Atlantic mackerel and horse mackerel egg survey: Dutch participation May and June 2010

Every three years an international Atlantic survey is carried out by different European institutes to monitor the spatial and seasonal distribution of Atlantic mackerel and horse mackerel. During this survey mackerel and horse mackerel eggs are sampled using a plankton torpedo or bongo nets. The survey covers the whole spawning area and season. It starts along the Portuguese coast in February and continues until July when the waters west of Scotland are sampled. The mackerel and horse mackerel egg survey is coordinated by the ICES working group for mackerel and horse mackerel egg surveys (WGMEGS). England and France started the egg survey in the western area in 1977. The Netherlands participates since 1983. Nowadays participating countries and sampling area have expanded. In 2010 the following countries participated in this survey: Faeröer Islands, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Scotland, Spain and The Netherlands

Quasiparticle origin of dynamical quantum phase transitions

Considering nonintegrable quantum Ising chains with exponentially decaying interactions, we present matrix product state results that establish a connection between low-energy quasiparticle excitations and the kind of nonanalyticities in the Loschmidt return rate. When domain walls in the spectrum of the quench Hamiltonian are energetically favored to be bound rather than freely propagating, anomalous cusps appear in the return rate regardless of the initial state. In the nearest-neighbor limit, domain walls are always freely propagating, and anomalous cusps never appear. As a consequence, our work illustrates that models in the same equilibrium universality class can still exhibit fundamentally distinct out-of-equilibrium criticality. Our results are accessible to current ultracold-atom and ion-trap experiments.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, accepted versio

Hepatitis A vaccination and its immunological and epidemiological long-term effects - a review of the evidence

Hepatitis A virus (HAV) infections continue to represent a significant disease burden causing approximately 200 million infections, 30 million symptomatic illnesses and 30,000 deaths each year. Effective and safe hepatitis A vaccinfes have been available since the early 1990s. Initially developed for individual prophylaxis, HAV vaccines are now increasingly used to control hepatitis A in endemic areas. The human enteral HAV is eradicable in principle, however, HAV eradication is currently not being pursued. Inactivated HAV vaccines are safe and, after two doses, elicit seroprotection in healthy children, adolescents, and young adults for an estimated 30-40 years, if not lifelong, with no need for a later second booster. The long-term effects of the single-dose live-attenuated HAV vaccines are less well documented but available data suggest they are safe and provide long-lasting immunity and protection. A universal mass vaccination strategy (UMV) based on two doses of inactivated vaccine is commonly implemented in endemic countries and eliminates clinical hepatitis A disease in toddlers within a few years. Consequently, older age groups also benefit due to the herd protection effects. Single-dose UMV programs have shown promising outcomes but need to be monitored for many more years in order to document an effective immune memory persistence. In non-endemic countries, prevention efforts need to focus on 'new' risk groups, such as men having sex with men, prisoners, the homeless, and families visiting friends and relatives in endemic countries. This narrative review presents the current evidence regarding the immunological and epidemiological long-term effects of the hepatitis A vaccination and finally discusses emerging issues and areas for research

Rupture of a giant external iliac aneurysm six years after an aorto-bifemoral bypass

peer reviewedWe report the case of a patient operated on for an aorto-iliac aneurysm with an aorto-bifemoral bypass who presented a metachronous iliac aneurysm rupture, six years later, because of aneurysmal degeneration. We performed bipolar ligation of the external iliac artery and an end-to-end anastomosis of the prosthetic limb to the common femoral artery. We discuss aneurysms of the external iliac artery, characterised by their rarity, their specific morbidity and mortality

Recolonisation of spawning grounds in a recovering fish stock: recent changes in North Sea herring

There is evidence that the importance of the different spawning grounds of North Sea autumn-spawning herring has changed. It has been hypothesised that as herring stocks collapse, the diversity of spawning sites also collapses. This was found to be the case in the Sea autumn-spawning herring, which collapsed in the late 1970s. The ICES International Herring Larval Survey has been carried out since 1972 and covers most of the potential and historic spawning grounds of herring. recovery of the stock did take place as predicted in terms of biomass, and re-colonisation of old spawning sites also did occur. We show that, despite the delayed response in re-colonisation of the southern spawning areas, there is almost no change in the number of spawning locations where the highest abundances of larvae (top 50%) are found from collapse to recovery (approximately 9 sites). It was a change in these core sites and the spread to other locations with lower larval abundance that caused the spread of herring spawning. We show that larval surveys are a useful tool for describing the dynamics of sub-stock structure in heterogeneous populations such as herring

“I Wish I Had AIDS”: A qualitative study on access to health care services for HIV/AIDS and diabetic patients in Cambodia

Financially stricken Cambodian patients with diabetes and HIV/AIDS typically encounter multiple, serious barriers to effective care. This process may extend over many years and involve numerous rounds of diagnosis and treatment as the disease progresses from initial symptoms to longer term complications. Living with both the impact of the disease and this ongoing struggle for care can severely disrupt the everyday life of both sufferers and their families. Our retrospective study adopted qualitative research methods to collect data from HIV/AIDS and diabetic patients enrolled and not enrolled in treatment programs at varying institutions in urban and rural settings. Using purposive sampling techniques, a total of 25 HIV/AIDS and 45 diabetic patients were recruited. Semi-structured and open-ended interviews were used to collect information on patient experiences of different phases in the on-going process of seeking care and treatment. The findings indicate that both HIV/AIDS and diabetic patients encounter multiple supply- and demand-side barriers to care at different stages of their illness. More strikingly, our research findings suggest that supply-side barriers, for example rationing systems or targeting strategies that limit access to free treatment or social assistance, are substantially higher for diabetic patients. This perceived inequity had a profound impact on diabetic patients to the extent that some “wished they had HIV/AIDS”. These findings suggest that there is an urgent need to widen the focus of health care to address the substantial and increasing burden of disease resulting from diabetes and other serious chronic disorders in Cambodia and many other low/middle income countries.