The role of the occupational therapist in disaster areas: systematic review

Background. Disasters are increasingly more frequent events on our planet. During disaster the role of the occupational therapist will require a more specific operative framework within nongovernmental organizations and community health services. Design. Systematic review. Objective. The aim of this study is to evaluate the evidence that highlight occupational therapist’s role in disaster area through a systematic review. Materials and Methods. Research on MEDLINE was performed. All articles from 2005 to 2015 concerning rehabilitation and occupational therapy in disaster areas were included. Results. Ten studies were selected to be included in this review. Four interesting points emerged: the importance of having rehabilitation intervention in postdisaster situations, the necessity to include a rehabilitation team in the early phase of disaster response, the need to provide a method to address the difficult evacuation, and finding the safest method of transport of people with preexisting disabilities and new injuries. Conclusions. The amount of evidence with respect to specific intervention of the occupational therapist’s role in a disaster situation is limited. However some evidence suggests that it could be a good means for reducing the number of medical complications and deaths of persons with preexisting disabilities. The evidences found highlight the necessity to create a multidisciplinary team addressing needs in disasters situation, in which the occupational therapist could certainly contribute

Nitrosative stress defences of the enterohepatic pathogenic bacterium Helicobacter pullorum

Helicobacter pullorum is an avian bacterium that causes gastroenteritis, intestinal bowel and hepatobiliary diseases in humans. Although H. pullorum has been shown to activate the mammalian innate immunity with release of nitric oxide (NO), the proteins that afford protection against NO and reactive nitrogen species (RNS) remain unknown. Here several protein candidates of H. pullorum, namely a truncated (TrHb) and a single domain haemoglobin (SdHb), and three peroxiredoxin-like proteins (Prx1, Prx2 and Prx3) were investigated. We report that the two haemoglobin genes are induced by RNS, and that SdHb confers resistance to nitrosative stress both in vitro and in macrophages. For peroxiredoxins, the prx2 and prx3 expression is enhanced by peroxynitrite and hydrogen peroxide, respectively. Mutation of prx1 does not alter the resistance to these stresses, while the single ∆prx2 and double ∆prx1∆prx2 mutants have decreased viability. To corroborate the physiological data, the biochemical analysis of the five recombinant enzymes was done, namely by stopped-flow spectrophotometry. It is shown that H. pullorum SdHb reacts with NO much more quickly than TrHb, and that the three Prxs react promptly with peroxynitrite, Prx3 displaying the highest reactivity. Altogether, the results unveil SdHb and Prx3 as major protective systems of H. pullorum against nitrosative stress

Playing Muller Games in a Hurry

This work studies the following question: can plays in a Muller game be stopped after a finite number of moves and a winner be declared. A criterion to do this is sound if Player 0 wins an infinite-duration Muller game if and only if she wins the finite-duration version. A sound criterion is presented that stops a play after at most 3^n moves, where n is the size of the arena. This improves the bound (n!+1)^n obtained by McNaughton and the bound n!+1 derived from a reduction to parity games

Neutrino Detection with Inclined Air Showers

The possibilities of detecting high energy neutrinos through inclined showers produced in the atmosphere are addressed with an emphasis on the detection of air showers by arrays of particle detectors. Rates of inclined showers produced by both down-going neutrino interactions and by up-coming $\tau$ decays from earth-skimming neutrinos as a function of shower energy are calculated with analytical methods using two sample neutrino fluxes with different spectral indices. The relative contributions from different flavors and charged, neutral current and resonant interactions are compared for down-going neutrinos interacting in the atmosphere. No detailed description of detectors is attempted but rough energy thresholds are implemented to establish the ranges of energies which are more suitable for neutrino detection through inclined showers. Down-going and up-coming rates are compared.Comment: Submitted to New Journal of Physic

Statistical Communication Theory

Contains reports on six research projects.National Science Foundation (Grant GP-2495)National Institutes of Health (Grant MH-04737-04)National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NsG-496

Inducible antiviral activity and rapid production of the Ribosome-Inactivating Protein I from Phytolacca heterotepala in tobacco

We studied the in vitro and in planta antiviral activity of the PhRIP I, a type 1 Ribosome-Inactivating Protein originally purified from leaves of the Phytolacca heterotepala. This protein inhibited protein translation in a cell-free assay and limited the local lesion formation from PVX infection on tobacco leaves. We used a transient expression system based on leaf infiltration with recombinant Agrobacteria to show that tobacco can produce a correctly processed PhRIP I enzyme that retains its antiviral activity. Hence, it is possible to rapidly yield in plants a type 1 RIP by means of this transient expression system. To analyse the possible increase of virus resistance in plants, Nicotiana tabacum lines that were transformed with the PhRIP I coding sequence under the control of the wound-inducible PGIP promoter were challenged by PVX. A significantly lower number of viral lesions compared to untransformed plants was observed only after the induction of the transgene, indicating that the controlled gene expression of an antiviral protein can increase virus resistance