Prehospital critical care is associated with increased survival in adult trauma patients in Scotland

Background Scotland has three prehospital critical care teams (PHCCTs) providing enhanced care support to a usually paramedic-delivered ambulance service. The effect of the PHCCTs on patient survival following trauma in Scotland is not currently known nationally. Methods National registry-based retrospective cohort study using 2011-2016 data from the Scottish Trauma Audit Group. 30-day mortality was compared between groups after multivariate analysis to account for confounding variables. Results Our data set comprised 17 157 patients, with a mean age of 54.7 years and 8206 (57.5%) of male gender. 2877 patients in the registry were excluded due to incomplete data on their level of prehospital care, leaving an eligible group of 14 280. 13 504 injured adults who received care from ambulance clinicians (paramedics or technicians) were compared with 776 whose care included input from a PHCCT. The median Injury Severity Score (ISS) across all eligible patients was 9; 3076 patients (21.5%) met the ISS>15 criterion for major trauma. Patients in the PHCCT cohort were statistically significantly (all p < 0.01) more likely to be male; be transported to a prospective Major Trauma Centre; have suffered major trauma; have suffered a severe head injury; be transported by air and be intubated prior to arrival in hospital. Following multivariate analysis, the OR for 30-day mortality for patients seen by a PHCCT was 0.56 (95% CI 0.36 to 0.86, p=0.01). Conclusion Prehospital care provided by a physician-led critical care team was associated with an increased chance of survival at 30 days when compared with care provided by ambulance clinicians

New Ultraviolet Extinction Curves for Interstellar Dust in M31

New low-resolution UV spectra of a sample of reddened OB stars in M31 were obtained with HST/STIS to study the wavelength dependence of interstellar extinction and the nature of the underlying dust grain populations. Extinction curves were constructed for four reddened sightlines in M31 paired with closely matching stellar atmosphere models. The new curves have a much higher S/N than previous studies. Direct measurements of N(H I) were made using the Ly$\alpha$ absorption lines enabling gas-to-dust ratios to be calculated. The sightlines have a range in galactocentric distance of 5 to 14 kpc and represent dust from regions of different metallicities and gas-to-dust ratios. The metallicities sampled range from Solar to 1.5 Solar. The measured curves show similarity to those seen in the Milky Way and the Large Magellanic Cloud. The Maximum Entropy Method was used to investigate the dust composition and size distribution for the sightlines observed in this program finding that the extinction curves can be produced with the available carbon and silicon abundances if the metallicity is super-Solar.Comment: ApJ, in press, 9 pages, 5 figure

Evidence of Embodied Social Competence During Conversation in High Functioning Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Even high functioning children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) exhibit impairments that affect their ability to carry out and maintain effective social interactions in multiple contexts. One aspect of subtle nonverbal communication that might play a role in this impairment is the whole-body motor coordination that naturally arises between people during conversation. The current study aimed to measure the time-dependent, coordinated whole-body movements between children with ASD and a clinician during a conversational exchange using tools of nonlinear dynamics. Given the influence that subtle interpersonal coordination has on social interaction feelings, we expected there to be important associations between the dynamic motor movement measures introduced in the current study and the measures used traditionally to categorize ASD impairment (ADOS-2, joint attention and theory of mind). The study found that children with ASD coordinated their bodily movements with a clinician, that these movements were complex and that the complexity of the children’s movements matched that of the clinician’s movements. Importantly, the degree of this bodily coordination was related to higher social cognitive ability. This suggests children with ASD are embodying some degree of social competence during conversations. This study demonstrates the importance of further investigating the subtle but important bodily movement coordination that occurs during social interaction in children with ASD

Residual Stresses in Alloy IN718 Produced Through Modulated Laser Powder Bed Fusion

Background: Laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) additive manufacturing (AM) is used for building metallic parts layer-by-layer and often generates non-uniform thermal gradients between layers during fabrication, resulting in the development of residual stresses when parts are cooled down. Objective: The impact of modulated laser used during the L-PBF process on residual stresses in Inconel 718 (IN718) material was investigated. The impact of build directions on residual stress is also determined. Methods: The contour method is employed to measure the full-field residual stress component on the cross-section of samples. A complementary residual stress measurement method, incremental hole drilling, was employed for obtaining in-plane residual stress components. Results: The results show that the residual stress distribution is sensitive to the build direction, with a higher magnitude of residual stress in the direction of build than that in the transverse direction. Multiple measurements with the same manufacturing parameters show good repeatability. Conclusion: Residual stresses in the as-built parts are significant and hence a further consideration regarding relieving residual stresses is required when post-thermal treatments are developed

Political economy of renewable resource federalism

Author Posting. © Ecological Society of America, 2021. This article is posted here by permission of Ecological Society of America for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Ecological Applications 00 (2021): e2276, doi:10.1002/eap.2276.The authority to manage natural capital often follows political boundaries rather than ecological. This mismatch can lead to unsustainable outcomes, as spillovers from one management area to the next may create adverse incentives for local decision making, even within a single country. At the same time, one‐size‐fits‐all approaches of federal (centralized) authority can fail to respond to state (decentralized) heterogeneity and can result in inefficient economic or detrimental ecological outcomes. Here we utilize a spatially explicit coupled natural–human system model of a fishery to illuminate trade‐offs posed by the choice between federal vs. state control of renewable resources. We solve for the dynamics of fishing effort and fish stocks that result from different approaches to federal management that vary in terms of flexibility. Adapting numerical methods from engineering, we also solve for the open‐loop Nash equilibrium characterizing state management outcomes, where each state anticipates and responds to the choices of the others. We consider traditional federalism questions (state vs. federal management) as well as more contemporary questions about the economic and ecological impacts of shifting regulatory authority from one level to another. The key mechanisms behind the trade‐offs include whether differences in local conditions are driven by biological or economic mechanisms; degree of flexibility embedded in the federal management; the spatial and temporal distribution of economic returns across states; and the status‐quo management type. While simple rules‐of‐thumb are elusive, our analysis reveals the complex political economy dimensions of renewable resource federalism.This work was partially supported through the Ecological Federalism working group of the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis, an Institute sponsored by the National Science Foundation through NSF Award (No. DBI‐1300426), with additional support from the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy and The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. M. G. Neubert acknowledges support from the U.S. National Science Foundation (DEB‐1558904) and from the J. Seward Johnson Endowment in support of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Marine Policy Center. We would like to thank seminar participants at Oregon State University, Nature Policy Lab at U.C. Davis, and the 2019 Association of Environmental and Resource Economists Summer Conference for valuable comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this research

Size and conformation limits to secretion of disulfide-bonded loops in autotransporter proteins

Autotransporters are a superfamily of virulence factors typified by a channel-forming C terminus that facilitates translocation of the functional N-terminal passenger domain across the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria. This final step in the secretion of autotransporters requires a translocation-competent conformation for the passenger domain that differs markedly from the structure of the fully folded secreted protein. The nature of the translocation-competent conformation remains controversial, in particular whether the passenger domain can adopt secondary structural motifs, such as disulfide- bonded segments, while maintaining a secretion-competent state. Here, we used the endogenous and closely spaced cysteine residues of the plasmid-encoded toxin (Pet) from enteroaggregative Escherichia coli to investigate the effect of disulfide bond-induced folding on translocation of an auto-transporter passenger domain. We reveal that rigid structural elements within disulfide-bonded segments are resistant to autotransporter-mediated secretion. We define the size limit of disulfide-bonded segments tolerated by the autotransporter system demonstrating that, when present, cysteine pairs are intrinsically closely spaced to prevent congestion of the translocator pore by large disulfide-bonded regions. These latter data strongly support the hairpin mode of autotransporter biogenesis

Coronal emission from the shocked circumstellar ring of SN 1987A

High resolution spectra with UVES/VLT of SN 1987A from December 2000 until November 2005 show a number of high ionization lines from gas with velocities of roughly 350 km/s, emerging from the shocked gas formed by the ejecta-ring collision. These include coronal lines from [Fe X], [Fe XI] and [Fe XIV] which have increased by a factor of about 20 during the observed period. The evolution of the lines is similar to that of the soft X-rays, indicating that they arise in the same component. The line ratios are consistent with those expected from radiative shocks with velocity 310-390 km/s, corresponding to a shock temperature of (1.6-2.5) x 10^6 K. A fraction of the coronal emission may, however, originate in higher velocity adiabatic shocks.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in A&