Identification of Factors Influencing Third Birth Transition in Manipur

The third birth transition has a negative impact on the national goal of fertility replacement level (2.1) which is to be achieved by 2010. To identify the factors influencing the demographic phenomenon, a cross sectional as well as community based study consisting of 1397 eligible women was conducted in the four valley districts of Manipur under cluster sampling scheme. Analysing the empirical information through SPSS, 42% of the study subjects transit their 3rd birth and its major determinants could be detected to be sex preference, age at marriage, and educational level each at 0.01 probability level of significance

Breathing SPACE – a practical approach to the breathless patient.

Breathlessness is a common symptom which may have multiple causes in any one individual and causes which may change over time. Breathlessness campaigns encourage people to see their GP if they are unduly breathless. Members of the London Respiratory Network collaborated to develop a tool which would encourage a holistic approach to breathlessness, which was applicable both at the time of diagnosis and during ongoing management. This has led to the development of the aide memoire “Breathing SPACE” which encompasses 5 key themes – Smoking, Pulmonary disease, Anxiety/psychosocial factors, Cardiac disease and Exercise/fitness. A particular concern was to ensure that high value interventions (smoking cessation and exercise interventions) are prioritised across the life-course and throughout the course of disease management. The approach is relevant both to well people and in those with an underling diagnosis or diagnoses. The inclusion of anxiety draws attention to the importance of mental health issues. Parity of esteem requires the physical health problems of people with mental illness to be addressed. The SPACE mnemonic also addresses the problem of underdiagnosis of heart disease in people with lung disease and vice versa, as well as the systematic undertreatment of these conditions where they do co-occur

Molecular Dynamics of "Fuzzy" Transcriptional Activator-Coactivator Interactions

Transcriptional activation domains (ADs) are generally thought to be intrinsically unstructured, but capable of adopting limited secondary structure upon interaction with a coactivator surface. The indeterminate nature of this interface made it hitherto difficult to study structure/function relationships of such contacts. Here we used atomistic accelerated molecular dynamics (aMD) simulations to study the conformational changes of the GCN4 AD and variants thereof, either free in solution, or bound to the GAL11 coactivator surface. We show that the AD-coactivator interactions are highly dynamic while obeying distinct rules. The data provide insights into the constant and variable aspects of orientation of ADs relative to the coactivator, changes in secondary structure and energetic contributions stabilizing the various conformers at different time points. We also demonstrate that a prediction of α-helical propensity correlates directly with the experimentally measured transactivation potential of a large set of mutagenized ADs. The link between α-helical propensity and the stimulatory activity of ADs has fundamental practical and theoretical implications concerning the recruitment of ADs to coactivators

Impacts of river engineering on river channel behaviour : implications for managing downstream flood risk

Although knowledge of sediment transport has improved over the last 25 years, our understanding of bedload transfer and sediment delivery is still based on a limited set of observations or on models that make assumptions on hydraulic and sediment transport processes. This study utilises repeat lidar survey data of the River Caldew above the City of Carlisle in the UK to investigate the balance of erosion and deposition associated with channel switching from an engineered and managed single thread channel to a naturalising incipient wandering system. Over the 11-year survey period (four bankfull flood events) around 271,000 m3 of sediment were delivered to the river and floodplain and 197,000 m3 eroded suggesting that storage rates of around 7000 m3/annum occurred. The balance of erosion and deposition is influenced by channelisation with very restricted overbank sedimentation and only limited local and transient in-channel bar deposition along the engineered reach (8000 m3 eroded). This contrasts with the activity of the naturalising reach downstream where a developing wandering channel system is acting to store coarse sediment in-stream as large bar complexes and the associated upstream aggrading plane bed reaches and overbank as splay deposits (87,000 m3 stored). Such behavior suggests that naturalisation of channelised systems upstream of flood vulnerable urban areas can have a significant impact on sediment induced flooding downstream. This conclusion must, however, be moderated in the light of the relatively small volumes of material needed to instigate local aggradation in over-capacity urban channels

A novel octopamine receptor with preferential expression in <i>Drosophila</i> mushroom bodies

Octopamine is a neuromodulator that mediates diverse physiological processes in invertebrates. In some insects, such as honeybees and fruit flies, octopamine has been shown to be a major stimulator of adenylyl cyclase and to function in associative learning. To identify an octopamine receptor mediating this function in Drosophila, putative biogenic amine receptors were cloned by a novel procedure using PCR and single-strand conformation polymorphism. One new receptor, octopamine receptor in mushroom bodies (OAMB), was identified as an octopamine receptor because human and Drosophila cell lines expressing OAMB showed increased cAMP and intracellular Ca2+ levels after octopamine application. Immunohistochemical analysis using an antibody made to the receptor revealed highly enriched expression in the mushroom body neuropil and the ellipsoid body of central complex, brain areas known to be crucial for olfactory learning and motor control, respectively. The preferential expression of OAMB in mushroom bodies and its capacity to produce cAMP accumulation suggest an important role in synaptic modulation underlying behavioral plasticity

Attitudes and access to lung volume reduction surgery for COPD: a survey by the British Thoracic Society.

OBJECTIVE: Lung volume reduction surgery for emphysema leads to improved survival in appropriately selected individuals, and it is therefore recommended in national and international guidelines for this group of patients. Despite this, fewer than 100 patients undergo the procedure each year in the UK. Our objective was to establish whether this reflects concerns about morbidity and mortality or difficulties in the referral pathway. DESIGN AND SETTING: We conducted a survey of members of the British Thoracic Society by email to investigate this in the second half of 2013. The survey included questions about access to investigations, the indications for lung volume reduction surgery (LVRS), whether a multidisciplinary meeting discussed eligibility of patients for LVRS and what the morbidity and mortality associated with the procedure was. RESULTS: There were 65 responses, 82% from respiratory physicians. Roughly half of the respondents were either unsure about the risks of death or prolonged (>30 days) hospital stay involved or significantly over-estimated them. In total, 70% did not have a specific multidisciplinary team to discuss the management of patients with advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). There was no consensus as to which patients with COPD should undergo a CT scan to evaluate them for possible surgery. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with COPD require a systematic and multidisciplinary approach to assessment for LVRS and these survey data suggest that work is needed to deliver this evidence-based therapy in a consistent and comprehensive way across the UK

Development of a soundscape simulator tool

This paper discusses the development of an interactive soundscape simulator, enabling users to manipulate a series of parameters to investigate if there is group correlation between factors such as source selection, positioning and level. The basis of the simulator stems from fieldwork and recordings carried out in London and Manchester. Through the use of an enhanced version of soundwalking, respondents are led on a walk around an urban space focusing on the soundscape, whilst answering questions in a semi-structured interview. The data collected is then used to inform the ecological validity of the simulator. The laboratory based tests use simulations based on spaces recorded in a series of urban locations, as well as an ‘idealised’ soundscape simulation, featuring data from all recorded locations. The sound sources used are based on user highlighted selections from all locations, based on preferences extracted from soundwalk field data. Preliminary results show the simulator is effective in obtaining numerical data based on subjective choices as well as, effective qualitative data which provides an insight into the reasoning behind the respondents choices. This work forms part of the Positive Soundscape Project

Prescribing workload administration to optimise isothermic heat acclimation

Repeated exercise-heat exposures, known as heat acclimation (HA), are often implemented as an intervention to attenuate decrements in physiological strain and exercise tolerance prior to work in normothermic and hot, humid conditions. The fundamental potentiating stimuli for thermoregulatory adaptation are repeated, significant rises in core temperature. Targeting of a specific core temperature is known as isothermic, or controlled hyperthermic HA. Different methods of modulating the exercise component of isothermic HA have been implemented, with prescription previously based upon either peak oxygen uptake (VO2peak), power, or subjective ratings of perceived exertion or thermal sensation. Interestingly, metabolic heat production, a measure to determine changes in core temperature, has not been used to prescribe isothermic HA. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between the rate of rectal (core) temperature (Trec) increase, and different methods for prescribing workload during an acute exercise-heat exposure, with the objective of trying to refine the prescription of isothermic HA workloads

Background suppressing Gabor energy filtering

In the field of facial emotion recognition, early research advanced with the use of Gabor filters. However, these filters lack generalization and result in undesirably large feature vector size. In recent work, more attention has been given to other local appearance features. Two desired characteristics in a facial appearance feature are generalization capability, and the compactness of representation. In this paper, we propose a novel texture feature inspired by Gabor energy filters, called background suppressing Gabor energy filtering. The feature has a generalization component that removes background texture. It has a reduced feature vector size due to maximal representation and soft orientation histograms, and it is awhite box representation. We demonstrate improved performance on the non-trivial Audio/Visual Emotion Challenge 2012 grand-challenge dataset by a factor of 7.17 over the Gabor filter on the development set. We also demonstrate applicability of our approach beyond facial emotion recognition which yields improved classification rate over the Gabor filter for four bioimaging datasets by an average of 8.22%