Epidemiology of ticks and tick-borne diseases in eastern, central and southern Africa. Proceedings of a workshop

The first part of this report comprises country reports that deals with epidemiology of ticks and tick-borne diseases in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The second part of the report covers topics on assessing the efficacy of immunization against tick-borne diseases, evaluating delivery systems for the control of tick-borne diseases and measuring the impact of immunization on livestock productivity. The paper ends with a discussion on coordination, collaboration and planning

The Effects of Music on Mood and Perception of a Visual Stimulus

We examined the influence of music on mood by instructing 81 undergraduate students to complete the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List–Revised (MAACLR) both before and after watching a 15-min video that was or was not paired with a piece of music. The 2 music categories were pleasant or depressing. Participants from the depressing group experienced a drop in positive affect, whereas participants from the pleasant group showed an increase on this measure. Men from the pleasant group had the highest pretreatment and lowest post treatment anxiety scores, whereas the women displayed no change in anxiety. The results indicate that music has only a slight impact on mood

Design fictions:a tool for debating societal, legal and ethical aspects of personal and pervasive health systems

The potential benefits offered by health-related technologies are counterpoised by the societal, legal and ethical challenges concomitant with the pervasive monitoring of people necessitated by such technological interventions. Through the ProtoPolicy research project we explored the production and use of design fictions as a tool for debating the societal, legal and ethical dimensions of personal health systems. Two design fictions were co-created and tested in a series of design workshops with community groups based in Lancashire and Cornwall, UK. A thematic analysis of a debate among older people from the Lancaster group on the Smart Object Therapist (SOT) design fiction highlighted societal and ethical issues relevant to personal health system design. We conclude that ethics like ‘usability’ may be usefully based on engagement with directly or indirectly implicated publics and should not be designed into innovation by experts alone

Whole-exome Sequencing and an iPSC-Derived Cardiomyocyte Model Provides a Powerful Platform for Gene Discovery in Left Ventricular Hypertrophy

Rationale: Left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) is a heritable predictor of cardiovascular disease, particularly in blacks. Objective: Determine the feasibility of combining evidence from two distinct but complementary experimental approaches to identify novel genetic predictors of increased LV mass. Methods: Whole-exome sequencing (WES) was conducted in seven African-American sibling trios ascertained on high average familial LV mass indexed to height (LVMHT) using Illumina HiSeq technology. Identified missense or nonsense (MS/NS) mutations were examined for association with LVMHT using linear mixed models adjusted for age, sex, body weight, and familial relationship. To functionally assess WES findings, human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (induced pluripotent stem cell-CM) were stimulated to induce hypertrophy; mRNA sequencing (RNA-seq) was used to determine gene expression differences associated with hypertrophy onset. Statistically significant findings under both experimental approaches identified LVH candidate genes. Candidate genes were further prioritized by seven supportive criteria that included additional association tests (two criteria), regional linkage evidence in the larger HyperGEN cohort (one criterion), and publically available gene and variant based annotations (four criteria). Results: WES reads covered 91% of the target capture region (of size 37.2 MB) with an average coverage of 65×. WES identified 31,426 MS/NS mutations among the 21 individuals. A total of 295 MS/NS variants in 265 genes were associated with LVMHT with q-value <0.25. Of the 265 WES genes, 44 were differentially expressed (P < 0.05) in hypertrophied cells. Among the 44 candidate genes identified, 5, including HLA-B, HTT, MTSS1, SLC5A12, and THBS1, met 3 of 7 supporting criteria. THBS1 encodes an adhesive glycoprotein that promotes matrix preservation in pressure-overload LVH. THBS1 gene expression was 34% higher in hypertrophied cells (P = 0.0003) and a predicted conserved and damaging NS variant in exon 13 (A2099G) was significantly associated with LVHMT (P = 4 × 10−6). Conclusion: Combining evidence from cutting-edge genetic and cellular experiments can enable identification of novel LVH risk loci

Correlation effects in MgO and CaO: Cohesive energies and lattice constants

A recently proposed computational scheme based on local increments has been applied to the calculation of correlation contributions to the cohesive energy of the CaO crystal. Using ab-initio quantum chemical methods for evaluating individual increments, we obtain 80% of the difference between the experimental and Hartree-Fock cohesive energies. Lattice constants corrected for correlation effects deviate by less than 1% from experimental values, in the case of MgO and CaO.Comment: LaTeX, 4 figure

A biomechanical analysis of growing rods used in the management of early onset scoliosis using a robotic testing facility

This investigation tested semi-constrained growing rods and rigid fusion rods used in the management of scoliosis and examined how instrumentation with these devices affected the biomechanical properties of the spine. This study shows that semi-constrained growing rods allow a greater range of motion than rigid rods in our porcine model through instrumented levels. These findings support the use of semi-constrained growing rods, as this construct allows a range of motion that is closer to that found in an un-instrumented spine while correcting deformity and allowing for continued growth

Feasibility and long-term results of focused radioguided parathyroidectomy using a "low" 37 MBq (1 mCi) (99m)Tc-sestamibi protocol

Aim of the present study was to investigate the feasibility and long-term results of focused radioguided parathyroidectomy using a "low" 37 MBq (1 mCi) (99m)Tc-sestamibi dose protocol compared to conventional "high 740 MBq (20 mCi) (99m)Tc-sestamibi dose protocol" in patients with primary hyperparathyroidism (PHPT). The data of focused radioguided surgery obtained in a group of 320 consecutive PHPT patients with high probability of the presence of a solitary parathyroid adenoma (PA) were studied. All patients underwent preoperative imaging work-up of double-tracer (99m)Tc-pertechnetate/(99m)Tc-sestamibi subtraction parathyroid scintigraphy (Sestamibi scintigraphy) and high resolution neck ultrasound (US). In 301/320 patients (96.6%) focused minimally invasive radioguided surgery was successfully performed by administering a "low" 37 MBq (1 mCi) (99m)Tc-sestamibi dose in the operating room 10 minutes before operation. No major intraoperative complications were recorded. Focused radioguided surgery required a mean time of 32 min and a mean hospital stay of 1.2 days. Local anesthesia was applied in 75 patients, 66 of whom (88%) were patients older than 65 years with comorbidities contraindicating general anesthesia. No case of persistent or recurrent PHPT was observed during post-surgical follow-up (range = 18–70 months; mean +/- SD = 15.3 +/- 9.1 months). Radiation exposure dose to the operating surgeon was 1.2 μSi/hour with the "low 37 MBq (1 mCi) (99m)Tc-sestamibi dose", and less than 1.0 μSi/hour for the other operating-room personnel. Focused low dose radioguided parathyroidectomy is a safe and effective means to localize parathyroid adenomas in patients affected by solitary PA thus reducing by 20 fold the radiation exposure dose to the patients and operating room personnel

ExoPlanet Optics: conceptual design processes for stealth telescopes

In this paper we examine several contrast-degrading static signature sources present in current terrestrial exoplanet Lyot Coronagraph/Telescope optical systems. These are: - Unnecessary optical surfaces, which increase cost, absorption, scatter, wavefront control and alignment issues. A suggested solution is to make every effort to investigate innovative solutions to reduce the number of optical surfaces during the early design phase. Consider free-form optics. - Diffraction from secondary support systems and classical hexagon segmented apertures, which masks the low IWA terrestrial exoplanets. A suggested mitigation is to investigate curved secondary support systems and a pinwheel architecture for the deployable primary aperture. - Polarization Fresnel and form birefringence aberrations, which distort the system PSF, introduce absorption, scatter and wavefront control issues. Mitigation is to reduce all ray-angles of incidence to a minimum, investigate zero-loss polarization compensation wavefront technology, and investigate metal thin film deposition processes required to minimize form birefringence in large-area high-reflectivity coatings. - Small-angle specular or resolved angle scattered light, which places a narrow halo of incoherent light around the base of the PSF. There is no requirement on mirror smooth-surface scatter. Investigate the physical source of the small angle scatter and develop mirror polishing and thin film deposition processes to minimize scatter