Designing crime prevention -a review of methods

The Designing Out Crime research centre (DOC) has now operated for almost 5 years. In this time the centre and its staff and students have worked on real life crime problems, using and developing ways of working within a design process. DOC is a multi-discipline centre and draws on the tools and methods of these disciplines. Recently DOC undertook a stock-take of the methods it uses within a frame creation process. This stock-take was then used to develop DOC method cards, in reference to the IDEO method cards of 2002. Situated within the frame creation process this paper explores 20 methods that were used in a case study that has gone from complex problem, to piloted solutions in the lifetime of DOC

Splinters in the fingernails, heart and brain: thromboembolic complications of non-bacterial thrombotic endocarditis despite treatment with a direct-acting oral anticoagulant

Non-bacterial thrombotic endocarditis (NBTE) is a rare condition characterized by non-infectious vegetations affecting the cardiac valves. Although systemic thromboembolism is a commonly associated condition, antiphospholipid syndrome is less common. Nevertheless, treatment generally involves long-term anticoagulation. We report a case of a patient with previously undiagnosed NBTE who suffered systemic thromboembolic events despite pre-existing treatment with a direct-acting oral anticoagulant

Contrasting Micro/Nano Architecture on Termite Wings: Two Divergent Strategies for Optimising Success of Colonisation Flights

Many termite species typically fly during or shortly after rain periods. Local precipitation will ensure water will be present when establishing a new colony after the initial flight. Here we show how different species of termite utilise two distinct and contrasting strategies for optimising the success of the colonisation flight. Nasutitermes sp. and Microcerotermes sp. fly during rain periods and adopt hydrophobic structuring/‘technologies’ on their wings to contend with a moving canvas of droplets in daylight hours. Schedorhinotermes sp. fly after rain periods (typically at night) and thus do not come into contact with mobile droplets. These termites, in contrast, display hydrophilic structuring on their wings with a small scale roughness which is not dimensionally sufficient to introduce an increase in hydrophobicity. The lack of hydrophobicity allows the termite to be hydrophilicly captured at locations where water may be present in large quantities; sufficient for the initial colonization period. The high wettability of the termite cuticle (Schedorhinotermes sp.) indicates that the membrane has a high surface energy and thus will also have strong attractions with solid particles. To investigate this the termite wings were also interacted with both artificial and natural contaminants in the form of hydrophilic silicon beads of various sizes, 4 µm C18 beads and three differently structured pollens. These were compared to the superhydrophobic surface of the planthopper (Desudaba psittacus) and a native Si wafer surface. The termite cuticle demonstrated higher adhesive interactions with all particles in comparison to those measured on the plant hopper

COX-2 selective inhibition reverses the trophic properties of gastrin in colorectal cancer

Gastrin is a gastrointestinal peptide that possesses potent trophic properties on both normal and neoplastic cells of gastrointestinal origin. Previous studies have indicated that chronic hypergastrinaemia increases the risk of colorectal cancer and cancer growth and that interruption of the effects of gastrin could be a potential target in the treatment of colorectal cancer. Here we demonstrate that gastrin leads to a dose-dependent increase in colon cancer cell proliferation and tumour growth in vitro and in vivo, and that this increment is progressively reversed by pretreatment with the cyclo-oxygenase-2 inhibitor NS-398. Gastrin was able to induce cyclo-oxygenase-2 protein expression, as well as the synthesis of prostaglandin E2, the major product of cyclo-oxygenase. Moreover, gastrin leads to approximately a two-fold induction of cyclo-oxygenase-2 promoter activity in transiently transfected cells. The results of these studies demonstrate that cyclo-oxygenase-2 appears to represent one of the downstream targets of gastrin and that selective cyclo-oxygenase-2 inhibition is capable of reversing the trophic properties of gastrin and presumably might prevent the growth of colorectal cancer induced by hypergastrinaemia

Chronic pain associated with the Chikungunya Fever: long lasting burden of an acute illness

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is responsible for major epidemics worldwide. Autochthonous cases were recently reported in several European countries. Acute infection is thought to be monophasic. However reports on chronic pain related to CHIKV infection have been made. In particular, the fact that many of these patients do not respond well to usual analgesics suggests that the nature of chronic pain may be not only nociceptive but also neuropathic. Neuropathic pain syndromes require specific treatment and the identification of neuropathic characteristics (NC) in a pain syndrome is a major step towards pain control.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We carried out a cross-sectional study at the end of the major two-wave outbreak lasting 17 months in Réunion Island. We assessed pain in 106 patients seeking general practitioners with confirmed infection with the CHIK virus, and evaluated its impact on quality of life (QoL).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The mean intensity of pain on the visual-analogical scale (VAS) was 5.8 ± 2.1, and its mean duration was 89 ± 2 days. Fifty-six patients fulfilled the definition of chronic pain. Pain had NC in 18.9% according to the DN4 questionnaire. Conversely, about two thirds (65%) of patients with NC had chronic pain. The average pain intensity was similar between patients with or without NC (6.0 ± 1.7 vs 6.1 ± 2.0). However, the total score of the Short Form-McGill Pain Questionnaire (SF-MPQ)(15.5 ± 5.2 vs 11.6 ± 5.2; p < 0.01) and both the affective (18.8 ± 6.2 vs 13.4 ± 6.7; p < 0.01) and sensory subscores (34.3 ± 10.7 vs 25.0 ± 9.9; p < 0.01) were significantly higher in patients with NC. The mean pain interference in life activities calculated from the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI) was significantly higher in patients with chronic pain than in patients without it (6.8 ± 1.9 vs 5.9 ± 1.9, p < 0.05). This score was also significantly higher in patients with NC than in those without such a feature (7.2 ± 1.5 vs 6.1 ± 1.9, p < 0.05).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>There exists a specific chronic pain condition associated to CHIKV. Pain with NC seems to be associated with more aggressive clinical picture, more intense impact in QoL and more challenging pharmacological treatment.</p

Sampling Scarab Beetles in Tropical Forests: The Effect of Light Source and Night Sampling Periods

Light traps have been used widely to sample insect abundance and diversity, but their performance for sampling scarab beetles in tropical forests based on light source type and sampling hours throughout the night has not been evaluated. The efficiency of mercury-vapour lamps, cool white light and ultraviolet light sources in attracting Dynastinae, Melolonthinae and Rutelinae scarab beetles, and the most adequate period of the night to carry out the sampling was tested in different forest areas of Costa Rica. Our results showed that light source wavelengths and hours of sampling influenced scarab beetle catches. No significant differences were observed in trap performance between the ultraviolet light and mercury-vapour traps, whereas these two methods caught significantly more species richness and abundance than cool white light traps. Species composition also varied between methods. Large differences appear between catches in the sampling period, with the first five hours of the night being more effective than the last five hours. Because of their high efficiency and logistic advantages, we recommend ultraviolet light traps deployed during the first hours of the night as the best sampling method for biodiversity studies of those scarab beetles in tropical forests

Differential Geometry for Model Independent Analysis of Images and Other Non-Euclidean Data: Recent Developments

This article provides an exposition of recent methodologies for nonparametric analysis of digital observations on images and other non-Euclidean objects. Fr\'echet means of distributions on metric spaces, such as manifolds and stratified spaces, have played an important role in this endeavor. Apart from theoretical issues of uniqueness of the Fr\'echet minimizer and the asymptotic distribution of the sample Fr\'echet mean under uniqueness, applications to image analysis are highlighted. In addition, nonparametric Bayes theory is brought to bear on the problems of density estimation and classification on manifolds