The well-being of British expatriate retirees in southern Europe

This article examines the personal outcomes of overseas residence in later life, by analysing some findings from the first large-scale, comparative study of the retirement of British citizens to southern Europe. Four study areas are compared: Tuscany in Italy, Malta, the Costa del Sol of Spain, and the Algarve region of Portugal. The analysis focuses on the expressed reasons for moving to and residing in the areas, the reported advantages and disadvantages, and the respondents' predictions of whether they would stay or leave in response to adverse and beneficial events. Overall the subjects give very positive reports, but there are considerable differences among the four areas. The associations of individual variation in well-being with both a person's ‘temporal commitment’ to the area and to facets of their social integration are analysed. The onset of severe incapacity, sufficient to prevent the continued running of a home, is the event most likely to cause people to leave their adopted areas of residence

The effect of supplementary grass silage and standard concentrate on milk fat fatty acid composition and iodine value when cows are fed a whole rapeseed-based concentrate at pasture

peer-reviewedThe use of grass silage and concentrates to supplement fresh grass intake is commonly practised in dairy systems. However, the effects of such supplementation within a dietary regime designed to produce a spreadable butter are unknown. Sixteen Holstein Friesian cows were used in an incomplete changeover design to investigate the effect on milk fat of supplementation with grass silage (GS) or standard concentrate (SC) when offering a concentrate based on whole rapeseed at pasture (RC+G). A control diet of fresh grass and standard concentrate (SC+G) was also included. Diet had no effect (P > 0.05) on milk yield or on the lactose concentration of milk. The iodine value (IV; grams of iodine per 100 g milk fat) of milk fat with the RC+G diet was greater (43.9, P < 0.05) than with the SC+G diet (39.9). The iodine value of milk fat was reduced (P < 0.05) when RC+G+GS was offered (41.5 g/100g), but not when RC+G+SC was offered (43.1 g/100g), compared with when RC+G was offered. The proportion of unsaturated fatty acids in milk fat was higher (P < 0.05) when the RC+G diet was offered compared with either RC+G+GS or RC+G+SC. If supplementary feedstuffs are to be used in combination with a wholerapeseed- based concentrate and pasture, then inclusion of standard concentrate would be preferred over grass silage because the negative impact on the iodine value of milk fat was less. However, further research is required to investigate the effect on IV of milk fat when a standard concentrate supplement is offered at levels that increase milk yield

Modelling of Tirapazamine effects on solid tumour morphology

Bioreductive drugs are in clinical practice to exploit the resistance from tumour microenvironments especially in the hypoxic region of tumour. We pre-sented a tumour treatment model to capture the pharmacology of one of the most prominent bioreductive drugs, Tirapazamine (TPZ) which is in clinical trials I and II. We calculated solid tumour mass in our previous work and then integrated that model with TPZ infusion. We calculated TPZ cytotoxicity, concentration, penetra-tion with increasing distance from blood vessel and offered resistance from micro-environments for drug penetration inside the tumour while considering each cell as an individual entity. The impact of these factors on tumour morphology is also showed to see the drug behaviour inside animals/humans tumours. We maintained the heterogeneity factors in presented model as observed in real tumour mass es-pecially in terms of cells proliferation, cell movement, extracellular matrix (ECM) interaction, and the gradients of partial oxygen pressure (pO2) inside tumour cells during the whole growth and treatment activity. The results suggest that TPZ high concentration in combination with chemotherapy should be given to get maximum abnormal cell killing. This model can be a good choice for oncologists and re-searchers to explore more about TPZ action inside solid tumour

Observing and modeling global warming impacts in Virginia

VIMS climate change white paper: Observing and modeling global warming impacts in Virgini

The MYC–NFATC2 axis maintains the cell cycle and mitochondrial function in acute myeloid leukaemia cells

Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is a clonal haematological malignancy affecting the myeloid lineage, with generally poor patient outcomes owing to the lack of targeted therapies. The histone lysine demethylase 4A (KDM4A) has been established as a novel therapeutic target in AML, due to its selective oncogenic role within leukaemic cells. We identify that the transcription factor nuclear factor of activated T cells 2 (NFATC2) is a novel binding and transcriptional target of KDM4A in the human AML THP-1 cell line. Furthermore, cytogenetically diverse AML cell lines, including THP-1, were dependent on NFATC2 for colony formation in vitro, highlighting a putative novel mechanism of AML oncogenesis. Our study demonstrates that NFATC2 maintenance of cell cycle progression in human AML cells was driven primarily by CCND1. Through RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) and chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-seq), NFATc2 was shown to bind to the promoter region of genes involved in oxidative phosphorylation and subsequently regulate their gene expression in THP-1 cells. Furthermore, our data show that NFATC2 shares transcriptional targets with the transcription factor c-MYC, with MYC knockdown phenocopying NFATC2 knockdown. These data suggest a newly identified co-ordinated role for NFATC2 and MYC in the maintenance of THP-1 cell function, indicative of a potential means of therapeutic targeting in human AML

Robust Henderson III estimators of variance components in the nested error model

Common methods for estimating variance components in Linear Mixed Models include Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Restricted Maximum Likelihood (REML). These methods are based on the strong assumption of multivariate normal distribution and it is well know that they are very sensitive to outlying observations with respect to any of the random components. Several robust altematives of these methods have been proposed (e.g. Fellner 1986, Richardson and Welsh 1995). In this work we present several robust alternatives based on the Henderson method III which do not rely on the normality assumption and provide explicit solutions for the variance components estimators. These estimators can later be used to derive robust estimators of regression coefficients. Finally, we describe an application of this procedure to small area estimation, in which the main target is the estimation of the means of areas or domains when the within-area sample sizes are small

Women, men and coronary heart disease: a review of the qualitative literature

Aim. This paper presents a review of the qualitative literature which examines the experiences of patients with coronary heart disease. The paper also assesses whether the experiences of both female and male patients are reflected in the literature and summarizes key themes. Background. Understanding patients' experiences of their illness is important for coronary heart disease prevention and education. Qualitative methods are particularly suited to eliciting patients' detailed understandings and perceptions of illness. As much previous research has been 'gender neutral', this review pays particular attention to gender. Methods. Published papers from 60 qualitative studies were identified for the review through searches in MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PREMEDLINE, PsychINFO, Social Sciences Citation Index and Web of Science using keywords related to coronary heart disease. Findings. Early qualitative studies of patients with coronary heart disease were conducted almost exclusively with men, and tended to generalize from 'male' experience to 'human' experience. By the late 1990s this pattern had changed, with the majority of studies including women and many being conducted with solely female samples. However, many studies that include both male and female coronary heart disease patients still do not have a specific gender focus. Key themes in the literature include interpreting symptoms and seeking help, belief about coronary 'candidates' and relationships with health professionals. The influence of social roles is important: many female patients have difficulties reconciling family responsibilities and medical advice, while male patients worry about being absent from work. Conclusions. There is a need for studies that compare the experiences of men and women. There is also an urgent need for work that takes masculinity and gender roles into account when exploring the experiences of men with coronary heart disease

"Object Categorization: Reversals and Explanations of the Basic-Level Advantage" (Rogers & Patterson, 2007): A simplicity account

T. T. Rogers and K. Patterson (2007), in their article “Object Categorization: Reversals and Explanations of the Basic-Level Advantage” (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136, 451–469), reported an impressive set of results demonstrating a reversal of the highly robust basic-level advantage both in patients with semantic dementia and in healthy individuals engaged in a speeded categorization task. To explain their results, as well as the usual basic-level advantage seen in healthy individuals, the authors employed a parallel distributed processing theory of conceptual knowledge. In this paper, we introduce an alternative way of explaining the results of Rogers and Patterson, which is premised on a more restricted set of assumptions born from standard categorization theory. Specifically, we provide evidence that their results can be accounted for based on the predictions of the simplicity model of unsupervised categorization