lighter calf weaning weights (194 ± 4 vs. 199 ± 4 kg; P \u3c 0.07) compared with INT heifers. Calf birth weight, calving difficulty, second-calf conception rates, and 2-yr-old retention rate did not differ (P \u3e 0.15) between systems. Cost per pregnant 2- yr-old cow was less for the RLX than the INT heifer development system. Of heifers that failed to become pregnant, a greater proportion (P = 0.07) of heifers in the RLX than in the INT system were prepubertal when the breeding season began. Therefore, a second 2-yr experiment evaluated melengestrol acetate (MGA, 0.5 mg/d) as a means of hastening puberty in heifers developed to 50% of mature BW. Heifers were assigned randomly to the control (n = 103) or MGA (n = 81) treatment for 14 d and were placed with bulls 13 d later for 45 d. Prebreeding and pregnancy diagnosis BW were similar (280 and 380 kg, respectively; P \u3e 0.10) for heifers in the control and MGA treatments. The proportion of heifers pubertal before breeding (74%), pregnancy rate (90%), calving date, calf weaning weight, and second breeding season pregnancy rate (92%) were similar (P \u3e 0.10) between treatments. Developing heifers to 50 or 55% of mature BW resulted in similar overall pregnancy rates, and supplementing the diets of heifers developed to 50% of mature BW with MGA before breeding did not improve reproductive performance

Effects of Prebreeding Body Weight or Progestin Exposure Before Breeding on Beef Heifer Performance Through the Second Breeding Season

Two experiments evaluated prebreeding target BW or progestin exposure for heifers developed lighter than traditional recommendations. Experiment 1 evaluated the effects of the system on heifer performance through subsequent calving and rebreeding over 3 yr. Heifers (229 kg) were assigned randomly to be developed to 55% of mature BW (299 kg) before a 45-d breeding season (intensive, INT; n = 119) or 50% of mature BW (272 kg) before a 60-d breeding season (relaxed, RLX; n = 142). Prebreeding and pregnancy diagnosis BW were greater (P ≤ 0.006) for INT than RLX heifers. Overall pregnancy rate did not differ (88.4%; P = 0.51), but RLX heifers had later calving dates (7 d; P \u3c 0.001) and lighter calf weaning weights (194 ± 4 vs. 199 ± 4 kg; P \u3c 0.07) compared with INT heifers. Calf birth weight, calving difficulty, second-calf conception rates, and 2-yr-old retention rate did not differ (P \u3e 0.15) between systems. Cost per pregnant 2- yr-old cow was less for the RLX than the INT heifer development system. Of heifers that failed to become pregnant, a greater proportion (P = 0.07) of heifers in the RLX than in the INT system were prepubertal when the breeding season began. Therefore, a second 2-yr experiment evaluated melengestrol acetate (MGA, 0.5 mg/d) as a means of hastening puberty in heifers developed to 50% of mature BW. Heifers were assigned randomly to the control (n = 103) or MGA (n = 81) treatment for 14 d and were placed with bulls 13 d later for 45 d. Prebreeding and pregnancy diagnosis BW were similar (280 and 380 kg, respectively; P \u3e 0.10) for heifers in the control and MGA treatments. The proportion of heifers pubertal before breeding (74%), pregnancy rate (90%), calving date, calf weaning weight, and second breeding season pregnancy rate (92%) were similar (P \u3e 0.10) between treatments. Developing heifers to 50 or 55% of mature BW resulted in similar overall pregnancy rates, and supplementing the diets of heifers developed to 50% of mature BW with MGA before breeding did not improve reproductive performance

Effect of Pre-breeding Weight and MGA Supplementation on Heifer Performance

Developing heifers to reach a target weight of 50% of mature body weight at the beginning of the breeding season is an effective method for reducing heifer development cost. Net costs to produce a bred yearling heifer and 2-year-old cow were lower when heifers were developed to 50% rather than 55% of mature body weight, regardless of breeding season length. Administration of oral progestin to heifers developed to 50% mature body weight prior to breeding did not affect reproductive performance during the first breeding season when heifers were exposed to bulls 13 days after the end of progestin treatment

Culture on the Rise: How and Why Cultural Membership Promotes Democratic Politics

Abstract Selectively using Tocqueville, many social scientists suggest that civic participation increases democracy. We go beyond this neo-Tocquevillian model in three ways. First, to capture broader political and economic transformations, we consider different types of participation; results change if we analyze separate participation arenas. Some are declining, but a dramatic finding is the rise of arts and culture. Second, to assess impacts of participation, we study more dimensions of democratic politics, including distinct norms of citizenship and their associated political repertoires. Third, by analyzing global International Social Survey Programme and World Values Survey data, we identify dramatic subcultural differences: the Tocquevillian model is positive, negative, or zero in different subcultures and contexts that we explicate. Keywords Political culture . Civic participation . Citizenship . Voluntary organizations The world is changing, arguably more rapidly and profoundly in recent decades than since the Industrial Revolution. Manufacturing is in deep decline; the percent of manual laborers has fallen by over half in most industrial countries since the 1950s. This in turn has transformed the political party system, as unions decline and left parties seek new social bases. All sorts of new civic groups emerge with global NGOs, the Internet, blogs, and new media/engagement strategies. Yet most thinking and theorizing about society and politics lags. Most of our models of civic groups, participation, and democracy come from an industrial era where class politics and party conflict dominated analysis. And as we think more globally, and look at broader patterns to help reframe the North American/European experience, what is "established" grows less clear. Approximately at the same time as the post-industrial political transformation in the West, the post-1989 transition to democracy in Eastern Europe led analysts to ask a question most ignored in the West-what are the conditions for democracy to flourish? To answer this, political scientists rediscovered Alexis de Tocqueville. Chief among them was Robert D. Putnam, who in Bowling Alone enshrined Tocqueville as "patron saint" of the social capital approach to emphasize the civic Int J Polit Cult Soc DOI 10.1007/s10767-013-9170-7 F. C. da Silva (*) : T. N. Clark : S. Cabaço University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] T. N. Clark e-mail: [email protected] S. Cabaço e-mail: [email protected] virtues of participation in voluntary social organizations Yet, if we break out participation into its components, we find dramatic differences from the "bowling alone" story. Voting and participation in general politics has declined in many countries since the 1980s, as has been widely reported. But barely noted is the rise of the arts and culture in these same years, even though some World Values Survey items suggest massive increases in arts and culture participation in various countries. 1 This is all the more surprising given its ubiquitous character. From mayors' agendas for urban renewal to the general population's practices, the arts have become a major area of political interest, economic investment, and self-realization in most developed countries. This global rise of arts and culture has been largely ignored until now for two main reasons. On one hand, most studies on the arts are case studies whose authors have not sought to explore the broader and the political implications of arts participation. 2 On the other hand, leading quantitative studies of arts and culture participation tend to focus on the traditional arts (live theater, symphony concerts, visiting museums) and omit such new activities as playing in a small band and many digital arts (graphic design, video, web and interactive design, animation). Still, there is by no means consensus here: rather many if not most writings on the arts suggest a decline rather than growth in recent decades. The main resolution of this conflict is to focus on what types of art and culture. The more established "high" art like classical music concerts, opera, and museum attendance show stability or decline in many countries. This has led to a sense of crisis in many arts organizations, like the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts which commissioned multiple studies. Many showed the classic decline of the "benchmark" high arts, but Novak- 1 Data from World Values Survey of national samples of citizens in each country. Question: A066. "Please look carefully at the following of voluntary organizations and activities and say…which if any do you belong to? Education, Arts, Music or Cultural Activities." In Canada, a study on citizens' preferences regarding federal spending points in the same direction, by finding that one of the few items that show significant change between 1994 and 2010 is support for "arts and culture," which climbed from 15 to 30 %. See http://www.queensu.ca/cora/_files/fc2010report.pdf 2 Most studies on the arts are case studies whose authors have not sought to explore the broader and the political implications of arts participation: see, e.g. Silva et al. This article discusses the political implications of what we call "the rise of culture." The rise of arts and culture, far from being an anomaly, is part and parcel of a much broader and deeper set of changes in an emerging form of politics lived by many, especially younger persons. It is a strategic research site where our litmus test results flag much broader and deeper changes, if we look. Culture can be about politics as well as personal identity. It can be part of one's job, but is more likely part of consumption-in a world where political candidates in their campaigns and actions stress consumption issues increasingly. Arts and culture may have some direct economic implications, but is more generally about meaning and value. For some in a secular but idea and image-driven world, music and books and their related activities replace the church and god and the functions of religion in earlier eras. For young persons breaking with their families and religious and work backgrounds, a charismatic singer like Madonna or Bruce Springsteen is more than entertainment. A reading group discussing Nietzsche, Marx, or Baudrillard can transform its members' thinking. While sympathetic towards the hermeneutically inspired "cultural turn" in American sociology, we seek to complement it with cross-national surveybased data, as this is the only way to capture broad, global sociopolitical changes. Analysts have sought to capture these profound sociopolitical changes with labels like postindustrial society, the knowledge economy, the third way, neo-liberalism, the creative class or economy, the consumer society, post-modernism, and more. What these have in common is stressing that the rules of many past models no long seem to work or demand qualification. How do any others specifically link to the growing salience of culture and the arts in the past few decades (see Our past work documented elements of this structural socioeconomic change as the rise of the "new political culture" (henceforth NPC). This original blend of social liberalism and fiscal conservatism was first identified in the 1970s urban America. What drives the shift toward the NPC? Seven general elements have been suggested to help understand the emergence of the NPC: (1) the classic left-right dimension has been transformed; immigration, women, and many new issues no longer map onto one single dimension; (2) social and fiscal/economic issues are explicitly distinguished, work no longer drives all; (3) social and cultural issues like identity, gender, morality, and lifestyle have risen in salience relative to fiscal/economic issues; (4) market individualism and social individualism grow: people seek to mark themselves as distinct from their surroundings; (5) the post-war national welfare state loses ground to federalist and regionalist solutions; parties, unions, and established churches are often replaced by new, smaller organizations that may join into social movements; (6) instead of rich vs. poor, or capitalisms vs. socialism, there is a rise of issue politics-of the arts, the environment, or gender equality-which may spark active citizen participation on one such issue, but each issue may be unrelated to the others; and (7) these NPC views are more pervasive among younger, more educated and affluent individuals, and societies. Citizens changed first in these respects, and leaders and analysts widely ignored these deep changes; many still do. But no longer do clientelism and class politics dominate politics as they did a few decades back. They are challenged by all manner of "reformers," some of whom relate to this new political culture. Many local and national political leaders came to adopt a NPC agenda in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, like Bill Clinton or Tony Blair or Antanas Mockus. In the 1990s, with the acceleration of economic globalization and the digital revolution (encompassing technological innovations such as the Internet, mobile phones, and personal computers), the shift from production to consumption started to capture the attention of social scientists. Two research questions, in particular, have been pursued. First, Culture on the Rise how and why is the growing prevalence of NPC associated with the replacement of class politics by issue politics? Second, how and why is the development of the NPC associated with the rise of consumption politics and the importance of amenities (for instance, in driving local development)? Behind these questions is the hypothesis that the rejection of hierarchy and welfare paternalism are in favor of horizontal, issue-politics increase as societies become more post-materialist, NPC. The article is organized as follows. We start by describing the analytical model, where we explain the main assumptions and research hypotheses behind this study. This includes a justification of our conceptual choices ("Research Design and Data Collection"). Next, we present our research design. Here, we discuss the main methodological issues we faced in conducting data analyses ("Findings"). We then present our findings ("Conclusion"). Specifically, we discuss the impact of our seven "contextual variables" in the relationship between cultural membership and democratic politics: these include three political cultures (class politics, clientelism, the new political culture) and four cultural traditions (Eastern religions, Orthodox Christianism, Catholicism, and Protestantism). Finally, we conclude the article by pointing out some of the most important implications of the current rise of culture, both for the purposes of policy making and for the social scientific research of politics. Analytical Model As noted above, the simpler patterns that have been widely used (like the decline in voting or bowling alone) do not hold consistently if we break out participation into separate issue areas, age groups, and countries. To make sense of these apparent disparities demands a subtler analytical model. If we look closely, we find that arts and culture are powerfully tied to other aspects of democratic life. But specifics vary by political cultures that follow disparate rules of the game. To clarify these patterns, we have extended past modeling about democratic politics to investigate impacts of culture, as follows. We include the core independent and dependent variables used by past analysts of citizen participation, but with two critical additions. First, we break out cultural participation from other content types of social participation-religious, community, and professional voluntary organizations-and compare its impacts to those of these other types. Second, we explore how these effects shift across political cultures. These two changes generate dramatic differences from most past work. The central path we explore is how cultural participation, here defined as membership in organizations by type as surveyed in the World Values Surveys (more below), impacts democratic politics. In turn, our conception of democratic politics includes political practices (protest, vote), norms of citizenship (citizens' beliefs about what makes one a "good citizen"), and attitudes (social and political trust). We hypothesize that the impact of cultural membership on each of these components of democratic politics will not be homogeneous; rather, it will vary by context. We analyze the impact of cultural membership on democratic politics in several ways. First, we consider direct effects of the standard socioeconomic variables (sex, age, education, income, and left-right self-positioning). Second, we compare the impact of cultural membership with the impact of other types of voluntary organizations, religious, professional, and community. Next, we analyze how these patterns shift across contexts, political cultures, and traditions (shown at the bottom of Silva et al. Dependent Variables Let us begin by explaining our conception of democratic politics. 4 Much civil society research has developed under the influence of Putnam's well-known jeremiad: civic participation is said to be in decline since the 1960s, with serious implications for the health of democracy. We suggest that this decline covers only part of what has happened in the last half a century. Another part of the change is a structural differentiation of political participation patterns accompanying the generational shift, societal value change, and socioeconomic modernization in dozens of countries around the world since the 1960s. Political repertoires of younger cohorts are larger than those of their predecessors (e.g., Tilly 2006, pp. 30-59). Our stress on expanded democratic repertoires joins the structural differentiation to overcome a narrow and conservative understanding that informed part of the communitarian revival of Tocqueville in the 1990s. For example, even Welzel, Inglehart, and Deutsch's recent discussion of elitechallenging repertoires shows a bias towards protest activities. Strikes, which enjoy constitutional protection in virtually all consolidated democracies, are excluded from their model under the grounds of their alleged "violent" nature To make our conception of democratic politics more empirically realistic and theoretically sound, we consider three broad categories of democratic political participation. First, we include voting and political campaigning, 5 the traditional mechanisms of political participation in representative democracies whose symbolic and non-instrumental functions have become recently re-appreciated. Second, we explore the work of Putnam, Kenneth Newton, Francis Fukuyama, and others in considering citizens' attitudes of trust in each other (social or interpersonal trust) and in the government and other institutions (political trust). 6 Third, we analyze elite-challenging modes of political mobilization. 7 This last category includes nonconventional political actions such as participation in demonstrations, signing petitions, writing political commentary in blogs, or boycotting certain products for ethical reasons. Together with voting and trust, protest is one of the three dimensions of democratic politics our model seeks to explain. If we no longer consider the New England, town meeting model of civic participation as the sole yardstick of democratic politics, but we include all three types just listed, we find no general decline in political participation. While some forms of political action become less popular (e.g., voting in certain countries), others are growing, and still others have emerged in recent years (e.g., political blogs or online petitions) (Dalton 2007). Whereas we try to overcome the conservative bias of the Putnam-Tocqueville model by enlarging what counts as democratic participation to include protest activities along with trust and voting, we try to avoid its parochialism by enlarging the scope of norms of citizenship with which it operates. Norms of citizenship encompass the values and representations individuals have of their relation with democratic authorities qua citizens. What are the civic virtues that one should exhibit to be considered an exemplary citizen? The existing literature, both in political theory 4 We thus restrict our analysis to democratic countries. Our list of 42 democratic countries is based on the Polity Score. Details of the indicators that constitute the index and the criteria for the classification of countries, according to the information, are available at http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm. 5 "Representative democracy" is an index composed of the following variables: "voted in last election" and "political action: attend political meetings or rally" (source: International Social Survey Programme 2004). 6 "Social trust" is an index composed by the variables: most people can be trusted; do you think people try to take advantage of you ((1) "can't be too careful," (2) "most people can be trusted"). Trust in political institutions corresponds to the variable confidence in the government (1 "none at all" to 4 "a great deal") (source: World Values Survey 1999Survey -2004 see, e.g., Rothstein and Stolle 2008). 7 "Protest" is an index composed by the following variables: political action-sign petition; joining boycotts; attending lawful demonstrations; joining unofficial strikes; and occupying buildings and factories. They have three-point scale: 1, "would never do"; 2, "might do"; and 3, "have done" (source: World Values Survey 1999 Culture on the Rise and empirical political science, is often insensitive to the variety of normative understandings regarding citizenship. For example, neo-republicanism often suggests that there is one ideal set of civic virtues: in the civic republican tradition back to Cicero, Harrington, and Machiavelli, contemporary political theorists try to deduce the civic virtues that the citizens of contemporary nation-states should strive toward (e.g., Pettit 2000). In the empirical tradition, albeit less philosophically sophisticated than their fellow political theorists, political scientists are arguably more sensitive to the heterogeneous nature of the normative fabric of citizenship. Hence, empirically oriented political scientists such as Dalton 8 "engagement," 9 and "solidarity" 10 norms of citizenship. In addition, we use a second cleavage that has received some theoretical treatment in recent years Contextual and Independent Variables In what follows, we discuss the several contextual 12 and independent variables in our model of the impact of cultural membership in democratic politics, as well as the axioms behind each of them. The model's first axiom concerns socioeconomic development. Democratic politics is associated with higher levels of income and education and younger individuals. 13 To be able to 8 The "duty-based" norm is an index composed by the following WVS variables: give authorities information to help justice; future changes: greater respect for authority; national goals: maintaining order in nation; and also by ISSP 2004 variables: good citizen: always vote in elections, never try to evade taxes, always obey laws, and serve in the military. 9 The "engagement" norm is an index composed by the following WVS variables: politics important in life; reasons to help: in the interest of society; discuss political matters with friends and also by ISSP 2004 variables: good citizen: keep watch in government; active in associations; understand other opinions; choose products with ethical concerns; and help less privileged in the country/in the world. 10 The "solidarity" norm is an index composed by the following WVS variables: importance of eliminating big income inequalities; reasons for voluntary work: solidarity with poor and disadvantaged; and ISSP 2004 variables: rights in democracy: government respect minorities; access to adequate standard of living; and tolerance of disagreement. 11 In the case of the ethnic/civic norm axis (identity and civic norms), we only have information in the World Values Survey in one variable. In the absence of other options, we maintain it in our analysis in these circumstances. In the ISSP 2004, there was no information available on this normative dimension. The WVS variable is: how proud of nationality (civic norm: not very/not at all proud). 12 Both NPC and CP are statistical indexes composed by World Values Survey items (fourth wave, described below). The different political cultures are multidimensional phenomena so a single indicator cannot measure them adequately. The means of the NPC and CP indexes were calculated across all respondents. In the analysis, the filtering criterion was inclusion of the observations that scored above the average value. The results from the regression estimates were then compared to each dominant political culture. For clientelism, due to the lack of available survey data, the measure was the index provided by Worldwide Governance Indicators (in this case, all respondents received the corresponding national Silva et al. form an opinion and express it coherently, to show interest in affairs that transcend the immediate private sphere, and to make political claims in public are all instances of p

Recycling Argon through Metamorphic Reactions: the Record in Symplectites

The 40Ar/39Ar ages of metamorphic micas that crystallized at high temperatures are commonly interpreted as cooling ages, with grains considered to have lost 40Ar via thermally-driven diffusion into the grain boundary network. Recently reported laser-ablation data suggest that the spatial distribution of Ar in metamorphic micas does not always conform to the patterns predicted by diffusion theory and that despite high metamorphic temperatures, argon was not removed efficiently from the local system during metamorphic evolution. In the Western Gneiss Region (WGR), Norway, felsic gneisses preserve microtextural evidence for the breakdown of phengite to biotite and plagioclase symplectites during near isothermal decompression from c. 20–25 to c. 8–12 kbar at ~700°C. These samples provide an ideal natural laboratory to assess whether the complete replacement of one K-bearing mineral by another at high temperatures completely ‘resets’ the Ar clock, or whether there is some inheritance of 40Ar in the neo-crystallized phase. The timing of the high-temperature portion of the WGR metamorphic cycle has been well constrained in previous studies. However, the timing of cooling following the overprint is still much debated. In-situ laser ablation spot dating in phengite, biotite-plagioclase symplectites and coarser, texturally later biotite yielded 40Ar/39Ar ages that span much of the metamorphic cycle. Together these data show that despite residence at temperatures of ~700°C, Ar is not completely removed by diffusive loss or during metamorphic recrystallization. Instead, Ar released during phengite breakdown appears to be partially reincorporated into the newly crystallizing biotite and plagioclase (or is trapped in fluid inclusions in those phases) within a close system. Our data show that the microtextural and petrographic evolution of the sample being dated provides a critical framework in which local 40Ar recycling can be tracked, thus potentially allowing 40Ar/39Ar dates to be linked more accurately to metamorphic history

Bacterial Community Legacy Effects Following the Agia Zoni II Oil-Spill, Greece

In September 2017 the Agia Zoni II sank in the Saronic Gulf, Greece, releasing approximately 500 tonnes of heavy fuel oil, contaminating the Salamina and Athens coastlines. Effects of the spill, and remediation efforts, on sediment microbial communities were quantified over the following 7 months. Five days post-spill, the concentration of measured hydrocarbons within surface sediments of contaminated beaches was 1,093–3,773 μg g–1 dry sediment (91% alkanes and 9% polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), but measured hydrocarbons decreased rapidly after extensive clean-up operations. Bacterial genera known to contain oil-degrading species increased in abundance, including Alcanivorax, Cycloclasticus, Oleibacter, Oleiphilus, and Thalassolituus, and the species Marinobacter hydrocarbonoclasticus from approximately 0.02 to >32% (collectively) of the total bacterial community. Abundance of genera with known hydrocarbon-degraders then decreased 1 month after clean-up. However, a legacy effect was observed within the bacterial community, whereby Alcanivorax and Cycloclasticus persisted for several months after the oil spill in formerly contaminated sites. This study is the first to evaluate the effect of the Agia Zoni II oil-spill on microbial communities in an oligotrophic sea, where in situ oil-spill studies are rare. The results aid the advancement of post-spill monitoring models, which can predict the capability of environments to naturally attenuate oil

Living with joint hypermobility syndrome: patient experiences of diagnosis, referral and self-care.

BACKGROUND: Musculoskeletal problems are common reasons for seeking primary health care. It has been suggested that many people with 'everyday' non-inflammatory musculoskeletal problems may have undiagnosed joint hypermobility syndrome (JHS), a complex multi-systemic condition. JHS is characterized by joint laxity, pain, fatigue and a wide range of other symptoms. Physiotherapy is usually the preferred treatment option for JHS, although diagnosis can be difficult. The lived experience of those with JHS requires investigation. OBJECTIVE: The aim of the study was to examine patients' lived experience of JHS, their views and experiences of JHS diagnosis and management. METHODS: Focus groups in four locations in the UK were convened, involving 25 participants with a prior diagnosis of JHS. The focus groups were audio recorded, fully transcribed and analysed using the constant comparative method to inductively derive a thematic account of the data. RESULTS: Pain, fatigue, proprioception difficulties and repeated cycles of injury were among the most challenging features of living with JHS. Participants perceived a lack of awareness of JHS from health professionals and more widely in society and described how diagnosis and access to appropriate health-care services was often slow and convoluted. Education for patients and health professionals was considered to be essential. CONCLUSIONS: Timely diagnosis, raising awareness and access to health professionals who understand JHS may be particularly instrumental in helping to ameliorate symptoms and help patients to self-manage their condition. Physiotherapists and other health professionals should receive training to provide biopsychosocial support for people with this condition