3,342 research outputs found
T-cell responses in oiled guillemots and swans in a rehabilitation setting
This article has been accepted for publication in the Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. The final version can be accessed from the link below.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Aquatic birds are commonly affected by oil spills. Despite rehabilitation efforts, the majority of rehabilitated common guillemots (Uria aalge) do not survive, whereas mute swans (Cygnus olor) tend to have higher post-release survival. Polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) present in crude oil and diesel are immunotoxic in birds affecting cell-mediated responses to immunogens. Because it is a target of PAH toxicity, T-lymphocyte response to controlled mitogen administration (phytohemagglutinnin test) was investigated in a scoping study as a potentially useful minimally invasive in vivo test of cell-mediated immunity. The test was performed on 69 mute swans and 31 common guillemots stranded on the Norfolk and Lincolnshire coastline and inland waterways in England (UK)either due to injury or to contamination with crude or diesel oil. T-lymphocyte response was significantly decreased in swans with greater oil scores. T-lymphocyte responses were also decreased in guillemots, but this finding was not statistically significant
Las IDE como evoluciĂłn natural de los SIG
La IDEE es un proyecto cooperativo, de autorĂa colectiva, en el que colaboran organismos e instituciones de los tres ámbitos de la AdministraciĂłn (general, regional y local), del entorno universitario y del sector privado. Esta impresionante oferta de informaciĂłn geográfica, junto con las funcionalidades que aportan las tecnologĂas de Infraestructuras de Datos Espaciales (IDE), permite vislumbrar un abanico de lĂneas de trabajo, todavĂa inexploradas, de gran interĂ©s para todos los especialistas, tĂ©cnicos e investigadores que manejan o precisan de cartografĂa en su quehacer cotidiano, que veremos en el presente artĂculo
Una nueva etapa: hacia la IDE 2.0
El desarrollo de las Infraestructuras de Datos Espaciales (IDE) en España ha cubierto una primera etapa basada en el despliegue de servicios básicos, aplicaciones de visualizaciĂłn y apertura de geoportales. Una IDE paradigmática de esta primera fase, que podemos llamar convencionalmente IDE 1.0, incluirĂa: un visualizador con servicios de mapas WMS de ortofotos, imágenes de satĂ©lite y cartografĂa, un catálogo de metadatos (CSW, SRW, otro perfil, o soluciones no estándar), un servicio de Nomenclátor (WFS-G, WFS-MNE o soluciones no estándar) para realizar bĂşsquedas por nombre, un servicio de descarga de datos (basado en WFS), ,y probablemente aplicaciones complementarias no estándar al margen de las specificaciones OGC, como, por ejemplo, utilidades de transformaciĂłn de coordenadas, o un cliente pesado para realizar vuelos virtuales. En suma, la mayorĂa de los geoportales disponibles están orientados fundamentalmente a la visualizaciĂłn de datos geográficos
Normative data and discriminative properties of short form 36 (SF-36) in Turkish urban population
BACKGROUND: SF-36 has been both translated into different languages and adapted to different cultures to obtain comparable data on health status internationally. However there have been only a limited number of studies focused on the discriminative ability of SF-36 regarding social and disease status in developing countries. The aim of this study was to obtain population norms of the short form 36 (SF-36) health survey and the association of SF-36 domains with demographic and socioeconomic variables in an urban population in Turkey. METHODS: A cross-sectional study. Face to face interviews were carried out with a sample of households. The sample was systematically selected from two urban Health Districts in Izmir, Turkey. The study group consisted of 1,279 people selected from a study population of 46,290 people aged 18 and over. RESULTS: Internal consistencies of the scales were high, with the exception of mental health and vitality. Physical health scales were associated with both age and gender. On the other hand, mental health scales were less strongly associated with age and gender. Women reported poorer health compared to men in general. Social risk factors (employment status, lower education and economic strain) were associated with worse health profiles. The SF-36 was found to be capable of discriminating disease status. CONCLUSION: Our findings, cautiously generalisable to urban population, suggest that the SF-36 can be a valuable tool for studies on health outcomes in Turkish population. SF-36 may also be a promising measure for research on health inequalities in Turkey and other developing countries
Severity of self-reported diseases and symptoms in Denmark
OBJECTIVE: To estimate and rank the relative severity of self-reported diseases and symptoms in Denmark. METHOD: The 1994 Danish Health and Morbidity Survey collected data from 5,472 Danes older than 16 years of age. Interviews (response frequency: 79%) gave information on diseases and symptoms; a self-administered SF-36 questionnaire (response frequency: 64%) provided information on health-related quality of life. The severity of diseases and symptoms was represented by the health-related quality of life scores that individuals suffering from particular diseases and symptoms obtained on the single dimensions of the SF-36 and on a combined sum of all dimensions. We applied logistic regression to control for the influence of sex, age and socio-economic status on the SF-36 score. We also analysed the interaction between socio-economic status and diseases on the SF-36 score. RESULTS: Females, more frequently than males, reported on all symptoms and all disease groups except injuries. People with relatively low levels of education reported most diseases, especially musculoskeletal and cardiovascular diseases, more frequently than people with higher education. Age-adjusted mean SF-36 scores for all dimensions combined showed that the symptoms of melancholy/depression and breathing difficulties, psychiatric disorders and respiratory diseases scored lowest (i.e. were most often associated with worse health). Females had lower SF-36 combined scores (worse health) than males on all symptoms. We found interaction between socio-economic status and respiratory diseases and musculoskeletal diseases on the SF-36 score. SF-36 scores also indicated significantly worse health among Danes with low education and income levels compared to those with higher education and income. CONCLUSION: In 1994 the Danes most frequently reported musculoskeletal symptoms and diseases. Psychiatric disorders and respiratory diseases were identified as the most severe reported diseases. Due to the interaction between socio-economic status and some diseases, severity estimates should be interpreted with caution or stratified by socio-economic groups
Metrics to evaluate research performance in academic institutions: A critique of ERA 2010 as applied in forestry and the indirect H2 index as a possible alternative
Excellence for Research in Australia (ERA) is an attempt by the Australian
Research Council to rate Australian universities on a 5-point scale within 180
Fields of Research using metrics and peer evaluation by an evaluation
committee. Some of the bibliometric data contributing to this ranking suffer
statistical issues associated with skewed distributions. Other data are
standardised year-by-year, placing undue emphasis on the most recent
publications which may not yet have reliable citation patterns. The
bibliometric data offered to the evaluation committees is extensive, but lacks
effective syntheses such as the h-index and its variants. The indirect H2 index
is objective, can be computed automatically and efficiently, is resistant to
manipulation, and a good indicator of impact to assist the ERA evaluation
committees and to similar evaluations internationally.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures, 7 tables, appendice
The Noncommutative Harmonic Oscillator based in Simplectic Representation of Galilei Group
In this work we study symplectic unitary representations for the Galilei
group. As a consequence the Schr\"odinger equation is derived in phase space.
The formalism is based on the non-commutative structure of the star-product,
and using the group theory approach as a guide a physical consistent theory in
phase space is constructed. The state is described by a quasi-probability
amplitude that is in association with the Wigner function. The 3D harmonic
oscillator and the noncommutative oscillator are studied in phase space as an
application, and the Wigner function associated to both cases are determined.Comment: 7 pages,no figure
Order-of-magnitude speedup for steady states and traveling waves via Stokes preconditioning in Channelflow and Openpipeflow
Steady states and traveling waves play a fundamental role in understanding
hydrodynamic problems. Even when unstable, these states provide the
bifurcation-theoretic explanation for the origin of the observed states. In
turbulent wall-bounded shear flows, these states have been hypothesized to be
saddle points organizing the trajectories within a chaotic attractor. These
states must be computed with Newton's method or one of its generalizations,
since time-integration cannot converge to unstable equilibria. The bottleneck
is the solution of linear systems involving the Jacobian of the Navier-Stokes
or Boussinesq equations. Originally such computations were carried out by
constructing and directly inverting the Jacobian, but this is unfeasible for
the matrices arising from three-dimensional hydrodynamic configurations in
large domains. A popular method is to seek states that are invariant under
numerical time integration. Surprisingly, equilibria may also be found by
seeking flows that are invariant under a single very large Backwards-Euler
Forwards-Euler timestep. We show that this method, called Stokes
preconditioning, is 10 to 50 times faster at computing steady states in plane
Couette flow and traveling waves in pipe flow. Moreover, it can be carried out
using Channelflow (by Gibson) and Openpipeflow (by Willis) without any changes
to these popular spectral codes. We explain the convergence rate as a function
of the integration period and Reynolds number by computing the full spectra of
the operators corresponding to the Jacobians of both methods.Comment: in Computational Modelling of Bifurcations and Instabilities in Fluid
Dynamics, ed. Alexander Gelfgat (Springer, 2018
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