Connectivity of larval stages of sedentary marine communities between hard substrates and offshore structures in the North Sea

Man-made structures including rigs, pipelines, cables, renewable energy devices, and ship wrecks, offer hard substrate in the largely soft-sediment environment of the North Sea. These structures become colonised by sedentary organisms and non-migratory reef fish, and form local ecosystems that attract larger predators including seals, birds, and fish. It is possible that these structures form a system of interconnected reef environments through the planktonic dispersal of the pelagic stages of organisms by ocean currents. Changes to the overall arrangement of hard substrate areas through removal or addition of individual man-made structures will affect the interconnectivity and could impact on the ecosystem. Here, we assessed the connectivity of sectors with oil and gas structures, wind farms, wrecks, and natural hard substrate, using a model that simulates the drift of planktonic stages of seven organisms with sedentary adult stages associated with hard substrate, applied to the period 2001–2010. Connectivity was assessed using a classification system designed to address the function of sectors in the network. Results showed a relatively stable overall spatial distribution of sector function but with distinct variations between species and years. The results are discussed in the context of decommissioning of oil and gas infrastructure in the North Sea

Application of a theoretical model to evaluate COPD disease management

Background: Disease management programmes are heterogeneous in nature and often lack a theoretical basis. An evaluation model has been developed in which theoretically driven inquiries link disease management interventions to outcomes. The aim of this study is to methodically evaluate the impact of a disease management programme for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) on process, intermediate and final outcomes of care in a general practice setting. Methods. A quasi-experimental research was performed with 12-months follow-up of 189 COPD patients in primary care in the Netherlands. The programme included patient education, protocolised a

Estimation of the severity of breathlessness in the emergency department: a dyspnea score

BACKGROUND: Dyspnea is a frequent complaint in emergency departments (ED). It has a significant amount of subjective and affective components, therefore the dyspnea scores, based on the patients' rating, can be ambiguous. Our purpose was to develop and validate a simple scoring system to evaluate the severity of dyspnea in emergency care, based on objectively measured parameters. METHODS: We performed a double center, prospective, observational study including 350 patients who were admitted in EDs with dyspnea. We evaluated the patients' subjective feeling about dyspnea and applied our Dyspnea Severity Score (DSS), rating the dyspnea in 7 Dimensions from 0 to 3 points. The DSS was validated using the deterioration of pH, base-excess and lactate levels in the blood gas samples (Objective Classification Scale (OCS) 9 points and 13 points groups). RESULTS: All of the Dimensions correlated closely with the OCS values and with the subjective feeling of the dyspnea. Using multiple linear regression analysis we were able to decrease the numbers of Dimensions from seven to four without causing a significant change in the determination coefficient in any OCS groups. This reduced DSS values (exercise tolerance, cooperation, cyanosis, SpO2 value) showed high sensitivity and specificity to predict the values of OCS groups (the ranges: AUC 0.77-0.99, sensitivity 65-100%, specificity 64-99%). There was a close correlation between the subjective dyspnea scores and the OCS point values (p /=7 points without correction factors) can be useful at the triage or in pre-hospital care

Multistrange baryon elliptic flow in Au plus Au collisions at root(NN)-N-S=200 GeV

We report on the first measurement of elliptic flow nu(2)(p(T)) of multistrange baryons Xi(-)+Xi(+) and Omega(-)+Omega(+) in heavy-ion collisions. In minimum-bias Au+Au collisions at root s(NN)=200 GeV, a significant amount of elliptic flow, comparable to other nonstrange baryons, is observed for multistrange baryons which are expected to be particularly sensitive to the dynamics of the partonic stage of heavy-ion collisions. The p(T) dependence of nu(2) of the multistrange baryons confirms the number of constituent quark scaling previously observed for lighter hadrons. These results support the idea that a substantial fraction of the observed collective motion is developed at the early partonic stage in ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider