The Collection, Evaluation and Conservation of Plant Genetic Resources

Report on the findings of a meeting of a TAC Ad Hoc Working Group held at the USDA Research Center in Beltsville, Maryland in March 1972. The working group was asked to provide advice on an action program for the conservation of plant genetic resources. It recommended a global network of genetic resource centers, involving both developed and developing countries, composed of a number of existing and planned regional and crop specific institutes. The network would be guided by an expert Coordinating Committee selected by TAC, and based at FAO Headquarters in Rome under a trust fund to ensure its independence. Program objectives, priorities by crop and by region, proposed structure and relations with its host FAO, and budget proposal for its first three years. Working group TOR and attendance at meeting attached. Agenda item presented at TAC Third Meeting, April 1972

Plant Genetic Resources in the CGIAR

Paper revised from a version considered at TAC 41 by an Ad hoc Working Group on Plant Genetic Resources composed of TAC and Center representatives. The paper deals with the roles of IBPGR and the nine commodity-oriented IARCs in the international collection, evaluation, and preservation of plant genetic resources. This ad hoc group recommended the establishment of a continuing Inter-Center Working Group on Plant Genetic Resources composed of representatives of the ten centers, with a TAC observer. The continuing working group would advise TAC and the center directors on twelve specified issues. The paper includes a table of genetic resource activities at the IARCs by commodity. Agenda document at TAC 41 and TAC 42, October-November 1986, and March 1987

The Death Debates: A Call for Public Deliberation

In this issue of the Report, James L. Bernat proposes an innovative and sophisticated distinction to justify the introduction of permanent cessation as a valid substitute standard for irreversible cessation in death determination. He differentiates two approaches to conceptualizing and determining death: the biological concept and the prevailing medical practice standard. While irreversibility is required by the biological concept, the weaker criterion of permanence, he claims, has always sufficed in the accepted standard medical practice to declare death. Bernat argues that the medical practice standard may be acceptable on the ground that proving circulatory or brain permanence is sufficient to assure complete accuracy for death diagnosis. The topic requires public deliberation: processes to survey people's opinions and mechanisms to channel their opinions into policy-making. What is at stake is the nature of our society. Do we want an expertocracy, in which an enlightened few design policies for the greater good of the majority and exploit the lack of public knowledge to achieve compliance

Evaluation of oxacillin and cefoxitin disk diffusion and microbroth dilution methods for detecting mecA-mediated β-lactam resistance in contemporary Staphylococcus epidermidis isolates

Methicillin (β-lactam) resistance i

Aid alignment for global health research: the role of HIROs

The lack of a mechanism that aligns financial flows for global health research towards public health priorities limits the impact of health research on health and health equity. Collaborative groups of health research funders appear to be particularly well situated to ameliorate this situation and to initiate discussion on aid alignment for global health research. One such group is the Heads of International Research Organizations (HIROs), which brings together a large number of major government and philanthropic funders of biomedical research. Surprisingly, there is hardly any information publicly available on HIROs' objectives, or on how it aims to achieve more harmonization in the field of research for health. Greater transparency on HIROs' objectives and on its current efforts towards addressing the gap between global health research needs and investments would be desirable, given the enormous potential benefits of more coordination by this group

Factors contributing to intervention fidelity in a multi-site chronic disease self-management program

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Disease self-management programs have been a popular approach to reducing morbidity and mortality from chronic disease. Replicating an evidence-based disease management program successfully requires practitioners to ensure fidelity to the original program design. METHODS: The Florida Health Literacy Study (FHLS) was conducted to investigate the implementation impact of the Pfizer, Inc. Diabetes Mellitus and Hypertension Disease Self-Management Program based on health literacy principles in 14 community health centers in Florida. The intervention components discussed include health educator recruitment and training, patient recruitment, class sessions, utilization of program materials, translation of program manuals, patient retention and follow-up, and technical assistance. RESULTS: This report describes challenges associated with achieving a balance between adaptation for cultural relevance and fidelity when implementing the health education program across clinic sites. This balance was necessary to achieve effectiveness of the disease self-management program. The FHLS program was implemented with a high degree of fidelity to the original design and used original program materials. Adaptations identified as advantageous to program participation are discussed, such as implementing alternate methods for recruiting patients and developing staff incentives for participation. CONCLUSION: Effective program implementation depends on the talent, skill and willing participation of clinic staff. Program adaptations that conserve staff time and resources and recognize their contribution can increase program effectiveness without jeopardizing its fidelity

Are decision trees a feasible knowledge representation to guide extraction of critical information from randomized controlled trial reports?

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>This paper proposes the use of decision trees as the basis for automatically extracting information from published randomized controlled trial (RCT) reports. An exploratory analysis of RCT abstracts is undertaken to investigate the feasibility of using decision trees as a semantic structure. Quality-of-paper measures are also examined.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A subset of 455 abstracts (randomly selected from a set of 7620 retrieved from Medline from 1998 – 2006) are examined for the quality of RCT reporting, the identifiability of RCTs from abstracts, and the completeness and complexity of RCT abstracts with respect to key decision tree elements. Abstracts were manually assigned to 6 sub-groups distinguishing whether they were primary RCTs versus other design types. For primary RCT studies, we analyzed and annotated the reporting of intervention comparison, population assignment and outcome values. To measure completeness, the frequencies by which complete intervention, population and outcome information are reported in abstracts were measured. A qualitative examination of the reporting language was conducted.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Decision tree elements are manually identifiable in the majority of primary RCT abstracts. 73.8% of a random subset was primary studies with a single population assigned to two or more interventions. 68% of these primary RCT abstracts were structured. 63% contained pharmaceutical interventions. 84% reported the total number of study subjects. In a subset of 21 abstracts examined, 71% reported numerical outcome values.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The manual identifiability of decision tree elements in the abstract suggests that decision trees could be a suitable construct to guide machine summarisation of RCTs. The presence of decision tree elements could also act as an indicator for RCT report quality in terms of completeness and uniformity.</p