Detecting green shoots of recovery: The importance of long-term individual-based monitoring of marine turtles

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this recordPopulation monitoring is an essential part of evaluating the effectiveness of management interventions for conservation. Coastal breeding aggregations of marine vertebrate species that come ashore to pup or nest provide an opportunistic window of observation into otherwise widely dispersed populations. Green turtle (Chelonia mydas) nesting on the north and west coasts of northern Cyprus has been monitored consistently and exhaustively since 1993, with an intensive saturation tagging programme running at one key site for the same duration. This historically depleted nesting population is showing signs of recovery, possibly in response to nest protection approaching two decades, with increasing nest numbers and rising levels of recruitment. Strong correlation between year-to-year magnitude of nesting and the proportion of new breeders in the nesting cohort implies that recruitment of new individuals to the breeding population is an important driver of this recovery trend. Recent changes in fishing activities may be impacting the local juvenile neritic stage, however, which may hinder this potential recovery. Individuals returning to breed after two years laid fewer clutches than those returning after three or four years, demonstrating a trade-off between remigration interval and breeding output. Average clutch frequencies have remained stable around a median of three clutches a year per female despite the demographic shift towards new nesters, which typically lay fewer clutches in their first season. We show that where local fecundity has been adequately assessed, the use of average clutch frequencies can be a reliable method for deriving nester abundance from nest counts. Index sites where individual-based monitoring is possible will be important in monitoring long-term climate driven changes in reproductive rates.European Social Fun

Fast and flexible selection with a single switch

Selection methods that require only a single-switch input, such as a button click or blink, are potentially useful for individuals with motor impairments, mobile technology users, and individuals wishing to transmit information securely. We present a single-switch selection method, "Nomon," that is general and efficient. Existing single-switch selection methods require selectable options to be arranged in ways that limit potential applications. By contrast, traditional operating systems, web browsers, and free-form applications (such as drawing) place options at arbitrary points on the screen. Nomon, however, has the flexibility to select any point on a screen. Nomon adapts automatically to an individual's clicking ability; it allows a person who clicks precisely to make a selection quickly and allows a person who clicks imprecisely more time to make a selection without error. Nomon reaps gains in information rate by allowing the specification of beliefs (priors) about option selection probabilities and by avoiding tree-based selection schemes in favor of direct (posterior) inference. We have developed both a Nomon-based writing application and a drawing application. To evaluate Nomon's performance, we compared the writing application with a popular existing method for single-switch writing (row-column scanning). Novice users wrote 35% faster with the Nomon interface than with the scanning interface. An experienced user (author TB, with > 10 hours practice) wrote at speeds of 9.3 words per minute with Nomon, using 1.2 clicks per character and making no errors in the final text.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, presented at NIPS 2009 Mini-symposi

Electrical stimulation devices for the prevention of venous thromboembolism: Preliminary studies of physiological efficacy and user satisfaction.

Introduction: Electrical stimulation could provide an alternative method for preventing venous thromboembolism in stroke patients. The purpose of this preliminary study was to explore the effects of electrical stimulation and intermittent pneumatic compression on enhancing lower limb venous return in healthy and chronic stroke patients and also to evaluate patient and nurse satisfaction. Methods: We investigated the effectiveness of two electrical stimulation devices: Geko (Firstkind Ltd, High Wycombe, UK) and Orthopaedic Microstim 2V2 (Odstock Medical Ltd, Salisbury, UK); and one intermittent pneumatic compression device: Huntleigh Flowstron Universal (Huntleigh Healthcare Ltd, Cardiff, UK). We recruited 12 healthy and 5 chronic stroke participants. The devices were fitted sequentially, and Doppler ultrasound measurements were taken. Eight patients and nurses were also recruited for a separate usability evaluation. Results: The electrical stimulation devices emulated the blood flow characteristics of intermittent pneumatic compression in both healthy and stroke participants provided that the intensity of electrical stimulation was sufficient. Patients and nurses also felt that the electrical stimulation devices were acceptable. Conclusions: Electrical stimulation may offer benefit as an alternative method for venous thromboembolism prevention in stroke patients. The apparent benefit is sufficient to warrant further investigation in a full powered randomised controlled trial

Using honey to heal diabetic foot ulcers

Diabetic ulcers seem to be arrested in the inflammatory/proliferative stage of the healing process, allowing infection and inflammation to preclude healing. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria have become a major cause of infections, including diabetic foot infections. It is proposed here that the modern developments of an ancient and traditional treatment for wounds, dressing them with honey, provide the solution to the problem of getting diabetic ulcers to move on from the arrested state of healing. Honeys selected to have a high level of antibacterial activity have been shown to be very effective against antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria in laboratory and clinical studies. The potent anti-inflammatory action of honey is also likely to play an important part in overcoming the impediment to healing that inflammation causes in diabetic ulcers, as is the antioxidant activity of honey. The action of honey in promotion of tissue regeneration through stimulation of angiogenesis and the growth of fibroblasts and epithelial cells, and its insulin-mimetic effect, would also be of benefit in stimulating the healing of diabetic ulcers. The availability of honey-impregnated dressings which conveniently hold honey in place on ulcers has provided a means of rapidly debriding ulcers and removing the bacterial burden so that good healing rates can be achieved with neuropathic ulcers. With ischemic ulcers, where healing cannot occur because of lack of tissue viability, these honey dressings keep the ulcers clean and prevent infection occurring

Genome screen in familial intracranial aneurysm

Research articl

The use of standardized patients for mock oral board exams in neurology: a pilot study

BACKGROUND: Mock oral board exams, fashioned after the live patient hour of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology exam, are commonly part of resident assessment during residency training. Exams using real patients selected from clinics or hospitals are not standardized and do not allow comparisons of resident performance across the residency program. We sought to create a standardized patient mock oral board exam that would allow comparison of residents' clinical performance. METHODS: Three cases were created and then used for this mock oral boards exercise utilizing trained standardized patients. Residents from the University of Cincinnati and Indiana University participated in the exam. Residents were scored by attending physician examiners who directly observed the encounter with the standardized patient. The standardized patient also assessed each resident. A post-test survey was administered to ascertain participant's satisfaction with the examination process. RESULTS: Resident scores were grouped within one standard deviation of the mean, with the exception of one resident who was also subjectively felt to "fail" the exam. In exams with two faculty "evaluators", scores were highly correlated. The survey showed satisfaction with the examination process in general. CONCLUSION: Standardized patients can be used for mock oral boards in the live patient format. Our initial experience with this examination process was positive. Further testing is needed to determine if this examination format is more reliable and valid than traditional methods of assessing resident competency

Autoimmune and autoinflammatory mechanisms in uveitis

The eye, as currently viewed, is neither immunologically ignorant nor sequestered from the systemic environment. The eye utilises distinct immunoregulatory mechanisms to preserve tissue and cellular function in the face of immune-mediated insult; clinically, inflammation following such an insult is termed uveitis. The intra-ocular inflammation in uveitis may be clinically obvious as a result of infection (e.g. toxoplasma, herpes), but in the main infection, if any, remains covert. We now recognise that healthy tissues including the retina have regulatory mechanisms imparted by control of myeloid cells through receptors (e.g. CD200R) and soluble inhibitory factors (e.g. alpha-MSH), regulation of the blood retinal barrier, and active immune surveillance. Once homoeostasis has been disrupted and inflammation ensues, the mechanisms to regulate inflammation, including T cell apoptosis, generation of Treg cells, and myeloid cell suppression in situ, are less successful. Why inflammation becomes persistent remains unknown, but extrapolating from animal models, possibilities include differential trafficking of T cells from the retina, residency of CD8(+) T cells, and alterations of myeloid cell phenotype and function. Translating lessons learned from animal models to humans has been helped by system biology approaches and informatics, which suggest that diseased animals and people share similar changes in T cell phenotypes and monocyte function to date. Together the data infer a possible cryptic infectious drive in uveitis that unlocks and drives persistent autoimmune responses, or promotes further innate immune responses. Thus there may be many mechanisms in common with those observed in autoinflammatory disorders

Dynamical Boson Stars

The idea of stable, localized bundles of energy has strong appeal as a model for particles. In the 1950s John Wheeler envisioned such bundles as smooth configurations of electromagnetic energy that he called {\em geons}, but none were found. Instead, particle-like solutions were found in the late 1960s with the addition of a scalar field, and these were given the name {\em boson stars}. Since then, boson stars find use in a wide variety of models as sources of dark matter, as black hole mimickers, in simple models of binary systems, and as a tool in finding black holes in higher dimensions with only a single killing vector. We discuss important varieties of boson stars, their dynamic properties, and some of their uses, concentrating on recent efforts.Comment: 79 pages, 25 figures, invited review for Living Reviews in Relativity; major revision in 201