Endogenous endophthalmitis secondary to erysipelas

A 64-year-old woman with chronic right arm lymphoedema presented with progressive and painful vision loss in the right eye following diagnosis of erysipelas in the ipsilateral arm. Visual acuity was light perception. Biomicroscopy revealed marked conjunctival injection, decreased corneal transparency and an inflammatory mass in the anterior chamber, which precluded fundoscopy. The ocular ultrasonography features were consistent with acute endophthalmitis, and the patient was admitted to the hospital. A systemic evaluation, including complete physical examination, echocardiography and blood tests, ruled out other sources of infection besides the cutaneous site. Blood cultures were positive for group A Streptococcus. A diagnosis of unilateral acute endophthalmitis due to group A Streptococcus bacteraemia secondary to erysipelas was made and successfully treated with optimal medical care, including prompt intravitreal and systemic antibiotic administration. Despite resolution of the infectious process, visual acuity did not improve.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Sustainable Development Principles for Engineering Educator

This paper focuses on the justification and incorporation of sustainable development course into the certified training of engineering educators. Under the ERASMUS+ Project ENTER, a consortium was set up to build the capacity of engineering HEIs by strengthening engineering educators’ preparation by an innovative kind of engineering pedagogy. One of the project tasks is to create a novel multicultural and international approach for formal post-graduate professional and pedagogical education of engineering educators. After a thorough educational market analysis, study of HEIs requirements and educators’ needs, a formal training program was designed. One of the core courses of that program is the course on Sustainable Development. The main aim of this course is to help educators to develop a strategy how to integrate sustainable development principles into engineering education at large

Session D1: Modelling the Efficiency of a Vertical Slot Fishway for Anadromous Fishes

Abstract: Several types of fish passage are increasingly being installed in river barriers to restore the longitudinal connectivity of fragmented riverine habitats. A vertical slot fishway installed in the Açude-Ponte weir at Coimbra (River Mondego, Portugal) was monitored to model the efficiency of this infrastructure for anadromous fishes (i.e., sea lamprey Petromyzon marinus L.; allis shad Alosa alosa L. and twaite shad Alosa fallax Lacépède, 1800) throughout 2013 and 2014 spawning seasons. Fish passage was assessed using a video recording system. Simultaneously, eight abiotic parameters, considered as potential predictors of fishway’s use by anadromous fishes, were continuously recorded during the entire study period. Boosted Regression Trees (BRTs) analysis was applied to relate the use of the fishway by sea lamprey and Alosa spp. with the abiotic predictors. To complement this data, a passive integrated transponder (PIT) antenna system was used to quantify passage efficiency for sea lampreys. Size frequency distribution and total biomass of fishes that successfully transposed the fishway was also estimated. Video data show that in the migratory seasons of 2013 and 2014, 8333 and 21979 sea lampreys passed through fishway, respectively, and a total of 7503 and 3404 Alosa spp. individuals transposed this infrastructure during the same period. About 30% of PIT tagged lampreys transposed the fishway. BRT models identified the river flow as the most important variable to explain use of the fishway by anadromous fishes. The relationships of this variable with the fish passages suggest that sea lampreys and Alosa spp. use the fishway preferentially at relatively low flow conditions that maximize the attraction efficiency of the fishway entrance. Finally, results obtained with this study were used to implement a sub-sampling methodology (video processing) to estimate the total amount of fish (lamprey and shads) that annually use the fishway during their spawning migrations

Temporal patterns of the catadromous thinlip grey mullet migration in freshwater

The thinlip grey mullet (Chelon ramada Risso, 1827) is a catadromous fish that performs massive migrations to freshwater habitats for feeding purposes that can assume a structuring role on riverine ecology due to the biomass involved in these movements. Seasonal movements of thinlip grey mullet through a vertical slot fish pass located in River Mondego (Portugal) were continuously monitored between 2013 and 2017. The extent of trophic migration, population size structure, biomass and the environmental triggers of bi-directional species' migratory activity were analysed. Between March and November of 2013/2014, ~2 million and 1 million movements were respectively recorded. From a subsampling approach, the upstream movements between 2015 and 2017 were estimated. Annually, around five hundred thousand upstream movements can occur to provide species access to the upstream freshwater reaches. Movements are exclusively diurnal, and the population composed by young adults in their first year of maturity, yet juveniles and larger fish were present (TL range: 90–540 mm). Upstream movements increased with temperatures above 15°C, reaching a peak at around 20°C coupled with a photoperiod of 15 h. Downstream movements attained the higher rates when temperature dropped from 22°C to 20°C and photoperiod to 13 h. However, under wetter hydrological conditions (as in 2014), discharge flows have a higher influence. These finding provide unique information regarding species migration to freshwater habitats in the Atlantic coast, namely the extended periods spent in such environments, overlapping with the spawning migration period. Additionally, highlights the importance of species' trophic migration both for its life cycle and riverine food-web

Disruption of the CYTOCHROME C OXIDASE DEFICIENT1 Gene Leads to Cytochrome c Oxidase Depletion and Reorchestrated Respiratory Metabolism in Arabidopsis

Cytochrome c oxidase is the last respiratory complex of the electron transfer chain in mitochondria and is responsible for transferring electrons to oxygen, the final acceptor, in the classical respiratory pathway. The essentiality of this step makes it that depletion in complex IV leads to lethality, thereby impeding studies on complex IV assembly and respiration plasticity in plants. Here, we characterized Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) embryo-lethal mutant lines impaired in the expression of the CYTOCHROME C OXIDASE DEFICIENT1 (COD1) gene, which encodes a mitochondria-localized PentatricoPeptide Repeat protein. Although unable to germinate under usual conditions, cod1 homozygous embryos could be rescued from immature seeds and developed in vitro into slow-growing bush-like plantlets devoid of a root system. cod1 mutants were defective in C-to-U editing events in cytochrome oxidase subunit2 and NADH dehydrogenase subunit4 transcripts, encoding subunits of respiratory complex IV and I, respectively, and consequently lacked cytochrome c oxidase activity. We further show that respiratory oxygen consumption by cod1 plantlets is exclusively associated with alternative oxidase activity and that alternative NADH dehydrogenases are also up-regulated in these plants. The metabolomics pattern of cod1 mutants was also deeply altered, suggesting that alternative metabolic pathways compensated for the probable resulting restriction in NADH oxidation. Being the first complex IV-deficient mutants described in higher plants, cod1 lines should be instrumental to future studies on respiration homeostasis

The effectiveness of educational interventions to develop patient safety knowledge, skills, behaviours, and attitudes in undergraduate nursing students: a systematic review [Abstract]

Background and aim: Nurses are crucial in ensuring patient safety, coordinating care and developing organisational structures to improve health outcomes. Therefore, undergraduate nursing education programs should be designed to provide future nurses with the knowledge, skills, behaviours, and attitudes that align with patient safety principles and improve the quality of healthcare systems. This systematic review aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of educational interventions in developing patient safety knowledge, skills, behaviours and attitudes in undergraduate nursing students. Methods: A systematic review of effectiveness was conducted following The Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology. Published studies in English, Portuguese and Spanish were searched from July 2011 to January 2022 across seven databases. Grey literature was also assessed. Two independent reviewers screened titles and abstracts and appraised the full text using standardised JBI tools. Data was extracted using an adapted instrument from JBI. Due to heterogeneities in intervention characteristics, studies methodologies and outcomes measures, meta-analysis was not feasible, and the findings were presented narratively. Results: Thirty quantitative studies met the review criteria. They were rated from low to moderate risk of bias. Several teaching methods were applied, and the effectiveness of these interventions was inconsistent with increasing patient safety knowledge, skills, behaviours and attitudes across nursing students in all years of the programme. Conclusion: More robust research is recommended to understand the impact of interventions to teach patient safety to undergraduate nursing students. Incorporating safety principles into the curriculum and maintaining a consistent focus throughout the nursing student's education is paramount

Fish pass use by shads (Alosa alosa L. and Alosa fallax (Lacépède, 1803)): implications for monitoring and management

Fish pass monitoring is essential to ensure the device's effectiveness as a mitigation measure for river impoundment, guaranteeing the longitudinal continuity of rivers, which is particularly important for diadromous fish that depend on obligatory migrations to freshwater reproduction (anadromous) or feeding areas (catadromous) to complete their life cycle. The upstream migration of the anadromous allis (Alosa alosa L.) and twaite (Alosa fallax Lacépède, 1803) shad in the River Mondego, Central Portugal, is being monitored at the Coimbra Dam fish pass since 2013, using visual counts. Statistical models were used to evaluate shad passage and to identify the main environmental variables that seem to condition their behaviour. A total of 26,561 shad were recorded in this infrastructure during the study period (2013–2017), with 96.5% of the total counted fish being counted between April and June. Overall, water temperature and river flow are the environmental predictors that consistently influence the number of shad using the fish pass, although its individual contribution changed between years. The models (Boosted Regression Trees) obtained were robust with an average explained deviance of 0.79 (R2), despite the poorer results associated with the 2015 spawning season, that were possibly related with the low number of adult fish observed that year. Results from this study contribute to better understand the dynamics associated with fish pass use by Alosa sp. and can help the conservation and management of these species through the improvement of fish pass attractiveness and, consequently, the overall efficiency of fish pass devices targeting shads

Effectiveness of educational interventions to develop patient safety knowledge, skills, behaviours and attitudes in undergraduate nursing students: A systematic review protocol

Introduction Patient safety is a healthcare discipline that aims to prevent and reduce patient harm, risks and errors during the provision of healthcare. Given the size of the nursing workforce in the healthcare system the inclusion of patient safety in the undergraduate nursing curriculum is necessary to enhance a safe culture in the daily work of their future careers. To this end, it is essential to apply effective teaching strategies to develop patient safety competencies. This review will aim to evaluate the effectiveness of educational interventions in developing patient safety knowledge, skills, behaviours and attitudes in undergraduate nursing students within the existing topic areas of the WHO Multi-professional Patient Safety Curriculum Guide. Methods and analysis The databases Medline, CINAHL, Scopus, Education Research Complete, The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, LILACS, Medes and Grey literature such as ClinicalTrials.gov, Google Scholar, DART-Europe, ProQuest Dissertations, CAPES thesis and dissertations, The Virginia Henderson Global e-Repository, Mednar and Thesis Canada will be searched from July 2011 to January 2022. Two independent reviewers will conduct the search, extract the data and assess the risk of bias for the included studies, using standardised critical appraisal instruments from the Joanna Briggs Institute. The quality of the evidence will be assessed using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment Development and Evaluation methodology. Studies will be pooled in the meta-analysis. Alternatively, the findings will be presented in narrative form, including tables and figures, to aid in data presentation. Ethics and dissemination This study raises no ethical issues. The findings will be disseminated through presentations at professional conferences and publications in a peer-reviewed journal

Diabetic Neuropathy and Axon Reflex-Mediated Neurogenic Vasodilatation in Type 1 Diabetes

Objective: Axon reflex-mediated neurogenic vasodilatation in response to cutaneous heating may reflect early, pre-clinical small fibre dysfunction. We aimed to evaluate the distribution of the vascular flare area measured by laser doppler imaging (‘‘LDI FLARE area’’) in type 1 diabetes and in healthy volunteers. Research and Methods: Concurrent with clinical and electrophysiological examination to classify diabetic sensorimotor polyneuropathy (DSP), LDIFLARE area (cm 2) was determined in 89 type 1 diabetes subjects matched to 64 healthy volunteers. We examined the association and diagnostic performance of LDI with clinical and subclinical measures of DSP and its severity. Results: Compared to the 64 healthy volunteers, the 56 diabetes controls without DSP had significantly lower LDIFLARE area (p = 0.006). The 33 diabetes cases with DSP had substantially lower LDIFLARE area as compared to controls without DSP (p = 0.002). There was considerable overlap in LDIFLARE area between all groups such that the ROC curve had an AUC of 0.72 and optimal sensitivity of 70 % for the detection of clinical DSP. Use of a subclinical definition for DSP, according to subclinical sural nerve impairment, was associated with improved AUC of 0.75 and sensitivity of 79%. In multivariate analysis higher HbA1c and body mass index had independent associations with smaller LDIFLARE area. Conclusions: Axon reflex-mediated neurogenic vasodilatation in response to cutaneous heating is a biomarker of earl