A rapid assay for tyrosinase activity

A rapid assay for tyrosinase activit

Spare embryos: 3000 reasons to rethink the significance of genetic relatedness.

IVF laws in Victoria, Australia provide that human embryos must not remain in storage in excess of 5 years. Studies reviewing the fate of surplus human embryos reveal that close to 90% of couples choose to discard their excess embryos and that hundreds of embryos are disposed of annually. It has been argued that human embryos are a valuable resource and that there is a need to consider educational programmes to encourage couples to donate spare embryos to other infertile couples, rather than discard them. Surveys show that one reason that so few embryos are donated is that couples attach great significance to genetic parenthood. Advances in reproductive technology may necessitate a review of biological definitions of family and the importance of genetic relatedness. It can be argued that it is unreasonable to conclude that genetic ties are so significant that embryos should be discarded rather than donated and raised by non-genetically related parents. It is suggested that education programmes should encourage reflection on people's beliefs about the importance of genetic relatedness with regard to what makes a family. Open embryo donation or directed embryo donation programmes might cause couples to change their minds, or alleviate their anxiety about donating embryos to others

Do health service staff support the implementation of voluntary assisted dying at their workplace?

Background: On 29 November 2017, the Victorian Parliament passed the Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) Act 2017, which came into effect on 19 June 2019. Aims: To investigate whether staff from a large regional health service support the legalisation of VAD and the implementation of VAD at their workplace. Methods: Staff were invited to complete an anonymous online survey comprising both closed- and open-ended questions. Results: Thirty-eight percent of the workforce (n = 1624) responded to the survey. Most participants supported the legalisation of VAD (88%), the provision of eligibility assessment and/or the administration of VAD within the health service (80%). There were negligible differences in support for VAD by role; however, specialist doctors were significantly less supportive (65%). Approximately half of the respondents expressed concern about monitoring (49%) or implementation (53%) of VAD. Concerns were also raised about assessment of eligibility, support for staff involved in VAD and pressure on both patients and staff to participate. Nearly three-quarters (71%) of participants agreed that if the health service offers VAD services, a special unit or facility should be available. Conclusions: This study found that health workers have concerns about the implementation of VAD at their workplace but are generally supportive. This article provides information for health services considering the implementation of VAD, about staff concerns and issues that need to be addressed for the successful introduction of VAD

Realistic extended target model for track before detect in maritime surveillance

Traditional target tracking algorithms are generally fed a set of thresholded detections under the hypothesis that no more than one detection is generated by each single target. Improvements in modern radar systems have made possible to obtain high resolution data of the targets, making them occupy more than a single resolution cell, and have made necessary to use appropriate Extended Target Tracking (ETT) techniques, since the aforementioned hypothesis is no longer valid. However, these techniques do not often take into account the physical phenomena that are involved in the radar-sea-target system. This paper explores some of the effects involved in the transmission, propagation, backscattering and processing of the radar signal in a maritime environment, that have a crucial importance in ETT. A statistical model that considers the featured effects is developed and tested in a particle filter based Track before Detect (TbD) algorithm. Accounting for physical aspects, good outcomes in both kinematic (i.e. position and velocity) and size (i.e. width and length) estimation can be pointed out using real radar data acquired by a high resolution X-band Marine radar located in the Gulf of La Spezia, Italy