Economic evaluation of a community based exercise programme to prevent falls

OBJECTIVE: To assess the incremental costs and cost effectiveness of implementing a home based muscle strengthening and balance retraining programme that reduced falls and injuries in older women. DESIGN: An economic evaluation carried out within a randomised controlled trial with two years of follow up. Participants were individually prescribed an exercise programme (exercise group, n=116) or received usual care and social visits (control group, n=117). SETTING: 17 general practices in Dunedin, New Zealand. PARTICIPANTS: Women aged 80 years and older living in the community and invited by their general practitioner to take part. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Number of falls and injuries related to falls, costs of implementing the intervention, healthcare service costs resulting from falls and total healthcare service costs during the trial. Cost effectiveness was measured as the incremental cost of implementing the exercise programme per fall event prevented. MAIN RESULTS: 27% of total hospital costs during the trial were related to falls. However, there were no significant differences in health service costs between the two groups. Implementing the exercise programme for one and two years respectively cost $314 and$265 (1995 New Zealand dollars) per fall prevented, and $457 and$426 per fall resulting in a moderate or serious injury prevented. CONCLUSIONS: The costs resulting from falls make up a substantial proportion of the hospital costs for older people. Despite a reduction in falls as a result of this home exercise programme there was no significant reduction in healthcare costs. However, the results reported will provide information on the cost effectiveness of the programme for those making decisions on falls prevention strategies

Emotional engagements predict and enhance social cognition in young chimpanzees

Social cognition in infancy is evident in coordinated triadic engagements, that is, infants attending jointly with social partners and objects. Current evolutionary theories of primate social cognition tend to highlight species differences in cognition based on human-unique cooperative motives. We consider a developmental model in which engagement experiences produce differential outcomes. We conducted a 10-year-long study in which two groups of laboratory-raised chimpanzee infants were given quantifiably different engagement experiences. Joint attention, cooperativeness, affect, and different levels of cognition were measured in 5- to 12-month-old chimpanzees, and compared to outcomes derived from a normative human database. We found that joint attention skills significantly improved across development for all infants, but by 12 months, the humans significantly surpassed the chimpanzees. We found that cooperativeness was stable in the humans, but by 12 months, the chimpanzee group given enriched engagement experiences significantly surpassed the humans. Past engagement experiences and concurrent affect were significant unique predictors of both joint attention and cooperativeness in 5- to 12-month-old chimpanzees. When engagement experiences and concurrent affect were statistically controlled, joint attention and cooperation were not associated. We explain differential social cognition outcomes in terms of the significant influences of previous engagement experiences and affect, in addition to cognition. Our study highlights developmental processes that underpin the emergence of social cognition in support of evolutionary continuity

The emergence of the cortisol circadian rhythm in monozygotic and dizygotic twin infants: the twin-pair synchrony

OBJECTIVE: Studies on the influence of genetic factors on the ontogeny of cortisol circadian rhythm in infants are lacking. This study evaluated the influence of twinning and the heritability on the age of emergence of salivary cortisol rhythm. DESIGN AND SUBJECTS: A longitudinal study was performed using salivary samples obtained during morning and night, at 2, 4, 8, 12, 16, 20 and 24 weeks of postnatal life in 34 infants, 10 monozygotic (MZ) and 7 dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs. Salivary cortisol was determined by radioimmunoassay (RIA). Zigosity was verified by DNA analysis of at least 13 short tandem repeat polymorphisms. Difference of the emergence of cortisol circadian rhythm, within each twin pair, the intraclass correlation coefficient and the heritability index (h(2)) were calculated. RESULTS: The mean (± SEM) age of emergence of salivary cortisol circadian rhythm was similar in MZ and DZ (7·8 ± 1·0 vs 7·4 ± 1·3 weeks). Seven pairs showed coincidence of the emergence of cortisol rhythm. Ten pairs were not coincident; among them the within-pair difference of emergence of salivary circadian rhythm was similar in both MZ and DZ groups. The intraclass correlation coefficients were rMZ = 0·60, P = 0·02; and rDZ = 0·65, P = 0·03, respectively. The heritability index (h(2)) was 0·21 (ns). CONCLUSIONS: Salivary circadian rhythm appeared at the same postnatal age in MZ and DZ twin infants. Although several physiological aspects might be involved, the heritability index, obtained in the present study, suggests less genetic than environmental impact on the age of the onset of the cortisol circadian rhythm. Our data also indicated that each twin-pair show synchrony because they probably shared prenatal and postnatal environmental synchronizers

All-Optical Broadband Excitation of the Motional State of Trapped Ions

We have developed a novel all-optical broadband scheme for exciting, amplifying and measuring the secular motion of ions in a radio frequency trap. Oscillation induced by optical excitation has been coherently amplified to precisely control and measure the ion's secular motion. Requiring only laser line-of-sight, we have shown that the ion's oscillation amplitude can be precisely controlled. Our excitation scheme can generate coherent motion which is robust against variations in the secular frequency. Therefore, our scheme is ideal to excite the desired level of oscillatory motion under conditions where the secular frequency is evolving in time. Measuring the oscillation amplitude through Doppler velocimetry, we have characterized the experimental parameters and compared them with a molecular dynamics simulation which provides a complete description of the system.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figure

Targeting Conservation Investments in Heterogeneous Landscapes: A distance function approach and application to watershed management

To achieve a given level of an environmental amenity at least cost, decision-makers must integrate information about spatially variable biophysical and economic conditions. Although the biophysical attributes that contribute to supplying an environmental amenity are often known, the way in which these attributes interact to produce the amenity is often unknown. Given the difficulty in converting multiple attributes into a unidimensional physical measure of an environmental amenity (e.g., habitat quality), analyses in the academic literature tend to use a single biophysical attribute as a proxy for the environmental amenity (e.g., species richness). A narrow focus on a single attribute, however, fails to consider the full range of biophysical attributes that are critical to the supply of an environmental amenity. Drawing on the production efficiency literature, we introduce an alternative conservation targeting approach that relies on distance functions to cost-efficiently allocate conservation funds across a spatially heterogeneous landscape. An approach based on distance functions has the advantage of not requiring a parametric specification of the amenity function (or cost function), but rather only requiring that the decision-maker identify important biophysical and economic attributes. We apply the distance-function approach empirically to an increasingly common, but little studied, conservation initiative: conservation contracting for water quality objectives. The contract portfolios derived from the distance-function application have many desirable properties, including intuitive appeal, robust performance across plausible parametric amenity measures, and the generation of ranking measures that can be easily used by field practitioners in complex decision-making environments that cannot be completely modeled. Working Paper # 2002-01

Species trait selection along a prescribed fire chronosequence

1. Fire is a widespread management practice used in the maintenance of European heathland. Frequent prescribed burns in small patches have been shown to benefit carabid communities; however, how fire favours specific life-history traits is poorly understood. 2. In this study, we identify characteristic species of the successional stages within heathlands, and find the traits which are characteristic of species in burnt areas versus areas dominated by older heath stands. 3. We identify 10 species as indicator species for heathland in the pioneer stage (0–5 years old); Amara lunicollis, Bembidion lampros, Calathus fuscipes, Carabus problematicus, Cicindela campestris, Nebria salina, Notiophilus aquaticus, Poecilus cupreus, P. lepidus and P. versicolor. Dyschirius globosus is identified as an indicator for the building stage (6–14 years old), and Carabus violaceus as an indicator for the mature stage (15–25 years old). 4. Moisture preference and diet are identified as traits that determine species response to prescribed fire. Collembolan specialists and species with no moisture preference are shown to be most abundant in burnt patches, whereas generalist predators and species with a high moisture preference are less tolerant of fire. 5. Knowledge of species sorting along a prescribed fire gradient can provide valuable information for heathland conservation.publishedVersio

Derivation of the human embryonic stem cell line RCe009-A (RC-5)

The human embryonic stem cell line RCe009-A (RC-5) was derived from a frozen and thawed Day 2 embryo voluntarily donated as unsuitable and surplus to requirement for fertility treatment following informed consent under licence from the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. RCe009-A carries the common DF508 mutation on the cystic fibrosis trans-membrane regulator gene associated with the disease cystic fibrosis. The cell line shows normal pluripotency marker expression and differentiation to the three germ layers in vitro. It has a normal 46XX female karyotype and microsatellite PCR identity, HLA and blood group typing data are available

Derivation of the human embryonic stem cell line RCe010-A (RC-6)

AbstractThe human embryonic stem cell line RCe010-A (RC-6) was derived from a frozen and thawed blastocyst voluntarily donated as unsuitable and surplus to fertility requirements following ethics committee approved informed consent under licence from the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. The cell line shows normal pluripotency marker expression and differentiation to the three germ layers in vitro. It has a normal 46XY male karyotype and microsatellite PCR identity, HLA and blood group typing data are available

Comparative analysis of the genes UL1 through UL7 of the duck enteritis virus and other herpesviruses of the subfamily Alphaherpesvirinae

The nucleotide sequences of eight open reading frames (ORFs) located at the 5' end of the unique long region of the duck enteritis virus (DEV) Clone-03 strain were determined. The genes identified were designated UL1, UL2, UL3, UL4, UL5, UL6 and UL7 homologues of the herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1). The DEV UL3.5 located between UL3 and UL4 had no homologue in the HSV-1. The arrangement and transcription orientation of the eight genes were collinear with their homologues in the HSV-1. Phylogenetic trees were constructed based on the alignments of the deduced amino acids of eight proteins with their homologues in 12 alpha-herpesviruses. In the UL1, UL3, UL3.5, UL5 and UL7 proteins trees, the branches were more closely related to the genus Mardivirus. However, the UL2, UL4, and UL6 proteins phylogenetic trees indicated a large distance from Mardivirus, indicating that the DEV evolved differently from other viruses in the subfamily Alphaherpesvirinae and formed a single branch within this subfamily

The Milky Way Bulge: Observed properties and a comparison to external galaxies

The Milky Way bulge offers a unique opportunity to investigate in detail the role that different processes such as dynamical instabilities, hierarchical merging, and dissipational collapse may have played in the history of the Galaxy formation and evolution based on its resolved stellar population properties. Large observation programmes and surveys of the bulge are providing for the first time a look into the global view of the Milky Way bulge that can be compared with the bulges of other galaxies, and be used as a template for detailed comparison with models. The Milky Way has been shown to have a box/peanut (B/P) bulge and recent evidence seems to suggest the presence of an additional spheroidal component. In this review we summarise the global chemical abundances, kinematics and structural properties that allow us to disentangle these multiple components and provide constraints to understand their origin. The investigation of both detailed and global properties of the bulge now provide us with the opportunity to characterise the bulge as observed in models, and to place the mixed component bulge scenario in the general context of external galaxies. When writing this review, we considered the perspectives of researchers working with the Milky Way and researchers working with external galaxies. It is an attempt to approach both communities for a fruitful exchange of ideas.Comment: Review article to appear in "Galactic Bulges", Editors: Laurikainen E., Peletier R., Gadotti D., Springer Publishing. 36 pages, 10 figure