Establishment and Maintenance of Roadside Plantings and Turf

A series of experimental investigations initiated by the Kentucky Highway Department over a six-year period were designed for the purpose of studying the I adaptability, establishment, and maintenance of roadside plantings and turf, including the stabilization and management of roadside soils

Examining the Predictors of the White Racial Justice Advocate

In recent years, race and racial justice issues have been at the forefront of political and academic discourse. Despite claim ha he Unied Sae ha moed ino a pot-acial era with the election of Barack Obama in 2008, empirical evidence unequivocally demonstrates that racial disparities still exist. While the system of racial oppression clearly has deleterious effects on people of color, some argue that White individuals are also negatively affected, albeit indirectly, by this system. Because the system of racial oppression affects White individuals, it is important that they too make efforts to dismantle the system of racial oppression. As White individuals are often perceived as more legitimate due to their privileged racial status, they can use this perception to intervene in instances that would be more difficult for people of color (e.g., interactions with other Whites). Thus, the present study aims to extend upon previous inquiry into White racial justice activism. Outgroup activism has generally received little attention in the activism literature and even less investigation has been made into White antiracist activism. Previous studies have largely employed qualitative methodology and have found the role of emotional engagement (e.g., empathy) and White privilege attitudes to be important factors motivating White activists to engage in racial justice efforts. It was hypothesized that empathy, ethnocultural empathy, and White privilege attitudes will predict general activist orientation and specific anti-racist activism behaviors. Results from a college student sample and an activist online sample suggested that ethnocultural empathy and White privilege attitudes, but not general empathy, predicted activist orientation and antiracist activism behaviors. These results provide support for previous qualitative studies suggesting a link between empathy, White privilege, and engagement in antiracist activism. Furthermore, the results have important implications for training White antiracist advocates and those within professions that value social justice (e.g., counseling psychologists). Given these findings, it would be prudent to further investigate the role of empathy in activism, the developmental trajectory of activist identity, and the development of White antiracist advocate training interventions

Four layer bandage compared with short stretch bandage for venous leg ulcers: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials with data from individual patients

<p><b>Objective:</b> To compare the effectiveness of two types of compression treatment (four layer bandage and short stretch bandage) in people with venous leg ulceration.</p> <p><b>Design:</b> Systematic review and meta-analysis of patient level data.</p> <p><b>Data:</b> sources Electronic databases (the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, the Cochrane Wounds Group Specialised Register, Medline, Embase, CINAHL, and National Research Register) and reference lists of retrieved articles searched to identify relevant trials and primary investigators. Primary investigators of eligible trials were invited to contribute raw data for re-analysis.</p> <p><b>Review:</b> methods Randomised controlled trials of four layer bandage compared with short stretch bandage in people with venous leg ulceration were eligible for inclusion. The primary outcome for the meta-analysis was time to healing. Cox proportional hazards models were run to compare the methods in terms of time to healing with adjustment for independent predictors of healing. Secondary outcomes included incidence and number of adverse events per patient.</p> <p><b>Results:</b> Seven eligible trials were identified (887 patients), and patient level data were retrieved for five (797 patients, 90% of known randomised patients). The four layer bandage was associated with significantly shorter time to healing: hazard ratio (95% confidence interval) from multifactorial model based on five trials was 1.31 (1.09 to 1.58), P=0.005. Larger ulcer area at baseline, more chronic ulceration, and previous ulceration were all independent predictors of delayed healing. Data from two trials showed no evidence of a difference in adverse event profiles between the two bandage types.</p> <p><b>Conclusions:</b> Venous leg ulcers in patients treated with four layer bandages heal faster, on average, than those of people treated with the short stretch bandage. Benefits were consistent across patients with differing prognostic profiles.</p&gt

Information Certainty Determines Social and Private Information Use in Ants

Decision-making in uncertain environments requires animals to evaluate, contrast and integrate various information sources to choose appropriate actions. In consensus-making groups, quorum responses are commonly used to combine private and social information, leading to both robust and flexible decisions. Here we show that in house-hunting ant colonies, individuals fine-tune the parameters of their quorum responses depending on their private knowledge: informed ants evaluating a familiar new nest rely relatively more on social than private information when the certainty of their private information is low, and vice versa. This indicates that the ants follow a highly sophisticated `copywhen-uncertain' social learning strategy similar to that observed in a few vertebrate species. Using simulations, we further show that this strategy improves colony performance during emigrations and confers well-informed individuals more weight in the decision process, thus representing a novel mechanism for the emergence of leadership in collective decision-making

An Examination of Heterosis in Crosses of Certain Inbred Strains of Mice

Author Institution: Department of Dairy Science, The Ohio State University, and Battelle Memorial Institute, Columbus, Ohi

SYSTEMS-2: a randomised phase II study of radiotherapy dose escalation for pain control in malignant pleural mesothelioma

SYSTEMS-2 is a randomised study of radiotherapy dose escalation for pain control in 112 patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM). Standard palliative (20Gy/5#) or dose escalated treatment (36Gy/6#) will be delivered using advanced radiotherapy techniques and pain responses will be compared at week 5. Data will guide optimal palliative radiotherapy in MPM

Molecular modeling of a tandem two pore domain potassium channel reveals a putative binding Site for general anesthetics

[Image: see text] Anesthetics are thought to mediate a portion of their activity via binding to and modulation of potassium channels. In particular, tandem pore potassium channels (K2P) are transmembrane ion channels whose current is modulated by the presence of general anesthetics and whose genetic absence has been shown to confer a level of anesthetic resistance. While the exact molecular structure of all K2P forms remains unknown, significant progress has been made toward understanding their structure and interactions with anesthetics via the methods of molecular modeling, coupled with the recently released higher resolution structures of homologous potassium channels to act as templates. Such models reveal the convergence of amino acid regions that are known to modulate anesthetic activity onto a common three- dimensional cavity that forms a putative anesthetic binding site. The model successfully predicts additional important residues that are also involved in the putative binding site as validated by the results of suggested experimental mutations. Such a model can now be used to further predict other amino acid residues that may be intimately involved in the target-based structure–activity relationships that are necessary for anesthetic binding