General Gauss-Bonnet brane cosmology

We consider 5-dimensional spacetimes of constant 3-dimensional spatial curvature in the presence of a bulk cosmological constant. We find the general solution of such a configuration in the presence of a Gauss-Bonnet term. Two classes of non-trivial bulk solutions are found. The first class is valid only under a fine tuning relation between the Gauss-Bonnet coupling constant and the cosmological constant of the bulk spacetime. The second class of solutions are static and are the extensions of the AdS-Schwarzchild black holes. Hence in the absence of a cosmological constant or if the fine tuning relation is not true, the generalised Birkhoff's staticity theorem holds even in the presence of Gauss-Bonnet curvature terms. We examine the consequences in brane world cosmology obtaining the generalised Friedmann equations for a perfect fluid 3-brane and discuss how this modifies the usual scenario.Comment: 20 pages, no figures, typos corrected, refs added, section IV changed yielding novel result

Assessment of the worldwide burden of critical illness: the Intensive Care Over Nations (ICON) audit

Global epidemiological data regarding outcomes for patients in intensive care units (ICUs) are scarce, but are important in understanding the worldwide burden of critical illness. We, therefore, did an international audit of ICU patients worldwide and assessed variations between hospitals and countries in terms of ICU mortality

Professionalism, Golf Coaching and a Master of Science Degree: A commentary

As a point of reference I congratulate Simon Jenkins on tackling the issue of professionalism in coaching. As he points out coaching is not a profession, but this does not mean that coaching would not benefit from going through a professionalization process. As things stand I find that the stimulus article unpacks some critically important issues of professionalism, broadly within the context of golf coaching. However, I am not sure enough is made of understanding what professional (golf) coaching actually is nor how the development of a professional golf coach can be facilitated by a Master of Science Degree (M.Sc.). I will focus my commentary on these two issues

2019 international consensus on cardiopulmonary resuscitation and emergency cardiovascular care science with treatment recommendations : summary from the basic life support; advanced life support; pediatric life support; neonatal life support; education, implementation, and teams; and first aid task forces

The International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation has initiated a continuous review of new, peer-reviewed, published cardiopulmonary resuscitation science. This is the third annual summary of the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation International Consensus on Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care Science With Treatment Recommendations. It addresses the most recent published resuscitation evidence reviewed by International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation Task Force science experts. This summary addresses the role of cardiac arrest centers and dispatcher-assisted cardiopulmonary resuscitation, the role of extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation in adults and children, vasopressors in adults, advanced airway interventions in adults and children, targeted temperature management in children after cardiac arrest, initial oxygen concentration during resuscitation of newborns, and interventions for presyncope by first aid providers. Members from 6 International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation task forces have assessed, discussed, and debated the certainty of the evidence on the basis of the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation criteria, and their statements include consensus treatment recommendations. Insights into the deliberations of the task forces are provided in the Justification and Evidence to Decision Framework Highlights sections. The task forces also listed priority knowledge gaps for further research

Major flaws in conflict prevention policies towards Africa : the conceptual deficits of international actors’ approaches and how to overcome them

Current thinking on African conflicts suffers from misinterpretations oversimplification, lack of focus, lack of conceptual clarity, state-centrism and lack of vision). The paper analyses a variety of the dominant explanations of major international actors and donors, showing how these frequently do not distinguish with sufficient clarity between the ‘root causes’ of a conflict, its aggravating factors and its triggers. Specifically, a correct assessment of conflict prolonging (or sustaining) factors is of vital importance in Africa’s lingering confrontations. Broader approaches (e.g. “structural stability”) offer a better analytical framework than familiar one-dimensional explanations. Moreover, for explaining and dealing with violent conflicts a shift of attention from the nation-state towards the local and sub-regional level is needed.Aktuelle Analysen afrikanischer Gewaltkonflikte sind häufig voller Fehlinterpretationen (Mangel an Differenzierung, Genauigkeit und konzeptioneller Klarheit, Staatszentriertheit, fehlende mittelfristige Zielvorstellungen). Breitere Ansätze (z. B. das Modell der Strukturellen Stabilität) könnten die Grundlage für bessere Analyseraster und Politiken sein als eindimensionale Erklärungen. häufig differenzieren Erklärungsansätze nicht mit ausreichender Klarheit zwischen Ursachen, verschärfenden und auslösenden Faktoren. Insbesondere die richtige Einordnung konfliktverlängernder Faktoren ist in den jahrzehntelangen gewaltsamen Auseinandersetzungen in Afrika von zentraler Bedeutung. Das Diskussionspapier stellt die große Variationsbreite dominanter Erklärungsmuster der wichtigsten internationalen Geber und Akteure gegenüber und fordert einen Perspektivenwechsel zum Einbezug der lokalen und der subregionalen Ebene für die Erklärung und Bearbeitung gewaltsamer Konflikte

Proteome sequence features carry signatures of the environmental niche of prokaryotes

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Prokaryotic environmental adaptations occur at different levels within cells to ensure the preservation of genome integrity, proper protein folding and function as well as membrane fluidity. Although specific composition and structure of cellular components suitable for the variety of extreme conditions has already been postulated, a systematic study describing such adaptations has not yet been performed. We therefore explored whether the environmental niche of a prokaryote could be deduced from the sequence of its proteome. Finally, we aimed at finding the precise differences between proteome sequences of prokaryotes from different environments.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We analyzed the proteomes of 192 prokaryotes from different habitats. We collected detailed information about the optimal growth conditions of each microorganism. Furthermore, we selected 42 physico-chemical properties of amino acids and computed their values for each proteome. Further, on the same set of features we applied two fundamentally different machine learning methods, Support Vector Machines and Random Forests, to successfully classify between bacteria and archaea, halophiles and non-halophiles, as well as mesophiles, thermophiles and mesothermophiles. Finally, we performed feature selection by using Random Forests.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>To our knowledge, this is the first time that three different classification cases (domain of life, halophilicity and thermophilicity) of proteome adaptation are successfully performed with the same set of 42 features. The characteristic features of a specific adaptation constitute a signature that may help understanding the mechanisms of adaptation to extreme environments.</p

Advanced Genomic Data Mining

As data banks increase their size, one of the current challenges in bioinformatics is to be able to query them in a sensible way. Information is contained in differen