Inserting rights and justice into urban resilience : a focus on everyday risk

Resilience building has become a growing policy agenda, particularly for urban risk management. While much of the resilience agenda has been shaped by policies and discourses from the global North, its applicability for cities of the global south, particularly African cities, has not been sufficiently assessed. Focusing on rights of urban citizens as the object to be made resilient, rather than physical and ecological infrastructures, may help to address many of the root causes that characterize the unacceptable risks that urban residents face on a daily basis. Linked to this idea, we discuss four entry points for grounding a rights and justice orientation for urban resilience. First, notions of resilience must move away from narrow, financially-orientated risk analyses. Second, opportunities must be created for “negotiated resilience”, to allow for attention to processes that support these goals, as well as for the integration of diverse interests. Third, achieving resilience in ways that do justice to the local realities of diverse urban contexts necessitates taking into account endogenous, locally situated processes, knowledges and norms. And finally, urban resilience needs to be placed within the context of global systems, providing an opportunity for African contributions to help reimagine the role that cities might play in these global finance, politics and science processes

Erratum to: Delta rhythmicity is a reliable EEG biomarker in Angelman syndrome: a parallel mouse and human analysis

After publication of our article [1], we became aware that there were two minor data loading and analysis scripting errors in the human EEG data processing pipeline. These errors affected the channel loading/grouping and sleep/ wake coding of EEG data. We have re-analysed all the data affected by these errors. The errors do not affect any interpretations or conclusions, thus no changes to the text are required apart from correcting p values and raw values affected by the errors. There are no changes to statistical significance or lack-thereof. The errors affect data presented in Fig. 3, Fig. 4, Fig. 5, and Additional file 3: Figure S3 and thus we have re-plotted these figures (see below)

Cultured circulating tumor cells and their derived xenografts for personalized oncology

AbstractRecent cancer research has demonstrated the existence of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in cancer patient's blood. Once identified, CTC biomarkers will be invaluable tools for clinical diagnosis, prognosis and treatment. In this review, we propose ex vivo culture as a rational strategy for large scale amplification of the limited numbers of CTCs from a patient sample, to derive enough CTCs for accurate and reproducible characterization of the biophysical, biochemical, gene expressional and behavioral properties of the harvested cells. Because of tumor cell heterogeneity, it is important to amplify all the CTCs in a blood sample for a comprehensive understanding of their role in cancer metastasis. By analyzing critical steps and technical issues in ex vivo CTC culture, we developed a cost-effective and reproducible protocol directly culturing whole peripheral blood mononuclear cells, relying on an assumed survival advantage in CTCs and CTC-like cells over the normal cells to amplify this specified cluster of cancer cells

Nasopharyngeal microbiota in children is associated with severe asthma exacerbations

Background: The respiratory microbiome has been associated with the etiology and disease course of asthma. Objective: We sought to assess the nasopharyngeal microbiota in children with a severe asthma exacerbation and their associations with medication, air quality, and viral infection. Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed among children aged 2 to 18 years admitted to the medium care unit (MCU; n = 84) or intensive care unit (ICU; n = 78) with an asthma exacerbation. For case-control analyses, we matched all cases aged 2 to 6 years (n = 87) to controls in a 1:2 ratio. Controls were participants of either a prospective case-control study or a longitudinal birth cohort (n = 182). The nasopharyngeal microbiota was characterized by 16S-rRNA-gene sequencing. Results: Cases showed higher Shannon diversity index (ICU and MCU combined; P = .002) and a distinct microbial community composition when compared with controls (permutational multivariate ANOVA R2 = 1.9%; P &lt; .001). We observed significantly higher abundance of Staphylococcus and “oral” taxa, including Neisseria, Veillonella, and Streptococcus spp. and a lower abundance of Dolosigranulum pigrum, Corynebacterium, and Moraxella spp. (MaAsLin2; q &lt; 0.25) in cases versus controls. Furthermore, Neisseria abundance was associated with more severe disease (ICU vs MCU MaAslin2, P = .03; q = 0.30). Neisseria spp. abundance was also related with fine particulate matter exposure, whereas Haemophilus and Streptococcus abundances were related with recent inhaled corticosteroid use. We observed no correlations with viral infection. Conclusions: Our results demonstrate that children admitted with asthma exacerbations harbor a microbiome characterized by overgrowth of Staphylococcus and “oral” microbes and an underrepresentation of beneficial niche-appropriate commensals. Several of these associations may be explained by (environmental or medical) exposures, although cause-consequence relationships remain unclear and require further investigations.</p

Nasopharyngeal microbiota in children is associated with severe asthma exacerbations

Background: The respiratory microbiome has been associated with the etiology and disease course of asthma. Objective: We sought to assess the nasopharyngeal microbiota in children with a severe asthma exacerbation and their associations with medication, air quality, and viral infection. Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed among children aged 2 to 18 years admitted to the medium care unit (MCU; n = 84) or intensive care unit (ICU; n = 78) with an asthma exacerbation. For case-control analyses, we matched all cases aged 2 to 6 years (n = 87) to controls in a 1:2 ratio. Controls were participants of either a prospective case-control study or a longitudinal birth cohort (n = 182). The nasopharyngeal microbiota was characterized by 16S-rRNA-gene sequencing. Results: Cases showed higher Shannon diversity index (ICU and MCU combined; P = .002) and a distinct microbial community composition when compared with controls (permutational multivariate ANOVA R2 = 1.9%; P &lt; .001). We observed significantly higher abundance of Staphylococcus and “oral” taxa, including Neisseria, Veillonella, and Streptococcus spp. and a lower abundance of Dolosigranulum pigrum, Corynebacterium, and Moraxella spp. (MaAsLin2; q &lt; 0.25) in cases versus controls. Furthermore, Neisseria abundance was associated with more severe disease (ICU vs MCU MaAslin2, P = .03; q = 0.30). Neisseria spp. abundance was also related with fine particulate matter exposure, whereas Haemophilus and Streptococcus abundances were related with recent inhaled corticosteroid use. We observed no correlations with viral infection. Conclusions: Our results demonstrate that children admitted with asthma exacerbations harbor a microbiome characterized by overgrowth of Staphylococcus and “oral” microbes and an underrepresentation of beneficial niche-appropriate commensals. Several of these associations may be explained by (environmental or medical) exposures, although cause-consequence relationships remain unclear and require further investigations.</p

Power Line Arbitrary Waveform Generator

Import 05/08/2014Tato bakalářská práce je zaměřena na generování libovolných průběhů napájecích napětí a simulaci poruchových stavů zdroje Kikusui PCR 1000 LA. V práci jsem se věnoval jak teoretickému popisu, tak praktickým zapojením a programování napájecích průběhů. V závěru jsem zhodnotil dosažené výsledky.This work is focused on generating abitrary waveform supply voltages and simulation of fault conditions Kikusui PCR 1000 LA. In my work I paid attention to theoretical description, practical wiring and programming of the supply waveforms. In the end, I reviewed the results.460 - Katedra informatikyvýborn

A climate resilience research renewal agenda: learning lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic for urban climate resilience

Learning lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic opens an opportunity for enhanced research and action on inclusive urban resilience to climate change. Lessons and their implications are used to describe a climate resilience research renewal agenda. Three key lessons are identified. The first lesson is generic, that climate change risk coexists and interacts with other risks through overlapping social processes, conditions and decision-making contexts. Two further lessons are urban specific: that networks of connectivity bring risk as well as resilience and that overcrowding is a key indicator of the multiple determinants of vulnerability to both COVID-19 and climate change impacts. From these lessons three research priorities arise: dynamic and compounding vulnerability, systemic risk and risk root cause analysis. These connected agendas identify affordable and healthy housing, social cohesion, minority and local leadership and multiscale governance as entry points for targeted research that can break cycles of multiple risk creation and so build back better for climate change as well as COVID-19 in recovery and renewal