Foetal scalp blood sampling during labour for pH and lactate measurements

Second-line methods of foetal monitoring have been developed in an attempt to reduce unnecessary interventions due to continuous cardiotocography (CTG), and to better identify foetuses that are at risk of intrapartum asphyxia.Very few studies directly compared CTG with foetal scalp blood (FBS) and CTG only. Only one randomised controlled trial (RCT) was published in the 1970s and had limited power to assess neonatal outcome. Direct and indirect comparisons conclude that FBS could reduce the number of caesarean deliveries associated with the use of continuous CTG.The main drawbacks of FBS are its invasive and discontinuous nature and the need for a sufficient volume of foetal blood for analysis, especially for pH measurement, resulting in failure rates reaching 10%. FBS for lactate measurement became popular with the design of test-strip devices, requiring <0.5 mL of foetal blood. RCTs showed similar outcomes with the use of FBS for lactates compared with pH in terms of obstetrical interventions and neonatal outcomes.In conclusion, there is some evidence that FBS reduces the need for operative deliveries. However, the evidence is limited with regard to actual standards, and large RCTs, directly comparing CTG only with CTG with FBS, are still needed

Change and Variation in Couples\u27 Earnings Equality Following Parenthood

Couples’ earnings equality declines substantially following a first birth, when time commitments at home and on the labor market diverge. In the context of broad increases in gender equality and growing socioeconomic disparities along various dimensions of family life, we examine changes in within-family earnings equality following parenthood and the extent to which they have played out differently by mothers’ education. Our analysis relies on links between rich surveys and administrative tax records that provide high quality earnings data for husbands and wives spanning two years before and up to 10 years following cohorts of first births from the 1980s to the 2000s (Survey of Income and Program Participation Synthetic Beta files; N =131,400 married couples and 21,300 first birth transitions). We find that wives’ share of couple earnings declined after parenthood, changes were relatively modest over time, and these were mostly concentrated among the earliest cohort of parents. The magnitude of decline in her earnings share was substantial, dropping 13 percentage points following first birth in the 1980s and 10 percentage points in the 2000s, after accounting for time-invariant couple characteristics and year and age fixed effects. We find few differences in her earnings share changes over time by mother’s education, and we identify mothers’ employment as a key mechanism of change across education groups. Wives’ financial dependence on their husbands increases substantially after parenthood, irrespective of education and cohort, with implications for women’s vulnerability, particularly in the U.S. where divorce remains common and public support for families is weak

Changes in Couples’ Earnings Following Parenthood and Trends in Family Earnings Inequality

The growing economic similarity of spouses has contributed to rising income inequality across households. Explanations have typically centered on assortative mating, but recent work has argued that changes in women’s employment and spouses’ division of paid work have played a more important role. We expand this work to consider the critical turning point of parenthood in shaping couples’ division of employment and earnings. Drawing on three U.S. nationally representative surveys, we examine the role of parenthood in spouses’ earnings correlations between 1968-2015 and ask to what extent changes in spouses’ earnings correlations are due to: (1) changes upon entry into marriage (assortative mating), (2) changes between marriage and parenthood, (3) changes following parenthood, and (4) changes in women’s employment. Our findings show that increases in the correlation between spouses’ earnings prior to 1990 came largely from changes between marriage and first birth, but after 1990 have come almost entirely from changes following parenthood. In both instances, changes in women’ employment are key to increasing earnings correlations. Changes in assortative mating played little role in either time period. An assessment of the aggregate-level implications points to the growing significance of earnings similarity after parenthood for rising income inequality across families

Controlling ligand surface density on streptavidin-magnetic particles by a simple, rapid, and reliable chemiluminescent test

International audienc

Brazilian Green Propolis: Effects In Vitro and In Vivo on Trypanosoma cruzi

The composition of a Brazilian green propolis ethanolic extract (Et-Bra) and its effect on Trypanosoma cruzi trypomastigotes and other pathogenic microorganisms have already been reported. Here, we further investigated Et-Bra targets in T. cruzi and its effect on experimental infection of mice. The IC50/4 days for inhibition of amastigote proliferation was 8.5 ± 1.8 μg mL−1, with no damage to the host cells. In epimastigotes Et-Bra induced alterations in reservosomes, Golgi complex and mitochondrion. These effects were confirmed by flow cytometry analysis. In trypomastigotes, Et-Bra led to the loss of plasma membrane integrity. The in vitro studies indicate that Et-Bra interferes in the functionality of the plasma membrane in trypomastigotes and of reservosomes and mitochondrion in epimastigotes. Acutely infected mice were treated orally with Et-Bra and the parasitemia, mortality and GPT, GOT, CK and urea levels were monitored. The extract (25–300 mg kg−1 body weight/day for 10 days) reduced the parasitemia, although not at significant levels; increased the survival of the animals and did not induce any hepatic, muscular lesion or renal toxicity. Since Et-Bra was not toxic to the animals, it could be assayed in combination with other drugs. Et-Bra could be a potential metacyclogenesis blocker, considering its effect on reservosomes, which are an important energy source during parasite differentiation

Impact of guidelines for the management of minor head injury on the utilization and diagnostic yield of CT over two decades, using natural language processing in a large dataset

Objectives We investigated the impact of clinical guidelines for the management of minor head injury on utilization and diagnostic yield of head CT over two decades. Methods Retrospective before-after study using multiple electronic health record data sources. Natural language processing algorithms were developed to rapidly extract indication, Glasgow Coma Scale, and CT outcome from clinical records, creating two datasets: one based on all head injury CTs from 1997 to 2009 (n = 9109), for which diagnostic yield of intracranial traumatic findings was calculated. The second dataset (2009–2014) used both CT reports and clinical notes from the emergency department, enabling selection of minor head injury patients (n = 4554) and calculation of both CT utilization and diagnostic yield. Additionally, we tested for significant changes in utilization and yield after guideline implementation in 2011, using chi-square statistics and logistic regression. Results The yield was initially nearly 60%, but in a decreasing trend dropped below 20% when CT became routinely used for head trauma. Between 2009 and 2014, of 4554 minor head injury patients overall, 85.4% underwent head CT. After guideline implementation in 2011, CT utilization significantly increased from 81.6 to 87.6% (p = 7 × 10−7 ), while yield significantly decreased from 12.2 to 9.6% (p = 0.029). Conclusions The number of CTs performed for head trauma gradually increased over two decades, while the yield decreased. In 2011, despite implementation of a guideline aiming to improve selective use of CT in minor head injury, utilization significantly increased

The Hamiltonian formulation of General Relativity: myths and reality

A conventional wisdom often perpetuated in the literature states that: (i) a 3+1 decomposition of space-time into space and time is synonymous with the canonical treatment and this decomposition is essential for any Hamiltonian formulation of General Relativity (GR); (ii) the canonical treatment unavoidably breaks the symmetry between space and time in GR and the resulting algebra of constraints is not the algebra of four-dimensional diffeomorphism; (iii) according to some authors this algebra allows one to derive only spatial diffeomorphism or, according to others, a specific field-dependent and non-covariant four-dimensional diffeomorphism; (iv) the analyses of Dirac [Proc. Roy. Soc. A 246 (1958) 333] and of ADM [Arnowitt, Deser and Misner, in "Gravitation: An Introduction to Current Research" (1962) 227] of the canonical structure of GR are equivalent. We provide some general reasons why these statements should be questioned. Points (i-iii) have been shown to be incorrect in [Kiriushcheva et al., Phys. Lett. A 372 (2008) 5101] and now we thoroughly re-examine all steps of the Dirac Hamiltonian formulation of GR. We show that points (i-iii) above cannot be attributed to the Dirac Hamiltonian formulation of GR. We also demonstrate that ADM and Dirac formulations are related by a transformation of phase-space variables from the metric $g_{\mu\nu}$ to lapse and shift functions and the three-metric $g_{km}$, which is not canonical. This proves that point (iv) is incorrect. Points (i-iii) are mere consequences of using a non-canonical change of variables and are not an intrinsic property of either the Hamilton-Dirac approach to constrained systems or Einstein's theory itself.Comment: References are added and updated, Introduction is extended, Subsection 3.5 is added, 83 pages; corresponds to the published versio

Mitochondrial Cox1 Sequence Data Reliably Uncover Patterns of Insect Diversity But Suffer from High Lineage-Idiosyncratic Error Rates

The demand for scientific biodiversity data is increasing, but taxonomic expertise is often limited or not available. DNA sequencing is a potential remedy to overcome this taxonomic impediment. Mitochondrial DNA is most commonly used, e.g., for species identification ("DNA barcoding"). Here, we present the first study in arthropods based on a near-complete species sampling of a family-level taxon from the entire Australian region. We aimed to assess how reliably mtDNA data can capture species diversity when many sister species pairs are included. Then, we contrasted phylogenetic subsampling with the hitherto more commonly applied geographical subsampling, where sister species are not necessarily captured. We sequenced 800 bp cox1 for 1,439 individuals including 260 Australian species (78% species coverage). We used clustering with thresholds of 1 to 10% and general mixed Yule Coalescent (GMYC) analysis for the estimation of species richness. The performance metrics used were taxonomic accuracy and agreement between the morphological and molecular species richness estimation. Clustering (at the 3% level) and GMYC reliably estimated species diversity for single or multiple geographic regions, with an error for larger clades of lower than 10%, thus outperforming parataxonomy. However, the rates of error were higher for some individual genera, with values of up to 45% when very recent species formed nonmonophyletic clusters. Taxonomic accuracy was always lower, with error rates above 20% and a larger variation at the genus level (0 to 70%). Sørensen similarity indices calculated for morphospecies, 3% clusters and GMYC entities for different pairs of localities was consistent among methods and showed expected decrease over distance. Cox1 sequence data are a powerful tool for large-scale species richness estimation, with a great potential for use in ecology and β-diversity studies and for setting conservation priorities. However, error rates can be high in individual lineages

Writing in Britain and Ireland, c. 400 to c. 800

No abstract available