House dust mite induced allergic rhinitis in children in primary care : Epidemiology and Management

Allergic rhinitis (AR) is an allergen-induced, upper-airway inflammatory disease. The characteristic symptoms of allergic rhinitis are a runny nose, sneezing, congestion, redness of the eyes, watering eyes, and itching of the eyes, nose and throat. Previously, allergic rhinitis was subdivided into seasonal and perennial allergic rhinitis. The current classification of the World Health Organization (WHO) subdivides allergic rhinitis into intermittent allergic rhinitis and persistent allergic rhinitis (ARIA Guidelines). Intermittent allergic rhinitis occurs in people who are allergic to grass or tree pollen present during spring and summer (hay fever). Persistent allergic rhinitis results from the constant presence of allergens such as mold, animal dander or house dust mites. This type of allergic rhinitis occurs throughout the year, although symptoms may be less severe than with intermittent allergic rhinitis. This thesis focuses on persistent allergic rhinitis triggered by house dust mites in children. The majority of patients who seek medical advice visit their general practitioner. Although allergic rhinitis is not a life-threatening disease, it can have a significant effect on quality of life, and is associated with a number of common co-morbidities, including asthma and sinusitis

Circadian rhythms and second language performance

Human behavior is not constant over the hours of the day, and there are considerable individual differences. Some people raise early and go to bed early and have their peek performance early in the day (“larks”) while others tend to go to bed late and get up late and have their best performance later in the day (“owls”). In this contribution we report on three projects on the role of chronotype (CT) in language processing and learning. The first study (de Bot, 2013) reports on the impact of CT on language learning aptitude and word learning. The second project was reported in Fang (2015) and looks at CT and executive functions, in particular inhibition as measured by variants of the Stroop test. The third project aimed at assessing lexical access in L1 and L2 at preferred and non-preferred times of the day. The data suggest that there are effects of CT on language learning and processing. There is a small effect of CT on language aptitude and a stronger effect of CT on lexical access in the first and second language. The lack of significance for other tasks is mainly caused by the large interindividual and intraindividual variation

Local variation in absolute water content of human and rabbit eye lenses measured by Raman microspectroscopy

Raman spectra were obtained from fresh, fixed and sliced rabbit lenses and from human lens slices. For all lenses and lens slices the ratio R, defined as the Raman intensity at 3390 cm−1 divided by the Raman intensity at 2935 cm−1, was measured at different locations along the visual and equatorial axis. The ratios R were transformed to absolute water mass percentages by measuring solutions with known protein concentrations. It was shown that fixation and slicing have very little effect on the absolute water content of the lenses. The values obtained for the absolute water content are comparable to values given in literature. It was also shown that the water content in rabbit and human lenses rapidly decreases from the immediate anterior and posterior subsurface region to the deep superficial cortex and is relatively constant in the nucleus. Raman microspectroscopy appears to be a reliable method for the measurement of the absolute water content of small volumes on defined positions in the lens. This can be very useful when analyzing the possible relation between local variations in water content and the occurrence of opacities in the lens

Multichronic complexity in second language development

Taking a dynamic systems perspective on second language development, this paper argues that development is change over time, which is never stable and has no end state. Moreover, time can be defined at different scales: from the millisecond, minute, week and year to the lifespan. At all scales we can see change over time in language development at different levels of granularity; however, the time scale and level of granularity we use  determines to a great extent what we find. What seems a change at one level may be nothing more than natural variation at another one.Keywords: Multichronic complexity, language development, variation, time scale

Editorial

Teachers have known for a long time that language learners differ and that a one-size-fits-all does not exist. Still in the days of structuralism, language and its users were seen as being a “thing” to be learned and taught, and since the goal of the learning was the same for all learners—proficiency in the language—the road to that goal should be uniform as well. Language was seen as a set of structures that had to be mastered, and this led to the audio-lingual method in which learners had to drill patterns and make no mistakes, since mistakes could be engrained as good as correct patterns. It was argued that the audiolingual method allowed for individual variation, since learners could choose their own goals and repeat parts of the curriculum on their own

The Living Rainforest Sustainable Greenhouses

The Living Rainforest (www.livingrainforest.org) is an educational charity that uses rainforest ecology as a metaphor for communicating general sustainability issues to the public. Its greenhouses and office buildings are to be renovated using the most sustainable methods currently available. This will be realised through construction of a high insulating greenhouse covering with a k-value of less than 2 Wm-2K-1, passive seasonal storage of excess summer solar energy in the ground by a ground source heat exchanger and exploitation of this low grade solar energy for heating in winter by a heat pump. In winter the heat pump will produce cold water to cool the ground allowing a passive cooling function in summer via the GSHE. It will be demonstrated that a GSHE is an alternative for an open aquifer in regions with no aquifer availability. The heat pump will deliver the heating baseload, the peak load will be delivered by a biomass boiler, fired with locally-sourced low-cost wood chips. It is expected that the energy saving will be about 75%, resulting in a major cost reduction. The low k-value of the covering is linked to a light transmission of 75 %. This is high enough for the demands of the vegetation in The Living Rainforest. Because the inner greenhouse climate demands are comparable to that of ornamentals, the results will be applicable to commercial ornamental production. In future low k-value coverings will also be available with high light transmission, allowing wider application of the results. This paper focuses on the correlation between k-value, light transmission and energy demand in order to investigate the trade-off between light transmittance (a major energy gain) and heat loss. The effects of these design parameters on storage and harvesting capacity are also considered but appear to have a low sensitivity. The renovated greenhouse site at The Living Rainforest will show that new greenhouses and ecology can be linked to sustainability and this will be communicated and demonstrated to the public

Raman microspectroscopy of fixed rabbit and human lenses and lens slices: New potentialities

Raman spectroscopy is a non-invasive, non-destructive technique for the study of the macromolecular composition of tissues. Raman spectra were obtained from intact fresh and paraformaldehyde fixed rabbit lenses and from thin slices prepared from these lenses. In addition the Raman spectrum of an intact 82-yr-old human lens was compared with a slice of the same lens. It appeared that fixation with paraformaldehyde had only a minor qualitative effect on the Raman spectra and that Raman spectra of intact lenses and lens slices were comparable. It was also shown that in the slice of the old human lens the fluorescence, due to chromophores, could be reduced so that a reliable Raman spectrum could be obtained.\ud \ud The use of slices improves the accuracy of the position at which Raman spectra are recorded and fixation extends the time available for Raman analysis which is particularly important for the study of human lenses. Moreover, slicing enables Raman analysis of old human lenses, which up to now was thought to be impossible due to the overwhelming fluorescence of the chromophores present in these lenses

Intensity of Multilingual Language Use Predicts Cognitive Performance in Some Multilingual Older Adults

Cognitive advantages for bilinguals have inconsistently been observed in different populations, with different operationalisations of bilingualism, cognitive performance, and the process by which language control transfers to cognitive control. This calls for studies investigating which aspects of multilingualism drive a cognitive advantage, in which populations and under which conditions. This study reports on two cognitive tasks coupled with an extensive background questionnaire on health, wellbeing, personality, language knowledge and language use, administered to 387 older adults in the northern Netherlands, a small but highly multilingual area. Using linear mixed effects regression modeling, we find that when different languages are used frequently in different contexts, enhanced attentional control is observed. Subsequently, a PLS regression model targeting also other influential factors yielded a two-component solution whereby only more sensitive measures of language proficiency and language usage in different social contexts were predictive of cognitive performance above and beyond the contribution of age, gender, income and education. We discuss these findings in light of previous studies that try to uncover more about the nature of bilingualism and the cognitive processes that may drive an advantage. With an unusually large sample size our study advocates for a move away from dichotomous, knowledge-based operationalisations of multilingualism and offers new insights for future studies at the individual leve