Fit for Birth- the effect of maternal weight changes in obese pregnant women on maternal and neonatal outcomes.

The ‘Fit for Birth’ study aimed to explore patterns of gestational weight gain and their relationship with pregnancy outcomes. The study had three aims: 1. To explore the feasibility of conducting a large cohort study in this setting. 2. To describe patterns of weight gain through pregnancy in obese women. 3. To explore associations of weight change during pregnancy with outcomes. Study population Pregnant women with a BMI ≥ 30 kg m−2 at first antenatal clinic visit. Methods This was a single centre pilot observational study based at the Liverpool Women's Hospital, a large UK maternity hospital.Women were recruited into the study at their antenatal booking visit and had weights measured throughout pregnancy. Patterns of weight gain were described and related to maternal and neonatal outcomes. Main outcome measure The primary outcome was a composite measure consisting of any of 12 adverse maternal and foetal outcomes. This was compared by categorized pregnancy weight gain (9 kg). Results Eight hundred and twenty four women consented to participation between June 2009 and June 2010. Weight data were collected on 756 women. Only 385 women had weights measured in all three study assessment periods (6–20 weeks, 20 + 1 to 32 weeks and >32 weeks gestation) while 427 women had weights measured in period 3. Individual patterns of weight gain varied widely and missing data were common and non‐random. There was a significant association between increased weight gain during pregnancy and poor maternal and foetal outcome. Conclusions Weight gain in obese women during pregnancy can be highly variable. Our study supports an association between increased weight gain in pregnancy and adverse perinatal outcomes

Verified and potential pathogens of predatory mites (Acari: Phytoseiidae)

Several species of phytoseiid mites (Acari: Phytoseiidae), including species of the genera Amblyseius, Galendromus, Metaseiulus, Neoseiulus, Phytoseiulus and Typhlodromus, are currently reared for biological control of various crop pests and/or as model organisms for the study of predator¿prey interactions. Pathogen-free phytoseiid mites are important to obtain high efficacy in biological pest control and to get reliable data in mite research, as pathogens may affect the performance of their host or alter their reproduction and behaviour. Potential and verified pathogens have been reported for phytoseiid mites during the past 25 years. The present review provides an overview, including potential pathogens with unknown host effects (17 reports), endosymbiotic Wolbachia (seven reports), other bacteria (including Cardinium and Spiroplasma) (four reports), cases of unidentified diseases (three reports) and cases of verified pathogens (six reports). From the latter group four reports refer to Microsporidia, one to a fungus and one to a bacterium. Only five entities have been studied in detail, including Wolbachia infecting seven predatory mite species, other endosymbiotic bacteria infecting Metaseiulus (Galendromus, Typhlodromus) occidentalis (Nesbitt), the bacterium Acaricomes phytoseiuli infecting Phytoseiulus persimilis Athias-Henriot, the microsporidium Microsporidium phytoseiuli infecting P. persimilis and the microsporidium Oligosproridium occidentalis infecting M. occidentalis. In four cases (Wolbachia, A. phytoseiuli, M. phytoseiuli and O. occidentalis) an infection may be connected with fitness costs of the host. Moreover, infection is not always readily visible as no obvious gross symptoms are present. Monitoring of these entities on a routine and continuous basis should therefore get more attention, especially in commercial mass-production. Special attention should be paid to field-collected mites before introduction into the laboratory or mass rearing, and to mites that are exchanged among rearing facilities. However, at present general pathogen monitoring is not yet practical as effects of many entities are unknown. More research effort is needed concerning verified and potential pathogens of commercially reared arthropods and those used as model organisms in research

Graphene for spintronics: giant Rashba splitting due to hybridization with Au

Graphene in spintronics has so far primarily meant spin current leads of high performance because the intrinsic spin-orbit coupling of its pi-electrons is very weak. If a large spin-orbit coupling could be created by a proximity effect, the material could also form active elements of a spintronic device such as the Das-Datta spin field-effect transistor, however, metal interfaces often compromise the band dispersion of massless Dirac fermions. Our measurements show that Au intercalation at the graphene-Ni interface creates a giant spin-orbit splitting (~100 meV) in the graphene Dirac cone up to the Fermi energy. Photoelectron spectroscopy reveals hybridization with Au-5d states as the source for the giant spin-orbit splitting. An ab initio model of the system shows a Rashba-split dispersion with the analytically predicted gapless band topology around the Dirac point of graphene and indicates that a sharp graphene-Au interface at equilibrium distance will account for only ~10 meV spin-orbit splitting. The ab initio calculations suggest an enhancement due to Au atoms that get closer to the graphene and do not violate the sublattice symmetry.Comment: 16 pages (3 figures) + supplementary information 16 pages (14 figures

Measuring every particle's size from three-dimensional imaging experiments

Often experimentalists study colloidal suspensions that are nominally monodisperse. In reality these samples have a polydispersity of 4-10%. At the level of an individual particle, the consequences of this polydispersity are unknown as it is difficult to measure an individual particle size from microscopy. We propose a general method to estimate individual particle radii within a moderately concentrated colloidal suspension observed with confocal microscopy. We confirm the validity of our method by numerical simulations of four major systems: random close packing, colloidal gels, nominally monodisperse dense samples, and nominally binary dense samples. We then apply our method to experimental data, and demonstrate the utility of this method with results from four case studies. In the first, we demonstrate that we can recover the full particle size distribution {\it in situ}. In the second, we show that accounting for particle size leads to more accurate structural information in a random close packed sample. In the third, we show that crystal nucleation occurs in locally monodisperse regions. In the fourth, we show that particle mobility in a dense sample is correlated to the local volume fraction.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

The Role of Individual Variables, Organizational Variables and Moral Intensity Dimensions in Libyan Management Accountants’ Ethical Decision Making

This study investigates the association of a broad set of variables with the ethical decision making of management accountants in Libya. Adopting a cross-sectional methodology, a questionnaire including four different ethical scenarios was used to gather data from 229 participants. For each scenario, ethical decision making was examined in terms of the recognition, judgment and intention stages of Rest’s model. A significant relationship was found between ethical recognition and ethical judgment and also between ethical judgment and ethical intention, but ethical recognition did not significantly predict ethical intention—thus providing support for Rest’s model. Organizational variables, age and educational level yielded few significant results. The lack of significance for codes of ethics might reflect their relative lack of development in Libya, in which case Libyan companies should pay attention to their content and how they are supported, especially in the light of the under-development of the accounting profession in Libya. Few significant results were also found for gender, but where they were found, males showed more ethical characteristics than females. This unusual result reinforces the dangers of gender stereotyping in business. Personal moral philosophy and moral intensity dimensions were generally found to be significant predictors of the three stages of ethical decision making studied. One implication of this is to give more attention to ethics in accounting education, making the connections between accounting practice and (in Libya) Islam. Overall, this study not only adds to the available empirical evidence on factors affecting ethical decision making, notably examining three stages of Rest’s model, but also offers rare insights into the ethical views of practising management accountants and provides a benchmark for future studies of ethical decision making in Muslim majority countries and other parts of the developing world

Effectiveness of Terbutaline Pump for the Prevention of Preterm Birth. A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Subcutaneous terbutaline (SQ terbutaline) infusion by pump is used in pregnant women as a prolonged (beyond 48-72 h) maintenance tocolytic following acute treatment of preterm contractions. The effectiveness and safety of this maintenance tocolysis have not been clearly established. We aimed to systematically evaluate the effectiveness and safety of subcutaneous (SQ) terbutaline infusion by pump for maintenance tocolysis.MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, the Cochrane Library, the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination databases, post-marketing surveillance data and grey literature were searched up to April 2011 for relevant experimental and observational studies. Two randomized trials, one nonrandomized trial, and 11 observational studies met inclusion criteria. Non-comparative studies were considered only for pump-related harms. We excluded case-reports but sought FDA summaries of post-marketing surveillance data. Non-English records without an English abstract were excluded. Evidence of low strength from observational studies with risk of bias favored SQ terbutaline pump for the outcomes of delivery at <32 and <37 weeks, mean days of pregnancy prolongation, and neonatal death. Observational studies of medium to high risk of bias also demonstrated benefit for other surrogate outcomes, such as birthweight and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admission. Several cases of maternal deaths and maternal cardiovascular events have been reported in patients receiving terbutaline tocolysis.Although evidence suggests that pump therapy may be beneficial as maintenance tocolysis, our confidence in its validity and reproducibility is low, suggesting that its use should be limited to the research setting. Concerns regarding safety of therapy persist

Primitive Neuroectodermal Tumor (PNET) of the kidney: a case report

BACKGROUND: A case of Primitive Neuroectodermal Tumor (PNET) of the kidney in a 27-year-old woman is presented. Few cases are reported in the literature with a variable, nonspecific presentation and an aggressive behaviour. In our case, a radical nephrectomy with lymphadenectomy was performed and there was no residual or recurrent tumour at 24-month follow-up. METHODS: The surgical specimens were formalin-fixed and paraffin embedded. The sections were stained with routinary H&E. Immunohistochemistry was performed. RESULTS: The immunohistochemical evaluation revealed a diffuse CD99 positivity in the cytoplasm of the neoplastic cells. Pankeratin, cytokeratin AE1/AE3, vimentin, desmin, S100, cromogranin were negative. The clinical presentation and the macroscopic aspect, together with the histological pattern, the cytological characteristic and the cellular immunophenotype addressed the diagnosis towards primary PNET of kidney. CONCLUSIONS: Since sometimes it is difficult to discriminate between PNET and Ewing's tumour, we reviewed the difficulties in differential diagnosis. These tumors have a common precursor but the stage of differentiation in which it is blocked is probably different. This could also explain their different biological behaviour and prognosis

Telephone and face to face methods of assessment of veteran's community reintegration yield equivalent results

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The Community Reintegration of Service Members (CRIS) is a new measure of community reintegration developed to measure veteran's participation in life roles. It consists of three sub-scales: Extent of Participation (Extent), Perceived Limitations with Participation (Perceived), and Satisfaction with Participation (Satisfaction). Testing of the CRIS measure to date has utilized in-person administration. Administration of the CRIS measure by telephone, if equivalent to in-person administration, would be desirable to lower cost and decrease administrative burden. The purpose of this study was to test the equivalence of telephone and in-person mode of CRIS administration.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A convenience sample of 102 subjects (76% male, 24% female, age mean = 49 years, standard deviation = 8.3) were randomly assigned to received either telephone interview at Visit 1 and in-person interview at Visit 2, or in-person interview at Visit 1 and telephone interview a Visit 2. Both Visits were conducted within one week. Intraclass correlation coefficients, ICC (2,1), were used to evaluate correspondence between modes for both item scores and summary scores. ANOVAs with mode order as a covariate were used to test for presence of an ordering effect.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>ICCs (95%CI) for the subscales were 0.92 (0.88-0.94) for Extent, 0.85 (0.80-0.90) for Perceived, and 0.89 (0.84-0.93) for Satisfaction. No ordering effect was observed.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Telephone administration of the CRIS measure yielded equivalent results to in-person administration. Telephone administration of the CRIS may enable lower costs of administration and greater adoption.</p