The Microbiota of the Extremely Preterm Infant.

Colonization of the extremely preterm infant's gastrointestinal tract and skin begins in utero and is influenced by a variety of factors, the most important including gestational age and environmental exposures. The composition of the intestinal and skin microbiota influences the developing innate and adaptive immune responses with short-term and long-term consequences including altered risks for developing necrotizing enterocolitis, sepsis, and a wide variety of microbe-related diseases of children and adults. Alteration of the composition of the microbiota to decrease disease risk is particularly appealing for this ultra-high-risk cohort that is brand new from an evolutionary standpoint

Ukraine's attitude towards European integration since the 2010 presidential elections: through the lenses of rationalism and constructivism

This study focuses the issue of Ukraine‟s attitude towards European integration since the 2010 presidential elections. It looks at speeches and articles from Ukrainian officials about European integration. Using constructivism and rationalism as lenses, we are able better understand Ukraine's attitude towards European. The periods preceding the 2010 presidential elections have been studied by Kratochvil and Tulmets (2010) and state the period from 2006 – 2010 is a period of strongly rationalist modes of argumentation between EU and Ukraine. The research question is: how has Ukraine‟s behaviour concerning European Integration changed since the 2010 presidential elections? This study is important because the presidential elections in 2010 marked a change of president, government, as well as potential change in foreign policy in Ukraine. The first chapter gives an introduction and looks at the methodology used in the study. The second chapter looks at what literature is available on the topic of European integration and gives a brief overview of the European Union's attitude towards Ukrainian integration. It also looks at the theoretical framework the case study will use, which is an adaptation of Kratochvil and Tulmets' original study. The third chapter includes the case study which starts by giving a brief background to Kratochvil and Tulmets' findings and follows on with the post-presidential election analysis. Finally conclusions are drawn finding that Ukraine‟s attitude towards European integration has most stayed the same, with a focus on rationalist modes of argumentation. Similar to the before the elections, officials have also moved back to constructivist modes occasionally. The biggest change which was seen was Ukraine new ability to use Russia and the Customs Union as leverage, or as an alternative to EU integration, to European integration in an attempt to speed up the EU‟s integration with Ukraine.http://tartu.ester.ee/record=b2656931~S

Digestion of Protein in Premature and Term Infants.

Premature birth rates and premature infant morbidity remain discouragingly high. Improving nourishment for these infants is the key for accelerating their development and decreasing disease risk. Dietary protein is essential for growth and development of infants. Studies on protein nourishment for premature infants have focused on protein requirements for catch-up growth, nitrogen balance, and digestive protease concentrations and activities. However, little is known about the processes and products of protein digestion in the premature infant. This review briefly summarizes the protein requirements of term and preterm infants, and the protein content of milk from women delivering preterm and at term. An in-depth review is presented of the current knowledge of term and preterm infant dietary protein digestion, including human milk protease and anti-protease concentrations; neonatal intestinal pH, and enzyme activities and concentrations; and protein fermentation by intestinal bacteria. The advantages and disadvantages of incomplete protein digestion as well as factors that increase resistance to proteolysis of particular proteins are discussed. In order to better understand protein digestion in preterm and term infants, future studies should examine protein and peptide fragment products of digestion in saliva, gastric, intestinal and fecal samples, as well as the effects of the gut micro biome on protein degradation. The confluence of new mass spectrometry technology and new bioinformatics programs will now allow thorough identification of the array of peptides produced in the infant as they are digested

The challenges of widening access to the medical profession: how to facilitate medical careers for those at a genuine disadvantage

Widening Participation (WP) for medical school entry has been politically encouraged to ensure access and participation for underrepresented groups rarely able to gain access to this high demand profession. Those who reside in the 20-40% most deprived postcodes in Scotland (SIMD20) are much less likely to apply for medical school entrance, and even less likely to succeed. The National Reach programme in Scotland aims to rectify the existing situation by encouraging and supporting students from working class backgrounds to apply to high demand courses, including medicine, and has achieved great success in helping pupils from target secondary schools to gain a place in Glasgow Medical School. However, some of the Reach students have similar demographics to the rest of the medical school class and arguably do not genuinely belong in the target group. To address this, a second flag based on SIMD20 residence was employed. However, applying more than one WP flag - while substantially improving the targeting of this programme and helping those who truly are multiply deprived - reduces the Reach-eligible applicant pool to the point of undermining the high WP targets imposed on Universities. But using only a single criterion of MD20 residence or school progression rate would unfairly advantage some pupils that are actually not disadvantaged. Ideally, individualised indicators such as eligibility for Free School Meals, possession of an Educational Maintenance Allowance or receipt of a UKCAT bursary, would complement residential data and school progression rates. This paper reflects on the evolution of the admissions practices in our medical school designed to comply with the targets, but also create a medical workforce reflecting the population it serves

Designing trails with a path-planning algorithm

Master's Project (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2021Designing the route of a trail, whether it be a hiking, mountain biking, or ATV trail, is a process currently done manually. Since a trail designer often chooses a path that minimizes certain costs, such as steepness, aspect, and proximity to existing structures, it is possible to automate this process using an algorithm. This paper describes Breadcrumbs, a program which uses GIS (Geographic Information Systems) data and a set of modifying weights to automatically create a trail route using a modified A* search algorithm. The operation of the program is described, and a number of experimental results are shown and discussed

Continuous Metadata in Continuous Integration, Stream Processing and Enterprise DataOps

ABSTRACTImplementations of metadata tend to favor centralized, static metadata. This depiction is at variance with the past decade of focus on big data, cloud native architectures and streaming platforms. Big data velocity can demand a correspondingly dynamic view of metadata. These trends, which include DevOps, CI/CD, DataOps and data fabric, are surveyed. Several specific cloud native tools are reviewed and weaknesses in their current metadata use are identified. Implementations are suggested which better exploit capabilities of streaming platform paradigms, in which metadata is continuously collected in dynamic contexts. Future cloud native software features are identified which could enable streamed metadata to power real time data fusion or fine tune automated reasoning through real time ontology updates

Re-estimation of argon isotope ratios leading to a revised estimate of the Boltzmann constant

In 2013, NPL, SUERC and Cranfield University published an estimate for the Boltzmann constant [1] based on a measurement of the limiting low-pressure speed of sound in argon gas. Subsequently, an extensive investigation by Yang et al [2] revealed that there was likely to have been an error in the estimate of the molar mass of the argon used in the experiment. Responding to [2], de Podesta et al revised their estimate of the molar mass [3]. The shift in the estimated molar mass, and of the estimate of kB, was large: -2.7 parts in 106, nearly four times the original uncertainty estimate. The work described here was undertaken to understand the cause of this shift and our conclusion is that the original samples were probably contaminated with argon from atmospheric air.
 In this work we have repeated the measurement reported in [1] on the same gas sample that was examined in [2, 3]. However in this work we have used a different technique for sampling the gas that has allowed us to eliminate the possibility of contamination of the argon samples. We have repeated the sampling procedure three times, and examined samples on two mass spectrometers. This procedure confirms the isotopic ratio estimates of Yang et al [2] but with lower uncertainty, particularly in the relative abundance ratio R38:36.
 Our new estimate of the molar mass of the argon used in Isotherm 5 in [1] is 39.947 727(15) g mol-1 which differs by +0.50 parts in 106 from the estimate 39.947 707(28) g mol-1 made in [3]. This new estimate of the molar mass leads to a revised estimate of the Boltzmann constant of kB = 1.380 648 60 (97) × 10−23 J K−1 which differs from the 2014 CODATA value by +0.05 parts in 106.&#13

Loss of signal transducer and activator of transcription 1 is associated with prostate cancer recurrence

STAT1 loss has previously been implicated in cell line studies to modify prostate cancer cell growth and survival, however the clinical significance of this has not previously been established. This study investigated if STAT1 loss was associated with patient outcome measures and the phenotypic consequence of STAT1 silencing. STAT1 expression was assessed in two patient cohorts with localised (n = 78) and advanced prostate cancer at initial diagnosis (n = 39) by immunohistochemistry (IHC). Impact of STAT1 silencing on prostate cancer cells lines was assessed using Cell Death detection ELISA, TLDA gene signature apoptosis arrays, WST-1 assay, xCELLigence system, clonogenic assay, and wound healing assay. In the localised patient cohort, low expression of STAT1 was associated with shorter time to disease recurrence (3.8 vs 7.3 years, P = 0.02) and disease specific survival (6.6 vs 9.3 years, P = 0.05). In the advanced patient cohort, low expression was associated with shorter time to disease recurrence (2.0 vs 3.9 years, P = 0.001). When STAT1 was silenced in PC3 cells (AR negative) and LNCaP cells (AR positive) silencing did not influence levels of apoptosis in either cell line and had little effect on cell viability in the LNCaP cells. In contrast, STAT1 silencing in the PC3 cells resulted in a pronounced increase in cell viability (WST-1 assay: mock silenced vs STAT1 silenced, P < 0.001), clonagenicity (clonogenic assay: mock silenced vs STAT1 silenced, P < 0.001), and migration (wound healing: mock silenced vs STAT1 silenced, P < 0.001). In conclusion, loss of STAT1 may promote prostate cancer recurrence in AR negative patients via increasing cell viability