An HI study of the collisional ring galaxy NGC 922

We present new atomic hydrogen (HI) observations of the collisional ring galaxy NGC 922 obtained using the Australia Telescope Compact Array. Our observations reveal for the first time the vast extent of the HI disc of this galaxy. The HI morphology and kinematics of NGC 922 show that this galaxy is not the product of a simple drop-through interaction, but has a more complex interaction history. The integrated HI flux density of NGC 922 from our observations is 24.7 Jy km s$^{-1}$, which is within the error of the flux value obtained using the $64$-m Parkes radio telescope. This flux density translates to a total HI mass of $1.1*10^{10}$ M$_{\circ}$ and corresponds to an HI to total mass fraction (M$_{HI}$/M$_{tot}$) of approximately $0.11$. The gaseous structures of NGC 922 are more extended to the north and include an HI tail that has a projected physical length of $8$ kpc. Gas warps are also evident in the velocity field of NGC 922 and are more prominent on the approaching and the western side of the disc. In comparison with a large sample of star-forming galaxies in the local Universe, NGC 922 possesses a high gas fraction relative to galaxies with a similar stellar mass of ~$10^{10.4}$ M$_{\circ}$, and exhibits a high specific star formation rate.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, published in MNRA

Using the 'Recognising and Assessing Medical problems in a psychiatric setting' (RAMPPS) course within a Pre-registration mental Health nursing Course

O objetivo da comunicação é apresentar e discutir alguns resultados de uma pesquisa voltada às possíveis articulações entre uma formação oferecida pela Secretaria da Educação do Estado de São Paulo – SEE/SP por meio dos Grupos de Referência – GR a equipes gestoras, compostas por professores (as) coordenadores (as), diretores (as) de escola e supervisores (as) de ensino, e suas práticas de gestão tanto em suas escolas como nas diretorias de ensino da rede pública paulista. A abordagem metodológica é predominantemente qualitativa e exploratória, tendo com principal instrumento relatos de observações dos encontros formativos. Assim, primeiramente contextualizam-se historicamente a formação e o desenvolvimento profissional de gestores (as) escolares, focalizando, mais especificamente, o Estado de São Paulo. Em seguida, explicita-se como a formação oferecida por meio do GR foi planejada. Finalmente, apresentam-se e discutem-se alguns resultados, derivados de uma primeira sistematização de dados referentes a alguns encontros formativos do GR. Eles confirmam que a autonomia, a participação e a gestão democrática podem ter sido alguns dos princípios do planejamento da formação por parte da SEE/SP e que esses princípios não têm orientado a formação como seria esperado em razão de limitações de várias ordens, notadamente aquelas impostas pelo próprio sistema de ensino estadual. Apesar desse entrave fundamental, é possível vislumbrar, já nesta análise inicial, algumas possíveis interlocuções entre a formação no GR e práticas gestoras

Palaeoepidemiological study of the post-medieval Gloucester 13/83 Skeletal Assemblage.

This thesis carries out a palaeoepidemiological study examining the representation of pathological conditions from an 18th-19th Century Gloucester skeletal collection (13/83). This skeletal assemblage contains 82 individuals, including 37 burials from a non-parochial church (Southgate Congregational Church) and 45 burials from Gloucester Infirmary (GI). Biological profiling was carried out to determine sex, estimate age-at-death and stature of individuals to aid in palaeoepidemiological study. This information was compared to the biological information obtained from the 1784-1837 burial register of Southgate Congregational Church (SCC). Significant differences were identified between the known age at death of the individual in the register and the age estimations of the church burials. This may be due to age bias in techniques applied in biological anthropology specifically as there is difficulty in ageing adults over 50 years. There was a significant difference in the numbers of adult males and females between SCC and GI cemeteries. There was also a significant difference age-at-death estimation between the SCC and GI. The high representation of subadults within the church cemetery compared to the Infirmary may contribute to this. Therefore different cemetery organisation is indicated by these results. Pathologies were categorised into groups for analysis, these were dental and skeletal pathologies (Trauma, congenital, joint, infectious, metabolic and neoplastic conditions). The frequencies of dental and skeletal pathologies were higher in Gloucester Infirmary. However, this was only found to be statistically significant in the dental and traumatic conditions. This was expected due to individuals within Gloucester Infirmary receiving treatment prior to death and suffering general poorer health than individuals from Southgate Congregational Church. Metabolic and neoplastic conditions were found in similar frequencies indicating that these conditions affected the individuals of Gloucester equally. Trends showed increased risk of infectious and metabolic conditions compared to earlier populations. Joint conditions were the most common group of skeletal conditions recorded in the 13/83 skeletal assemblage. The 18th-19th century saw great social economic changes within Britain. This was the also that case in Gloucester, although skeletal analysis indicated that this was less extreme than in larger cities. Access to universal health care and control of infectious disease within the modern population has led to longer life expectancies and therefore different disease prevalence with such as increases in cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes mellitus, and secondary pathologies. These increases are predicted to continue with the emergence of new and old infectious conditions arising as a result of antibiotic resistance and global pandemics

Walls talk: Microbial biogeography of homes spanning urbanization.

Westernization has propelled changes in urbanization and architecture, altering our exposure to the outdoor environment from that experienced during most of human evolution. These changes might affect the developmental exposure of infants to bacteria, immune development, and human microbiome diversity. Contemporary urban humans spend most of their time indoors, and little is known about the microbes associated with different designs of the built environment and their interaction with the human immune system. This study addresses the associations between architectural design and the microbial biogeography of households across a gradient of urbanization in South America. Urbanization was associated with households' increased isolation from outdoor environments, with additional indoor space isolation by walls. Microbes from house walls and floors segregate by location, and urban indoor walls contain human bacterial markers of space use. Urbanized spaces uniquely increase the content of human-associated microbes-which could increase transmission of potential pathogens-and decrease exposure to the environmental microbes with which humans have coevolved

Image-Based Cardiac Diagnosis With Machine Learning: A Review

Cardiac imaging plays an important role in the diagnosis of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Until now, its role has been limited to visual and quantitative assessment of cardiac structure and function. However, with the advent of big data and machine learning, new opportunities are emerging to build artificial intelligence tools that will directly assist the clinician in the diagnosis of CVDs. This paper presents a thorough review of recent works in this field and provide the reader with a detailed presentation of the machine learning methods that can be further exploited to enable more automated, precise and early diagnosis of most CVDs

Does bariatric surgery prior to total hip or knee arthroplasty reduce post-operative complications and improve clinical outcomes for obese patients? Systematic review and meta-analysis.

AIMS: Our aim was to determine whether, based on the current literature, bariatric surgery prior to total hip (THA) or total knee arthroplasty (TKA) reduces the complication rates and improves the outcome following arthroplasty in obese patients. METHODS: A systematic literature search was undertaken of published and unpublished databases on the 5 November 2015. All papers reporting studies comparing obese patients who had undergone bariatric surgery prior to arthroplasty, or not, were included. Each study was assessed using the Downs and Black appraisal tool. A meta-analysis of risk ratios (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) was performed to determine the incidence of complications including wound infection, deep vein thrombosis (DVT), pulmonary embolism (PE), revision surgery and mortality. RESULTS: From 156 potential studies, five were considered to be eligible for inclusion in the study. A total of 23 348 patients (657 who had undergone bariatric surgery, 22 691 who had not) were analysed. The evidence-base was moderate in quality. There was no statistically significant difference in outcomes such as superficial wound infection (relative risk (RR) 1.88; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.95 to 0.37), deep wound infection (RR 1.04; 95% CI 0.65 to 1.66), DVT (RR 0.57; 95% CI 0.13 to 2.44), PE (RR 0.51; 95% CI 0.03 to 8.26), revision surgery (RR 1.24; 95% CI 0.75 to 2.05) or mortality (RR 1.25; 95% CI 0.16 to 9.89) between the two groups. CONCLUSION: For most peri-operative outcomes, bariatric surgery prior to THA or TKA does not significantly reduce the complication rates or improve the clinical outcome. This study questions the previous belief that bariatric surgery prior to arthroplasty may improve the clinical outcomes for patients who are obese or morbidly obese. This finding is based on moderate quality evidence. Cite this article: Bone Joint J 2016;98-B:1160-6

Conformational flexibility within the nascent polypeptide–associated complex enables its interactions with structurally diverse client proteins

As newly synthesized polypeptides emerge from the ribosome, it is crucial that they fold correctly. To prevent premature aggregation, nascent chains interact with chaperones that facilitate folding or prevent misfolding until protein synthesis is complete. Nascent polypeptide–associated complex (NAC) is a ribosome-associated chaperone important for protein homeostasis. However, how NAC binds its substrates remains unclear. Using native electrospray ionization MS (ESI MS), limited proteolysis, NMR and cross-linking, we analysed the conformational properties of NAC from Caenorhabditis elegans and studied its ability to bind proteins in different conformational states. Our results revealed that NAC adopts an array of compact and expanded conformations and binds weakly to client proteins that are unfolded, folded, or intrinsically disordered, suggestive of broad substrate compatibility. Of note, we found that this weak binding retards aggregation of the intrinsically disordered protein α-synuclein both in vitro and in vivo. These findings provide critical insights into the structure and function of NAC. Specifically, they reveal the ability of NAC to exploit its conformational plasticity to bind a repertoire of substrates having unrelated sequences and structures independently of actively translating ribosomes

Systematic review of fatty acid composition of human milk from mothers of preterm compared to full-term infants

Background: Fatty acid composition of human milk serves as guidance for the composition of infant formulae. The aim of the study was to systematically review data on the fatty acid composition of human milk of mothers of preterm compared to full-term infants. Methods: An electronic literature search was performed in English (Medline and Medscape) and German (SpringerLink) databases and via the Google utility. Fatty acid compositional data for preterm and fullterm human milk were converted to differences between means and 95% confidence intervals. Results: We identified five relevant studies publishing direct comparison of fatty acid composition of preterm versus full-term human milk. There were no significant differences between the values of the principal saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids. In three independent studies covering three different time points of lactation, however, docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) values were significantly higher in milk of mothers of preterm as compared to those of full-term infants, with an extent of difference considered nutritionally relevant. Conclusion: Higher DHA values in preterm than in full-term human milk underlines the importance of using own mother's milk for feeding preterm babies and raises the question whether DHA contents in preterm formulae should be higher than in formulae for full-term infants. Copyright (c) 2008 S. Karger AG, Basel

Subtle changes in the flavour and texture of a drink enhance expectations of satiety

Background: The consumption of liquid calories has been implicated in the development of obesity and weight gain. Energy-containing drinks are often reported to have a weak satiety value: one explanation for this is that because of their fluid texture they are not expected to have much nutritional value. It is important to consider what features of these drinks can be manipulated to enhance their expected satiety value. Two studies investigated the perception of subtle changes in a drink’s viscosity, and the extent to which thick texture and creamy flavour contribute to the generation of satiety expectations. Participants in the first study rated the sensory characteristics of 16 fruit yogurt drinks of increasing viscosity. In study two, a new set of participants evaluated eight versions of the fruit yogurt drink, which varied in thick texture, creamy flavour and energy content, for sensory and hedonic characteristics and satiety expectations. Results: In study one, participants were able to perceive small changes in drink viscosity that were strongly related to the actual viscosity of the drinks. In study two, the thick versions of the drink were expected to be more filling and have a greater expected satiety value, independent of the drink’s actual energy content. A creamy flavour enhanced the extent to which the drink was expected to be filling, but did not affect its expected satiety. Conclusions: These results indicate that subtle manipulations of texture and creamy flavour can increase expectations that a fruit yogurt drink will be filling and suppress hunger, irrespective of the drink’s energy content. A thicker texture enhanced expectations of satiety to a greater extent than a creamier flavour, and may be one way to improve the anticipated satiating value of energy-containing beverages