Painting the ideal home: using art to express visions of technologically supported independent living for older people in North East England

This paper describes the investigation of the development of future technological products to support older people in everyday living through the agency of a community art group. Recent research has identified a number of challenges facing designers seeking to use traditional participatory design approaches to gather technology requirements data from older people. Here, a project is described that sought to get a group of older people to think creatively about their needs and desires for technological support through the medium of paint. The artistic expression technique described in this article allowed the identification of issues that had also been found by previous research that used a range of different techniques. This indicates that the approach shows promise, as it allows information to be gathered in an environment that is comfortable and familiar using methods already known by the participants and which they find enjoyable. It provides a complement (or possible alternative) to standard protocols and has the potential benefit of extracting even richer information as the primary task for participants is enjoyable in its own right and is not associated with an interrogative process. Furthermore, it is argued that some of the key risks of traditional approaches are lessened or removed by the naturalistic setting of this approach

Methodological approaches to assess body-weight regulation and aetiology of obesity

Obesity, which is becoming one of the major health hazards in developed and developing societies, results from a long-term positive energy balance. Body-weight regulation and stability depend on an axis with three interrelated components: food intake, energy expenditure and adipogenesis, although there are still many unknown features concerning fuel homeostasis and energy balance. Biochemical processes are interconnected, and a separate consideration of each component is often useful for methodological purposes and to achieve a better understanding of the whole system. Thus, many different experimental approaches can be applied by using laboratory animals, cell culture or human subjects to unravel the molecular mechanisms which participate in body-weight regulation. Thus, both in vitro (cellular and subcellular models) and in vivo methods have dramatically increased our knowledge of weight control. Several strategies in obesity research are reported here, exploiting the opportunities of the molecular era as well as novel whole-body approaches, which will impact on the development of new targets for obesity management and prevention

Quantitative lateral flow strip assays as user-friendly tools to detect biomarker profiles for leprosy

Leprosy is a debilitating, infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium leprae. Despite the availability of multidrug therapy, transmission is unremitting. Thus, early identification of M. leprae infection is essential to reduce transmission. The immune response to M. leprae is determined by host genetics, resulting in paucibacillary (PB) and multibacillary (MB) leprosy associated with dominant cellular or humoral immunity, respectively. This spectral pathology of leprosy compels detection of immunity to M. leprae to be based on multiple, diverse biomarkers. In this study we have applied quantitative user friendly lateral flow assays (LFAs) for four immune markers (anti-PGL-I antibodies, IL-10, CCL4 and IP-10) for whole blood samples from a longitudinal BCG vaccination field-trial in Bangladesh. Different biomarker profiles, in contrast to single markers, distinguished M. leprae infected from non-infected test groups, patients from household contacts (HHC) and endemic controls (EC), or MB from PB patients. The test protocol presented in this study merging detection of innate, adaptive cellular as well as humoral immunity, thus provides a convenient tool to measure specific biomarker profiles for M. leprae infection and leprosy utilizing a field-friendly technology

Review and guide to a future naming system of African Bemisia tabaci species

Once a pest has been correctly identified, its genus and species name can provide a link to valuable indications of its ecology, biology and life history that are critical for developing control strategies. Importantly, this link should exist even when the pest was known under other names (synonyms), or was not considered a pest at all (National Research Council, 1968). Many examples have shown that incorrect identification or classification of a pest has led to fruitless searches for biocontrol agents in the native range, incorrect assignments as disease vectors, and costly, yet misdirected, suppression measures. As new approaches for delimiting species based on molecular information become more widely used, the process of correctly identifying a species has become even more complex. Fortunately, we have good systematic frameworks and nomenclatural systems that are able to cope with these challenges. Here we review challenges associated with classification and identification within the Bemisia tabaci (Gennadius) species complex. These pests and the viruses they transmit have emerged in the past few decades as among the most damaging to food and fibre crops globally (Varma & Malathi, 2003; Pimental et al., 2005; Seal et al., 2006), especially in sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA). The systematics of the B. tabaci species group has been a highly debated topic for years (Boykin, 2014). Putative species are indistinguishable morphologically, so other biological data have been collected to investigate the species in the complex. Based on genetic differences (Colvin et al., 2004; Sseruwagi et al., 2005; Boykin et al., 2007; Boykin et al., 2013; Hsieh et al., 2014) and mating incompatibility (Colvin et al., 2004; Liu et al., 2007; Xu et al., 2010), B. tabaci is now recognized as a species complex that consists of at least 34 putative species (Boykin et al., 2012). The rapid discovery of significant species diversity has led to many changes in the informal names used over the last 10 years (Boykin, 2014), creating confusion in the literature

Erratum: Author Correction: Identification of genes required for eye development by high-throughput screening of mouse knockouts.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1038/s42003-018-0226-0.]

A genetic variation map for chicken with 2.8 million single-nucleotide polymorphisms

We describe a genetic variation map for the chicken genome containing 2.8 million single-nucleotide polymorphisms ( SNPs). This map is based on a comparison of the sequences of three domestic chicken breeds ( a broiler, a layer and a Chinese silkie) with that of their wild ancestor, red jungle fowl. Subsequent experiments indicate that at least 90% of the variant sites are true SNPs, and at least 70% are common SNPs that segregate in many domestic breeds. Mean nucleotide diversity is about five SNPs per kilobase for almost every possible comparison between red jungle fowl and domestic lines, between two different domestic lines, and within domestic lines - in contrast to the notion that domestic animals are highly inbred relative to their wild ancestors. In fact, most of the SNPs originated before domestication, and there is little evidence of selective sweeps for adaptive alleles on length scales greater than 100 kilobases