Impact of climate change and bioenergy on nutrition

Food security has deteriorated since 1995 and reductions in child malnutrition are proceeding too slowly to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target for halving hunger by 2015. Three major challenges threaten to drastically complicate efforts to overcome food insecurity and malnutrition: climate change, the growing use of food crops as a source of fuel and soaring food prices. Food security has four dimensions: food availability, access to food, stability of supply and access and safe and healthy food utilization. It is a key factor in good nutrition, along with health, sanitation and care practices. Globally, one billion people are currently without access to safe water and over 2 billion lack adequate sanitation facilities. Present global food supplies are more than adequate to provide everyone with all the needed calories, if the food were equally distributed. But over 820 million people in developing countries have calorie-deficient diets; over 60 percent live in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.Climate change, Bioenergy, Nutrition, food security, Food prices, Sustainable development,

Engaging the public with the scrutiny of legislation requires more than just asking for their views

Cristina Leston-Bandeira and Louise Thompson examine the impact of a stage of the legislative process piloted by the House of Commons in 2013, during which the public were invited to comment on a bill undergoing parliamentary scrutiny. They explain why, despite an impressive response, the Public Reading Stage failed to make much of an impact

Evaluation of the Improving Social Connectedness of Older Australians project pilot: Informing future policy considerations

This report draws on findings and lessons learned through the Australian Government funded evaluation of the Improving Social Connectedness of Older Australians (ISCOA) pilot. It summarises what has worked in the context of the evaluation to help inform the Government’s future models of care and interventions for lonely and socially isolated older Australians

Attributes of innovations and approaches to scalability - lessons from a national program to extend the scope of practice of health professionals

The context for the paper was the evaluation of a national program in Australia to investigate extended scopes of practice for health professionals (paramedics, physiotherapists, and nurses). The design of the evaluation involved a mixed-methods approach with multiple data sources. Four multidisciplinary models of extended scope of practice were tested over an 18-month period, involving 26 organizations, 224 health professionals, and 36 implementation sites. The evaluation focused on what could be learned to inform scaling up the extended scopes of practice on a national scale. The evaluation findings were used to develop a conceptual framework for use by clinicians, managers, and policy makers to determine appropriate strategies for scaling up effective innovations. Development of the framework was informed by the literature on the diffusion of innovations, particularly an understanding that certain attributes of innovations influence adoption. The framework recognizes the role played by three groups of stakeholders: evidence producers, evidence influencers, and evidence adopters. The use of the framework is illustrated with four case studies from the evaluation. The findings demonstrate how the scaling up of innovations can be influenced by three quite distinct approaches - letting adoption take place in an uncontrolled, unplanned, way; actively helping the process of adoption; or taking deliberate steps to ensure that adoption takes place. Development of the conceptual framework resulted in two sets of questions to guide decisions about scalability, one for those considering whether to adopt the innovation (evidence adopters), and the other for those trying to decide on the optimal strategy for dissemination (evidence influencers)

Estudios de pre-mejoramiento genético en Panicum coloratum var. coloratum: Caracterización usando marcadores moleculares y caracteres agro-morfológicos

Panicum coloratum var. coloratum is a native African perennial C4 grass, introduced to Argentina. It is tolerant of salinity and cold and has good forage production. The scarce genotypic and phenotypic information about this grass limits its breeding in order to satisfy market demands. The aim of this study was to evaluate the variability in a collection of P. coloratum var. coloratum formed by 8 accessions and grown at EEA INTA Rafaela during the summer of 2011, based on 15 ISSR molecular markers and 17 morphological characters. For all morphological characters, the distribution of variability observed in the collection was high and not homogenous. The characters that showed greater variation were related to forage and seed production. Eight ISSRs, selected according to their reproducibility, showed 127 bands with 100% polymorphism and allowed grouping of populations according to their site of collection. AMOVA study indicated that more than 58% of the molecular variation existed within accessions; this would be consistent with the predominant allogamous form of reproduction. The results showed that the combined use of molecular and morphological markers offer complementary information. The high variability detected in this collection will allow for the initiation of a breeding program to improve important characters like those related to DM yield and seed production.Fil: Burgos, Estanislao. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigación en Ciencias Veterinarias y Agronómicas. Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Thompson, Carolina Soledad. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Santa Fe. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Rafaela; ArgentinaFil: Giordano, Mabel Cristina. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Santa Fe. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Rafaela; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe; ArgentinaFil: Tomas, Maria Andrea. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Santa Fe. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Rafaela; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe; Argentin

A Partnership to Improve Health Care in Kosovo: Dartmouth Medical School and Kosovar nurses worked together on a two-year project to rebuild primary health care in the postconflict city of Gjilan

Partnership between a health municipality in Kosova, in the former Republic of Yugoslavia and Dartmouth Medical School, New Hampshire, to rebuild the primary care system after the war. The project, which included nurses from both countries, is described, focusing on the changing roles of nurses

Functional Fixedness in Creative Thinking Tasks Depends on Stimulus Modality

This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record.Pictorial examples during creative thinking tasks can lead participants to fixate on these examples and reproduce their elements even when yielding suboptimal creative products. Semantic memory research may illuminate the cognitive processes underlying this effect. Here, we examined whether pictures and words differentially influence access to semantic knowledge for object concepts depending on whether the task is close- or open-ended. Participants viewed either names or pictures of everyday objects, or a combination of the two, and generated common, secondary, or ad hoc uses for them. Stimulus modality effects were assessed quantitatively through reaction times and qualitatively through a novel coding system, which classifies creative output on a continuum from top-down-driven to bottom-up-driven responses. Both analyses revealed differences across tasks. Importantly, for ad hoc uses, participants exposed to pictures generated more top-down-driven responses than those exposed to object names. These findings have implications for accounts of functional fixedness in creative thinking, as well as theories of semantic memory for object concepts

Sds22, a PP1 phosphatase regulatory subunit, regulates epithelial cell polarity and shape [Sds22 in epithelial morphology]

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>How epithelial cells adopt their particular polarised forms is poorly understood. In a screen for genes regulating epithelial morphology in <it>Drosophila</it>, we identified <it>sds22</it>, a conserved gene previously characterised in yeast.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In the columnar epithelia of imaginal discs or follicle cells, mutation of <it>sds22 </it>causes contraction of cells along their apical-basal axis, resulting in a more cuboidal morphology. In addition, the mutant cells can also display altered cell polarity, forming multiple layers in follicle cells and leaving the epithelium in imaginal discs. In yeast, <it>sds22 </it>encodes a PP1 phosphatase regulatory subunit. Consistent with this, we show that <it>Drosophila </it>Sds22 binds to all four <it>Drosophila </it>PP1s and shares an overlapping phenotype with <it>PP1beta9c</it>. We also show that two previously postulated PP1 targets, Spaghetti Squash and Moesin are hyper-phosphorylated in <it>sds22 </it>mutants. This function is shared by the human homologue of Sds22, PPP1R7.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Sds22 is a conserved PP1 phosphatase regulatory subunit that controls cell shape and polarity.</p