Recreational mountain biking - a new tool in rural development

Rural development should lead to improved quality of life and economic prosperity of regions without burdening ecosystems and all landscape components. Recreational activities or tourism have a significant influence on the development of the regions but also represent important pressure on the natural environment. Only such recreational activities that are geared towards sustainability in the cultural landscape should be supported. We present one example of the sustainable recreation form – mountain biking – and efforts to established the mountain bike destination close to the City of Pisek in the Czech Republic. The decision on the existence or the absence of the project by the City of Pisek was supported by a feasibility study carried out by the expert team from Mendel University in Brno. The socio-economic impact assessment of the project was based on the Cost-Benefit Analysis. The values of the indicators for evaluating the effectiveness of investments reached the levels at which the project could be recommended for the realization. Results of the economic evaluation refers to the excess of the positive effects of the project over its negative consequences. Despite these positive results of the study, the Council of the City of Pisek decided not to support the project of this mountain bike destination

On directed information theory and Granger causality graphs

Directed information theory deals with communication channels with feedback. When applied to networks, a natural extension based on causal conditioning is needed. We show here that measures built from directed information theory in networks can be used to assess Granger causality graphs of stochastic processes. We show that directed information theory includes measures such as the transfer entropy, and that it is the adequate information theoretic framework needed for neuroscience applications, such as connectivity inference problems.Comment: accepted for publications, Journal of Computational Neuroscienc

Dienogest 2 mg Daily in the Treatment of Adolescents with Clinically Suspected Endometriosis: The VISanne Study to Assess Safety in ADOlescents

Study Objective: To study the safety and efficacy of dienogest 2 mg in adolescents with suspected endometriosis.Design: A 52-week, open-label, single-arm study.Setting: In 21 study centers, in 6 European countries.Participants: Adolescents aged 12 to younger than 18 years with clinically suspected or laparoscopically confirmed endometriosis.Interventions: Dienogest 2 mg once daily.Main Outcome Measures: The primary end point was relative change in lumbar spine (L2-L4) bone mineral density (BMD) measured using dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry. A key secondary end point was change in endometriosis-associated pain assessed using a visual analogue scale.Results: Of 120 patients screened, 111 comprised the full-analysis set (ie, patients who took >= 1 dose of study drug and had >= 1 post-treatment observation) and 97 (87.4%) completed the study. Mean lumbar BMD at baseline was 1.1046 (SD, 0.1550) g/cm(2). At the end of dienogest treatment (EOT; defined as at 52 weeks or premature study discontinuation), mean relative change in BMD from baseline was -1.2% (SD, 2.3%; n 5 103). Follow-up measurement 6 months after EOT in the subgroup with decreased BMD at EOT (n 5 60) showed partial recovery in lumbar BMD (mean change from baseline: -2.3% at EOT, -0.6% 6 months after EOT). Mean endometriosis-associated pain score was 64.3 (SD, 19.1) mm at baseline and decreased to 9.0 (SD, 13.9) mm by week 48.Conclusion: In adolescents with suspected endometriosis, dienogest 2 mg for 52 weeks was associated with a decrease in lumbar BMD, followed by partial recovery after treatment discontinuation. Endometriosis-associated pain was substantially reduced during treatment. Because bone accretion is critical during adolescence, results of the VISanne study to assess safety in ADOlescents (VISADO) study highlights the need for tailored treatment in this population, taking into account the expected efficacy on endometriosis-associated pain and an individual's risk factors for osteoporosis

The PedPAD study: Boys predominate in the hypogammaglobulinaemia registry of the ESID online database

PubMed ID: 24506305Hypogammaglobulinaemias are the most common primary immunodeficiency diseases. This group of diseases is very heterogeneous, and little is known about these diseases in children. In the Pediatric Predominantly Antibody Deficiencies (PedPAD) study, we analysed data from the European Society for Immunodeficiencies (ESID) online database to gain more insight into the characteristics of children with hypogammaglobulinaemia; 46 centres in 18 different countries agreed to participate. Data from 2076 of the 3191 children who were registered at the time of data extraction with a diagnosis of hypogammaglobulinaemia (this excludes agammaglobulinaemia and defects in class-switch recombination) were available for analysis. The data set showed several limitations. Because of country-related differences in diagnostic criteria used for the classification of different types of primary hypogammaglobulinaemia, further analysis of the data was performed in the combined data set. The most striking observation is the strong majority of male patients in the group of children with primary hypogammaglobulinaemia (n=1292, 63%). This male predominance was observed in each of the 18 countries involved. The boys were younger at diagnosis (mean age males 5·3 years; mean age females 5·8 years). Moreover, one or more complications were more frequently reported in boys (12%) compared to girls (5%). The male predominance suggests that patients with an undetected or unknown X-linked genetic cause are included in this group of children registered as primary hypogammaglobulinaemia. © 2014 British Society for Immunology