Mothers’ recognition of newborn danger signs and health seeking behaviour

Background: Early recognition of neonatal illnesses followed by  care-seeking and intervention are key factors in improving neonatal health and survival.Objectives: To assess mothers’ ability to recognize newborn dangersigns and actions taken by mothers in the event of neonatal illness.Methods: The study was carried out in three health centres in Yenagoa Metropolis from April to May 2011. A 15 itemed Questionnaire based on the WHO/UNICEF IMCI programme handbook was administered to 146 mothers with infants younger than three months. The mothers were asked to identify danger signs of neonatal illness from a list of symptoms, to indicate which of the listed symptoms their babies experienced, to state what actions were taken in response to the symptoms and reasons for notutilizing orthodox healthcare.Results: None of the listed symptoms was recognized by up to halfthe mothers as danger signs of neonatal illness, the best being fast breathing by 66 (45.2%) mothers. Eighty two (56.2%) mothers reportedthat their children experienced some of the neonatal danger signs: the commonest were difficult breathing and convulsions in 8 (9.8%) cases each. Unconsciousness and excessive crying were thought to be caused by evil spirits and consultations sought with faith healers. The major constraint to utilization of health facilities was cost {45(29.8%)}.Conclusion: Mothers’ recognition of danger signs in the newborn was poor. Self-medication and the use of home remedies delayed timely  consultation. The commonest reason for non-utilization of health facilities was lack of money.Keywords: Mothers, Newborns, Danger signs, Recognition, Health seeking

Chronic renal homograft function. Correlation with histology and lymphocyte antigen matching

Renal function was studied in twenty-nine of thirty-four surviving renal allograft recipients from an initial group of sixty-four patients two years after transplantation. Mean clearances of inulin and PAH were, respectively, greater than and equal to half the donors' initial predicted clearances. Minimum urine osmolality during water diuresis was greater, and maximum urine osmolality during hydropenia was less than normal, an effect attributable partly to enhanced solute load in a single transplanted kidney. Patients with compatible donor-recipient lymphocyte antigens demonstrated statistically better function than those with one or more incompatibilities, although there was a definite degree of overlap between the two groups. In contrast, little correlation could be demonstrated between the cumulative histopathology and renal clearances. Renal function in patients with compatible donors was statistically greater than half the donors' initial predicted function. Serial increase in renal clearances was documented in one patient with a compatible donor. Serial decreases were demonstrated in two patients with incompatible donors. These findings suggest that hypertrophy of the denervated, transplanted kidney occurs when immune reaction is minimal. © 1967

Spatiotemporal Arbitrage of Large-Scale Portable Energy Storage for Grid Congestion Relief

Energy storage has great potential in grid congestion relief. By making large-scale energy storage portable through trucking, its capability to address grid congestion can be greatly enhanced. This paper explores a business model of large-scale portable energy storage for spatiotemporal arbitrage over nodes with congestion. We propose a spatiotemporal arbitrage model to determine the optimal operation and transportation schedules of portable storage. To validate the business model, we simulate the schedules of a Tesla Semi full of Tesla Powerpack doing arbitrage over two nodes in California with local transmission congestion. The results indicate that the contributions of portable storage to congestion relief are much greater than that of stationary storage, and that trucking storage can bring net profit in energy arbitrage applications.Comment: Submitted to IEEE PES GM 2019; 5 pages,4 figure

Educação no/do campo: caminhos para uma formação humana e uma visibilidade social

A Educação do Campo foi historicamente pensada a partir da relação entre educação e trabalho, ou seja, o trabalho (ontológico) do homem do campo vinha como condição primeira para a construção de uma formação humana que tenha como objetivo dar uma visibilidade social ao sujeito. A primeira parte do presente estudo foi realizado na década de 1990, no momento em que o contexto nacional era provocativo e sem ações significativas que apontassem ações para minimizar as mazelas que assolavam a educação Rural Brasileira, atualmente refletida conceitualmente e em práticas pontuais em educação no/do campo. Pretende-se aqui fazer um paralelo entre a década passada com os dias atuais, sem perder de vista atores e espaços. Utilizou-se como fundamentação o teórico Miguel Arroyo acrescido com estudos de Molina & Caldart. O abordado trata da representação da escola para o aluno trabalhador rural. A pesquisa foi feita na comunidade de Ceraíma, distrito de Guanambi-BA, com 30 alunos do Ensino Fundamental, utilizando a investigação etnometodológica e estudos bibliográficos a fim de problematizar as temáticas pesquisadas. Naquele momento a escola significava mobilidade em torno de subempregos no mundo urbano e visibilidade social. Aproximando-se duas décadas os resultados permanecem e apontam outras mazelas produzidas nos centros urbanos e importado para o espaço rural.&nbsp

Inference of disease associations with unmeasured genetic variants by combining results from genome-wide association studies with linkage disequilibrium patterns in a reference data set

Results from whole-genome association studies of many common diseases are now available. Increasingly, these are being incorporated into meta-analyses to increase the power to detect weak associations with measured single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Imputation of genotypes at unmeasured loci has been widely applied using patterns of linkage disequilibrium (LD) observed in the HapMap panels, but there is a need for alternative methods that can utilize the pooled effect estimates from meta-analyses and explore possible associations with SNPs and haplotypes that are not included in HapMap

Can we manage coastal ecosystems to sequester more blue carbon?

© The Ecological Society of America To promote the sequestration of blue carbon, resource managers rely on best-management practices that have historically included protecting and restoring vegetated coastal habitats (seagrasses, tidal marshes, and mangroves), but are now beginning to incorporate catchment-level approaches. Drawing upon knowledge from a broad range of environmental variables that influence blue carbon sequestration, including warming, carbon dioxide levels, water depth, nutrients, runoff, bioturbation, physical disturbances, and tidal exchange, we discuss three potential management strategies that hold promise for optimizing coastal blue carbon sequestration: (1) reducing anthropogenic nutrient inputs, (2) reinstating top-down control of bioturbator populations, and (3) restoring hydrology. By means of case studies, we explore how these three strategies can minimize blue carbon losses and maximize gains. A key research priority is to more accurately quantify the impacts of these strategies on atmospheric greenhouse-gas emissions in different settings at landscape scales

Macroevolutionary dynamics of nectar spurs, a key evolutionary innovation.

Floral nectar spurs are widely considered a key innovation promoting diversification in angiosperms by means of pollinator shifts. We investigated the macroevolutionary dynamics of nectar spurs in the tribe Antirrhineae (Plantaginaceae), which contains 29 genera and 300-400 species (70-80% spurred). The effect of nectar spurs on diversification was tested, with special focus on Linaria, the genus with the highest number of species. We generated the most comprehensive phylogeny of Antirrhineae to date and reconstructed the evolution of nectar spurs. Diversification rate heterogeneity was investigated using trait-dependent and trait-independent methods, and accounting for taxonomic uncertainty. The association between changes in spur length and speciation was examined within Linaria using model testing and ancestral state reconstructions. We inferred four independent acquisitions of nectar spurs. Diversification analyses revealed that nectar spurs are loosely associated with increased diversification rates. Detected rate shifts were delayed by 5-15 Myr with respect to the acquisition of the trait. Active evolution of spur length, fitting a speciational model, was inferred in Linaria, which is consistent with a scenario of pollinator shifts driving diversification. Nectar spurs played a role in diversification of the Antirrhineae, but diversification dynamics can only be fully explained by the complex interaction of multiple biotic and abiotic factors.This work was supported by the Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship LINARIA-SPECIATION (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IEF, reference 624396), an Isaac Newton Trust Research Grant (Trinity College, Cambridge), a Juan de la Cierva fellowship to M.F.-M. (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity, reference IJCI-2015-23459) and a Generalitat Valenciana postdoctoral grant to A.J. (Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, reference BEST/2014/264)

Effective detection of human leukocyte antigen risk alleles in celiac disease using tag single nucleotide polymorphisms.

Background: The HLA genes, located in the MHC region on chromosome 6p21.3, play an important role in many autoimmune disorders, such as celiac disease (CD), type 1 diabetes (T1D), rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis and others. Known HLA variants that confer risk to CD, for example, include DQA1*05/DQB1*02 (DQ2.5) and DQA1*03/ DQB1*0302 (DQ8). To diagnose the majority of CD patients and to study disease susceptibility and progression, typing these strongly associated HLA risk factors is of utmost importance. However, current genotyping methods for HLA risk factors involve many reactions, and are complicated and expensive. We sought a simple experimental approach using tagging SNPs that predict the CD-associated HLA risk factors. Methodology: Our tagging approach exploits linkage disequilibrium between single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) and the CD-associated HLA risk factors DQ2.5 and DQ8 that indicate direct risk, and DQA1*0201/DQB1*0202 (DQ2.2) and DQA1*0505/DQB1*0301 (DQ7) that attribute to the risk of DQ2.5 to CD. To evaluate the predictive power of this approach, we performed an empirical comparison of the predicted DQ types, based on these six tag SNPs, with those executed with current validated laboratory typing methods of the HLA-DQA1 and -DQB1 genes in three large cohorts. The results were validated in three European celiac populations. Conclusion: Using this method, only six SNPs were needed to predict the risk types carried by .95% of CD patients. We determined that for this tagging approach the sensitivity was .0.991, specificity .0.996 and the predictive value .0.948. Our results show that this tag SNP method is very accurate an