Inaugural Conference of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS)

Inaugural Conference of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS), June 5th – 8th, 2012, School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University, Gothenburg, Sweden

MeerKLASS: MeerKAT Large Area Synoptic Survey

We discuss the ground-breaking science that will be possible with a wide area survey, using the MeerKAT telescope, known as MeerKLASS (MeerKAT Large Area Synoptic Survey). The current specifications of MeerKAT make it a great fit for science applications that require large survey speeds but not necessarily high angular resolutions. In particular, for cosmology, a large survey over $\sim 4,000 \, {\rm deg}^2$ for $\sim 4,000$ hours will potentially provide the first ever measurements of the baryon acoustic oscillations using the 21cm intensity mapping technique, with enough accuracy to impose constraints on the nature of dark energy. The combination with multi-wavelength data will give unique additional information, such as exquisite constraints on primordial non-Gaussianity using the multi-tracer technique, as well as a better handle on foregrounds and systematics. Such a wide survey with MeerKAT is also a great match for HI galaxy studies, providing unrivalled statistics in the pre-SKA era for galaxies resolved in the HI emission line beyond local structures at z > 0.01. It will also produce a large continuum galaxy sample down to a depth of about 5\,$\mu$Jy in L-band, which is quite unique over such large areas and will allow studies of the large-scale structure of the Universe out to high redshifts, complementing the galaxy HI survey to form a transformational multi-wavelength approach to study galaxy dynamics and evolution. Finally, the same survey will supply unique information for a range of other science applications, including a large statistical investigation of galaxy clusters as well as produce a rotation measure map across a huge swathe of the sky. The MeerKLASS survey will be a crucial step on the road to using SKA1-MID for cosmological applications and other commensal surveys, as described in the top priority SKA key science projects (abridged).Comment: Larger version of the paper submitted to the Proceedings of Science, "MeerKAT Science: On the Pathway to the SKA", Stellenbosch, 25-27 May 201

Neonatal face-to-face interactions promote later social behaviour in infant rhesus monkeys

In primates, including humans, mothers engage in face-to-face interactions with their infants, with frequencies varying both within and across species. However, the impact of this variation in face-to-face interactions on infant social development is unclear. Here we report that infant monkeys (Macaca mulatta) who engaged in more neonatal face-to-face interactions with mothers have increased social interactions at 2 and 5 months. In a controlled experiment, we show that this effect is not due to physical contact alone: monkeys randomly assigned to receive additional neonatal face-to-face interactions (mutual gaze and intermittent lip-smacking) with human caregivers display increased social interest at 2 months, compared with monkeys who received only additional handling. These studies suggest that face-to-face interactions from birth promote young primate social interest and competenc

Health related quality of life outcomes following surgery and/or radiation for patients with potentially unstable spinal metastases.

Currently there is no prospective pain and health related quality of life (HRQOL) data of patients with potentially unstable spinal metastases who were treated with surgery ± radiation or radiation alone.An international prospective cohort multicenter study of patients with potentially unstable spinal metastases, defined by a SINS score 7 to 12, treated with surgery ± radiation or radiotherapy alone was conducted. HRQOL was evaluated with the numeric rating scale (NRS) pain score, the SOSGOQ2.0, the SF-36, and the EQ-5D at baseline and 6, 12, 26, and 52 weeks after treatment.A total of 136 patients were treated with surgery ± radiotherapy and 84 with radiotherapy alone. At baseline, surgically treated patients were more likely to have mechanical pain, a lytic lesion, a greater median Spinal Instability Neoplastic score, vertebral compression fracture, lower performance status, HRQOL, and pain scores. From baseline to 12 weeks post-treatment, surgically treated patients experienced a 3.0-point decrease in NRS pain score (95% CI -4.1 to -1.9, p.001), and a 12.7-point increase in SOSGOQ2.0 score (95% CI 6.3-19.1, p.001). Patients treated with radiotherapy alone experienced a 1.4-point decrease in the NRS pain score (95% CI -2.9 to 0.0, p=.046) and a 6.2-point increase in SOSGOQ2.0 score (95% CI -2.0 to 14.5, p=.331). Beyond 12 weeks, significant improvements in pain and HRQOL metrics were maintained up to 52-weeks follow-up in the surgical cohort, as compared with no significant changes in the radiotherapy alone cohort.Patients treated with surgery demonstrated clinically and statistically significant improvements in pain and HRQOL up to 1-year postsurgery. Treatment with radiotherapy alone resulted in improved pain scores, but these were not sustained beyond 3 months and HRQOL outcomes demonstrated nonsignificant changes over time. Within the SINS potentially unstable group, distinct clinical profiles were observed in patients treated with surgery or radiotherapy alone

Origine sociale et comportement politique

Les conséquences politiques de la mobilité sociale intergénérationnelle sur les comportements et les attitudes politiques des individus ont fait l'objet, depuis une vingtaine d'années, d'une série de recherches en particulier aux Etats-Unis et en Angleterre. A la suite de ces travaux une conclusion majeure semble s'imposer : les « mobiles sociaux » adopteraient un comportement politique intermédiaire entre leur groupe d'origine et leur groupe d'arrivée. Dans cette recherche, qui se fonde sur l'analyse d'un échantillon représentatif de cadres moyens et supérieurs, l'origine sociale paraît effectivement déterminer pour partie les comportements et attitudes politiques des individus appartenant aux couches moyennes salariées. Toutefois, une étude plus précise de ce mécanisme montre que l'effet de l'origine sociale sur le comportement et les attitudes politiques n'est pas seulement fonction de la distance entre la position sociale du père et celle du fils mais se diversifie également selon la nature et les conditions du trajet social effectué par l'individu.The political consequences of intergenerational social mobility on individuals' political attitudes and behavior have been studied in a series of inquiries over the past twenty years, especially in the United States and England. As a result of this work, it seems that one major conclusion may be drawn: the "socially mobile" seem to adopt a political behavior which is intermediate to that of the group from which they started out and that into which they are arriving. In this study based on a representative sample of middle — and upper — level executives, social origin indeed seems to be in part a determining factor in the political behavior and attitudes of individuals belonging to the middle range of the wage scale. However, a closer study of this mechanism shows that the effect of social origin upon political behavior and attitudes is not only a function of the distance between the father's and the son's social positions, but also differs according to the nature and conditions of the individual's social ascension

Determining the provincial and national burden of influenza-associated severe acute respiratory illness in South Africa using a rapid assessment methodology

Local disease burden data are necessary to set national influenza vaccination policy. In 2010 the population of South Africa was 50 million and the HIV prevalence was 11%. We used a previously developed methodology to determine severe influenza burden in South Africa. Hospitalized severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) incidence was calculated, stratified by HIV status, for four age groups using data from population-based surveillance in one site situated in Gauteng Province for 2009–2011. These rates were adjusted for each of the remaining 8 provinces based on their prevalence of risk factors for pneumonia and healthcare- seeking behavior. We estimated non-hospitalized influenza-associated SARI from healthcare utilization surveys at two sites and used the percent of SARI cases positive for influenza from sentinel surveillance to derive the influenza-associated SARI rate. We applied rates of hospitalized and non-hospitalized influenza-associated SARI to census data to calculate the national number of cases. The percent of SARI cases that tested positive for influenza ranged from 7–17% depending on age group, year, province and HIV status. In 2010, there were an estimated 21,555 total severe influenza cases in HIV-uninfected individuals and 13,876 in HIV-infected individuals. In 2011, there were an estimated 29,892 total severe influenza cases in HIV-uninfected individuals and 17,289 in HIV-infected individuals. The incidence of influenza-associated SARI was highest in children <5 years and was higher in HIV-infected than HIV-uninfected persons in all age groups. Influenza virus was associated with a substantial amount of severe disease, especially in young children and HIV-infected populations in South Africa.S1 Table. Provincial adjustment factors for severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) healthcare- seeking behavior, 2009–2011.S2 Table. Estimated hospitalized severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) incidence (95% C. I.) stratified by HIV serostatus for South Africa, 2009–2011. Data are rates per 100,000 persons.S3 Table. Influenza-associated hospitalized severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) incidence and number of cases in each province for 2009–2011, stratified by HIV serostatus.S1 Appendix. Equations used in calculation of annual number of cases of influenza-associated severe acute respiratory illness (SARI).The Global Health Research Graduate Student Award, Centre for Global Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: http://www.hopkinsglobalhealth.org/.http://www.plosone.orgam201

Development of a respiratory severity score for hospitalized adults in a high HIV-prevalence setting—South Africa, 2010-2011

BACKGROUND : Acute lower respiratory tract infections (LRTI) are a frequent cause of hospitalization and mortality in South Africa; however, existing respiratory severity scores may underestimate mortality risk in HIV-infected adults in resource limited settings. A simple predictive clinical score for low-resource settings could aid healthcare providers in the management of patients hospitalized with LRTI. METHODS : We analyzed 1,356 LRTI hospitalizations in adults aged ≥18 years enrolled in Severe Acute Respiratory Illness (SARI) surveillance in three South African hospitals from January 2010 to December 2011. Using demographic and clinical data at admission, we evaluated potential risk factors for in-hospital mortality. We evaluated three existing respiratory severity scores, CURB-65, CRB-65, and Classification Tree Analysis (CTA) Score assessing for discrimination and calibration. We then developed a new respiratory severity score using a multivariable logistic regression model for in-hospital mortality and assigned points to risk factors based on the coefficients in the multivariable model. Finally we evaluated the model statistically using bootstrap resampling techniques. RESULTS : Of the 1,356 patients hospitalized with LRTI, 101 (7.4%) died while hospitalized. The CURB-65, CRB-65, and CTA scores had poor calibration and demonstrated low discrimination with c-statistics of 0.594, 0.548, and 0.569 respectively. Significant risk factors for in-hospital mortality included age ≥ 45 years (A), confusion on admission (C), HIV-infection (H), and serum blood urea nitrogen >7 mmol/L (U), which were used to create the seven-point ACHU clinical predictor score. In-hospital mortality, stratified by ACHU score was: score ≤1, 2.4%, score 2, 6.4%, score 3, 11. 9%, and score ≥ 4, 29.3%. Final models showed good discrimination (c-statistic 0.789) and calibration (chi-square 1.6, Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit p-value = 0.904) and discriminated well in the bootstrap sample (average optimism of 0.003). CONCLUSIONS : Existing clinical predictive scores underestimated mortality in a low resource setting with a high HIV burden. The ACHU score incorporates a simple set a risk factors that can accurately stratify patients ≥18 years of age with LRTI by in-hospital mortality risk. This score can quantify in-hospital mortality risk in an HIV-endemic, resource-limited setting with limited clinical information and if used to facilitate timely treatment may improve clinical outcomes.Additional file 1: BMC Pulmonary_Severity Score Data.xlsx. Severity Score Dataset. Dataset generated and used for analysis and creation of the ACHU score. Two tabs are included 1) includes the data used for the analysis 2) includes important notes related to the analytical methods and definitions for several composite variables.Additional file 2: Table S1. CURB-65, CRB-65, Classification Tree Analysis (CTA) severity scores. Table S2. Predicted and observed risk of mortality based on CURB-65, CRB-65, Classification Tree Analysis (CTA), and CURB-45 severity scores among hospitalized adults with lower respiratory tract infections, South Africa, 2010–2011. Table S3. Predicted and observed risk of mortality based by ACHU (Age, confusion, HIV, urea) respiratory severity score among hospitalized adults with lower respiratory tract infections, South Africa, 2010–2011.The Centers for Disease Control and Preventionhttp://www.biomedcentral.com/bmccom/plementalternmedam2017Medical Virolog

LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products

(Abridged) We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A vast array of science will be enabled by a single wide-deep-fast sky survey, and LSST will have unique survey capability in the faint time domain. The LSST design is driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system sited at Cerro Pach\'{o}n in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg$^2$ field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel camera. The standard observing sequence will consist of pairs of 15-second exposures in a given field, with two such visits in each pointing in a given night. With these repeats, the LSST system is capable of imaging about 10,000 square degrees of sky in a single filter in three nights. The typical 5$\sigma$ point-source depth in a single visit in $r$ will be $\sim 24.5$ (AB). The project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations by 2022. The survey area will be contained within 30,000 deg$^2$ with $\delta<+34.5^\circ$, and will be imaged multiple times in six bands, $ugrizy$, covering the wavelength range 320--1050 nm. About 90\% of the observing time will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will uniformly observe a 18,000 deg$^2$ region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the anticipated 10 years of operations, and yield a coadded map to $r\sim27.5$. The remaining 10\% of the observing time will be allocated to projects such as a Very Deep and Fast time domain survey. The goal is to make LSST data products, including a relational database of about 32 trillion observations of 40 billion objects, available to the public and scientists around the world.Comment: 57 pages, 32 color figures, version with high-resolution figures available from https://www.lsst.org/overvie

A multi-stage genome-wide association study of bladder cancer identifies multiple susceptibility loci.

We conducted a multi-stage, genome-wide association study of bladder cancer with a primary scan of 591,637 SNPs in 3,532 affected individuals (cases) and 5,120 controls of European descent from five studies followed by a replication strategy, which included 8,382 cases and 48,275 controls from 16 studies. In a combined analysis, we identified three new regions associated with bladder cancer on chromosomes 22q13.1, 19q12 and 2q37.1: rs1014971, (P = 8 × 10⁻¹²) maps to a non-genic region of chromosome 22q13.1, rs8102137 (P = 2 × 10⁻¹¹) on 19q12 maps to CCNE1 and rs11892031 (P = 1 × 10⁻⁷) maps to the UGT1A cluster on 2q37.1. We confirmed four previously identified genome-wide associations on chromosomes 3q28, 4p16.3, 8q24.21 and 8q24.3, validated previous candidate associations for the GSTM1 deletion (P = 4 × 10⁻¹¹) and a tag SNP for NAT2 acetylation status (P = 4 × 10⁻¹¹), and found interactions with smoking in both regions. Our findings on common variants associated with bladder cancer risk should provide new insights into the mechanisms of carcinogenesis