1,377 research outputs found
A rare study from the wintering grounds provides insight into the costs of malaria infection for migratory birds
Malaria parasites can have strong effects on the population dynamics and evolution of migratory bird species. In many species, parasite transmission occurs on the wintering grounds, but studies to determine the consequences of infection have taken place during the breeding season, when malaria parasites circulate at chronic levels. We examined the predictors of malarial infections for great reed warblers during the northern winter in Africa, where active parasite transmission is thought to occur and naïve individuals experience acute infections. Counter to expectations, we found that winter infection intensities were lower than those encountered on the breeding grounds. One potential explanation is that reduced immune function during breeding allows parasites to persist at higher chronic intensities. We found no relationships between the incidence or intensity of infection on condition (as measured by scaled mass index, plasma metabolites, and feather corticosterone), spring migration departure dates, or home range sizes. We also tested a prediction of the Hamilton–Zuk hypothesis and found that male ornament (song) quality was unrelated to parasitic infection status. Overall, our results provide the first evidence that long‐distance migrants captured on their wintering grounds are in the chronic stage of infection, and suggest that winter studies may fare no better than breeding studies at determining the costs of acute malarial infection for great reed warblers.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Wiley via http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jav.0087
MassBuilt: effectiveness of an apprenticeship site-based smoking cessation intervention for unionized building trades workers
Blue-collar workers are difficult to reach and less likely to successfully quit smoking. The objective of this study was to test a training site-based smoking cessation intervention.
This study is a randomized-controlled trial of a smoking cessation intervention that integrated occupational health concerns and was delivered in collaboration with unions to apprentices at 10 sites (n = 1,213). We evaluated smoking cessation at 1 and 6 months post-intervention.
The baseline prevalence of smoking was 41%. We observed significantly higher quit rates in the intervention versus control group (26% vs. 16.8%; p = 0.014) 1 month after the intervention. However, the effects diminished over time so that the difference in quit rate was not significant at 6 month post-intervention (9% vs. 7.2%; p = 0.48). Intervention group members nevertheless reported a significant decrease in smoking intensity (OR = 3.13; 95% CI: 1.55–6.31) at 6 months post-intervention, compared to controls.
The study demonstrates the feasibility of delivering an intervention through union apprentice programs. Furthermore, the notably better 1-month quit rate results among intervention members and the greater decrease in smoking intensity among intervention members who continued to smoke underscore the need to develop strategies to help reduce relapse among blue-collar workers who quit smoking
An in vitro evaluation of standard rotational thromboelastography in monitoring of effects of recombinant factor VIIa on coagulopathy induced by hydroxy ethyl starch
BACKGROUND: Rotational thromboelastography (ROTEG) has been proposed as a monitoring tool that can be used to monitor treatment of hemophilia with recombinant factor VIIa (rFVIIa). In these studies special non-standard reagents were used as activators of the coagulation. The aim of this study was to evaluate if standard ROTEG analysis could be used for monitoring of effects of recombinant factor VIIa (rFVIIa) on Hydroxy Ethyl Starch-induced dilutional coagulopathy. METHODS: The study was performed in vitro on healthy volunteers. Prothrombin time (PT) and ROTEG analysis were performed after dilution with 33% hydroxy ethyl starch and also after addition of rFVIIa to the diluted blood. RESULTS: PT was impaired with INR changing from 0.9 before dilution to 1.2 after dilution while addition of rFVIIa to diluted blood lead to an overcorrection of the PT to an International Normalized Ratio (INR) value of 0.6 (p = 0.01). ROTEG activated with the contact activator ellagic acid was impaired by hemodilution (p = 0.01) while addition of rFVIIa had no further effects. ROTEG activated with tissue factor (TF) was also impaired by hemodilution (p = 0.01) while addition of rFVIIa lead to further impairment of the coagulation (p = 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: The parameters affected in the ROTEG analysis were Clot Formation Time and Amplitude after 15 minutes while the Clotting Time was unaffected. We believe these effects to be due to methodological problems when using standard activators of the coagulation in the ROTEG analysis in combination with rFVIIa
Interbreed variation in serum serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine) concentration in updates healthy dogs
Introduction: Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine [5-HT]) has several biological functions. In different species, excessive 5-HT has been linked to valvular lesions, similar to those seen in dogs with myxomatous mitral valve disease. Previous studies suggest higher 5-HT in healthy Cavalier King Charles Spaniels (CKCSs), a breed highly affected by myxomatous mitral valve disease, compared to other breeds. Objective: To investigate potential interbreed variation in serum 5-HT in healthy dogs. Animals: 483 healthy dogs of nine breeds aged 1-7 years. Methods: Dogs were examined at five European centers. Absence of cardiovascular, organ-related, or systemic diseases was ensured by thorough clinical investigations including echocardiography. Serum was frozen and later analyzed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Results: Median 5-HT concentration was 252.5 (interquartile range = 145.5-390.6) ng/mL. Overall breed difference was found (p Conclusions: Interbreed variation in serum 5-HT concentration was found in healthy dogs aged 1-7 years. These differences should be taken into account when designing clinical studies. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe
Genetic and environmental transactions underlying the associationbetween physical fitness/physical exercise and body composition
Inexperienced clinicians can extract pathoanatomic information from MRI narrative reports with high reproducibility for use in research/quality assurance
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Although reproducibility in reading MRI images amongst radiologists and clinicians has been studied previously, no studies have examined the reproducibility of inexperienced clinicians in extracting pathoanatomic information from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) narrative reports and transforming that information into quantitative data. However, this process is frequently required in research and quality assurance contexts. The purpose of this study was to examine inter-rater reproducibility (agreement and reliability) among an inexperienced group of clinicians in extracting spinal pathoanatomic information from radiologist-generated MRI narrative reports.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Twenty MRI narrative reports were randomly extracted from an institutional database. A group of three physiotherapy students independently reviewed the reports and coded the presence of 14 common pathoanatomic findings using a categorical electronic coding matrix. Decision rules were developed after initial coding in an effort to resolve ambiguities in narrative reports. This process was repeated a further three times using separate samples of 20 MRI reports until no further ambiguities were identified (total n = 80). Reproducibility between trainee clinicians and two highly trained raters was examined in an arbitrary coding round, with agreement measured using percentage agreement and reliability measured using unweighted Kappa (<it>k</it>). Reproducibility was then examined in another group of three trainee clinicians who had not participated in the production of the decision rules, using another sample of 20 MRI reports.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The mean percentage agreement for paired comparisons between the initial trainee clinicians improved over the four coding rounds (97.9-99.4%), although the greatest improvement was observed after the first introduction of coding rules. High inter-rater reproducibility was observed between trainee clinicians across 14 pathoanatomic categories over the four coding rounds (agreement range: 80.8-100%; reliability range <it>k </it>= 0.63-1.00). Concurrent validity was high in paired comparisons between trainee clinicians and highly trained raters (agreement 97.8-98.1%, reliability <it>k </it>= 0.83-0.91). Reproducibility was also high in the second sample of trainee clinicians (inter-rater agreement 96.7-100.0% and reliability <it>k </it>= 0.76-1.00; intra-rater agreement 94.3-100.0% and reliability <it>k </it>= 0.61-1.00).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>A high level of radiological training is not required in order to transform MRI-derived pathoanatomic information from a narrative format to a quantitative format with high reproducibility for research or quality assurance purposes.</p
Evaluation of cast metallic posts reproduction according to its quantity and position inside the casting ring
Hierarchical information clustering by means of topologically embedded graphs
We introduce a graph-theoretic approach to extract clusters and hierarchies
in complex data-sets in an unsupervised and deterministic manner, without the
use of any prior information. This is achieved by building topologically
embedded networks containing the subset of most significant links and analyzing
the network structure. For a planar embedding, this method provides both the
intra-cluster hierarchy, which describes the way clusters are composed, and the
inter-cluster hierarchy which describes how clusters gather together. We
discuss performance, robustness and reliability of this method by first
investigating several artificial data-sets, finding that it can outperform
significantly other established approaches. Then we show that our method can
successfully differentiate meaningful clusters and hierarchies in a variety of
real data-sets. In particular, we find that the application to gene expression
patterns of lymphoma samples uncovers biologically significant groups of genes
which play key-roles in diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of some of the most
relevant human lymphoid malignancies.Comment: 33 Pages, 18 Figures, 5 Table
Comparison of Similarity Coefficients used for Cluster Analysis with Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism Markers in the Silkworm, Bombyx mori
Establishing accurate genetic similarity and dissimilarity between individuals is an essential and decisive point for clustering and analyzing inter and intra population diversity because different similarity and dissimilarity indices may yield contradictory outcomes. We assessed the variations caused by three commonly used similarity coefficients including Jaccard, Sorensen-Dice and Simple matching in the clustering and ordination of seven Iranian native silkworm, Bombyx mori L. (Lepidoptera: Bombycidae), strains analyzed by amplified fragment length polymorphism markers. Comparisons among the similarity coefficients were made using the Spearman correlation analysis, dendrogram evaluation (visual inspection and consensus fork index - CIC), projection efficiency in a two-dimensional space, and groups formed by the Tocher optimization procedure. The results demonstrated that for almost all methodologies, the Jaccard and Sorensen-Dice coefficients revealed extremely close results, because both of them exclude negative co-occurrences. Due to the fact that there is no guarantee that the DNA regions with negative cooccurrences between two strains are indeed identical, the use of coefficients such as Jaccard and Sorensen-Dice that do not include negative co-occurrences was imperative for closely related organisms
Epidemiology and Genetic Epidemiology of the Liver Function Test Proteins
The liver function test (LFT) is among the most commonly used clinical investigations to assess hepatic function, severity of liver diseases and the effect of therapies, as well as to detect drug-induced liver injury (DILI)
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