Palliative Care in Dementia

An optimal approach to palliative care for people with dementia has been defined by the European Association for Palliative Care with 11 domains including applicability of palliative care; person-centered care, communication, and shared decision-making; and setting care goals and advance care planning. Not all people with dementia will require specialist palliative care, and all involved in dementia care should be able to provide palliative care focusing on care and treatment which aims to increase the comfort and quality of life of the individual and supporting their family. There are many complications and symptoms which may arise for someone with dementia including increased infections, shortness of breath, swallowing difficulties, and pain which the individual may not be able to clearly express. These complications can lead to difficult decisions which need to be made by not only practitioners but also family caregivers as proxy. There should be a shared decision-making approach to these complications and symptoms, with advance care planning performed where possible. Caring for someone with dementia is one of the most difficult caring roles; support for family caregivers as part of a palliative approach is essential. Each person with dementia is different, and needs should be assessed on an individual basis, adopting a person-centered approach to care

Does public awareness increase support for invasive species management?:Promising evidence across taxa and landscape types

Management of invasive species often raises substantial conflicts of interest. Since such conflicts can hamper proposed management actions, managers, decision makers and researchers increasingly recognize the need to consider the social dimensions of invasive species management. In this exploratory study, we aimed (1) to explore whether species’ taxonomic position (i.e. animals vs. plants) and type of invaded landscape (i.e. urban vs. nonurban) might influence public perception about the management of invasive species, and (2) to assess the potential of public awareness to increase public support for invasive species management. We reviewed the scientific literature on the conflicts of interest around the management of alien species and administered two-phased questionnaires (before and after providing information on the target species and its management) to members of the public in South Africa and the UK (n = 240). Our review suggests that lack of public support for the management of invasive animals in both urban and non-urban areas derives mainly from moralistic value disagreements, while the management of invasive plants in non-urban areas mostly causes conflicts based on utilitarian value disagreements. Despite these general trends, conflicts are context dependent and can originate from a wide variety of different views. Notably, informing the public about the invasive status and negative impacts of the species targeted for management appeared to increase public support for the management actions. Therefore, our results align with the view that increased public awareness might increase the public support for the management of invasive species, independent of taxonomic position and type of landscape

Response of insect parasitism to elevation depends on host and parasitoid life-history strategies

How global warming will affect insect parasitoids and their role as natural enemies of insect pests is difficult to assess within a short period of time. Considering that elevation gradients can be used as analogues for global warming, we carried out meta-analyses of 27 correlations between parasitoid richness and elevation and 140 correlations between parasitism rate and elevation in natural and semi-natural environments. We also explored various covariates that may explain the observed responses. Both parasitism rates and parasitoid species richness significantly decreased with increasing elevation. The decrease was greater for ectoparasitoids and parasitoids of ectophagous insects than for endoparasitoids and parasitoids of endophagous hosts, possibly because these latter are better protected from adverse and extreme climatic conditions occurring at higher elevations. Although our results suggest an increase of parasitism with increasing temperature, other factors regulating herbivorous insects have to be considered before concluding that climate warming will lead to a decrease in pest density

Apoptosis and p53 expression in rat adjuvant arthritis.

STATEMENT OF FINDINGS: The kinetics of apoptosis and the apoptosis-regulating gene p53 in adjuvant arthritis (AA) were investigated to assess the value of the AA rat model for testing apoptosis-inducing therapies. Very few terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated deoxyuridine triphosphate (dUTP) nick end-labeling (TUNEL)-positive cells were detected during the early phases of AA, but on day 23 (chronic arthritis) the percentage of TUNEL-positive cells was significantly increased. Expression of p53 in synovial tissue gradually increased from days 5-23, which was markedly higher than p53 levels in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) synovium. Significant apoptosis only occurs late in rat AA and is concordant with marked p53 overexpression, making it useful model for testing proapoptotic therapies, but rat AA is not the best model for p53 gene therapy because dramatic p53 overexpression occurs in the latter stages of the disease

Oviposition site selection of an endangered butterfly at local spatial scales

As pre-hibernating larvae of the marsh fritillary (Euphydryas aurinia) have limited mobility essential resources need to be available at a very local scale. We surveyed larval webs (2011-2013), the host plant devil's bit scabious (Succisa pratensis) (2012), and derived variables from digital orthophotos and digital elevation models (Normalized Differenced Vegetation Index, accumulated sun hours, slope, aspect) to explain the presence-absence and abundance of larval webs at three different spatial grain sizes (5 x 2.5 m, 10 x 10 m, 25 x 25 m) across seven study sites in northern Jutland, Denmark. Two-component hurdle models indicated that host plant abundance was the only important predictor of presence-absence and abundance of larval webs across the seven sites. The strength of the host plant effect on larval web prevalence increased when enlarging spatial grain size. For presence-absence (and less for abundance), the effect of host plants on larval webs varied across study sites. Using mixed effects models, we additionally analysed presence-absence of larval webs (in 1 x 1 m plots) in relation to detailed host plant measurements (abundance and size), vegetation height, and environmental variables (soil temperature, air temperature and soil moisture) across four of the sites. This showed that larval webs were located in the densest parts of the host plant patches. Given the low mobility of pre-hibernating larvae (< 0.5 m), our results suggest that females select dense parts within large patches of host plants as oviposition sites. Future management should concentrate on establishing large patches of the larval host plant