Comparative Efficacy of BioUD to Other Commercially Available Arthropod Repellants Against the Ticks Amblyomma americanum and Dermacentor variabilis on Cotton Cloth

BioUD is an arthropod repellent that contains the active ingredient 2-undecanone originally derived from wild tomato plants. Repellency of BioUD was compared with five commercially available arthropod repellents against the ticks Amblyomma americanum (L.) and Dermacentor variabilis Say in two-choice bioassays on treated versus untreated cotton cheesecloth. Overall mean percentage repellency against both species was greatest for and did not differ significantly between BioUD (7.75% 2-undecanone) and products containing 98.1% DEET, 19.6% IR3535, and 30% oil of lemon eucalyptus. Products containing 5% and 15% Picaridin and 0.5% permethrin were also repellent compared with untreated controls but to a lesser degree than BioUD. The four most active repellents at the same concentrations used before were directly compared in head-to-head bioassays on cotton cheesecloth. BioUD provided significantly greater overall mean percentage repellency than IR3535 for A. americanum and D. variabilis. BioUD was significantly more repellent than oil of lemon eucalyptus for A. americanum but did not differ significantly in repellency against D. variabilis. No statistically significant difference in overall mean percentage repellency was found between BioUD and DEET for A. americanum or D. variabilis. In a 7-week time course bioassay, BioUD applied to cotton cheesecloth and held at room temperature provided 5 weeks of \u3e 90% repellency against A. americanum

Living with AIDS in Uganda: a qualitative study of patients' and families' experiences following referral to hospice

Background: Globally, the majority of people with HIV/AIDS live in sub-Saharan Africa. While the increasing availability of antiretroviral therapy is improving the outlook for many, its effects are yet to reach all of those in need and patients still present with advanced disease. This paper reports findings from qualitative interviews with patients living with AIDS and their caregivers who were receiving palliative care from Hospice Africa Uganda (HAU). We aimed to understand what motivated patients and their families to seek formal healthcare, whether there were any barriers to help- seeking and how the help and support provided to them by HAU was perceived. Methods: We invited patients with AIDS and their relatives who were newly referred to HAU to participate in qualitative interviews. Patients and carers were interviewed in their homes approximately four weeks after the patient’s enrolment at HAU. Interviews were translated, transcribed and analysed using narrative and thematic approaches. Results: Interviews were completed with 22 patients (10 women and 12 men) and 20 family caregivers, nominated by patients. Interviews revealed the extent of suffering patients endured and the strain that family caregivers experienced before help was sought or accessed. Patients reported a wide range of severe physical symptoms. Patients and their relatives reported worries about the disclosure of the AIDS diagnosis and fear of stigma. Profound poverty framed all accounts. Poverty and stigma were, depending on the patient and family situation, both motivators and barriers to help seeking behaviour. Hospice services were perceived to provide essential relief of pain and symptoms, as well as providing rehabilitative support and a sense of caring. The hospice was perceived relieve utter destitution, although it was unable to meet all the expectations that patients had. Conclusion: Hospice care was highly valued and perceived to effectively manage problems such as pain and other symptoms and to provide rehabilitation. Participants noted a strong sense of being “cared for”. However, poverty and a sense of stigma were widespread. Further research is needed to understand how poverty and stigma can be effectively managed in hospice care for patients for advanced AIDS and their families

Shedding light on sporopollenin chemistry, with reference to UV reconstructions

Sporopollenin, which forms the outer wall of pollen and spores, contains a chemical signature of ultraviolet-B flux via concentrations of UV-B absorbing compounds (UACs), providing a proxy for reconstructing UV irradiance through time. Although Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy provides an efficient means of measuring UAC concentrations, nitrogen-containing compounds have the potential to bias the aromatic and hydroxyl bands used to quantify and standardise UAC abundances. Here, we explore the presence and possible influence of nitrogen in UV reconstruction via an FTIR study of Lycopodium spores from a natural shading gradient. We show that the UV-sensitive aromatic peak at 1510 cm− 1 is clearly distinguishable from the amide II peak at 1550 cm− 1, and the decrease in aromatic content with increased shading can be reconstructed using standardisation approaches that do not rely on the 3300 cm− 1 hydroxyl band. Isolation of the sporopollenin results in the loss of nitrogen-related peaks from the FTIR spectra, while the aromatic gradient remains. This confirms the lack of nitrogen in sporopollenin and its limited potential for impacting on palaeo-UV reconstructions. FTIR is therefore an appropriate tool for quantifying UACs in spores and pollen, and information on UV flux should be obtainable from fossil or processed samples

Cornucopia: Temporal safety for CHERI heaps

Use-after-free violations of temporal memory safety continue to plague software systems, underpinning many high-impact exploits. The CHERI capability system shows great promise in achieving C and C++ language spatial memory safety, preventing out-of-bounds accesses. Enforcing language-level temporal safety on CHERI requires capability revocation, traditionally achieved either via table lookups (avoided for performance in the CHERI design) or by identifying capabilities in memory to revoke them (similar to a garbage-collector sweep). CHERIvoke, a prior feasibility study, suggested that CHERI’s tagged capabilities could make this latter strategy viable, but modeled only architectural limits and did not consider the full implementation or evaluation of the approach. Cornucopia is a lightweight capability revocation system for CHERI that implements non-probabilistic C/C++ temporal memory safety for standard heap allocations. It extends the CheriBSD virtual-memory subsystem to track capability flow through memory and provides a concurrent kernel-resident revocation service that is amenable to multi-processor and hardware acceleration. We demonstrate an average overhead of less than 2% and a worst-case of 8.9% for concurrent revocation on compatible SPEC CPU2006 benchmarks on a multi-core CHERI CPU on FPGA, and we validate Cornucopia against the Juliet test suite’s corpus of temporally unsafe programs. We test its compatibility with a large corpus of C programs by using a revoking allocator as the system allocator while booting multi-user CheriBSD. Cornucopia is a viable strategy for always-on temporal heap memory safety, suitable for production environments.This work was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), under contracts FA8750-10-C-0237 (“CTSRD”) and HR0011-18-C-0016 (“ECATS”). We also acknowledge the EPSRC REMS Programme Grant (EP/K008528/1), the ABP Grant (EP/P020011/1), the ERC ELVER Advanced Grant (789108), the Gates Cambridge Trust, Arm Limited, HP Enterprise, and Google, Inc

Cohort Randomised Controlled Trial of a Multifaceted Podiatry Intervention for the Prevention of Falls in Older People (The REFORM Trial)

BACKGROUND: Falls are a major cause of morbidity among older people. A multifaceted podiatry intervention may reduce the risk of falling. This study evaluated such an intervention. DESIGN: Pragmatic cohort randomised controlled trial in England and Ireland. 1010 participants were randomised (493 to the Intervention group and 517 to Usual Care) to either: a podiatry intervention, including foot and ankle exercises, foot orthoses and, if required, new footwear, and a falls prevention leaflet or usual podiatry treatment plus a falls prevention leaflet. The primary outcome was the incidence rate of self-reported falls per participant in the 12 months following randomisation. Secondary outcomes included: proportion of fallers and those reporting multiple falls, time to first fall, fear of falling, Frenchay Activities Index, Geriatric Depression Scale, foot pain, health related quality of life, and cost-effectiveness. RESULTS: In the primary analysis were 484 (98.2%) intervention and 507 (98.1%) control participants. There was a small, non statistically significant reduction in the incidence rate of falls in the intervention group (adjusted incidence rate ratio 0.88, 95% CI 0.73 to 1.05, p = 0.16). The proportion of participants experiencing a fall was lower (49.7 vs 54.9%, adjusted odds ratio 0.78, 95% CI 0.60 to 1.00, p = 0.05) as was the proportion experiencing two or more falls (27.6% vs 34.6%, adjusted odds ratio 0.69, 95% CI 0.52 to 0.90, p = 0.01). There was an increase (p = 0.02) in foot pain for the intervention group. There were no statistically significant differences in other outcomes. The intervention was more costly but marginally more beneficial in terms of health-related quality of life (mean quality adjusted life year (QALY) difference 0.0129, 95% CI -0.0050 to 0.0314) and had a 65% probability of being cost-effective at a threshold of £30,000 per QALY gained. CONCLUSION: There was a small reduction in falls. The intervention may be cost-effective. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN ISRCTN68240461

The genome of a songbird

The zebra finch is an important model organism in several fields with unique relevance to human neuroscience. Like other songbirds, the zebra finch communicates through learned vocalizations, an ability otherwise documented only in humans and a few other animals and lacking in the chickenthe only bird with a sequenced genome until now. Here we present a structural, functional and comparative analysis of the genome sequence of the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata), which is a songbird belonging to the large avian order Passeriformes. We find that the overall structures of the genomes are similar in zebra finch and chicken, but they differ in many intrachromosomal rearrangements, lineage-specific gene family expansions, the number of long-terminal-repeat- based retrotransposons, and mechanisms of sex chromosome dosage compensation. We show that song behaviour engages gene regulatory networks in the zebra finch brain, altering the expression of long non-coding RNAs, microRNAs, transcription factors and their targets. We also show evidence for rapid molecular evolution in the songbird lineage of genes that are regulated during song experience. These results indicate an active involvement of the genome in neural processes underlying vocal communication and identify potential genetic substrates for the evolution and regulation of this behaviour. © 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved

Replication for Web Hosting Systems

Replication is a well-known technique to improve the accessibility of Web sites. It generally offers reduced client latencies and increases a site’s availability. However, applying replication techniques is not trivial, and various Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) have been created to facilitate replication for digital content providers. Th

Trees and shrubs as sources of fodder in Australia

Experience with browse plants in Australia is briefly reviewed in terms of their forage value to animals, their economic value to the landholder and their ecological contribution to landscape stability. Of the cultivated species only two have achieved any degree of commercial acceptance (Leucaena leucocephala and Chamaecytisus palmensis). Both of these are of sufficiently high forage value to be used as the sole source of feed during seasonal periods of nutritional shortage. Both are also leguminous shrubs that establish readily from seed. It is suggested that a limitation in their present use is the reliance on stands of single species which leaves these grazing systems vulnerable to disease and insects. Grazing systems so far developed for high production and persistence of cultivated species involve short periods of intense grazing followed by long periods of recovery. Similar management may be necessary in the arid and semi-arid rangelands where palatable browse species are in decline

The Transplanted Appropriate Adult Scheme in China

Borrowed from England and Wales, the Chinese Appropriate Adult Scheme involves a dynamic of selective adaptation. This article analyses two salient features of the appropriate adult scheme within the Chinese context, in comparison with its counterpart in England and Wales: its complementarity of the juvenile's parent, and the passive role that appropriate adults play during pretrial interrogations. Drawing upon empirical evidence, the article argues that the transplanted Chinese appropriate adult scheme has failed to oversee the legality of interrogations, nor does it provide adequate safeguards for juvenile suspects. The concept of vulnerability that lies at the heart of the appropriate adult safeguard in England and Wales appears to be lost in translation. Rather than providing a safeguard for juveniles at their most vulnerable, the appropriate adult is more concerned with indulging the needs of the interrogators in China

Hidden in the Middle : Culture, Value and Reward in Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics - the so-called shotgun marriage between biology and computer science - is an interdiscipline. Despite interdisciplinarity being seen as a virtue, for having the capacity to solve complex problems and foster innovation, it has the potential to place projects and people in anomalous categories. For example, valorised 'outputs' in academia are often defined and rewarded by discipline. Bioinformatics, as an interdisciplinary bricolage, incorporates experts from various disciplinary cultures with their own distinct ways of working. Perceived problems of interdisciplinarity include difficulties of making explicit knowledge that is practical, theoretical, or cognitive. But successful interdisciplinary research also depends on an understanding of disciplinary cultures and value systems, often only tacitly understood by members of the communities in question. In bioinformatics, the 'parent' disciplines have different value systems; for example, what is considered worthwhile research by computer scientists can be thought of as trivial by biologists, and vice versa. This paper concentrates on the problems of reward and recognition described by scientists working in academic bioinformatics in the United Kingdom. We highlight problems that are a consequence of its cross-cultural make-up, recognising that the mismatches in knowledge in this borderland take place not just at the level of the practical, theoretical, or epistemological, but also at the cultural level too. The trend in big, interdisciplinary science is towards multiple authors on a single paper; in bioinformatics this has created hybrid or fractional scientists who find they are being positioned not just in-between established disciplines but also in-between as middle authors or, worse still, left off papers altogether