FARM POLICY EXTENSION WORK

Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Current homeroom practices in the publicly supported high schools for negroes in the state of North Carolina

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Constraints on relaxation rates for N-level quantum systems

We study the constraints imposed on the population and phase relaxation rates by the physical requirement of completely positive evolution for open N-level systems. The Lindblad operators that govern the evolution of the system are expressed in terms of observable relaxation rates, explicit formulas for the decoherence rates due to population relaxation are derived, and it is shown that there are additional, non-trivial constraints on the pure dephasing rates for N>2. Explicit experimentally testable inequality constraints for the decoherence rates are derived for three and four-level systems, and the implications of the results are discussed for generic ladder-, Lambda- and V-systems, and transitions between degenerate energy levels.Comment: 10 pages, RevTeX, 4 figures (eps/pdf

Exploring the behavioural drivers of veterinary surgeon antibiotic prescribing: a qualitative study of companion animal veterinary surgeons in the UK

Background: Multi-drug resistant bacteria are an increasing concern in both human and veterinary medicine. Inappropriate prescribing and use of antibiotics within veterinary medicine may be a contributory factor to antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The ‘One Health’ Initiative aims to work across species and environments to reduce AMR, however; little is currently known about the factors which influence antibiotic prescribing among veterinary surgeons in companion animal practice. This paper reports on qualitative data analysis of interviews with veterinary surgeons whose practice partially or wholly focuses on companion animals (N = 16). The objective of the research was to explore the drivers of companion animal veterinary surgeons’ antibiotic prescribing behaviours. The veterinary surgeons interviewed were all practising within the UK (England (n = 4), Scotland (n = 11), Northern Ireland (n = 1)). A behavioural thematic analysis of the data was undertaken, which identified barriers and facilitators to specific prescribing-related behaviours. Results: Five components of prescribing behaviours were identified: 1) confirming clinical need for antibiotics; 2) responding to clients; 3) confirming diagnosis; 4) determining dose, duration and type of antibiotic; and 5) preventing infection around surgery (with attendant appropriate and inappropriate antibiotic prescribing behaviours). Barriers to appropriate prescribing identified include: business, diagnostic, fear, habitual practice and pharmaceutical factors. Facilitators include: AMR awareness, infection prevention, professional learning and regulation and government factors. Conclusion: This paper uses a behavioural lens to examine drivers which are an influence on veterinary surgeons’ prescribing behaviours. The paper contributes new understandings about factors which influence antibiotic prescribing behaviours among companion animal veterinary surgeons. This analysis provides evidence to inform future interventions, which are focused on changing prescribing behaviours, in order to address the pressing public health concern of AMR

S.cerevisiae Complex Function Prediction with Modular Multi-Relational Framework

Proceeding of: 23rd International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Other Applications of Applied Intelligent Systems, IEA/AIE 2010, Córdoba, Spain, June 1-4, 2010Determining the functions of genes is essential for understanding how the metabolisms work, and for trying to solve their malfunctions. Genes usually work in groups rather than isolated, so functions should be assigned to gene groups and not to individual genes. Moreover, the genetic knowledge has many relations and is very frequently changeable. Thus, a propositional ad-hoc approach is not appropriate to deal with the gene group function prediction domain. We propose the Modular Multi-Relational Framework (MMRF), which faces the problem from a relational and flexible point of view. The MMRF consists of several modules covering all involved domain tasks (grouping, representing and learning using computational prediction techniques). A specific application is described, including a relational representation language, where each module of MMRF is individually instantiated and refined for obtaining a prediction under specific given conditions.This research work has been supported by CICYT, TRA 2007-67374-C02-02 project and by the expert biological knowledge of the Structural Computational Biology Group in Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO). The authors would like to thank members of Tilde tool developer group in K.U.Leuven for providing their help and many useful suggestions.Publicad

Antigen-Specific T-Cell Activation Distinguishes between Recent and Remote Tuberculosis Infection

Rationale: Current diagnostic tests fail to identify individuals at higher risk of progression to tuberculosis disease, such as those with recent Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection, who should be prioritized for targeted preventive treatment. Objectives: To define a blood-based biomarker, measured with a simple flow cytometry assay, that can stratify different stages of tuberculosis infection to infer risk of disease. Methods: South African adolescents were serially tested with QuantiFERON-TB Gold to define recent (QuantiFERON-TB conversion 1 yr) infection. We defined the ΔHLA-DR median fluorescence intensity biomarker as the difference in HLA-DR expression between IFN-γ+ TNF+ Mycobacterium tuberculosis-specific T cells and total CD3+ T cells. Biomarker performance was assessed by blinded prediction in untouched test cohorts with recent versus persistent infection or tuberculosis disease and by unblinded analysis of asymptomatic adolescents with tuberculosis infection who remained healthy (nonprogressors) or who progressed to microbiologically confirmed disease (progressors). Measurements and Main Results: In the test cohorts, frequencies of Mycobacterium tuberculosis-specific T cells differentiated between QuantiFERON-TB- (n = 25) and QuantiFERON-TB+ (n = 47) individuals (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, 0.94; 95% confidence interval, 0.87-1.00). ΔHLA-DR significantly discriminated between recent (n = 20) and persistent (n = 22) QuantiFERON-TB+ (0.91; 0.83-1.00); persistent QuantiFERON-TB+ and newly diagnosed tuberculosis (n = 19; 0.99; 0.96-1.00); and tuberculosis progressors (n = 22) and nonprogressors (n = 34; 0.75; 0.63-0.87). However, ΔHLA-DR median fluorescent intensity could not discriminate between recent QuantiFERON-TB+ and tuberculosis (0.67; 0.50-0.84). Conclusions: The ΔHLA-DR biomarker can identify individuals with recent QuantiFERON-TB conversion and those with disease progression, allowing targeted provision of preventive treatment to those at highest risk of tuberculosis. Further validation studies of this novel immune biomarker in various settings and populations at risk are warranted

The Imprint of Gravitational Waves in Models Dominated by a Dynamical Cosmic Scalar Field

An alternative to the standard cold dark matter model has been recently proposed in which a significant fraction of the energy density of the universe is due to a dynamical scalar field ($Q$) whose effective equation-of-state differs from that of matter, radiation or cosmological constant ($\Lambda$). In this paper, we determine how the Q-component modifies the primordial inflation gravitational wave (tensor metric) contribution to the cosmic microwave background anisotropy and, thereby, one of the key tests of inflation.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figures, revtex, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Hiding in Plain Sight-Ancient Chinese Anatomy

For thousands of years, scientists have studied human anatomy by dissecting bodies. Our knowledge of their findings is limited, however, both by the subsequent loss of many of the oldest texts, and by a tendency towards a Eurocentric perspective in medicine. As a discipline, anatomy tends to be much more familiar with ancient Greek texts than with those from India, China or Persia. Here we show that the Mawangdui medical texts, entombed in the Mawangdui burial site in Changsha, China 168BCE, are the oldest surviving anatomical atlas in the world. These medical texts both predate and inform the later acupuncture texts which have been the foundation for acupuncture practice in the subsequent two millennia. The skills necessary to interpret them are diverse, requiring the researcher firstly to read the original Chinese, and secondly to perform the anatomical investigations that allow a re-viewing of the structures that the texts refer to. Acupuncture meridians are considered to be esoteric in nature, but these texts are clearly descriptions of the physical body. As such, they represent a previously hidden chapter in the history of anatomy, and a new perspective on acupuncture