The decline in patient numbers in mental handicap hospitals: how the cost savings should be calculated

The movement of patients out of long stay mental handicap hospitals releases some funds which can go towards the development of community services. This paper considers the size of the possible savings on the basis of leaving the resources available for care unchanged for those who remain in hospital. It is argued that the savings depend on the dependency of those discharged, the existing level of services and the policy of a particular hospital about the use of paramedical staff. This has the implication that each hospital has to be considered individually. The paper goes on to discuss how costs in hospitals should be apportioned, and how potential savings can be identified. On the basis of a study of five hospitals in the Northern Region it emerges that there are few fixed costs, but the discharge of low dependency patients produces savings of approximately 50% of average cost. The results show that this rises as the programme involves the discharge of more dependent patients.

Azospirillum Genomes Reveal Transition of Bacteria from Aquatic to Terrestrial Environments

Fossil records indicate that life appeared in marine environments ∼3.5 billion years ago (Gyr) and transitioned to terrestrial ecosystems nearly 2.5 Gyr. Sequence analysis suggests that “hydrobacteria” and “terrabacteria” might have diverged as early as 3 Gyr. Bacteria of the genus Azospirillum are associated with roots of terrestrial plants; however, virtually all their close relatives are aquatic. We obtained genome sequences of two Azospirillum species and analyzed their gene origins. While most Azospirillum house-keeping genes have orthologs in its close aquatic relatives, this lineage has obtained nearly half of its genome from terrestrial organisms. The majority of genes encoding functions critical for association with plants are among horizontally transferred genes. Our results show that transition of some aquatic bacteria to terrestrial habitats occurred much later than the suggested initial divergence of hydro- and terrabacterial clades. The birth of the genus Azospirillum approximately coincided with the emergence of vascular plants on land

Hemidesmosome integrity protects the colon against colitis and colorectal cancer

OBJECTIVE: Epidemiological and clinical data indicate that patients suffering from IBD with long-standing colitis display a higher risk to develop colorectal high-grade dysplasia. Whereas carcinoma invasion and metastasis rely on basement membrane (BM) disruption, experimental evidence is lacking regarding the potential contribution of epithelial cell/BM anchorage on inflammation onset and subsequent neoplastic transformation of inflammatory lesions. Herein, we analyse the role of the alpha6beta4 integrin receptor found in hemidesmosomes that attach intestinal epithelial cells (IECs) to the laminin-containing BM. DESIGN: We developed new mouse models inducing IEC-specific ablation of alpha6 integrin either during development (alpha6DeltaIEC) or in adults (alpha6DeltaIEC-TAM). RESULTS: Strikingly, all alpha6DeltaIEC mutant mice spontaneously developed long-standing colitis, which degenerated overtime into infiltrating adenocarcinoma. The sequence of events leading to disease onset entails hemidesmosome disruption, BM detachment, IL-18 overproduction by IECs, hyperplasia and enhanced intestinal permeability. Likewise, IEC-specific ablation of alpha6 integrin induced in adult mice (alpha6DeltaIEC-TAM) resulted in fully penetrant colitis and tumour progression. Whereas broad-spectrum antibiotic treatment lowered tissue pathology and IL-1beta secretion from infiltrating myeloid cells, it failed to reduce Th1 and Th17 response. Interestingly, while the initial intestinal inflammation occurred independently of the adaptive immune system, tumourigenesis required B and T lymphocyte activation. CONCLUSIONS: We provide for the first time evidence that loss of IECs/BM interactions triggered by hemidesmosome disruption initiates the development of inflammatory lesions that progress into high-grade dysplasia and carcinoma. Colorectal neoplasia in our mouse models resemble that seen in patients with IBD, making them highly attractive for discovering more efficient therapies.PMC559510

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Influence of cryogenic cooling of cheese curd on yield and quality of semi-hard cheeses

The influence of cryogenic cooling of cheese curd on the yield and the quality of semihard cheese (Trappist type) was studied. During three successive cheese manufacturing processes, the curd at moulding was separated into two aliquots: the first being directly pressed (control cheese) and the second being quickly cooled previously at 20 $\circ$C in a cryogenic cabinet (trial cheese). The cryogenic cooling of the curd slightly delayed the acidification and significantly reduced the syneresis. The increase in the cheese yield (+4.8% at brining and +3.8% at the end of ripening) was only due to the increase in the moisture retention. The sensory characteristics of the ripened cheeses were similar for both control and trial cheeses. The slight modifications in the melting texture and the acid taste were due to a post-acidification phenomenon that could be easily corrected by the classical operating parameters. Although stretchability was slightly increased in trial cheeses, the other functionalities were similar to those of control cheeses. Moreover, the comparison of the two experiments that were conducted with different kinetics of cooling suggests that optimisation of the cryogenic parameters could lead to a more marked increase in the cheese yield, due to higher moisture retention, and also lead to a better recovery of milk components

MAAP Annotate: When Archaeology meets Augmented Reality for Annotation of Megalithic Art

International audienceMegalithic art is a spectacular form of symbolic representation found on prehistoric monuments. Carved by Europe's first farmers, this art allows an insight into the creativity and vision of prehistoric communities. As examples of this art continue to fade, it is increasingly important to document and study these symbols. This paper presents MAAP Annotate, a Mixed Reality annotation tool from the Megalithic Art Analysis Project (MAAP). It provides an innovative method of interacting with megalithic art, combining cross-disciplinary research in digital heritage, 3D scanning and imaging, and augmented reality. The development of the tool is described, alongside the results of an evaluation carried out on a group of archaeologists from University College Dublin, Ireland. It is hoped that such tools will enable archaeologists to collaborate worldwide, and non-specialists to experience and learn about megalithic art

MAAP Annotate: When archaeology meets augmented reality for annotation of megalithic art

2017 23rd International Conference on Virtual System & Multimedia (VSMM)Megalithic art is a spectacular form of symbolic representation found on prehistoric monuments. Carved by Europe’s first farmers, this art allows an insight into the creativity and vision of prehistoric communities. As examples of this art continue to fade, it is increasingly important to document and study these symbols. This paper presents MAAP Annotate, a Mixed Reality annotation tool from the Megalithic Art Analysis Project (MAAP). It provides an innovative method of interacting with megalithic art, combining cross-disciplinary research in digital heritage, 3D scanning and imaging, and augmented reality. The development of the tool is described, alongside the results of an evaluation carried out on a group of archaeologists from University College Dublin, Ireland. It is hoped that such tools will enable archaeologists to collaborate worldwide, and nonspecialists to experience and learn about megalithic art.UCD New Interdisciplinary Initiatives Fund (NIIF

Economic implications of reducing caesarean section rates – Analysis of two health systems

Caesarean section (CS) rates throughout Europe have risen significantly over the last two decades. As well as being an important clinical issue, these changes in mode of birth may have substantial resource implications. Policy initiatives to curb this rise have had to contend with the multiplier effect of women who had a CS for their first birth having a greater likelihood of requiring one during subsequent births, thus making it difficult to decrease CS rates in the short term. Our study examines the long-term resource implications of reducing CS rates among first-time mothers, as well as improving rates of vaginal birth after caesarean section (VBAC), among an annual cohort of women over the course of their most active childbearing years (18 to 44 years) in two public health systems in Europe. We found that the economic benefit of improvements in these two outcomes is considerable, with the net present value of the savings associated with a five-percentage-point change in nulliparous CS rates and VBAC rates being €1.1million and £9.8million per annual cohort of 18-year-olds in Ireland and England/Wales, respectively. Reductions in CS rates among first-time mothers are associated with a greater payoff than comparable increases in VBAC rates. The net present value of achieving CS rates comparable to those currently observed in the best performing Scandinavian countries was €3.5M and £23.0M per annual cohort in Ireland and England/Wales, respectively