Road User Charging – Pricing Structures.

This project considers the extent to which the public could cope with complex price or tariff structures such as those that might be considered in the context of a national congestion pricing scheme. The key elements of the brief were: • to review existing studies of road pricing schemes to assess what information and evidence already exists on the key issues; • to identify what can be learned about pricing structures from other transport modes and other industries and in particular what issues and conclusions might be transferable; • to improve the general understanding of the relationship between information and people’s ability to respond; and • to recommend what further research would be most valuable to fill evidence gaps and enable conclusions to be drawn about an effective structure

Bleeding disorders : functionality of global haemostasis assays in attaining clinical outcomes : a review

Abstract: Many tests used to evaluate haemostasis correspond to artificially created environments. These include some of the traditional screening tests, which were established through understanding the coagulation cascade for example, the prothrombin time (PT), the activated partial thromboplastin time (aPTT) and Fibrinogen estimation. And as such, they have contributed greatly to our current knowledge of the haemostatic process. Unfortunately, these traditional laboratory tests have their limitations. Open to debate for example, is their ability to supply enough information timeously (? laboratory turnaround time) in order to diagnose and treat patients according to their phenotype. Anarchetypical shift in haemostasis measurements using global haemostasis tests that determine the complete process in a more physiological and all-inclusive way are consequently being reevaluated..

Risk communication and participatory research: ‘Fuzzy felt’, visual games and group discussion of complex issues

Published

Custo de produção do gado puro sangue Charolês.

Foi estimado o custo da criação do rebanho Charolês, mantido para fim de pesquisa na UEPAE de São Carlos, com o objetivo de colher subsidios para o estudo da economicidade da pesquisa e de registrar incidências de custo aplicáveis a criação a nível de empresa

<i>Schistosoma mansoni</i> cercariae experience influx of macromolecules during skin penetration

We have observed that when cercariae penetrate the skin of mice, there is influx into their tissues of Lucifer Yellow and certain labelled molecules of up to 20 kDa molecular weight. This observation was made using a variety of fluorescent membrane-impermeant compounds injected into the skin before the application of cercariae. This unexpected phenomenon was investigated further by transforming cercariae in vitro in the presence of the membrane-impermeant compounds and examining the distribution by microscopy. In schistosomula derived from this procedure, the nephridiopore and surface membrane were labelled while the pre- and post-acetabular glands were not labelled. The region associated with the oesophagus within the pharyngeal muscle clearly contained the fluorescent molecules, as did the region adjacent to the excretory tubules and the germinal mass. We used cercariae stained with carmine to aid identification of regions labelled with Lucifer Yellow. Although the mechanism of this influx is unclear, the observation is significant. From it, we can suggest an hypothesis that, during skin penetration, exposure of internal tissues of the parasite to external macromolecules represents a novel host-parasite interfac

Aiding Lay Decision Making Using a Cognitive Competencies Approach

Two prescriptive approaches have evolved to aid human decision making: just in time interventions that provide support as a decision is being made; and just in case interventions that educate people about future events that they may encounter so that they are better prepared to make an informed decision when these events occur. We review research on these two approaches developed in the context of supporting everyday decisions such as choosing an apartment, a financial product or a medical procedure. We argue that the lack of an underlying prescriptive theory has limited the development and evaluation of these interventions. We draw on recent descriptive research on the cognitive competencies that underpin human decision making to suggest new ways of interpreting how and why existing decision aids may be effective and suggest a different way of evaluating their effectiveness. We also briefly outline how our approach has the potential to develop new interventions to support everyday decision making and highlight the benefits of drawing on descriptive research when developing and evaluating interventions

Callose deposition and symplastic connectivity are regulated prior to lateral root emergence.

Root growth is critical for the effective exploitation of the rhizosphere and productive plant growth. Our recent work(1) showed that root architecture was dependent upon the degree of symplastic connectivity between neighboring cells during the specification of lateral root primordia and was affected by genes regulating callose deposition at plasmodesmata (PD). Here we provide additional evidence that both symplastic connectivity and callose are also important during the later phase of lateral root development: emergence. Callose immunolocalization assays indicated that transient symplastic isolation of the primordium occur immediately prior to emergence through the overlaying tissues to produce the mature lateral root.(1) Here we could corroborate these results by analyzing the mobility of a symplastic tracer and the expression of PD genes in lateral roots and in response to auxins. Moreover, we show that altering callose deposition affects the number of emerged lateral roots suggesting that PD regulation is important for emergence