Prevalence of Antibodies against Hantaviruses in Serum and Saliva of Adults Living or Working on Farms in Yorkshire, United Kingdom

We acknowledge Clement and colleagues for their comments [1] on our paper [2]. We agree that many controversies are being discussed by the hantavirus community, particularly surrounding the interpretation of serological results and the designation of new species and strains. Within this setting, we are grateful for the opportunity to respond to the key factual and methodological points raised by Clements et al. [...

Centering relationships in a competitive sports environment

The purpose of this study was to investigate the implementation of and experience with a Restorative Youth Sports (RYS) model in a competitive soccer environment. Sport can be a fertile ground for youth to develop life skills that can have considerable value in adult life (Martinek & Lee, 2012). Although an entire field of research has been dedicated to the examination of the purposeful integration of life skills into sport, the competitive sports environment has continued to be unexplored. It is delicate balance for coaches to prioritize life skill development with performance outcomes. RYS has been proposed as such a model to equally foster personal and social responsibility and youth empowerment with player development. This study took an in-depth look at the implementation, facilitation, and player experience within an RYS environment. Three questions guided the research: 1) How does the research develop and facilitate a RYS model into a competitive sports team? 2) What is the experience in a RYS competitive soccer team? 3) In what ways, if any, do participants’ think through and learn inside the RYS program? How do they think about elements of the program outside of the program into other areas of their lives? Through a case study (Yin, 2009) and self-study approach (LaBoskey, 2004), these questions were explored with an u14 girls’ competitive soccer team across an entire season. Various sources were collected including semi-structured interviews, focus groups, a self-reflective journal, critical-friend discussions, field-notes, RP Observe, TPSR Implementation Checklists, and artifact analysis to triangulate the findings. The research supported the growth of the coach who facilitated the RYS environment, supported the fidelity of implementation, and highlighted how RYS fostered a spectrum of transfer across players. The themes that emerged from the case study supported Jacobs and Wright’s (2018) conceptual framework of bridging the transfer of life skills from sport to other contexts through an in-depth look at program implementation, student learning, cognitive connections, and near and far transfer. These findings contribute to the scholarship of RYS and SBYD and the practical implementation and experience of centering relationships in a competitive sports environment

Patterns of analgesic use, pain and self-efficacy: a cross-sectional study of patients attending a hospital rheumatology clinic

Background: Many people attending rheumatology clinics use analgesics and non-steroidal anti-inflammatories for persistent musculoskeletal pain. Guidelines for pain management recommend regular and pre-emptive use of analgesics to reduce the impact of pain. Clinical experience indicates that analgesics are often not used in this way. Studies exploring use of analgesics in arthritis have historically measured adherence to such medication. Here we examine patterns of analgesic use and their relationships to pain, self-efficacy and demographic factors. Methods: Consecutive patients were approached in a hospital rheumatology out-patient clinic. Pattern of analgesic use was assessed by response to statements such as 'I always take my tablets every day.' Pain and self-efficacy (SE) were measured using the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) and Arthritis Self-Efficacy Scale (ASES). Influence of factors on pain level and regularity of analgesic use were investigated using linear regression. Differences in pain between those agreeing and disagreeing with statements regarding analgesic use were assessed using t-tests. Results: 218 patients (85% of attendees) completed the study. Six (2.8%) patients reported no current pain, 26 (12.3%) slight, 100 (47.4%) moderate, 62 (29.4%) severe and 17 (8.1%) extreme pain. In multiple linear regression self efficacy and regularity of analgesic use were significant (p < 0.01) with lower self efficacy and more regular use of analgesics associated with more pain. Low SE was associated with greater pain: 40 (41.7%) people with low SE reported severe pain versus 22 (18.3%) people with high SE, p < 0.001. Patients in greater pain were significantly more likely to take analgesics regularly; 13 (77%) of those in extreme pain reported always taking their analgesics every day, versus 9 (35%) in slight pain. Many patients, including 46% of those in severe pain, adjusted analgesic use to current pain level. In simple linear regression, pain was the only variable significantly associated with regularity of analgesic use: higher levels of pain corresponded to more regular analgesic use (p = 0.003). Conclusion: Our study confirms that there is a strong inverse relationship between self-efficacy and pain severity. Analgesics are often used irregularly by people with arthritis, including some reporting severe pain

The Dark Matter Distributions in Low-Mass Disk Galaxies. I. Hα Observations Using the Palomar Cosmic Web Imager

Dark-matter-only simulations predict that dark matter halos have cusp-like inner density profiles, while observations of low-mass galaxies have found a range of inner slopes that are typically much shallower. It is still not well established whether this discrepancy can be explained by baryonic feedback or if it may require modified dark matter models. To better understand the diversity of dark matter profiles in dwarf galaxies, we undertook a survey of 26 low-mass galaxies (\mathrm{log}{M}_{* }/{M}_{\odot }=8.4\mbox{--}9.8, v max = 50–140 km s−1) within 30 Mpc using the Palomar Cosmic Web Imager, which is among the largest integral field spectroscopic surveys of its type. In this paper, we derive Hα velocity fields for the full sample with a typical spatial resolution of ~160 pc. We extract rotation curves and verify their robustness to several choices in the analysis. We present a method for improving the velocity precision obtained from image slicing spectrographs using narrowband Hα images. For 11 galaxies, we compare the Hα velocity fields to CO kinematics measured using CARMA, finding the maps to be in good agreement. The standard deviation of the difference is typically ~7 km s−1, comparable to the level of turbulence in the interstellar medium, showing that the two tracers have substantially the same bulk kinematics. In a companion paper, we will use the rotation curves produced here to construct mass models of the galaxies and determine their dark matter density profiles

Assessing fossil fuel CO₂ emissions in California using atmospheric observations and models

Analysis systems incorporating atmospheric observations could provide a powerful tool for validating fossil fuel CO2 (ffCO2) emissions reported for individual regions, provided that fossil fuel sources can be separated from other CO2 sources or sinks and atmospheric transport can be accurately accounted for. We quantified ffCO2 by measuring radiocarbon (14C) in CO2, an accurate fossil-carbon tracer, at nine observation sites in California for three months in 2014–15. There is strong agreement between the measurements and ffCO2 simulated using a high-resolution atmospheric model and a spatiotemporally-resolved fossil fuel flux estimate. Inverse estimates of total in-state ffCO2 emissions are consistent with the California Air Resources Board's reported ffCO2 emissions, providing tentative validation of California's reported ffCO2 emissions in 2014–15. Continuing this prototype analysis system could provide critical independent evaluation of reported ffCO2 emissions and emissions reductions in California, and the system could be expanded to other, more data-poor regions

A Curve Shaped Description of Large Networks, with an Application to the Evaluation of Network Models

BACKGROUND: Understanding the structure of complex networks is a continuing challenge, which calls for novel approaches and models to capture their structure and reveal the mechanisms that shape the networks. Although various topological measures, such as degree distributions or clustering coefficients, have been proposed to characterize network structure from many different angles, a comprehensive and intuitive representation of large networks that allows quantitative analysis is still difficult to achieve. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here we propose a mesoscopic description of large networks which associates networks of different structures with a set of particular curves, using breadth-first search. After deriving the expressions of the curves of the random graphs and a small-world-like network, we found that the curves possess a number of network properties together, including the size of the giant component and the local clustering. Besides, the curve can also be used to evaluate the fit of network models to real-world networks. We describe a simple evaluation method based on the curve and apply it to the Drosophila melanogaster protein interaction network. The evaluation method effectively identifies which model better reproduces the topology of the real network among the given models and help infer the underlying growth mechanisms of the Drosophila network. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This curve-shaped description of large networks offers a wealth of possibilities to develop new approaches and applications including network characterization, comparison, classification, modeling and model evaluation, differing from using a large bag of topological measures

Colouration in amphibians as a reflection of nutritional status : the case of tree frogs in Costa Rica

Colouration has been considered a cue for mating success in many species; ornaments in males often are related to carotenoid mobilization towards feathers and/or skin and can signal general health and nutrition status. However, there are several factors that can also link with status, such as physiological blood parameters and body condition, but there is not substantial evidence which supports the existence of these relationships and interactions in anurans. This study evaluated how body score and blood values interact with colouration in free-range Agalychnis callidryas and Agalychnis annae males. We found significant associations between body condition and plasmatic proteins and haematocrit, as well as between body condition and colour values from the chromaticity diagram. We also demonstrated that there is a significant relation between the glucose and plasmatic protein values that were reflected in the ventral colours of the animals, and haematocrit inversely affected most of those colour values. Significant differences were found between species as well as between populations of A. callidryas, suggesting that despite colour variation, there are also biochemical differences within animals from the same species located in different regions. These data provide information on underlying factors for colouration of male tree frogs in nature, provide insights about the dynamics of several nutrients in the amphibian model and how this could affect the reproductive output of the animals

The Cosmological Constant

This is a review of the physics and cosmology of the cosmological constant. Focusing on recent developments, I present a pedagogical overview of cosmology in the presence of a cosmological constant, observational constraints on its magnitude, and the physics of a small (and potentially nonzero) vacuum energy.Comment: 50 pages. Submitted to Living Reviews in Relativity (http://www.livingreviews.org/), December 199