"5 Days in August" – How London Local Authorities used Twitter during the 2011 riots

© IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2012This study examines effects of microblogging communications during emergency events based on the case of the summer 2011 riots in London. During five days in August 2011, parts of London and other major cities in England suffered from extensive public disorders, violence and even loss of human lives. We collected and analysed the tweets posted by the official accounts maintained by 28 London local government authorities. Those authorities used Twitter for a variety of purposes such as preventing rumours, providing official information, promoting legal actions against offenders and organising post-riot community engagement activities. The study shows how the immediacy and communicative power of microblogging can have a significant effect at the response and recovery stages of emergency events

‘Walking in Their Shoes’: The effects of an immersive digital story intervention on empathy in nursing students:The effects of an immersive digital story intervention on empathy in nursing students

Abstract Aim To evaluate the effects of a novel, immersive digital story intervention on empathy. Design A randomized trial with three phases. Results A total of 238 2nd year nursing students were recruited between May 2018 and December 2019. At baseline, no significant differences in empathy between the groups were found (p = .760). However, at post‐test, empathy was significantly higher in the intervention group (M: 118.76, SD: 10.65) than it was in the control group (M: 114.60, SD: 15.40) (p = .012). At follow‐up, there were no significant differences in empathy between the groups (p = .364). Conclusion The intervention resulted in an immediate increase in empathy in nursing students. However, further development of effective intervention delivery modes and fundamental redesign of the intervention itself would be needed to sustain this improvement over the long term

A systematic review of air pollution and incidence of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest

Introduction: Studies have linked air pollution with the incidence of acute coronary artery events and cardiovascular mortality but the association with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is less clear. Aim: To examine the association of air pollution with the occurrence of OHCA.Methods: Electronic bibliographic databases (until February 2013) were searched. Search terms included common air pollutants and OHCA. Studies of patients with implantable cardioverter defibrillators and OHCA not attended by paramedics were excluded. Two independent reviewers (THKT and TAW) identified potential studies. Methodological: quality was assessed by the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale.Results: Of 849 studies, 8 met the selection criteria. Significant associations between particulate matter (PM) exposure (especially PM2.5) and OHCA were found in 5 studies. An increase of OHCA risk ranged from 2.4% to 7% per interquartile increase in average PM exposure on the same day and up to 4 days prior to the event. A large study found ozone increased the risk of OHCA within 3 h prior to the event. The strongest risk OR of 3.8–4.6% per 20 parts per billion ozone increase of the average level was within 2 h prior to the event. Similarly, another study found an increased risk of 18% within 2 days prior to the event.Conclusions: Larger studies have suggested an increased risk of OHCA with air pollution exposure from PM 2.5 and ozone

Seasonality and predictability shape temporal species diversity

Temporal environmental fluctuations, such as seasonality, exert strong controls on biodiversity. While the effects of seasonality are well known, the predictability of fluctuations across years may influence seasonality in ways that are less well understood. The ability of a habitat to support unique, non‐nested assemblages of species at different times of the year should depend on both seasonality (occurrence of events at specific periods of the year) and predictability (the reliability of event recurrence) of characteristic ecological conditions. Drawing on tools from wavelet analysis and information theory, we developed a framework for quantifying both seasonality and predictability of habitats, and applied this using global long‐term rainfall data. Our analysis predicted that temporal beta diversity should be maximized in highly predictable and highly seasonal climates, and that low degrees of seasonality, predictability, or both would lower diversity in characteristic ways. Using stream invertebrate communities as a case study, we demonstrated that temporal species diversity, as exhibited by community turnover, was determined by a balance between temporal environmental variability (seasonality) and the reliability of this variability (predictability). Communities in highly seasonal mediterranean environments exhibited strong oscillations in community structure, with turnover from one unique community type to another across seasons, whereas communities in aseasonal New Zealand environments fluctuated randomly. Understanding the influence of seasonal and other temporal scales of environmental oscillations on diversity is not complete without a clear understanding of their predictability, and our framework provides tools for examining these trends at a variety of temporal scales, seasonal and beyond. Given the uncertainty of future climates, seasonality and predictability are critical considerations for both basic science and management of ecosystems (e.g., dam operations, bioassessment) spanning gradients of climatic variability

PCV54 Can A Cvd Polypill Save Money In The ‘Real World'?

Digitalitzat per Artypla

Characterisation of Peptide5 systemic administration for treating traumatic spinal cord injured rats

© 2017, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany. Systemic administration of a Connexin43 mimetic peptide, Peptide5, has been shown to reduce secondary tissue damage and improve functional recovery after spinal cord injury (SCI). This study investigated safety measures and potential off-target effects of Peptide5 systemic administration. Rats were subjected to a mild contusion SCI using the New York University impactor. One cohort was injected intraperitoneally with a single dose of fluorescently labelled Peptide5 and euthanised at 2 or 4 h post-injury for peptide distribution analysis. A second cohort received intraperitoneal injections of Peptide5 or a scrambled peptide and was culled at 8 or 24 h post-injury for the analysis of connexin proteins and systemic cytokine profile. We found that Peptide5 did not cross the blood-spinal cord barrier in control animals, but reached the lesion area in the spinal cord-injured animals without entering non-injured tissue. There was no evidence that the systemic administration of Peptide5 modulates Connexin43 protein expression or hemichannel closure in the heart and lung tissue of SCI animals. The expression levels of other major connexin proteins including Connexin30 in astrocytes, Connexin36 in neurons and Connexin47 in oligodendrocytes were also unaltered by systemic delivery of Peptide5 in either the injured or non-injured spinal cords. In addition, systemic delivery of Peptide5 had no significant effect on the plasma levels of cytokines, chemokines or growth factors. These data indicate that the systemic delivery of Peptide5 is unlikely to cause any off-target or adverse effects and may thus be a safe treatment option for traumatic SCI

Combining capture-recapture data and known ages allows estimation of age-dependent survival rates

In many animal populations, demographic parameters such as survival and recruitment vary markedly with age, as do parameters related to sampling, such as capture probability. Failing to account for such variation can result in biased estimates of population-level rates. However, estimating age-dependent survival rates can be challenging because ages of individuals are rarely known unless tagging is done at birth. For many species, it is possible to infer age based on size. In capture-recapture studies of such species, it is possible to use a growth model to infer the age at first capture of individuals. We show how to build estimates of age-dependent survival into a capture-mark-recapture model based on data obtained in a capture-recapture study. We first show how estimates of age based on length increments closely match those based on definitive aging methods. In simulated analyses, we show that both individual ages and age-dependent survival rates estimated from simulated data closely match true values. With our approach, we are able to estimate the age-specific apparent survival rates of Murray and trout cod in the Murray River, Australia. Our model structure provides a flexible framework within which to investigate various aspects of how survival varies with age and will have extensions within a wide range of ecological studies of animals where age can be estimated based on size