Post natal care in Bubi district deserves more attention

A CAJM medical article.Objectives: To establish whether, where and when women in Bubi District attend Post Natal Care (PNC), the factors that influence attendance, the quality of services and traditional or cultural practices felated to PNC. Design: A cross sectional survey. Setting: Bubi District, Matebeleland North Province, Zimbabwe. Subjects: A multistage sample of 200 women with a child aged three to 12 months, convenience samples of .96 women with a child zero to 12 months who had attended PNC; 112 elderly women from the community and 10 nurses. Main Outcome Measures: PNC attendance, place and timing of PNC visit, quality of PNC, knowledge and attitudes towards PNC and traditional practices Results: 61% of the women had attended PNC. Factors associated with non-attendance were higher age and parity, home delivery and long distance between home and health facility. Almost all women attended PNC in a district health facility. Eighty three percent were seen at six weeks post par turn. Forty percent of the mothers and 36.1% of the babies had received a full examination, but 37.7% and 4.9% respectively had not been examined at all. Nine of the 10 nurses interviewed were not aware of a PNC policy. Knowledge on PNC among the women in the community was poor. Some potentially beneficial and harmful traditional practices related to mother and baby were identified. Conclusion: PNC attendance in this study was almost three times the attendance reported through the routine National Health Information System, but lower than elsewhere in Zimbabwe. The quality of the services was rather poor and more geared towards the baby than the mother. Both health workers and the community need to better understand the importance of PNC. Because the first two weeks postpartum is the period with highest morbidity and mortality, women should be advised to make a PNC visit within 14 days, or whenever they have problems, rather than at six weeks. All health facilities, including the mobile teams should be able to offer PNC. There is need to develop an ‘ evidence-based’ PNC policy to guide nurses on what to offer to both mother and baby, also taking into consideration common traditional practices

Global data on earthworm abundance, biomass, diversity and corresponding environmental properties

14 p.Earthworms are an important soil taxon as ecosystem engineers, providing a variety of crucial ecosystem functions and services. Little is known about their diversity and distribution at large spatial scales, despite the availability of considerable amounts of local-scale data. Earthworm diversity data, obtained from the primary literature or provided directly by authors, were collated with information on site locations, including coordinates, habitat cover, and soil properties. Datasets were required, at a minimum, to include abundance or biomass of earthworms at a site. Where possible, site-level species lists were included, as well as the abundance and biomass of individual species and ecological groups. This global dataset contains 10,840 sites, with 184 species, from 60 countries and all continents except Antarctica. The data were obtained from 182 published articles, published between 1973 and 2017, and 17 unpublished datasets. Amalgamating data into a single global database will assist researchers in investigating and answering a wide variety of pressing questions, for example, jointly assessing aboveground and belowground biodiversity distributions and drivers of biodiversity change

Fine-Scale Mapping of the 4q24 Locus Identifies Two Independent Loci Associated with Breast Cancer Risk

Background: A recent association study identified a common variant (rs9790517) at 4q24 to be associated with breast cancer risk. Independent association signals and potential functional variants in this locus have not been explored. Methods: We conducted a fine-mapping analysis in 55,540 breast cancer cases and 51,168 controls from the Breast Cancer Association Consortium. Results: Conditional analyses identified two independent association signals among women of European ancestry, represented by rs9790517 [conditional P = 2.51 × 10−4; OR, 1.04; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.02–1.07] and rs77928427 (P = 1.86 × 10−4; OR, 1.04; 95% CI, 1.02–1.07). Functional annotation using data from the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project revealed two putative functional variants, rs62331150 and rs73838678 in linkage disequilibrium (LD) with rs9790517 (r2 ≥ 0.90) residing in the active promoter or enhancer, respectively, of the nearest gene, TET2. Both variants are located in DNase I hypersensitivity and transcription factor–binding sites. Using data from both The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Molecular Taxonomy of Breast Cancer International Consortium (METABRIC), we showed that rs62331150 was associated with level of expression of TET2 in breast normal and tumor tissue. Conclusion: Our study identified two independent association signals at 4q24 in relation to breast cancer risk and suggested that observed association in this locus may be mediated through the regulation of TET2. Impact: Fine-mapping study with large sample size warranted for identification of independent loci for breast cancer risk

Differential recognition of vascular and parenchymal beta amyloid deposition

By phage display, llama-derived heavy chain antibody fragments were selected from non-immune and immune libraries and tested for their affinity and specificity for beta amyloid by phage-ELISA, immunohistochemistry and surface plasmon resonance. We identified eight distinct heavy chain antibody fragments specific for beta amyloid. While three of them recognized vascular and parenchymal beta amyloid deposits, the remaining five heavy chain antibody fragments recognized vascular beta amyloid specifically, failing to bind to parenchymal beta amyloid. These heavy chain antibody fragments, selected from different libraries, demonstrated differential affinity for different epitopes when used for immunohistochemistry. These observations indicate that the llama heavy chain antibody fragments are the first immunologic probes with the ability to differentiate between parenchymal and vascular beta amyloid aggregates. This indicates that vascular and parenchymal beta amyloid deposits are heterogeneous in epitope presence/availability. The properties of these heavy chain antibody fragments make them potential candidates for use in in vivo differential diagnosis of Alzheimer disease and cerebral amyloid angiopathy. Continued use and characterization of these reagents will be necessary to fully understand the performance of these immunoreagents. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.NEUR

Supplementary data for the article: Cyclists’ eye movements and crossing judgments at uncontrolled intersections: An eye-tracking study using animated video clips

This dataset includes, animated video clips, Matlab scripts, raw data, data for statistical analyses, forms (consent form, instructions) and questionnaires provided to participants for the paper: Kovácsová, N., Cabrall, C. D. D., Antonisse, S. J., De Haan, T., Van Namen, R., Nooren, J. L., Schreurs, R., Hagenzieker, M. P., & De Winter, J. C. F. (2018). Cyclists’ eye movements and crossing judgments at uncontrolled intersections: An eye-tracking study using animated video clips. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 120, 270–28

Introduction or reintroduction? Last resorts for the latest bird to become extinct in Europe, the Andalusian hemipode Turnix sylvatica sylvatica

The Andalusian hemipode (Turnix sylvatica sylvatica) (Order: Turniciformes, Family: Turnicidae), formerly distributed in several Mediterranean countries, is a critically endangered bird, if not already extinct. Subspecies of the T. sylvatica complex, in turn composed by nine subspecies are widely distributed in Africa and southern Asia. The last free-ranging Andalusian hemipodes were shot by hunters near Donana National Park (Spain) in 1981. Therefore, this species could be the last bird species getting extinct in Iberia and Europe in the XXth century. This investigation deals with the phylogenetic relationships of the Andalusian hemipode with the sup- posedly congeneric T. varia, T. tanki, T. suscitator and T. pyrrhothorax, and with the supposedly conspecific T. sylvatica lepurana, which is the geographically nearest buttonquail population (occurring in central and southern Africa). A 606 bp long fragment of the cytochrome b gene (approx. 1140 bp) of the mitochondrial DNA was sequenced, using both museum skins (the only available source for T. s. sylvatica) or blood/tissue samples from contemporary individuals (remaining species and subspecies). Seven haplotypes were found: two each for T. varia and T. s. lepurana, and one each for T. tanki, T. suscitator, T. pyrrhothorax, and T. s. sylvatica. Sequence divergence values obtained from pairwise distances between the T. sylvatica group haplotypes and the other species, ranged from 19.4 to 25.9%. The low genetic divergence between T. s. sylvatica and T. s. lepurana (0.00–0.01%) confirmed that the current classification based on morphological characters is correct, and that these two taxa may should be considered as subspecies. This close relationship would permit an introduction T. sylvatica where the species was last seen in Spain (i.e., Donana National Park). This area is now strictly protected and human persecution is no longer a problem.Peer reviewe