The Effect of a Compulsory Curriculum on Ethical Attitudes of Medical Students

The purpose of the present study was to assess the influence of a compulsory curriculum on first-year medical students. The ethical attitude study was performed at the School of Medicine, University of Rijeka, Croatia. The samples consisted of 171 medical students (68 males and 103 females) interviewed at the beginning of the first year of studies. Some of them, namely 143 (56 males and 87 females) were interviewed again at the end of the same academic year. Data were analysed by applying factor analysis under principal component model and varimax criterion as the rotation model. The results clearly show that the current compulsory curriculum without formal ethical education has a limited influence on first-year medical students. That points to the obvious necessity to implement the medical ethics in the course of medical education

Policies can help to apply successful strategies to control soil and water losses. The case of chipped pruned branches (CPB) in Mediterranean citrus plantations

There is a need to devise management strategies that control soil and water losses in agriculture land to allow the design of proper policies to achieve sustainability. It is the responsibility of scientists to work with other actors to co-construct strategies that will lead to sustainable land-use policies. Using chipped pruned branches (CPB) as mulch can be a viable option because they represent local (in situ) organic material that can restore soil nutrients and organic matter. This research assesses: i) the perception of farmers towards different types of management strategies and CPB's costs; ii) the biomass yield of citrus branches and the impact of CPB on soil properties; iii) how CPB affects soil erosion and runoff generation in citrus plantations; and, iv) a discussion about how to favour the use of CPB thought successful policies. To achieve those goals we carried out: i) one-hundred interviews to assess the perception of farmers and twelve interviews to assess the economic balance of twelve land owners; ii) soil was sampled at 0-2 and 4-6 cm depths; iii) pruned material was surveyed for 40 trees; and iv) forty rainfall simulation experiments (55mmh−1) were carried out in two citrus plantations at paired sites (Control versus CPB), in La Costera District in Eastern Spain. Forty circular (0.25m2) plots were installed in four rows (4×5=20 plots) in control (CON) and CPB plots (20+20=40 plots) to perform the rainfall simulations over one hour. The cost of chipping ranged from 102 to 253 ha−1, and was related to the size of the farm. The soil quality, runoff and erosion assessment showed that CPB is a suitable strategy. CPB increased organic matter from 1.3% to 2.9% after 10 years in the 0-2 cm depth layer, while the 4-6 cm layer was largely not affected (OM moved from 1.1 to 1.3% after 10 years), and soil bulk density showed a similar trend: a decrease from 1.36 to 1.16 g cm−3 in the surface layer with no change in the subsurface layer. The hydrological and erosional responses were different between CON and CPB. The CON plots initiated ponding (40 s) and runoff (107 s) earlier than the CPB plots (169 and 254 s, respectively); and runoff discharge was 60% in CON vs 43% in CPB plots. Sediment concentration was four times larger in the CON plots than in the CPB (11.3 g l−1 vs 3 g l−1), and soil erosion was 3.8 Mg ha−1 h-1 vs 0.7 Mg ha−1 h−1. CPB mulches were effective at controlling soil and water losses in Mediterranean citrus plantations as they showed the relationship between vegetation/litter cover and soil erosion rates. However, the farmer's perception survey showed that the use of CPB was not welcomed nor accepted by the farmers. Policies that aim to promote CPB as soil conservation mulch need to be promoted by subsidies as the farmers requested, and by education to demonstrate the positive effects of CPB to of the farming community

HLA Class I and Class II Polymorphism in the Population of Rijeka, Croatia

The aim of the study was to examine frequencies of HLA-A, -B, -DR antigens and haplotypes in population of Rijeka and to compare them with general Croatian and European populations. The subjects were 117 unrelated healthy blood donors. The antigens with the highest frequencies were: A2 (27.2%), A9 (16.3%), B5 (14.8%), B12 (11.8%), B18 (11.8%), DR5 (21.6%) and DR6 (13.8%). Comparison of HLA antigens frequencies has shown statistically significant difference in 1 antigen with Croatian population and in 8 antigens with European population. The HLA haplotypes with high frequencies included HLA-A2, B5 (6.84%), HLA-A2, B12 (6.84%), HLA-A2, B18 (6.84%), HLA-B12, DR2 (9.78%) and HLA-B18, DR5 (6.84%). The antigen B5 showed strongest association with DR5 (6.41%; LD = 1.30) as in general Croatian and in some European populations. The results have shown great diversity of HLA haplotypes in Rijeka population which can be the result of admixture with neighborhood immigrating populations during the history

A Case of Lichen Ruber Planus in a Patient with Familial Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis and lichen ruber planus are clinically and histologically distinct complex disorders of putative autoimmune aetiology that are fairly commonly observed in isolation but rarely found in combination. Only two previous reports have described lichen skin disorders in association with multiple sclerosis. The present report describes the case of a 51-year old Caucasian woman exhibiting both familial multiple sclerosis and lichen ruber planus. This combination may have occurred by chance or it might imply that these disorders share common mechanisms in their pathogenesis

Edaphic characteristics of Austrian pine (Pinus nigra Arn.) forests in the Višegrad area

This paper presents the results of soil research in Austrian pine (Pinus nigra Arn.) forest communities in the Višegrad area, carried out to determine the basic soil characteristics and eco-production potential of forest habitats as an important basis and framework for the successful management of these forests on the principles of sustainable development. Austrian pine forests in this region are an important and ecologically valuable community. The complexity of the geological structure and relief dynamics are dominant environmental factors that condition the expressed variability of soils in the study area. Forest communities of Austrian pine are formed on the peridotites and serpentinites, eutric ranker (haplic leptosol), eutric cambisol (haplic cambisols) and pseudogley (haplic planosol), dense granular and marl limestones calcomelanosol (mollic leptosol), rendzina (rendzic leptosol) and calcocambisol (leptic cambisol). The productivity of these soils is highly correlated with depth and texture composition, and the impact of these factors is linked with soil type, climate and other site conditions. In the research area, soil types with low production potential such as rankers, rendzinas, limestone and dolomite calcomelanosol are dominant. Deeper variants of eutric cambisol, pseudogley and calcocambisol can be classified as soils with moderate to high production potential

Bottlenecks in the Open-Access System: Voices from Around the Globe

<p>A level playing field is key for global participation in science and scholarship, particularly with regard to how scientific publications are financed and subsequently accessed. However, there are potential pitfalls of the so-called “Gold” open-access (OA) route, in which author-paid publication charges cover the costs of production and publication. <br>Gold OA plans in which author charges are required may not solve the access problem, but rather may shift the access barrier from reader to writer. Under such plans, everyone may be free to read papers, but it may still be prohibitively expensive to publish them. In a scholarly community that is increasingly global, spread over more and more regions and countries of the world, these publication access barriers may be quite significant. <br>In the present paper, a global suite of colleagues in academe joins this debate. The group of colleagues, a network of researchers active in scholarly publishing, spans four continents and multiple disciplines in the natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences, as well as diverse political and economic situations. We believe that this global <br>sampling of researchers can provide the nuance and perspective necessary to grasp this complex problem. The group was assembled without an attempt to achieve global coverage through random sampling. <br>This contribution differs from other approaches to the open-access problem in several fundamental ways. (A) It is scholar-driven, and thus can represent the ‘other side of the coin’ of scholarly communication. (B) It focuses on narrative report, where scholars were free to orient their responses as they saw fit, rather than being confined to binary or scalar choices. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, (C) it distinguishes among institutions and countries and <br>situations, highlighting inequalities of access among wealthy and economically-challenged nations, and also within countries depending on the size and location of particular institutions.</p

Bottlenecks in the Open-Access System: Voices from Around the Globe

A level playing field is key for global participation in science and scholarship, particularly with regard to how scientific publications are financed and subsequently accessed. However, there are potential pitfalls of the so-called “Gold” open-access (OA) route, in which author-paid publication charges cover the costs of production and publication. Gold OA plans in which author charges are required may not solve the access problem, but rather may shift the access barrier from reader to writer. Under such plans, everyone may be free to read papers, but it may still be prohibitively expensive to publish them. In a scholarly community that is increasingly global, spread over more and more regions and countries of the world, these publication access barriers may be quite significant. In the present paper, a global suite of colleagues in academe joins this debate. The group of colleagues, a network of researchers active in scholarly publishing, spans four continents and multiple disciplines in the natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences, as well as diverse political and economic situations. We believe that this global sampling of researchers can provide the nuance and perspective necessary to grasp this complex problem. The group was assembled without an attempt to achieve global coverage through random sampling. This contribution differs from other approaches to the open-access problem in several fundamental ways. (A) It is scholar-driven, and thus can represent the ‘other side of the coin’ of scholarly communication. (B) It focuses on narrative report, where scholars were free to orient their responses as they saw fit, rather than being confined to binary or scalar choices. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, (C) it distinguishes among institutions and countries and situations, highlighting inequalities of access among wealthy and economically-challenged nations, and also within countries depending on the size and location of particular institutions