Macrofossils and pollen representing forests of the pre-Taupo volcanic eruption (c. 1850 yr BP) era at Pureora and Benneydale, central North Island, New Zealand.

Micro- and macrofossil data from the remains of forests overwhelmed and buried at Pureora and Benneydale during the Taupo eruption (c. 1850 conventional radiocarbon yr BP) were compared. Classification of relative abundance data separated the techniques, rather than the locations, because the two primary clusters comprised pollen and litter/wood. This indicates that the pollen:litter/wood within-site comparisons (Pureora and Benneydale are 20 km apart) are not reliable. Plant macrofossils represented mainly local vegetation, while pollen assemblages represented a combination of local and regional vegetation. However, using ranked abundance and presence/absence data, both macrofossils and pollen at Pureora and Benneydale indicated conifer/broadleaved forest, of similar forest type and species composition at each site. This suggests that the forests destroyed by the eruption were typical of mid-altitude west Taupo forests, and that either data set (pollen or macrofossils) would have been adequate for regional forest interpretation. The representation of c. 1850 yr BP pollen from the known buried forest taxa was generally consistent with trends determined by modern comparisons between pollen and their source vegetation, but with a few exceptions. A pollen profile from between the Mamaku Tephra (c. 7250 yr BP) and the Taupo Ignimbrite indicated that the Benneydale forest had been markedly different in species dominance compared with the forest that was destroyed during the Taupo eruption. These differences probably reflect changes in drainage, and improvements in climate and/or soil fertility over the middle Holocene

“He's Still the Winner in My Mind”: Maintaining the Collective Identity in Sport through Social Creativity and Group Affirmation

Social Creativity and Group Affirmation are two strategies by which individuals that identify with a sporting activity, team, group or individual may protect that sense of identification in light of negative events. This paper explores the use of such strategies through examining reactions to doping allegations surrounding Lance Armstrong to explain how members of two brand communities (one based on the brand of Armstrong as cyclist and the other on the brand of Armstrong as cancer survivor) maintain a sense of allegiance. Through undertaking a netnographic approach, six strategies were identified by members of these communities, three of which could be identified as Social Creativity Strategies (Lance Armstrong as “superhuman”, the notion of cycling as a ‘level playing field’, Armstrong as scapegoat) and three as Group Affirmation (Armstrong as a continuing inspiration, the Armstrong legacy, and denial). The two brand communities demonstrated differing patterns of maintenance, with those within the cycling community focusing more upon Social Creativity strategies, whereas those members of the Armstrong as cancer survivor brand tended to focus upon Group Affirmation strategies

From discovery to scale-up: alpha-lipoic acid : nicotinamide co-crystals in a continuous oscillatory baffled crystalliser

The crystalline nutritional supplement alpha-lipoic acid degrades rapidly on exposure to temperatures above its melting point 65 degrees C and to light. A small-scale experimental co-crystal screen has produced three novel co-crystals of alpha-lipoic acid that each display enhanced thermal stability and differences in aqueous solubilities compared to alpha-lipoic acid. In each case, the initial screening procedure produced tens of milligrams of material enabling initial identification, characterisation and crystal structure determination. The structure of the alpha-lipoic acid : nicotinamide co-crystal was determined by single crystal X-ray diffraction and used for subsequent phase identification. Scale-up of the co-crystallisation process of alpha-lipoic acid with nicotinamide was then investigated in a continuous oscillatory baffled crystalliser. Over 1 kg of solid co-crystals was produced using a continuous crystallisation process in a continuous oscillatory baffled crystalliser at a throughput of 350 g h-1 yielding a purity of 99% demonstrating this as an effective route to rapid scale-up of a novel co-crystal system

Faculty experiences with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) public access policy, compliance issues, and copyright practices

Objectives: The research assessed faculty awareness of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) public access policy and faculty experiences with the copyright terms in their author agreements with publishers. Methods: During the fall of 2011, 198 faculty members receiving funding from NIH at a large urban academic institution were invited to participate in an anonymous online survey. A total of 94 faculty members responded to the survey, representing a response rate of 47%. Results: Thirty percent of the survey respondents were either unaware of or not familiar with the NIH policy. Further, a significant number of faculty members (97.8%) indicated that they usually signed their copyright forms “as is.” The findings show that time, confusing instructions, and unclear journal policies are challenges experienced by NIH-funded faculty in complying with the federal mandate. Conclusion: There is a need to educate faculty with respect to the value of retaining their copyrights and self-archiving their publications to help advance public access and open access scholarship

Livestock trade networks for guiding animal health surveillance

BACKGROUND: Trade in live animals can contribute to the introduction of exotic diseases, the maintenance and spread endemic diseases. Annually millions of animals are moved across Europe for the purposes of breeding, fattening and slaughter. Data on the number of animals moved were obtained from the Directorate General Sanco (DG Sanco) for 2011. These were converted to livestock units to enable direct comparison across species and their movements were mapped, used to calculate the indegrees and outdegrees of 27 European countries and the density and transitivity of movements within Europe. This provided the opportunity to discuss surveillance of European livestock movement taking into account stopping points en-route. RESULTS: High density and transitivity of movement for registered equines, breeding and fattening cattle, breeding poultry and pigs for breeding, fattening and slaughter indicates that hazards have the potential to spread quickly within these populations. This is of concern to highly connected countries particularly those where imported animals constitute a large proportion of their national livestock populations, and have a high indegree. The transport of poultry (older than 72 hours) and unweaned animals would require more rest breaks than the movement of weaned animals, which may provide more opportunities for disease transmission. Transitivity is greatest for animals transported for breeding purposes with cattle, pigs and poultry having values of over 50%. CONCLUSIONS: This paper demonstrated that some species (pigs and poultry) are traded much more frequently and at a larger scale than species such as goats. Some countries are more vulnerable than others due to importing animals from many countries, having imported animals requiring rest-breaks and importing large proportions of their national herd or flock. Such knowledge about the vulnerability of different livestock systems related to trade movements can be used to inform the design of animal health surveillance systems to facilitate the trade in animals between European member states. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12917-015-0354-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Patients’ Perceptions of Memory Functioning Before and After Surgical Intervention to Treat Medically Refractory Epilepsy.

Purpose:One risk associated with epilepsy surgery is memory loss, but perhaps more important is how patients perceive changes in their memories. This longitudinal study evaluated changes in memory self-reports and investigated how self-reports relate to changes on objective memory measures in temporal or extratemporal epilepsy patients who underwent surgery. Methods: Objective memory (Wechsler Memory Scale–Revised) and subjective memory self-reports (Memory Assessment Clinics Self-Rating Scale) were individually assessed for 136 patients ∼6 months before and 6 months after surgery. A measure of depressive affect (Beck Depression Inventory–2nd Edition) was used to control variance attributable to emotional distress. Results: Despite a lack of significant correlational relationships between objective and subjective memory for the entire sample, significant correlations between objective memory scores and self-reports did emerge for a subset of patients who evidenced memory decline. Differences also were found in the subjective memory ratings of temporal lobe versus extratemporal patients. Temporal lobe patients rated their memories more negatively than did extratemporal patients and were more likely to report significant improvements in their memory after surgery. Conclusions: In general, patients were not accurate when rating their memories compared to other adults. However, patients with significant declines in their memories were sensitive to actual changes in their memories over time relative to their own personal baselines

Neurobehavioral consequences of chronic intrauterine opioid exposure in infants and preschool children: a systematic review and meta-analysis

<b>Background</b><p></p> It is assumed within the accumulated literature that children born of pregnant opioid dependent mothers have impaired neurobehavioral function as a consequence of chronic intrauterine opioid use.<p></p> <b>Methods</b><p></p> Quantitative and systematic review of the literature on the consequences of chronic maternal opioid use during pregnancy on neurobehavioral function of children was conducted using the Meta-analysis of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (MOOSE) and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines. We searched Cinahl, EMBASE, PsychINFO and MEDLINE between the periods of January 1995 to January 2012.<p></p> <b>Results</b><p></p> There were only 5 studies out of the 200 identified that quantitatively reported on neurobehavioral function of children after maternal opioid use during pregnancy. All 5 were case control studies with the number of exposed subjects within the studies ranging from 33–143 and 45–85 for the controls. This meta-analysis showed no significant impairments, at a non-conservative significance level of p < 0.05, for cognitive, psychomotor or observed behavioural outcomes for chronic intra-uterine exposed infants and pre-school children compared to non-exposed infants and children. However, all domains suggested a trend to poor outcomes in infants/children of opioid using mothers. The magnitude of all possible effects was small according to Cohen’s benchmark criteria.<p></p> <b>Conclusions</b><p></p> Chronic intra-uterine opioid exposed infants and pre-school children experienced no significant impairment in neurobehavioral outcomes when compared to non-exposed peers, although in all domains there was a trend to poorer outcomes. The findings of this review are limited by the small number of studies analysed, the heterogenous populations and small numbers within the individual studies. Longitudinal studies are needed to determine if any neuropsychological impairments appear after the age of 5 years and to help investigate further the role of environmental risk factors on the effect of ‘core’ phenotypes

Single hadron response measurement and calorimeter jet energy scale uncertainty with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

The uncertainty on the calorimeter energy response to jets of particles is derived for the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). First, the calorimeter response to single isolated charged hadrons is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo simulation using proton-proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies of sqrt(s) = 900 GeV and 7 TeV collected during 2009 and 2010. Then, using the decay of K_s and Lambda particles, the calorimeter response to specific types of particles (positively and negatively charged pions, protons, and anti-protons) is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo predictions. Finally, the jet energy scale uncertainty is determined by propagating the response uncertainty for single charged and neutral particles to jets. The response uncertainty is 2-5% for central isolated hadrons and 1-3% for the final calorimeter jet energy scale.Comment: 24 pages plus author list (36 pages total), 23 figures, 1 table, submitted to European Physical Journal

Standalone vertex finding in the ATLAS muon spectrometer

A dedicated reconstruction algorithm to find decay vertices in the ATLAS muon spectrometer is presented. The algorithm searches the region just upstream of or inside the muon spectrometer volume for multi-particle vertices that originate from the decay of particles with long decay paths. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated using both a sample of simulated Higgs boson events, in which the Higgs boson decays to long-lived neutral particles that in turn decay to bbar b final states, and pp collision data at √s = 7 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC during 2011