Paediatric wheezy admissions at and around school holiday periods

Objective: To study the influence of school holidays on paediatric admissions with wheezing. Design, setting and patients: Retrospective analysis of all admissions due to wheeze in the paediatric age group. Regional hospital catering for all such admissions, subdivided by age group. Outcome measures: Comparison of hospitalisations due to wheezing before, during and after school holiday periods. Results: Summated admissions showed an increase in admissions over the Christmas period for preschool children, and a decrease for school age children. In Easter and at the start of the summer holidays, admissions decreased in all age groups, except for the late school age group which showed increased admissions in April-May. After the summer holidays, a rise in admissions was noted for all ages. Conclusions: Our findings support the multiphenotypic theory for the precipitation of wheezy attacks, with a changeover from a predominantly viral respiratory trigger to a more atopic form of the disease at around 10 years of age. Prophylaxis during school periods is especially important, and advice leading to prophylaxis dose reduction in the benign summer months should be accompanied by advice to restart adequate prophylaxis medication prior to restarting school.peer-reviewe

The relationship between resilience and sustainable development of ecological-economic systems

Resilience as a descriptive concept gives insight into the dynamic properties of a system. Sustainability as a normative concept captures basic ideas of inter- and intragenerational justice. In this paper we specify the relationship between resilience and sustainable development. Based on an ecological-economic model where two natural capital stocks provide ecosystem services that are complements for human well-being, we derive conditions on the dynamics of the ecological-economic system and the sustainability criterion, such that a) resilience of the system in a given regime is both necessary and sufficient for sustainable development, b) resilience of the system in a given regime is sufficient, but not necessary, c) resilience of the system in a given regime is necessary, but not sufficient, and d) resilience of the system in a given regime is neither necessary nor sufficient for sustainable development. We conclude that more criteria than the resilience of the current state of the system have to be taken into account when designing policies for sustainable management of ecological-economic systems.ecosystem resilience, sustainable development, management of ecological-economic systems

UNDERSTANDING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS AND COORDINATION IN AGRI-BUSINESS SUPPLY CHAINS: AN EXAMINATION OF THE NEW ZEALAND MEAT INDUSTRY

Two phenomena are occurring simultaneously within the agribusiness sector: customers are requiring tighter product specifications and agricultural chains are becoming more coordinated. However, the exact relationship between these two phenomena is not clear. This research explores that relationship. Five New Zealand fresh meat chains were the focus of multiple case-study research, which used a chain-level (multi-dyadic) approach. Chains were assessed as to the nature of product specifications demanded at the end-customer level, as well as to the nature of inter-firm relationships. Interestingly, tighter product specifications in themselves do not lead to more coordinated chains; coordination seems to be linked to the level of effort required to meet product specifications.Industrial Organization, Livestock Production/Industries,

Environment-Behaviour Studies in the Classroom

This article briefly outlines a summary of some aspects of a thorough literature review performed by Horne (1999) looking into the classroom environment and its effects on the practice of teachers. Below is outlined an overview of the subject. Intuitively, we know that the physical environment of the classroom has an impact on the behaviour of both teachers and pupils. The difficulty is understanding how this impact occurs, and how much of this impact is consciously and deliberately planned by the teacher. The knowledge of these relationships can benefit teachers in their awareness of their environment and this knowledge is empowering, enabling teachers to take control of the space and deliberately design it. Any teaching can be effective if teachers understand their setting and how it influences behaviour. Beyond that lies the need to feel capable of responding to this understanding by having a proactive rather than a defeatist attitude towards the setting. Design and Technology is an area of the curriculum that would benefit greatly with the enhanced knowledge about how space relates to behaviour, learning and teaching. It is part of Design and Technology’s nature to manipulate space, materials and resources, so the better awareness of the effects of these on its users would only be beneficial to subject development

Automated Solid-Phase Based Methodologies for the Synthesis of Glycosylated Biomolecules

Glycosylation is the most common post-translational modification of proteins in living organisms and participates in several processes such as cell adhesion, signal transduction and immune responses. Glycans present on glycoproteins are associated with health and disease conditions and can be used as markers for diagnosis or as therapeutical agents. However, the main limitation that slows down the research on glycosylated biomolecules is the lack of homogeneous isoforms of glycoproteins. Thus, the need to have homogeneous materials has prompted the development of methods for synthesizing glycosylated proteins. This work is aimed to develop strategies and methodologies for synthesizing glycosylated molecules. Two projects were executed to synthesize glycosylated amino acids of Trypanosoma cruzi and variants of the human glycoprotein CD59

The ORF1 Protein Encoded by LINE-1: Structure and Function During L1 Retrotransposition

LINE-1, or L1 is an autonomous non-LTR retrotransposon in mammals. Retrotransposition requires the function of the two, L1-encoded polypeptides, ORF1p and ORF2p. Early recognition of regions of homology between the predicted amino acid sequence of ORF2 and known endonuclease and reverse transcriptase enzymes led to testable hypotheses regarding the function of ORF2p in retrotransposition. As predicted, ORF2p has been demonstrated to have both endonuclease and reverse transcriptase activities. In contrast, no homologs of known function have contributed to our understanding of the function of ORF1p during retrotransposition. Nevertheless, significant advances have been made such that we now know that ORF1p is a high affinity RNA binding protein that forms a ribonucleoprotein particle together with L1 RNA. Furthermore, ORF1p is a nucleic acid chaperone and this nucleic acid chaperone activity is required for L1 retrotransposition