Zammit bniedem tax-xjenza

L-awtur isostni li Sir Temi Zammit kien wieħed mill-aqwa xjentisti li b’għerfu u ħiltu daħal fix-xirka ta’ Grima, Demarco u Barth, tobba kbar li isimhom ingħaraf mad-dinja.N/

Household decision-making about delivery in health facilities: evidence from Tanzania.

This study investigated how partners' perceptions of the healthcare system influence decisions about delivery-location in low-resource settings. A multistage population-representative sample was used in Kasulu district, Tanzania, to identify women who had given birth in the last five years and their partners. Of 826 couples in analysis, 506 (61.3%) of the women delivered in the home. In multivariate analysis, factors associated with delivery in a health facility were agreement of partners on the importance of delivering in a health facility and agreement that skills of doctors are better than those of traditional birth attendants. When partners disagreed, the opinion of the woman was more influential in determining delivery-location. Agreement of partners regarding perceptions about the healthcare system appeared to be an important driver of decisions about delivery-location. These findings suggest that both partners should be included in the decision-making process regarding delivery to raise rates of delivery at facility

Relationship of hyperglycaemia, hypoglycaemia, and glucose variability to atherosclerotic disease in type 2 diabetes

Objective: Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is known to be associated with increased cardiovascular risk. The aim of this study was therefore to investigate the independent effects of hyperglycaemia, hypoglycaemia, and glucose variability on microvascular and macrovascular disease in T2DM. Methods. Subjects with T2DM of 7.8mmol/L (β=15.83, p=0005) was the sole independent predictor of albuminuria in generalised linear regression. Conclusions. This study demonstrates that hypoglycaemia is associated with the occurrence of atherosclerotic disease while hyperglycaemia is associated with microvascular disease in a Caucasian population with T2DM of recent duration.peer-reviewe

Sclerostin's role in bone's adaptive response to mechanical loading

Mechanical loading is the primary functional determinant of bone mass and architecture, and osteocytes play a key role in translating mechanical signals into (re)modelling responses. Although the precise mechanisms remain unclear, Wnt signalling pathway components, and the anti-osteogenic canonical Wnt inhibitor Sost/sclerostin in particular, play an important role in regulating bone's adaptive response to loading. Increases in loading-engendered strains down-regulate osteocyte sclerostin expression, whereas reduced strains, as in disuse, are associated with increased sclerostin production and bone loss. However, while sclerostin up-regulation appears to be necessary for the loss of bone with disuse, the role of sclerostin in the osteogenic response to loading is more complex. While mice unable to down-regulate sclerostin do not gain bone with loading, Sost knockout mice have an enhanced osteogenic response to loading. The molecular mechanisms by which osteocytes sense and transduce loading-related stimuli into changes in sclerostin expression remain unclear but include several, potentially interlinked, signalling cascades involving periostin/integrin, prostaglandin, estrogen receptor, calcium/NO and Igf signalling. Deciphering the mechanisms by which changes in the mechanical environment regulate sclerostin production may lead to the development of therapeutic strategies that can reverse the skeletal structural deterioration characteristic of disuse and age-related osteoporosis and enhance bones' functional adaptation to loading. By enhancing the osteogenic potential of the context in which individual therapies such as sclerostin antibodies act it may become possible to both prevent and reverse the age-related skeletal structural deterioration characteristic of osteoporosis

Influence du couvert végétal sur l'hydrologie des crues, modélisation à validations multiples

La modélisation présentée ici a subi une double validation : expérimentale, par exploitation de bassins fortement contrastés en végétation, et méthodologique, par exploitation simultanée d'un modèle régional (descriptif synthétique) à démarche ascendante (QdF) et d'un modèle conceptuel global à démarche descendante (GR3J). Le bassin versant de l'Ardières à Beaujeu (54,5 km2) est un petit bassin versant montagneux, recouvert sur 90 % de sa superficie d'une forêt de sapins, de feuillus ainsi que de prairies et sur les 10 % restants de vignobles. A proximité de celui-ci, le bassin versant de la Vauxonne à Buyon (49,3 km2), dont 70 % de la superficie sont plantés en vigne et 30 % sont occupés par la forêt et les prairies, présente des crues bien différenciées, de celles de son voisin, en général plus rapides et deux fois plus intenses. Nous pouvons penser que cette différence de comportement hydrologique est liée au mode d'occupation des sols et plus précisément au système sol-végétation. Dans un premier temps, nous montrons que la paramétrisation des modèles, fortement différenciée d'un bassin versant à l'autre, est la "signature" (toutes choses égales par ailleurs) du rôle joué par l'entité végétale sur les crues observées. Dans un deuxième temps, l'exemple de simulation choisi permet de quantifier et de comparer, pour une même pluie "fictive" d'entrée, le comportement hydrologique en crue d'un petit bassin (environ 50 km2) forestier ou vignoble, dans un contexte pluviométrique bien différencié, de type océanique ou continental alpin. (Résumé d'auteur

A study of response behaviour in a theatre during a live performance

This paper presents the results of an unannounced theatre evacuation involving some 1200 people. The evacuation took place towards the end of a live theatre performance in the Marlowe Theatre in the UK. In particular response phase behaviours are discussed and response time data is presented. A key finding of this work which is different to other reported work is that the occupant response time distribution, while following the typical log-normal distribution is related to the geometrical positioning of the occupants relative to proximity to exit aisles and exit rows. Response time is found to increase relative to distance (seating location) from the exit aisles and exit rows

Hydrozoa, fjord Comau, Chile.

The shallow-water hydrozoan fauna of fjordComau is surveyed. A total of thirty three specieswere recorded. They have been assigned to eightfamilies of Athecata, eight families of Thecata,two families of Narcomedusae and one family ofTrachymedusae. Their ecology is brieflydiscussed

Revealing Hidden Hierarchical Heavy Hitters in network traffic

© 2018 Association for Computing Machinery. The idea to enable advanced in-network monitoring functionality has been lately fostered by the advent of massive data-plane programmability. A specific example includes the detection of traffic aggregates with programmable switches, i.e., heavy hitters. So far, proposed solutions implement the mining process by partitioning the network stream in disjoint windows. This practice allows efficient implementations but comes at a well-known cost: the results are tightly coupled with the traffic and window's characteristics. This poster quantifies the limitations of disjoint time windows approaches by showing that they hardly cope with traffic dynamics. We report the results of our analysis and unveil that up to 34% of the total number of the hierarchical heavy hitters might not be detected with those approaches. This is a call for a new set of windowless-based algorithms to be implemented with the match-action paradigm

A molecular and cellular analysis of human embryonic optic fissure closure related to the eye malformation coloboma

Ocular coloboma is a congenital eye malformation, resulting from a failure in optic fissure closure (OFC), and causing visual impairment. There has been little study of the epithelial fusion process underlying closure in the human embryo and coloboma aetiology remains poorly understood. We performed RNAseq of cell populations isolated using laser capture microdissection to identify novel human OFC signature genes and probe the expression profile of known coloboma genes, along with a comparative murine analysis. Gene set enrichment patterns showed conservation between species. Expression of genes involved in epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition was transiently enriched in the human fissure margins during OFC at days 41-44. Electron microscopy and histological analyses showed that cells transiently delaminate at the point of closure, and produce cytoplasmic protrusions, before rearranging to form two continuous epithelial layers. Apoptosis was not observed in the human fissure margins. These analyses support a model of human OFC in which epithelial cells at the fissure margins undergo a transient epithelial-to-mesenchymal-like transition, facilitating cell rearrangement to form a complete optic cup