Empiricism Without the Senses: How the Instrument Replaced the Eye

On receiving news of Galileo’s observations of the four satellites of Jupiter and the rugged face of the moon through his newly invented perspicillum, Kepler in great excitement exclaimed: Therefore let Galileo take his stand by Kepler’s side. Let the former observe the moon with his face turned skyward, while the latter studies the sun by looking down at a screen (lest the lens injure his eyes). Let each employ his own device, and from this partnership may there some day arise an absolutely perfect theory of the distances. This Hollywood-like scene of the two astronomers marching hand in hand toward the dawn of a new scientific era was no attempt by Kepler to appropriate Galileo’s success or to diminish the novelty of the telescope. On the contrary, Kepler repeatedly asserted how short sighted he was in misjudging the potential for astronomical observations inherent in lenses, and how radically Galileo’s instrument transformed the science of astronomy. It was a deep sense of recognition that beyond their different scientific temperaments and projects, they shared a common agenda of a new mode of empirical engagement with the phenomenal world: the instrument. For Kepler and Galileo, empirical investigation was no longer a direct engagement with nature, but an essentially mediated endeavor. The new instruments were not to assist the human senses, but to replace them

Effect of four plant species on soil 15N-access and herbage yield in temporary agricultural grasslands

Positive plant diversity-productivity relationships have been reported for experimental semi-natural grasslands (Cardinale et al. 2006; Hector et al. 1999; Tilman et al. 1996) as well as temporary agricultural grasslands (Frankow-Lindberg et al. 2009; Kirwan et al. 2007; Nyfeler et al. 2009; Picasso et al. 2008). Generally, these relationships are explained, on the one hand, by niche differentiation and facilitation (Hector et al. 2002; Tilman et al. 2002) and, on the other hand, by greater probability of including a highly productive plant species in high diversity plots (Huston 1997). Both explanations accept that diversity is significant because species differ in characteristics, such as root architecture, nutrient acquisition and water use efficiency, to name a few, resulting in composition and diversity being important for improved productivity and resource use (Naeem et al. 1994; Tilman et al. 2002). Plant diversity is generally low in temporary agricultural grasslands grown for ruminant fodder production. Grass in pure stands is common, but requires high nitrogen (N) inputs. In terms of N input, two-species grass-legume mixtures are more sustainable than grass in pure stands and consequently dominate low N input grasslands (Crews and Peoples 2004; Nyfeler et al. 2009; Nyfeler et al. 2011). In temperate grasslands, N is often the limiting factor for productivity (Whitehead 1995). Plant available soil N is generally concentrated in the upper soil layers, but may leach to deeper layers, especially in grasslands that include legumes (Scherer-Lorenzen et al. 2003) and under conditions with surplus precipitation (Thorup-Kristensen 2006). To improve soil N use efficiency in temporary grasslands, we propose the addition of deep-rooting plant species to a mixture of perennial ryegrass and white clover, which are the most widespread forage plant species in temporary grasslands in a temperate climate (Moore 2003). Perennial ryegrass and white clover possess relatively shallow root systems (Kutschera and Lichtenegger 1982; Kutschera and Lichtenegger 1992) with effective rooting depths of <0.7 m on a silt loamy site (Pollock and Mead 2008). Grassland species, such as lucerne and chicory, grow their tap-roots into deep soil layers and exploit soil nutrients and water in soil layers that the commonly grown shallow-rooting grassland species cannot reach (Braun et al. 2010; Skinner 2008). Chicory grown as a catch crop after barley reduced the inorganic soil N down to 2.5 m depth during the growing season, while perennial ryegrass affected the inorganic soil N only down to 1 m depth (Thorup-Kristensen 2006). Further, on a Wakanui silt loam in New Zealand chicory extracted water down to 1.9 m and lucerne down to 2.3 m soil depth, which resulted in greater herbage yields compared with a perennial ryegrass-white clover mixture, especially for dryland plots (Brown et al. 2005). There is little information on both the ability of deep- and shallow-rooting grassland species to access soil N from different vertical soil layers and the relation of soil N-access and herbage yield in temporary agricultural grasslands. Therefore, the objective of the present work was to test the hypotheses 1) that a mixture comprising both shallow- and deep-rooting plant species has greater herbage yields than a shallow-rooting binary mixture and pure stands, 2) that deep-rooting plant species (chicory and lucerne) are superior in accessing soil N from 1.2 m soil depth compared with shallow-rooting plant species, 3) that shallow-rooting plant species (perennial ryegrass and white clover) are superior in accessing soil N from 0.4 m soil depth compared with deep-rooting plant species, 4) that a mixture of deep- and shallow-rooting plant species has greater access to soil N from three soil layers compared with a shallow-rooting two-species mixture and that 5) the leguminous grassland plants, lucerne and white clover, have a strong impact on grassland N acquisition, because of their ability to derive N from the soil and the atmosphere

Nitrogen transfer from forage legumes to nine neighbouring plants in a multi-species grassland

Legumes play a crucial role in nitrogen supply to grass-legume mixtures for ruminant fodder. To quantify N transfer from legumes to neighbouring plants in multi-species grasslands we established a grass-legume-herb mixture on a loamy-sandy site in Denmark. White clover (Trifolium repens L.), red clover (Trifolium pratense L.) and lucerne (Medicago sativa L.) were leaf-labelled with 15N enriched urea during one growing season. N transfer to grasses (Lolium perenne L. and xfestulolium), white clover, red clover, lucerne, birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus L.), chicory (Cichorium intybus L.), plantain (Plantago lanceolata L.), salad burnet (Sanguisorba minor L.)and caraway (Carum carvi L.) was assessed. Neighbouring plants contained greater amounts of N derived from white clover (4.8 gm-2) compared with red clover (2.2 gm-2) and lucerne (1.1 gm-2). Grasses having fibrous roots received greater amounts of N from legumes than dicotyledonous plants which generally have taproots. Slurry application mainly increased N transfer from legumes to grasses. During the growing season the three legumes transferred approximately 40 kg N ha-1 to neighbouring plants. Below-ground N transfer from legumes to neighbouring plants differed among nitrogen donors and nitrogen receivers and may depend on root characteristics and regrowth strategies of plant species in the multi-species grassland

Environmental Factors in the Relapse and Recurrence of Inflammatory Bowel Disease:A Review of the Literature

The causes of relapse in patients with Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) are largely unknown. This paper reviews the epidemiological and clinical data on how medications (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, estrogens and antibiotics), lifestyle factors (smoking, psychological stress, diet and air pollution) may precipitate clinical relapses and recurrence. Potential biological mechanisms include: increasing thrombotic tendency, imbalances in prostaglandin synthesis, alterations in the composition of gut microbiota, and mucosal damage causing increased permeability

Molecular characterization and antiviral activity test of common drugs against echovirus 18 isolated in Korea

Genetic diversity and antiviral activity for five common antiviral drugs of echovirus (ECV) 5 isolated in Korea have been described. The present study extended these tests to a Korean ECV 18 isolate. An outbreak of aseptic meningitis caused by the ECV 18 isolate was reported in Korea in 2005, marking the first time this virus had been identified in the country since enterovirus surveillance began in 1993. Using a sample isolated from stool specimen of a 5-year-old male patient with aseptic meningitis, the complete genome sequence was obtained and was compared it with the Metcalf prototype strain. Unlike the ECV5 isolate, the 3' untranslated region had the highest identity value (94.2%) at the nucleotide level, while, at the amino acid level, the P2 region displayed the highest identity value (96.9%). These two strains shared all cleavage sites, with the exception of the 2B/2C site, which was RQ/NN in the Metcalf strain but RQ/NS in the Korean ECV 18 isolate. In Vero cells infected with the Korean ECV 18 isolate, no cytotoxicity was observed in the presence of azidothymidine, acyclovir, amantadine, lamivudine, or ribavirin, when the drugs were administered at a CC50 value >100 μg/mL. Of the five drugs, only amantadine (IC50: 4.97 ± 0.77 μg/mL, TI: 20.12) and ribavirin (IC50: 7.63 ± 0.87 μg/mL, TI: 13.11) had any antiviral activity against the Korean ECV 18 isolate in the five antiviral drugs. These antiviral activity effects were similar with results of the Korean ECV5 isolate

Simulation-Based Estimates of Effectiveness and Cost-Effectiveness of Smoking Cessation in Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

International audienceBACKGROUND: The medico-economic impact of smoking cessation considering a smoking patient with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is poorly documented. OBJECTIVE: Here, considering a COPD smoking patient, the specific burden of continuous smoking was estimated, as well as the effectiveness and the cost-effectiveness of smoking cessation. METHODS: A multi-state Markov model adopting society's perspective was developed. Simulated cohorts of English COPD patients who are active smokers (all severity stages combined or patients with the same initial severity stage) were compared to identical cohorts of patients who quit smoking at cohort initialization. Life expectancy, quality adjusted life-years (QALY), disease-related costs, and incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER: £/QALY) were estimated, considering smoking cessation programs with various possible scenarios of success rates and costs. Sensitivity analyses included the variation of model key parameters. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: At the horizon of a smoking COPD patient's remaining lifetime, smoking cessation at cohort intitialization, relapses being allowed as observed in practice, would result in gains (mean) of 1.27 life-years and 0.68 QALY, and induce savings of -1824 £/patient in the disease-related costs. The corresponding ICER was -2686 £/QALY. Smoking cessation resulted in 0.72, 0.69, 0.64 and 0.42 QALY respectively gained per mild, moderate, severe, and very severe COPD patient, but was nevertheless cost-effective for mild to severe COPD patients in most scenarios, even when hypothesizing expensive smoking cessation intervention programmes associated with low success rates. Considering a ten-year time horizon, the burden of continuous smoking in English COPD patients was estimated to cost a total of 1657 M£ while 452516 QALY would be simultaneously lost. CONCLUSIONS: The study results are a useful support for the setting of smoking cessation programmes specifically targeted to COPD patients

Life values as predictors of pain, disability and sick leave among Swedish registered nurses: a longitudinal study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Prospective studies on high-risk populations, such as subgroups of health care staff, are limited, especially prospective studies among staff not on sick-leave. This paper is a report of a longitudinal study conducted to describe and compare the importance and consistency of life domains among registered nurses (RNs) working in a Swedish hospital and evaluate a model based on the consistency of valued life domains for prediction of pain, disability and sick leave.</p> <p>Method</p> <p>Importance and consistency ratings of life values, in 9 domains, were collected during 2003 and 2006 from 196 RNs using the Valued Living Questionnaire (VLQ). Logistic regression analyses were used for prediction of pain, disability and sick leave at the three-year follow-up. The predictors family relations, marriage couples/intimate relations, parenting, friends/social life, work, education, leisure time, psychological well-being, and physical self-care were used at baseline.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>RNs rated life values regarding parenting as most important and with the highest consistency both at baseline and at follow-up. No significant differences were found between RNs' ratings of importance and consistency over the three-year period, except for friends/social relations that revealed a significant decrease in importance at follow-up. The explanatory models for pain, disability and sick leave significantly predicted pain and disability at follow-up. The odds of having pain were significantly increased by one consistency rating (psychological well-being), while the odds were significantly decreased by physical self-care. In the model predicting disability, consistency in psychological well-being and education significantly increased the odds of being disabled, while consistency in physical self-care significantly decreased the odds.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The results suggest that there might be a link between intra-individual factors reflecting different aspects of appraised life values and musculoskeletal pain (MSP).</p

The Brain Atlas Concordance Problem: Quantitative Comparison of Anatomical Parcellations

Many neuroscientific reports reference discrete macro-anatomical regions of the brain which were delineated according to a brain atlas or parcellation protocol. Currently, however, no widely accepted standards exist for partitioning the cortex and subcortical structures, or for assigning labels to the resulting regions, and many procedures are being actively used. Previous attempts to reconcile neuroanatomical nomenclatures have been largely qualitative, focusing on the development of thesauri or simple semantic mappings between terms. Here we take a fundamentally different approach, discounting the names of regions and instead comparing their definitions as spatial entities in an effort to provide more precise quantitative mappings between anatomical entities as defined by different atlases. We develop an analytical framework for studying this brain atlas concordance problem, and apply these methods in a comparison of eight diverse labeling methods used by the neuroimaging community. These analyses result in conditional probabilities that enable mapping between regions across atlases, which also form the input to graph-based methods for extracting higher-order relationships between sets of regions and to procedures for assessing the global similarity between different parcellations of the same brain. At a global scale, the overall results demonstrate a considerable lack of concordance between available parcellation schemes, falling within chance levels for some atlas pairs. At a finer level, this study reveals spatial relationships between sets of defined regions that are not obviously apparent; these are of high potential interest to researchers faced with the challenge of comparing results that were based on these different anatomical models, particularly when coordinate-based data are not available. The complexity of the spatial overlap patterns revealed points to problems for attempts to reconcile anatomical parcellations and nomenclatures using strictly qualitative and/or categorical methods. Detailed results from this study are made available via an interactive web site at http://obart.info

Mutations in the ELANE Gene are Associated with Development of Periodontitis in Patients with Severe Congenital Neutropenia

# The Author(s) 2011. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Background Patients with severe congenital neutropenia (SCN) often develop periodontitis despite standard medical and dental care. In light of previous findings that mutations in the neutrophil elastase gene, ELANE, are associated with more severe neutropenic phenotypes, we hypothesized an association between the genotype of SCN and development of periodontitis. Methods Fourteen Swedish patients with SCN or cyclic neutropenia harboring different genetic backgrounds were recruited for periodontal examination. Peripheral blood, gingival crevicular fluid (GCF), and subgingival bacterial Thomas Modéer and Katrin Pütsep have contributed equally to the study

Oestrogen receptor β and neoadjuvant therapy with tamoxifen: prediction of response and effects of treatment

In order to elucidate the relative importance of oestrogen receptor (ER)α, ERβ and an ERβ variant (ERβ2/βcx) in the response of breast cancers to tamoxifen, tumour levels of each receptor were assessed in 36 patients before and after 3 months of neoadjuvant treatment with tamoxifen (20 mg daily). All patients were postmenopausal women presenting with large ERα-positive breast cancers. Clinical response to treatment was assessed by tumour volume changes as determined from sequential ultrasounds and pathological response by comparison of the tumour morphology before and after treatment. Of 33 cases, 23 (70%) were classified as having a clinical response and 16 (48%) as having a response pathologically. All tumours stained positively for ERα and ERβ and 15 out of 33 (45%) for ERβ2/βcx. There were no significant differences in quantitative expression of any receptor between tumours that subsequently responded and that did not, whether response was assessed clinically or pathologically. Tamoxifen treatment was associated with a decrease in ERα, but an increase was the most frequent change (17 out of 33) in ERβ, and no consistent change was evident in staining of the ERβ2/βcx variant. In summary, ERβ1 and ERβ2/βcx variant protein are detected in ERα-positive breast tumours but their expression is not associated with a response to tamoxifen. Differential changes in ERα and ERβ were seen with treatment