An Exact Renormalization Group analysis of 3-d Well Developed turbulence

We take advantage of peculiar properties of three dimensional incompressible turbulence to introduce a nonstandard Exact Renormalization Group method. A Galilean invariance preserving regularizing procedure is utilized and a field truncation is adopted to test the method. Results are encouraging: the energy spectrum E(k) in the inertial range scales with exponent -1.666+/- 0.001 and the Kolmogorov constant C_K, computed for several (realistic) shapes of the stirring force correlator, agrees with experimental data.Comment: 12 pg, 2figures, LaTex, To be published on Physics Letters

Understanding disease control: influence of epidemiological and economic factors

We present a local spread model of disease transmission on a regular network and compare different control options ranging from treating the whole population to local control in a well-defined neighborhood of an infectious individual. Comparison is based on a total cost of epidemic, including cost of palliative treatment of ill individuals and preventive cost aimed at vaccination or culling of susceptible individuals. Disease is characterized by pre- symptomatic phase which makes detection and control difficult. Three general strategies emerge, global preventive treatment, local treatment within a neighborhood of certain size and only palliative treatment with no prevention. The choice between the strategies depends on relative costs of palliative and preventive treatment. The details of the local strategy and in particular the size of the optimal treatment neighborhood weakly depends on disease infectivity but strongly depends on other epidemiological factors. The required extend of prevention is proportional to the size of the infection neighborhood, but this relationship depends on time till detection and time till treatment in a non-nonlinear (power) law. In addition, we show that the optimal size of control neighborhood is highly sensitive to the relative cost, particularly for inefficient detection and control application. These results have important consequences for design of prevention strategies aiming at emerging diseases for which parameters are not known in advance

Fast Visuomotor Processing of Redundant Targets: The Role of the Right Temporo-Parietal Junction

Parallel processing of multiple sensory stimuli is critical for efficient, successful interaction with the environment. An experimental approach to studying parallel processing in sensorimotor integration is to examine reaction times to multiple copies of the same stimulus. Reaction times to bilateral copies of light flashes are faster than to single, unilateral light flashes. These faster responses may be due to ‘statistical facilitation’ between independent processing streams engaged by the two copies of the light flash. On some trials, however, reaction times are faster than predicted by statistical facilitation. This indicates that a neural ‘coactivation’ of the two processing streams must have occurred. Here we use fMRI to investigate the neural locus of this coactivation. Subjects responded manually to the detection of unilateral light flashes presented to the left or right visual hemifield, and to the detection of bilateral light flashes. We compared the bilateral trials where subjects' reaction times exceeded the limit predicted by statistical facilitation to bilateral trials that did not exceed the limit. Activity in the right temporo-parietal junction was higher in those bilateral trials that showed coactivation than in those that did not. These results suggest the neural coactivation observed in visuomotor integration occurs at a cognitive rather than sensory or motor stage of processing

The Political Economy of Non-Traditional Security: Explaining the Governance of Avian Influenza in Indonesia

Given the common association of non-traditional security (NTS) problems with globalisation, surprisingly little attention has been paid to how the political economy context of given NTS issues shape how they are securitised and managed in practice. We argue that security and its governance are always highly contested because different modes of security governance invariably privilege particular interests and normative agendas in state and society, which relate directly to the political economy. Drawing on critical political geography, we argue that, because NTS issues are perceived as at least potentially transnational, their securitisation often involves strategic attempts by actors and coalitions to ‘rescale’ their governance beyond the national political and institutional arenas, into new, expert-dominated modes of governance. Such efforts are often resisted by other coalitions, for which this rescaling is deleterious. As evidenced by a case study of avian influenza in Indonesia, particular governance outcomes depend upon the nature of the coalitions assembled for and against rescaling in specific situations, while these coalitions’ make-up and relative strength is shaped by the political economy of the industries that rescaling would affect, viewed against the broader backdrop of state-society relations

External fixation compared to intramedullary nailing of tibial fractures in the rat

Background and purpose It is not known whether there is a difference in bone healing after external fixation and after intramedullary nailing. We therefore compared fracture healing in rats after these two procedures

Online dietary intake estimation : The food4me food frequency questionnaire

Copyright ©Hannah Forster, Rosalind Fallaize, Caroline Gallagher, Clare B O’Donovan, Clara Woolhead, Marianne C Walsh, Anna L Macready, Julie A Lovegrove, John C Mathers, Michael J Gibney, Lorraine Brennan, Eileen R Gibney. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 09.06.2014. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.Dietary assessment methods are important tools for nutrition research. Online dietary assessment tools have the potential to become invaluable methods of assessing dietary intake because, compared with traditional methods, they have many advantages including the automatic storage of input data and the immediate generation of nutritional outputs. Objective: The aim of this study was to develop an online food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) for dietary data collection in the Food4Me study and to compare this with the validated European Prospective Investigation of Cancer (EPIC) Norfolk printed FFQ. Methods: The Food4Me FFQ used in this analysis was developed to consist of 157 food items. Standardized color photographs were incorporated in the development of the Food4Me FFQ to facilitate accurate quantification of the portion size of each food item. Participants were recruited in two centers (Dublin, Ireland and Reading, United Kingdom) and each received the online Food4Me FFQ and the printed EPIC-Norfolk FFQ in random order. Participants completed the Food4Me FFQ online and, for most food items, participants were requested to choose their usual serving size among seven possibilities from a range of portion size pictures. The level of agreement between the two methods was evaluated for both nutrient and food group intakes using the Bland and Altman method and classification into quartiles of daily intake. Correlations were calculated for nutrient and food group intakes. Results: A total of 113 participants were recruited with a mean age of 30 (SD 10) years (40.7% male, 46/113; 59.3%, 67/113 female). Cross-classification into exact plus adjacent quartiles ranged from 77% to 97% at the nutrient level and 77% to 99% at the food group level. Agreement at the nutrient level was highest for alcohol (97%) and lowest for percent energy from polyunsaturated fatty acids (77%). Crude unadjusted correlations for nutrients ranged between .43 and .86. Agreement at the food group level was highest for other fruits (eg, apples, pears, oranges) and lowest for cakes, pastries, and buns. For food groups, correlations ranged between .41 and .90. Conclusions: The results demonstrate that the online Food4Me FFQ has good agreement with the validated printed EPIC-Norfolk FFQ for assessing both nutrient and food group intakes, rendering it a useful tool for ranking individuals based on nutrient and food group intakes.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

The Red Sea, Coastal Landscapes, and Hominin Dispersals

This chapter provides a critical assessment of environment, landscape and resources in the Red Sea region over the past five million years in relation to archaeological evidence of hominin settlement, and of current hypotheses about the role of the region as a pathway or obstacle to population dispersals between Africa and Asia and the possible significance of coastal colonization. The discussion assesses the impact of factors such as topography and the distribution of resources on land and on the seacoast, taking account of geographical variation and changes in geology, sea levels and palaeoclimate. The merits of northern and southern routes of movement at either end of the Red Sea are compared. All the evidence indicates that there has been no land connection at the southern end since the beginning of the Pliocene period, but that short sea crossings would have been possible at lowest sea-level stands with little or no technical aids. More important than the possibilities of crossing the southern channel is the nature of the resources available in the adjacent coastal zones. There were many climatic episodes wetter than today, and during these periods water draining from the Arabian escarpment provided productive conditions for large mammals and human populations in coastal regions and eastwards into the desert. During drier episodes the coastal region would have provided important refugia both in upland areas and on the emerged shelves exposed by lowered sea level, especially in the southern sector and on both sides of the Red Sea. Marine resources may have offered an added advantage in coastal areas, but evidence for their exploitation is very limited, and their role has been over-exaggerated in hypotheses of coastal colonization

Uncovering treatment burden as a key concept for stroke care: a systematic review of qualitative research

<b>Background</b> Patients with chronic disease may experience complicated management plans requiring significant personal investment. This has been termed ‘treatment burden’ and has been associated with unfavourable outcomes. The aim of this systematic review is to examine the qualitative literature on treatment burden in stroke from the patient perspective.<p></p> <b>Methods and findings</b> The search strategy centred on: stroke, treatment burden, patient experience, and qualitative methods. We searched: Scopus, CINAHL, Embase, Medline, and PsycINFO. We tracked references, footnotes, and citations. Restrictions included: English language, date of publication January 2000 until February 2013. Two reviewers independently carried out the following: paper screening, data extraction, and data analysis. Data were analysed using framework synthesis, as informed by Normalization Process Theory. Sixty-nine papers were included. Treatment burden includes: (1) making sense of stroke management and planning care, (2) interacting with others, (3) enacting management strategies, and (4) reflecting on management. Health care is fragmented, with poor communication between patient and health care providers. Patients report inadequate information provision. Inpatient care is unsatisfactory, with a perceived lack of empathy from professionals and a shortage of stimulating activities on the ward. Discharge services are poorly coordinated, and accessing health and social care in the community is difficult. The study has potential limitations because it was restricted to studies published in English only and data from low-income countries were scarce.<p></p> <b>Conclusions</b> Stroke management is extremely demanding for patients, and treatment burden is influenced by micro and macro organisation of health services. Knowledge deficits mean patients are ill equipped to organise their care and develop coping strategies, making adherence less likely. There is a need to transform the approach to care provision so that services are configured to prioritise patient needs rather than those of health care systems