Fungal Genomics Challenges the Dogma of Name-Based Biosecurity

Microorganisms have inadvertently been spread via the global movement and trade of their substrates, such as animals, plants, and soil. This intercontinental exchange in the current era of globalisation has given rise to significant increases in the distribution of known pests and pathogens. Importantly, it has also resulted in many novel, emerging, infectious diseases. Biosecurity and quarantine, which aim to prevent the establishment of foreign or harmful organisms in a non-native area, are under significant pressure due to the massive increases in travel and trade. Traditionally, quarantine regulations have been implemented based on pathogens that already cause significant disease problems on congener hosts in other parts of the world (e.g., Q-bank, available at http://www.q-bank.eu). Well-known pathogens are described, named, and studied to determine their disease cycle, epidemiology, and impact. Their importance is assessed based on their risk of infection, establishment, and economic or environmental consequences. This then shapes phytosanitary practices.The Tree Protection Co-operative Programme (TPCP), THRIP initiative of the Department of Trade and Industry, Department of Science and Technology (DST)/ National Research Foundation (NRF), and Centre of Excellence in Tree Health Biotechnology (CTHB).http://www.plospathogens.orgam2016Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI)GeneticsMicrobiology and Plant PathologyPlant Scienc

Private-label use and store loyalty

The authors develop an econometric model of the relationship between a household’s private-label (PL) share and its behavioral store loyalty. The model includes major drivers of these two behaviors and controls for simultaneity and nonlinearity in the relationship between them. The model is estimated with a unique data set that combinescomplete purchase records of a panel of Dutch households with demographic and psychographic data. The authorsestimate the model for two retail chains in the Netherlands the leading service chain with a well-differentiatedhigh-share PL and the leading value chain with a lower-share PL. They find that PL share significantly affects all three measures of behavioral loyalty in the study: share of wallet, share of items purchased, andshare of shopping trips. In addition, behavioral loyalty has a significant effect on PL share. For the service chain, the authors find that both effects are in the form of an inverted U. For the value chain, the effects are positive and nonlinear, but they do not exhibit nonmonotonicity, because PL share has not yet reached high enough levels. The managerial implications of this research are important. Retailers can reap the benefits of a virtuous cycle; greater PL share increases share of wallet, and greater share of wallet increases PL share. However, this virtuous cycle operates only to a point because heavy PL buyers tend to be loyal to price savings and PLs in general, not to the PL of any particular chain.pre-prin

Improving Aboriginal maternal and infant health services in the \u27Top End\u27 of Australia; synthesis of the findings of a health services research program aimed at engaging stakeholders, developing research capacity and embedding change

BackgroundHealth services research is a well-articulated research methodology and can be a powerful vehicle to implement sustainable health service reform. This paper presents a summary of a five-year collaborative program between stakeholders and researchers that led to sustainable improvements in the maternity services for remote-dwelling Aboriginal women and their infants in the Top End (TE) of Australia. MethodsA mixed-methods health services research program of work was designed, using a participatory approach. The study area consisted of two large remote Aboriginal communities in the Top End of Australia and the hospital in the regional centre (RC) that provided birth and tertiary care for these communities. The stakeholders included consumers, midwives, doctors, nurses, Aboriginal Health Workers (AHW), managers, policy makers and support staff. Data were sourced from: hospital and health centre records; perinatal data sets and costing data sets; observations of maternal and infant health service delivery and parenting styles; formal and informal interviews with providers and women and focus groups. Studies examined: indicator sets that identify best care, the impact of quality of care and remoteness on health outcomes,  discrepancies in the birth counts in a range of different data sets and ethnographic studies of ‘out of hospital’ or health centre birth and parenting. A new model of maternity care was introduced by the health service aiming to improve care following the findings of our research. Some of these improvements introduced during the five-year research program of research were evaluated. ResultsCost effective improvements were made to the acceptability, quality and outcomes of maternity care. However, our synthesis identified system-wide problems that still account for poor quality of infant services, specifically, unacceptable standards of infant care and parent support, no apparent relationship between volume and acuity of presentations and staff numbers with the required skills for providing care for infants, and an ‘outpatient’ model of care. Services were also characterised by absent Aboriginal leadership and inadequate coordination between remote and tertiary services that is essential to improve quality of care and reduce ‘system-introduced’ risk. ConclusionEvidence-informed redesign of maternity services and delivery of care has improved clinical effectiveness and quality for women. However, more work is needed to address substandard care provided for infants and their parents

Functional significance may underlie the taxonomic utility of single amino acid substitutions in conserved proteins

We hypothesized that some amino acid substitutions in conserved proteins that are strongly fixed by critical functional roles would show lineage-specific distributions. As an example of an archetypal conserved eukaryotic protein we considered the active site of ß-tubulin. Our analysis identified one amino acid substitution—ß-tubulin F224—which was highly lineage specific. Investigation of ß-tubulin for other phylogenetically restricted amino acids identified several with apparent specificity for well-defined phylogenetic groups. Intriguingly, none showed specificity for “supergroups” other than the unikonts. To understand why, we analysed the ß-tubulin Neighbor-Net and demonstrated a fundamental division between core ß-tubulins (plant-like) and divergent ß-tubulins (animal and fungal). F224 was almost completely restricted to the core ß-tubulins, while divergent ß-tubulins possessed Y224. Thus, our specific example offers insight into the restrictions associated with the co-evolution of ß-tubulin during the radiation of eukaryotes, underlining a fundamental dichotomy between F-type, core ß-tubulins and Y-type, divergent ß-tubulins. More broadly our study provides proof of principle for the taxonomic utility of critical amino acids in the active sites of conserved proteins

Book Reviews

Basic Neurology. Ed. by J. Gilroy and P. L. Holliday. Pp. vii + 373. Illustrated. R27,90. London: Macmillan. 1982.The Pathology of the Heart. By E. G. J. Olsen. Pp. ix + 402. Illustrated. R91,85. London: Macmillan. 1982.Profile of Disease and Health Care in South Africa. By H. C. J. van Rensburg and A. Mans. Pp. xvii + 319. R29,50. Pretoria: Academica Press. 1982.Principles of Ambulatory Medicine. Ed. by L. R. Barker, J. R. Burton and P. D. Zieve. Pp. xiii + 1127. Illustrated. R78,-. Baltimore, Maryland: Williams & Wilkins. 1982.Topical Reviews in Accident Surgery, vol. 2. Ed. by N. Tubbs and P. S. London. Pp. ix +258. Illustrated. £18,50. London: Wright PSG.1982.Early Care of the Injured Patient. 3rd ed. Ed. by A. J. Wait, L. F. Peltier, B. A. Pruitt jun, D. D. Trunkey and R. F. Wilson. Pp. xv + 413. Illustrated. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders. 1982.Current Pediatric Therapy. 10th ed. By S. S. Gellis and B. M. Kagan. Pp. xxxviii + 776. R94,25. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders. 1982.Selected Techniques in Interventional Radiology,vol. 19 (Saunders Monographs in Clinical Radiology). By S. Kadir, S. L. Kaufman, K. H. Barth and R. 1. White jun. Pp. xi +216. Illustrated. R76,75. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders. 1982.Clinical Topics in Internal Medicine. Ed. by G. M. Tisi and H. M. Ranney. Pp. xii 173. Illustrated. Baltimore, Maryland: Williams & Wilkins. 1982.Recognizable Patterns of Human Malformation: Genetic Embryologic and Clinical Aspects (Major Problems in Clinical Pediatrics, vo!. vii). 3rd ed. By W. David and M. D. Smith. Pp. xvii + 653. Illustrated. R78,55. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders. 1982.The Patient and the Plastic Surgeon. By R. M. Goldwyn. Pp. xiii + 255. Boston: Little, Brown. 1981.The Aging Lumbar Spine. By S. W. Wiesel, P. Bernini and R. H. Rothman. Pp. 257. Illustrated. R69,55. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders. 1982.Postoperative Complications of Intracranial Neurological Surgery. By N. H. Horwitz and H. V. Rizzoli. Pp. xi + 472. Illustrated. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins. 1982.Current Topics in Inflammation and Infection (International Academy of Pathology Monograph). Ed. by G. Majno, R. S. Cotran and . Kaufman. Pp. xi + 242. Illustrated. Baltimore, Maryland: Williams & Wilkins. 1982.Radiology of the Ear, Nose and Throat. By G. E. Valvassori, G. D. Porter, W. N. Hanafee, B. L. Carter and R. A. Buckingham. Pp. viii + 342. Illustrated. RI94,30. Philadelphia: \Y/. B. Saunders. 1982.Neuropathology ofParasitic Infections. By W. J. Brown and M. Voge. Pp. 240. Illustrated. RI5,-. Oxford: Oxford Medical Publishers. 1982.Herzkrankheiten: Pathophysiologie, Diagoostik, Therapie. 2nd ed. By H. Roskamm and H. Reindel!. Pp. xxxiii + 1543. Illustrated. DM 278,-. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. 1982.Review ofSpeech, Language and Hearing, vols I, 2and 3. By N. J. Lass, L. V. McReynolds, J. L. Northern and D. E. Yoder. Illustrated. R36,20 each. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders. 1982

A meeting report: cross-cultural comparability of questionnaire measures in large-scale international surveys

The value of cross-country comparisons is at the heart of large-scale international surveys. Yet the validity of such comparisons is often challenged, particularly in the case of latent traits whose estimates are based on self-reported answers to a small number of questionnaire items. Many believe self-reports to be unreliable and not comparable, and indeed, formal statistical procedures very often reject the assumption that the questions are understood and answered in the same way in different countries (measurement invariance). A methodological conference on the comparability of questionnaire scales was hosted by the OECD on 8 and 9 November 2018. This meeting report summarises the discussions held at the conference about measurement invariance testing and instrument design. The report first provides a brief introduction to the measurement models and the accompanying invariance analyses typically used in the industry of large-scale international surveys and points to the main limitations of these current standard approaches. It then presents classical and novel ways to deal with imperfect comparability of measurements when scaling and reporting on continuous traits and on categorical latent variables. It finally discusses the extent to which item design can improve the cross-country comparability of the measured constructs (e.g. by adopting innovative item formats such as anchoring vignettes and situational judgement test items). It concludes with some general considerations for survey design and reporting on invariance analyses and survey results

H.E.S.S. observations of gamma-ray bursts in 2003-2007

Very-high-energy (VHE; >~100 GeV) gamma-rays are expected from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) in some scenarios. Exploring this photon energy regime is necessary for understanding the energetics and properties of GRBs. GRBs have been one of the prime targets for the H.E.S.S. experiment, which makes use of four Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) to detect VHE gamma-rays. Dedicated observations of 32 GRB positions were made in the years 2003-2007 and a search for VHE gamma-ray counterparts of these GRBs was made. Depending on the visibility and observing conditions, the observations mostly start minutes to hours after the burst and typically last two hours. Results from observations of 22 GRB positions are presented and evidence of a VHE signal was found neither in observations of any individual GRBs, nor from stacking data from subsets of GRBs with higher expected VHE flux according to a model-independent ranking scheme. Upper limits for the VHE gamma-ray flux from the GRB positions were derived. For those GRBs with measured redshifts, differential upper limits at the energy threshold after correcting for absorption due to extra-galactic background light are also presented.Comment: 9 pages, 4 tables, 3 figure