A qualitative interpretation of challenges associated with helping patients with multiple chronic diseases identify their goals

Background Patients with multiple chronic diseases are usually treated according to disease-specific guidelines, with outcome measurements focusing mostly on biomedical indicators (e.g. blood sugar levels or lung function). However, for multimorbidity, a goal-oriented approach focusing on the goals defined by the individual patient, may be more suitable. Despite the clear theoretical and conceptual advantages of including patient-defined goals in clinical decision-making for multimorbidity, it is not clear how patients define their goals and which aspects play a role in the process of defining them. Objective To explore goal-setting in patients with multimorbidity. Design Qualitative analysis of interviews with 19 patients diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and comorbidities. Results Patients do not naturally present their goals. Their goals are difficult to elicit, even when different interviewing techniques are used. Four underlying hypotheses which may explain this finding were identified from the interviews: (1) patients cannot identify with the concept of goal-setting; (2) goal-setting is reduced due to acceptation; (3) actual stressors predominate over personal goal-setting; and (4) patients may consider personal goals as selfish. Conclusions Our findings advocate for specific attention to provider skills and strategies that help patients identify their personal goals. The hypotheses on why patients may struggle with defining goals may be useful to prompt patients in this process and support the development of a clinical method for goal-oriented care

Impact of bias correction on climate change signals over central Europe and the Iberian Peninsula

peer reviewedVegetation models for climate adaptation and mitigation strategies require spatially high-resolution climate input data in which the error with respect to observations has been previously corrected. To quantify the impact of bias correction, we examine the effects of quantile-mapping bias correction on the climate change signal (CCS) of climate, extremes, and biological variables from the convective regional climate model COSMO-CLM and two dynamic vegetation models (LPJ-GUESS and CARAIB). COSMO-CLM was driven and analyzed at 3 km horizontal resolution over Central Europe (CE) and the Iberian Peninsula (IP) for the transient period 1980–2070 under the RCP8.5 scenario. Bias-corrected and uncorrected climate simulations served as input to run the dynamic vegetation models over Wallonia. Main result of the impact of bias correction on the climate is a reduction of seasonal absolute precipitation by up to −55% with respect to uncorrected simulations. Yet, seasonal climate changes of precipitation and also temperature are marginally affected by bias correction. Main result of the impact of bias correction on changes in extremes is a robust spatial mean CCS of climate extreme indices over both domains. Yet, local biases can both over- and underestimate changes in these indices and be as large as the raw CCS. Changes in extremely wet days are locally enhanced by bias correction by more than 100%. Droughts in southern IP are exacerbated by bias correction, which increases changes in consecutive dry days by up to 14 days/year. Changes in growing season length in CE are affected by quantile mapping due to local biases ranging from 24 days/year in western CE to −24 days/year in eastern CE. The increase of tropical nights and summer days in both domains is largely affected by bias correction at the grid scale because of local biases ranging within ±14 days/year. Bias correction of this study strongly reduces the precipitation amount which has a strong impact on the results of the vegetation models with a reduced vegetation biomass and increases in net primary productivity. Nevertheless, there are large differences in the results of the two applied vegetation models.Multisectoral analysis of climate and land use change impacts on pollinators, plant diversity and crops yields (MAPPY)Projets multilatéraux de recherche (PINT-MULTI

Predicting HIV resistance with the 3D neighborhood kernel

Recently, we developed the 3D Neighborhood Kernel (3DNK), which acts on 3D structures of small molecules and proteins. We showed its state-of-the-art performance on several biological datasets. However, 3D data are in many cases difficult to obtain. For this reason, we adopt a different strategy: instead of requiring actual 3D structures, we use as input protein sequences, of which we approximate the 3D structure through homology modelling. Then, we apply 3DNK on the approximated 3D protein structures and show that, on the task of predicting HIV resistance, we obtain better results than when using a kernel function based on the protein sequences alone.status: publishe

Marine Species Traits in the LifeWatch Taxonomic Backbone

Describing species patterns and their underlying processes are essential to assessing the status and future evolution of marine ecosystems. This effort requires biological information on functional and structural species traits, such as feeding ecology, body size, reproduction, and life history. Basic trait information was already available within the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), for a limited number of taxa: Biological and ecological traits (e.g., body size, feeding type) Taxonomic traits (e.g., paraphyletic groups) Human-defined traits (e.g., Red List species) Within the EMODnet Biology project and the LifeWatch Taxonomic Backbone, this initiative was taken one step further, and ten traits were prioritized to document: taxonomy, environment, geography, depth, body size, substratum, mobility, skeleton, diet, and reproduction. Criteria for selecting these traits were: applicability to most taxa, easy availability, and the fact that their inclusion would result in new research and/or management applications. Taxonomy- and environment-related information are available within WoRMS, whereas geography data are available through the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS). During 2018, the skeleton information was added to WoRMS. Currently, almost 4,000 accepted marine species have information regarding their supporting structure, enclosures, and composition. Body size information wascollected for distinct (taxonomic) groups, which resulted in more than 6,000 accepted marine species having quantitative body size information included in WoRMS. An ongoing traits data mining exercise is combining body size with benthos-plankton information, extracted both from WoRMS and the European Ocean Biogeographic Information System (EurOBIS), to assign functional groups such as macrobenthos, microplankton, etc. to the taxa in WoRMS. All trait information collected in WoRMS is made available through a dedicated thematic traits portal

Impact of bias correction on climate change signals over central Europe and the Iberian Peninsula

Gefördert durch den Publikationsfonds der Universität Kasse

The LifeWatch Taxonomic Backbone: Connecting information on taxonomy, biogeography, literature, traits and genomics

The Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) is responsible for the set-up of the LifeWatch Taxonomic Backbone (LW-TaxBB), as a central part of the European LifeWatch Infrastructure. The LW-TaxBB aims to (virtually) bring together different component databases and data systems, all of them related to taxonomy, biogeography, ecology, genetics and literature. By doing so, the LW-TaxBB standardises species data and integrates biodiversity data from different repositories and operating facilities and is the driving force behind the species information services of the Belgian LifeWatch.be e-Lab and the Marine Virtual Research Environment that are being developed. The mission of LifeWatch is to advance biodiversity research and to provide major contributions to address the big environmental challenges, such as knowledge-based solutions for environmental managers in the field of conservation or dealing with long-standing ecological questions that could so far not be addressed due to a lack of data or a lack of good and easy access to data. This is being achieved by giving access to data and information through a single infrastructure which (virtually) brings together a large range and variety of datasets, services and tools. Scientists can use these tools and services to construct so-called Virtual Research Environments (VREs), where they are able to address specific questions related to biodiversity research, including e.g. topics related to conservation. They are not only offered an environment with unlimited computer and data storage capacity, but there is also transparency at all stages of the research process and the generic application of the e-infrastructure opens the door towards more inter- and multidisciplinary research. The LW-TaxBB – virtually - brings together different component databases and data systems, dealing with five major components: (1) taxonomy, through regional, national, European, global and thematic databases, (2) biogeography, based on databases dealing with species occurrences, (3) ecology, in the form of species-specific traits, (4) genetics and (5) literature, by linking all available information to the relevant sources and through tools that can intelligently search this literature. The LifeWatch Taxonomic Backbone is a two-way street: besides using the tools and functionalities it is offering – which are often developed based on identified needs within the scientific community -, scientists can also contribute themselves to make it more complete. Feedback on all available data and information (e.g. taxonomy and traits) is highly appreciated and communicated with the experts involved in the different component databases. All distribution information collected by individual scientists can become part of the biogeographic component of this backbone, by contributing occurrence data to the system. Through the LW-TaxBB, users benefit in several ways, amongst others by: Easy access to data and information to a variety of resources The opportunity to quality control their own data, by cross-checking with data available through the LW-TaXBB Free and easy access to a wide range of data services and web services Possibility to combine available services into workflows, and link several systems together Major components of the LW-TaxBB are – amongst others - the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) and the European node of the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (EurOBIS). WoRMS is an authoritative classification and catalogue of marine names currently containing 233,275 accepted marine species. EurOBIS publishes distribution data on marine species, collected within European marine waters or collected by European researchers outside European marine waters and currently contains 24.8 million distribution records. Both these systems have a strong link and collaboration agreements with international initiatives such as e.g. the Catalogue of Life (CoL), the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) and the Global Biodiversity Information System (GBIF) and aim to collaborate with other ESFRIs such as DiSSCO and ELIXIR

A decade of the World Register of Marine Species – General insights and experiences from the Data Management Team: Where are we, what have we learned and how can we continue?

The World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2017. WoRMS is a unique database: there is no comparable global database for marine species, which is driven by a large, global expert community, is supported by a Data Management Team and can rely on a permanent host institute, dedicated to keeping WoRMS online. Over the past ten years, the content of WoRMS has grown steadily, and the system currently contains more than 242,000 accepted marine species. WoRMS has not yet reached completeness: approximately 2,000 newly described species per year are added, and editors also enter the remaining missing older names–both accepted and unaccepted–an effort amounting to approximately 20,000 taxon name additions per year. WoRMS is used extensively, through different channels, indicating that it is recognized as a high-quality database on marine species information. It is updated on a daily basis by its Editorial Board, which currently consists of 490 taxonomic and thematic experts located around the world. Owing to its unique qualities, WoRMS has become a partner in many large-scale initiatives including OBIS, LifeWatch and the Catalogue of Life, where it is recognized as a high-quality and reliable source of information for marine taxonomy

Compilation graph with the evolution in page views, hits, unique visitors, visits and terabytes of bandwidth for the website of the World Register of Marine Species.

<p>Compilation graph with the evolution in page views, hits, unique visitors, visits and terabytes of bandwidth for the website of the World Register of Marine Species.</p

Evolution in the number of WoRMS-related portals, sub-categorized in global, regional and thematic species databases, represented cumulatively.

<p>Evolution in the number of WoRMS-related portals, sub-categorized in global, regional and thematic species databases, represented cumulatively.</p