Ocular complications of herpes zoster ophthalmicus

Fifty percent of patients with ophthalmic zoster develop ocular complications. These may be mild or severe, and can lead to loss of sight which, by timely and good management can be prevented in most cases. Unfortunately knowledge of the complications and their management is often poor making the design and interpretation of clinical trials difficult. 1356 cases of ophthalmic zoster were collected over fifteen years with at least 6 months follow up. Their details and complications were entered into a database. There is a generally held impression that patients developing zoster do so because of impaired immunity. Analysis of our findings showed that this was not so. The database results were analyzed to quantify the incidence of complications and their correlates. Two common corneal complications that are difficult to manage and lead to visual impairment were studied in detail including: Mucous plaque keratitis is defined as a distinct entity appearing at an early or late stage and occurred in forty seven cases. Poor management leads to visual impairment from neurotrophic ulceration, megaplaque keratitis and glaucoma. Lipid keratopathy induces diminished visual acuity and photophobia. It occurred in thirty six cases. Careful and prolonged treatment of chronic stromal keratitis with topical steroid will prevent this occurring, but when it does successful laser occlusion of corneal blood vessels halts the deposition of lipid and may actually disperse it or make the host cornea safer for keratoplasty. One hundred and seventy six patients were screened orthoptically and the incidence of extraocular muscle palsies assessed with regard to distribution and natural history. Possible pathogeneses are discussed. Overall recovery was good. Lastly iritis and iris atrophy were identified in five hundred and twenty patients and twenty three were investigated with anterior segment fluorescein angiography. This showed that they were associated with an ischaemic vasculitis

IPD-MHC 2.0:An improved inter-species database for the study of the major histocompatibility complex

The IPD-MHC Database project (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/ipd/mhc/) collects and expertly curates sequences of the major histocompatibility complex from non-human species and provides the infrastructure and tools to enable accurate analysis. Since the first release of the database in 2003, IPD-MHC has grown and currently hosts a number of specific sections, with more than 7000 alleles from 70 species, including non-human primates, canines, felines, equids, ovids, suids, bovins, salmonids and murids. These sequences are expertly curated and made publicly available through an open access website. The IPD-MHC Database is a key resource in its field, and this has led to an average of 1500 unique visitors and more than 5000 viewed pages per month. As the database has grown in size and complexity, it has created a number of challenges in maintaining and organizing information, particularly the need to standardize nomenclature and taxonomic classification, while incorporating new allele submissions. Here, we describe the latest database release, the IPD-MHC 2.0 and discuss planned developments. This release incorporates sequence updates and new tools that enhance database queries and improve the submission procedure by utilizing common tools that are able to handle the varied requirements of each MHC-group

Effects of labeling a product eco-friendly and genetically modified: A cross-cultural comparison for estimates of taste, willingness to pay and health consequences

As the demand for eco-friendly food-produced without pesticides and environmentally harmful chemicals-increases, the need to develop genetically modified (GM) organisms that are more resistant to parasites and other environmental crop threats may increase. Because of this, products labeled both "eco-friendly" and "genetically modified" could become commonly available on the market. In this paper, we explore-in a Swedish and a UK sample-the consequences of combining eco-labeling and GM-labeling to judgments of taste, health consequences and willingness to pay for raisins. Participants tasted and evaluated four categories of raisins (eco-labeled and GM-labeled; eco-labeled; GM-labeled; and neither eco-labeled nor GM-labeled). The results suggest that there is a cost associated with adding a GM-label to an eco-labeled product: The GM-label removes the psychological benefits of the eco-label. This negative effect of the GM-label was larger among Swedish participants in comparison with UK participants, because the magnitude of the positive effect of the eco-label was larger in the Swedish sample and, hence, the negative effects of the GM-label became more pronounced (especially for health estimates). The roles of individual differences in attitudes, environmental concern and socially desirable responding in relation to the label effects are discussed

Summary and synthesis of Changing Cold Regions Network (CCRN) research in the interior of western Canada – Part 2: Future change in cryosphere, vegetation, and hydrology

CCRN from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) through their Climate Change and Atmospheric Research (CCAR) programPeer ReviewedThe interior of western Canada, like many similar cold mid- to high-latitude regions worldwide, is undergoing extensive and rapid climate and environmental change, which may accelerate in the coming decades. Understanding and predicting changes in coupled climate–land– hydrological systems are crucial to society yet limited by lack of understanding of changes in cold-region process responses and interactions, along with their representation in most current-generation land-surface and hydrological models. It is essential to consider the underlying processes and base predictive models on the proper physics, especially under conditions of non-stationarity where the past is no longer a reliable guide to the future and system trajectories can be unexpected. These challenges were forefront in the recently completed Changing Cold Regions Network (CCRN), which assembled and focused a wide range of multi-disciplinary expertise to improve the understanding, diagnosis, and prediction of change over the cold interior of western Canada. CCRN advanced knowledge of fundamental cold-region ecological and hydrological processes through observation and experimentation across a network of highly instrumented research basins and other sites. Significant efforts were made to improve the functionality and process representation, based on this improved understanding, within the fine-scale Cold Regions Hydrological Modelling (CRHM) platform and the large-scale Modélisation Environmentale Communautaire (MEC) – Surface and Hydrology (MESH) model. These models were, and continue to be, applied under past and projected future climates and under current and expected future land and vegetation cover configurations to diagnose historical change and predict possible future hydrological responses. This second of two articles synthesizes the nature and understanding of cold-region processes and Earth system responses to future climate, as advanced by CCRN. These include changing precipitation and moisture feedbacks to the atmosphere; altered snow regimes, changing balance of snowfall and rainfall, and glacier loss; vegetation responses to climate and the loss of ecosystem resilience to wildfire and disturbance; thawing permafrost and its influence on landscapes and hydrology; groundwater storage and cycling and its connections to surface water; and stream and river discharge as influenced by the various drivers of hydrological change. Collective insights, expert elicitation, and model application are used to provide a synthesis of this change over the CCRN region for the late 21st century

A many-analysts approach to the relation between religiosity and well-being

The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N=10,535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-being, and (2) whether the relation between religiosity and self-reported well-being depends on perceived cultural norms of religion (i.e., whether it is considered normal and desirable to be religious in a given country). In a two-stage procedure, the teams first created an analysis plan and then executed their planned analysis on the data. For the first research question, all but 3 teams reported positive effect sizes with credible/confidence intervals excluding zero (median reported β=0.120). For the second research question, this was the case for 65% of the teams (median reported β=0.039). While most teams applied (multilevel) linear regression models, there was considerable variability in the choice of items used to construct the independent variables, the dependent variable, and the included covariates

A Many-analysts Approach to the Relation Between Religiosity and Well-being

The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N = 10, 535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-being, and (2) whether the relation between religiosity and self-reported well-being depends on perceived cultural norms of religion (i.e., whether it is considered normal and desirable to be religious in a given country). In a two-stage procedure, the teams first created an analysis plan and then executed their planned analysis on the data. For the first research question, all but 3 teams reported positive effect sizes with credible/confidence intervals excluding zero (median reported β = 0.120). For the second research question, this was the case for 65% of the teams (median reported β = 0.039). While most teams applied (multilevel) linear regression models, there was considerable variability in the choice of items used to construct the independent variables, the dependent variable, and the included covariates

Mortality and pulmonary complications in patients undergoing surgery with perioperative SARS-CoV-2 infection: an international cohort study

Background: The impact of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) on postoperative recovery needs to be understood to inform clinical decision making during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. This study reports 30-day mortality and pulmonary complication rates in patients with perioperative SARS-CoV-2 infection. Methods: This international, multicentre, cohort study at 235 hospitals in 24 countries included all patients undergoing surgery who had SARS-CoV-2 infection confirmed within 7 days before or 30 days after surgery. The primary outcome measure was 30-day postoperative mortality and was assessed in all enrolled patients. The main secondary outcome measure was pulmonary complications, defined as pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, or unexpected postoperative ventilation. Findings: This analysis includes 1128 patients who had surgery between Jan 1 and March 31, 2020, of whom 835 (74·0%) had emergency surgery and 280 (24·8%) had elective surgery. SARS-CoV-2 infection was confirmed preoperatively in 294 (26·1%) patients. 30-day mortality was 23·8% (268 of 1128). Pulmonary complications occurred in 577 (51·2%) of 1128 patients; 30-day mortality in these patients was 38·0% (219 of 577), accounting for 81·7% (219 of 268) of all deaths. In adjusted analyses, 30-day mortality was associated with male sex (odds ratio 1·75 [95% CI 1·28–2·40], p\textless0·0001), age 70 years or older versus younger than 70 years (2·30 [1·65–3·22], p\textless0·0001), American Society of Anesthesiologists grades 3–5 versus grades 1–2 (2·35 [1·57–3·53], p\textless0·0001), malignant versus benign or obstetric diagnosis (1·55 [1·01–2·39], p=0·046), emergency versus elective surgery (1·67 [1·06–2·63], p=0·026), and major versus minor surgery (1·52 [1·01–2·31], p=0·047). Interpretation: Postoperative pulmonary complications occur in half of patients with perioperative SARS-CoV-2 infection and are associated with high mortality. Thresholds for surgery during the COVID-19 pandemic should be higher than during normal practice, particularly in men aged 70 years and older. Consideration should be given for postponing non-urgent procedures and promoting non-operative treatment to delay or avoid the need for surgery. Funding: National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), Association of Coloproctology of Great Britain and Ireland, Bowel and Cancer Research, Bowel Disease Research Foundation, Association of Upper Gastrointestinal Surgeons, British Association of Surgical Oncology, British Gynaecological Cancer Society, European Society of Coloproctology, NIHR Academy, Sarcoma UK, Vascular Society for Great Britain and Ireland, and Yorkshire Cancer Research

A tale of two cognitions: The Evolution of Social Constructivism in International Relations

Abstract Constructivism in International Relations (IR) is popular, but constructivists seem disappointed. Allegedly something has been lost. Such criticisms are misplaced. There was never a uniform Constructivism. Since constructivism is socially constructed, to argue that constructivism has evolved “wrongly” is odd. This paper explains the dissatisfaction with constructivism followed by a second reading of its evolution as a tale of two cognitions. These two cognitions distinguish genera in the constructivist “family”. A criticism against one genus based on the cognition of the other is unfair. A focus on cognitions and the use of genera helps in perceiving constructivism’s future evolution

BalloonSAT: A Very Low-Cost ‘Satellite’ Test Platform

The University of North Dakota has, over the last five years, performed work to significantly lower the cost of the development of a small spacecraft. Despite making significant reductions to CubeSat cost levels, providing increased functionality and customization capabilities, orbital missions still require funding levels that may place them outside the financial capabilities of most K-12 schools along with many colleges and universities. For institutions that can afford CubeSat development, a mechanism is required to allow the institution to gain competency on spacecraft development prior to being a successful proposer for many sources of prospective funding. For both of these reasons, a very low cost CubeSat-like high altitude balloon (HAB) or solar balloon (SB) payload and an associated tracking system solution are being developed. This paper presents an overview of the BalloonSAT design. It describes the composition of the HAB/SB payload and the differences between this design approach and many typical HAB payload designs. One area of particular notoriety of the design, the use of 3D printing to produce the payload frame, is covered in detail. A discussion of the ease of construction, based on the use of 3D printed frame and inserted side panels (mirroring the CubeSat design) is presented. The comparative benefits and drawbacks of this design approach versus foam enclosures and other common HAB payloads are considered. In addition, communication technologies for the HAB/SB and the decision-making process between HABs and SBs are also reviewed in detail. The paper concludes with a discussion of previous and ongoing test missions and an overview of planned future work