Operation Moshtarak and the manufacture of credible, “heroic” warfare

Richard Lance Keeble argues that Fleet Street’s coverage of the Afghan conflict has served largely to promote the interests of the military/industrial/media complex – and marginalise the views of the public who have consistently appealed in polls for the troops to be brought back hom

Ultrasonic tomographic imaging of defects in industrial materials

Ultrasonic tomography has been fairly widely applied for imaging of inhomogeneities in isotropic materials, particularly in the medical field, however, little success has been made in its application to industrial materials. This is largely due to the complex nature of ultrasonic wave propagation in these anisotropic materials. The three dimensional characteristics of ultrasonic wave propagation in anisotropic materials have been thoroughly studied for single crystals and also studied recently for different composites [1,2,3]. Understanding these characteristics provides the theoretical background for developing appropriate ultrasonic tomographic imaging methods for industrial materials

Corrections in an electronic environment

The need to publish corrections to scientific articles, and occasionally to retract them, has been recognized for decades. However very little emphasis has been attached to how this is done, provided that the retraction or correction is accessible. We are considering a policy to directly correct our online publications

Absorbing and transferring risk: assessing the impact of a statewide high-risk-pregnancy telemedical program on VLBW maternal transports

BACKGROUND: Prior research has shown that resources have an impact on birth outcomes. In this paper we ask how combinations of telemedical and hospital-level resources impact transports of mothers expecting very low birth weight (VLBW) babies in Arkansas. METHODS: Using de-identified birth certificate data from the Arkansas Department of Health, data were gathered on transports of women carrying VLBW babies for two six-month periods: a period just before the start of ANGELS (12/02-05/03), a telemedical outreach program for high-risk pregnancies, and a period after the program had been running for six months (12/03-05/04). For each maternal transport, the following information was recorded: maternal race-ethnicity, maternal age, and the birth weight of the infant. Logistic regression was used to assess the relationship between the predictors (telemedicine, hospital level, maternal characteristics) and the probability of a transport. RESULTS: Having a telemedical site available increases the probability of a mother carrying a VLBW baby being transported to a level III facility either before or during birth. Having at least a level II nursery also increases the chance of a maternal transport. Where both level II nurseries and telemedical access are available, the odds of VLBW maternal transports are only modestly increased in comparison to the case where neither is present. At the individual level, Hispanic mothers were less likely to be transported than other mothers, and teenaged mothers were more likely to be transported than those 18 and over. A mother's being Black or being over 35 did not have an impact on the odds of being transported to a level III facility. CONCLUSION: Combinations of resources have an impact on physician decisions regarding VLBW transports and are interpretable in terms of the capacity to diagnose and absorb risk. We suggest a collegial review of transport patterns and birth outcomes from areas with different levels of resources as a vehicle for moving the entire system of care forward over time. With such an evidence-based review in place, the collegial relations among level III specialists and obstetricians from around the state can, over time, develop workable protocols for when and how level III facilities should be involved

A vision of the future for BMC Medicine: serving science, medicine and authors

In June 2009, BMC Medicine received its first official impact factor of 3.28 from Thomson Reuters. In recognition of this landmark event, the BMC Medicine editorial team present and discuss the vision and aims of the journal

Nonminimal Couplings in the Early Universe: Multifield Models of Inflation and the Latest Observations

Models of cosmic inflation suggest that our universe underwent an early phase of accelerated expansion, driven by the dynamics of one or more scalar fields. Inflationary models make specific, quantitative predictions for several observable quantities, including particular patterns of temperature anistropies in the cosmic microwave background radiation. Realistic models of high-energy physics include many scalar fields at high energies. Moreover, we may expect these fields to have nonminimal couplings to the spacetime curvature. Such couplings are quite generic, arising as renormalization counterterms when quantizing scalar fields in curved spacetime. In this chapter I review recent research on a general class of multifield inflationary models with nonminimal couplings. Models in this class exhibit a strong attractor behavior: across a wide range of couplings and initial conditions, the fields evolve along a single-field trajectory for most of inflation. Across large regions of phase space and parameter space, therefore, models in this general class yield robust predictions for observable quantities that fall squarely within the "sweet spot" of recent observations.Comment: 17pp, 2 figs. References added to match the published version. Published in {\it At the Frontier of Spacetime: Scalar-Tensor Theory, Bell's Inequality, Mach's Principle, Exotic Smoothness}, ed. T. Asselmeyer-Maluga (Springer, 2016), pp. 41-57, in honor of Carl Brans's 80th birthda

Anchoring of proteins to lactic acid bacteria

The anchoring of proteins to the cell surface of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) using genetic techniques is an exciting and emerging research area that holds great promise for a wide variety of biotechnological applications. This paper reviews five different types of anchoring domains that have been explored for their efficiency in attaching hybrid proteins to the cell membrane or cell wall of LAB. The most exploited anchoring regions are those with the LPXTG box that bind the proteins in a covalent way to the cell wall. In recent years, two new modes of cell wall protein anchoring have been studied and these may provide new approaches in surface display. The important progress that is being made with cell surface display of chimaeric proteins in the areas of vaccine development and enzyme- or whole-cell immobilisation is highlighted.

Development of cross-curricular key skills using a 3D immersive learning environment in schools

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017. Pedagogical opportunities offered by 3D immersive environments are not restricted to subject-based knowledge but also include non-disciplinary and cross-curricular key skills. This pilot study introduced a large 3D scene of a non-extant architectural exhibition into teaching and learning activities at three UK schools. From observation and qualitative data capture, a comparative case study identified a number of pedagogical opportunities and challenges. Despite diverse teacher and student approaches, a number of common factors were identified including constructionist teaching methods and the suitability of 3D environments for developing cross-curricular key skills and capabilities. In relation to the literature, this paper analyses how subject-aligned use of the 3D model met with differing levels of success, identifies four key skills that emerged from student use of the model across all three schools, and considers how challenges might be translated into further learning opportunities

Dose-dense adjuvant chemotherapy for primary breast cancer

Adjuvant chemotherapy has been proven to reduce significantly the risk for relapse and death in women with operable breast cancer. Nevertheless, the prognosis for patients presenting with extensive axillary lymph node involvement remains suboptimal. In an attempt to improve on the efficacy of existing chemotherapy, a phase III intergroup trial led by the Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB 97-41) was designed, which tested a mathematical model of tumor growth based on the Norton–Simon hypothesis. This hypothesis, developed about 3 decades ago, and the kinetic model derived from it, created the basis of the concepts of dose density and sequential therapy, both of which were tested in CALGB 97-41. This large prospective randomized trial demonstrated that shortening the time interval between each chemotherapy cycle while maintaining the same dose size resulted in significant improvements in disease-free and overall survival in patients with node-positive breast carcinoma. This finding is highly relevant and has immediate implications for clinical practice

The first microbial colonizers of the human gut: composition, activities, and health implications of the infant gut microbiota

The human gut microbiota is engaged in multiple interactions affecting host health during the host's entire life span. Microbes colonize the neonatal gut immediately following birth. The establishment and interactive development of this early gut microbiota are believed to be (at least partially) driven and modulated by specific compounds present in human milk. It has been shown that certain genomes of infant gut commensals, in particular those of bifidobacterial species, are genetically adapted to utilize specific glycans of this human secretory fluid, thus representing a very intriguing example of host-microbe coevolution, where both partners are believed to benefit. In recent years, various metagenomic studies have tried to dissect the composition and functionality of the infant gut microbiome and to explore the distribution across the different ecological niches of the infant gut biogeography of the corresponding microbial consortia, including those corresponding to bacteria and viruses, in healthy and ill subjects. Such analyses have linked certain features of the microbiota/microbiome, such as reduced diversity or aberrant composition, to intestinal illnesses in infants or disease states that are manifested at later stages of life, including asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, and metabolic disorders. Thus, a growing number of studies have reported on how the early human gut microbiota composition/development may affect risk factors related to adult health conditions. This concept has fueled the development of strategies to shape the infant microbiota composition based on various functional food products. In this review, we describe the infant microbiota, the mechanisms that drive its establishment and composition, and how microbial consortia may be molded by natural or artificial interventions. Finally, we discuss the relevance of key microbial players of the infant gut microbiota, in particular bifidobacteria, with respect to their role in health and disease