Piloting VAKE (Values and Knowledge Education) in the Education for Practice of Nurses.

Imagine the following situation: You are a nurse for elderly people, going to the homes of your patients. A female patient tells you on our first visit after hospital discharge following a hip fracture surgery that she does not want to be at home, because she is not well enough to be alone and she needs therapy with oxygen in permanent basis until she recovers from a respiratory temporary infection situa¬tion. This kind of situations is the starting point for an educational sequence that ad-dresses both values (here: life, human dignity, respect, loneliness) and knowledge (different medical treatments, legal rules, etc.). The example shows how intensely interrelated the values and the facts are. Based on this example we introduce the constructivist didactical tool VaKE (Values and Knowledge Education) that permits to combine both issues, and present a pilot study using this method in the education of nurses.Tempus/LLAF; VAKEinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Changes of sodium ion compartmentalization in biological systems due to pathological states. An NMR study

Noninvasive nuclear magnetic resonance was used to measure the relaxation decay curves of naturally occurring 23Na ions in several biological systems. Experimental results showed an increase of membrane bound population for pathologic samples as compared with control. The bound sodium population was put in evidence using singular value decomposition method. Thus, the singular values that are obtained without any a priori from the fitting the relaxation decay curves are a new parameter in characterizing the cellular state. In the presence of artificial biological membranes, 23Na bound strongly to membranes containing phosphatidylcholine (PC) and phosphatidylserine (PS), but not to membranes consisting of only PC. A large bound population also appeared in the presence of apoptotic epithelial cells, which are known to translocate PS to the cell surface. A role for PS was confirmed by showing that sodium binds to the surface of epithelial cells infected with Chlamydia psittaci, and the amplitude of the bound population increases with a time-course similar to the appearance of PS on the surface of dying cells. Finally, this approach could distinguish between normal perfused liver and liver undergoing ischemia, due most likely to the exposure of surface PS on apoptotic and necrotic cells in the damaged tissue. Taken together, these studies demonstrate that the analysis of 23Na relaxation decay curves could reveal the presence of cells undergoing apoptosis and/or necrosis in living tissues. Noninvasive 23Na NMR measurements could thus be envisioned for controlling the quality of organs before transplantation, for the detection of asymptomatic infections that result in death of the host cell or inflammation of the tissue, and for characterizing the efficiency of novel apoptosis-inducing drugs to treat cancer

Mutations in NOTCH2 in families with Hajdu-Cheney syndrome

Hajdu-Cheney syndrome is a rare genetic disorder whose hallmark is acro-osteolysis, shortening of terminal phalanges and generalized osteoporosis. We assembled a cohort of 7 families with the condition and performed whole exome resequencing on a selected set of affected patients. One protein-coding gene, NOTCH2, carried heterozygous truncating variants in all patients and their affected family members. Our results replicate recently published studies of HCS and further support this as the causal gene for the disorder. In total we identified five novel and one previously reported mutation, all clustered near the carboxyl terminus of the gene, suggesting an allele specific genotype-phenotype effect since other mutations in NOTCH2 have been reported to cause a form of Alagille syndrome. Notch mediated signaling is known to play a role in bone metabolism. Our results support a potential therapeutic role for Notch pathways in treatment of osteoporosis. © 2011 Wiley-Liss, Inc.status: publishe

Configurational crop heterogeneity increases within-field plant diversity

Increasing landscape heterogeneity by restoring semi-natural elements to reverse farmland biodiversity declines is not always economically feasible or acceptable to farmers due to competition for land. We hypothesized that increasing the heterogeneity of the crop mosaic itself, hereafter referred to as crop heterogeneity, can have beneficial effects on within-field plant diversity. Using a unique multi-country dataset from a cross-continent collaborative project covering 1,451 agricultural fields within 432 landscapes in Europe and Canada, we assessed the relative effects of compositional and configurational crop heterogeneity on within-field plant diversity components. We also examined how these relationships were modulated by the position within the field. We found strong positive effects of configurational crop heterogeneity on within-field plant alpha and gamma diversity in field interiors. These effects were as high as the effect of semi-natural cover. In field borders, effects of crop heterogeneity were limited to alpha diversity. We suggest that a heterogeneous crop mosaic may overcome the high negative impact of management practices on plant diversity in field interiors, whereas in field borders, where plant diversity is already high, landscape effects are more limited. Synthesis and applications. Our study shows that increasing configurational crop heterogeneity is beneficial to within-field plant diversity. It opens up a new effective and complementary way to promote farmland biodiversity without taking land out of agricultural production. We therefore recommend adopting manipulation of crop heterogeneity as a specific, effective management option in future policy measures, perhaps adding to agri-environment schemes, to contribute to the conservation of farmland plant diversity