Caudal cervical vertebral morphological variation is not associated with clinical signs in Warmblood horses

Background Variation in equine caudal cervical spine morphology at C6 and C7 has high prevalence in Warmblood horses and is suspected to be associated with pain in a large mixed-breed group of horses. At present no data exist on the relationship between radiographic phenotype and clinical presentation in Warmblood horses in a case-control study. Objectives To establish the frequency of radiographically visible morphologic variation in a large group of Warmblood horses with clinical signs and compare this with a group without clinical signs. We hypothesised that occurrence of morphologic variation in the case group would not differ from the control group, indicating there is no association between clinical signs and morphologic variation. Study design Retrospective case-control. Methods Radiographic presence or absence of morphologic variation of cervical vertebrae C6 and C7 was recorded in case (n = 245) and control horses (n = 132). Case and control groups were compared by univariable Pearson's Chi-square and multivariable logistic regression for measurement variables age, sex, breed, degenerative joint disease and morphologic variation at C6 and C7. Odds ratio and confidence intervals were obtained. A P <= 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results Morphologic variation at C6 and C7 (n = 108/377 = 28.6%; Cases 58/245 = 23.7%; Control 50/132 = 38%) was less frequent in horses with clinical signs in univariable testing (OR 0.48, 95% CI 0.3-0.8, P = 0.001). Age, sex, breed and degenerative joint disease were not retained in the final multivariable logistic regression step whereas morphologic variation remained significantly less present in horses with clinical signs. Main limitations Possible demographic differences between equine clinics. Conclusions Morphologic variation in the caudal cervical spine was detected more frequently in horses without clinical signs. Therefore, radiographic presence of such variation does not necessarily implicate the presence of clinical signs

Twitter Flood Mapping Scripts: First Release

The increasing number and severity of floods, driven by phenomena such as urbanization, deforestation, subsidence and climate change, create a growing need for accurate and timely flood maps. In this paper we present and evaluate a method to create deterministic and probabilistic flood maps from Twitter messages that mention locations of flooding. A deterministic flood map created for the December 2015 flood in the city of York (UK) showed good performance (F(2) =  0.69; a statistic ranging from 0 to 1, with 1 expressing a perfect fit with validation data). The probabilistic flood maps we created showed that, in the York case study, the uncertainty in flood extent was mainly induced by errors in the precise locations of flood observations as derived from Twitter data. Errors in the terrain elevation data or in the parameters of the applied algorithm contributed less to flood extent uncertainty. Although these maps tended to overestimate the actual probability of flooding, they gave a reasonable representation of flood extent uncertainty in the area. This study illustrates that inherently uncertain data from social media can be used to derive information about flooding

Intersite comparison of interannual nearshore bar behavior

Long-term (>years) bathymetric data sets collected in six multiple near-shore sandbar systems were analyzed with complex empirical orthogonal function analysis to quantify intersite differences and similarities in cyclic offshore progressive bar behavior. The observations came from a 37-year annually sampled data set of four regions along the Dutch coast (spanning 70 km of coastline), an 18-year fortnightly to monthly sampled data set at Duck, North Carolina (alongshore extent ~1 km), and a 7-year daily sampled data set of a single cross-shore profile at the Hasaki coast of Japan. The first complex mode, typically representing 50–70% of the total depth variance, described the long-term offshore progressive behavior and allowed for an objective separation of the barred part of the profile from the shoreward- and seaward-located nonbarred parts by considering a threshold bar amplitude below which the spatial results from the first mode were not considered reliable. The sandbars at the six examined sites share common lengths and nondimensional amplitude characteristics, which can be described by a negatively skewed Gaussian function. The absolute amplitude dimensions and the cycle return intervals differ, however, considerably between the sites. The key geometric parameters that steer this intersite variation are the time-averaged mean depths at the shoreward and seaward side of the bar zone (dshore and dsea, respectively) as well as their difference dbz. The degree to which intersite differences in dshore, dsea, and dbz are related linearly to intersite differences in bulk statistics of external forcings (wave, tide, sediment, and bed profile characteristics) is inconclusive

State of the art of aeolian and dune research on the Dutch and Belgian coast

Five years ago, at the previous anniversary of the NCK days, an overview was presented of the state of the art of “Measuring and modelling coastal dune development in the Netherlands” (De Groot et al., 2012). At that moment, new coastal-dune research had sprung up in the Netherlands after a relatively quiet period of about two decades, and the individual research projects were just starting to interconnect. Since then, research has blossomed. A large number of PhD students, postdocs and staff of many institutes are involved, and coastal aeolian processes have become a permanent topic of recent NCK days. Young researchers are meeting a couple of times per year to discuss their work informally, and several PhD theses were defended

Innovators’ Acts of Framing and Audiences’ Structural Characteristics in Novelty Recognition

We integrate a rhetorical with an audience-mediated perspective on novelty recognition to advance a conceptual framework where recognition of novel ideas is understood as the result of the interplay between an innovator’s acts of framing and audiences’ structural characteristics. Building on storytelling and narrative research, we argue that innovators can overcome the liability of newness of their ideas by framing them so as to shape the evaluation of relevant audiences (e.g., peers, critics, investors or users). We also suggest that non-agentic mechanisms can render a field more or less permeable to the reception of novel ideas. Specifically, we propose that two audience-level characteristics affect novelty evaluation: audience heterogeneity and whether an audience is internal or external to cultural producers’ (including innovators’) professional community. Studying innovators’ acts of framing and marrying them with audience-level characteristics affords a window into a more nuanced understanding of how novel ideas are recognized and eventually accepted in cultural fields, thus offering several contributions to research on innovation and entrepreneurship and, more generally, social evaluation

The effects of source credibility and salience on sales performance: a study of corporate art collectors

Signaling theory (Spence, 1973) focuses on using signals as proxies of quality and helps explain how signals reduce uncertainties in pre-purchase decision-making. Signals convey information about a product or producer’s unobservable or indiscernible quality (Kirmani and Rao, 2000), and are important in all markets but particularly those with informational gaps (Akerlof, 1970), where for example, product quality is difficult to determine prior to consumption (Nelson, 1970) or perhaps even after consumption (Darby and Karni, 1973)

New Developments in the Synthesis of Natural and Unnatural Amino Acids

Amino acids play an important role in biochemistry and chemistry. They are the building blocks of proteins and play an essential role in the regulation of the metabolism of living organisms.In general, it can be stated that microbial processes (fermentation) are the industrial production methods of choice for large‐scale production of naturally occuring proteinogenic L‐α‐H‐amino acids, while for the production of synthetic D‐ and/or L‐α‐H‐amino acids, several other methods are highly competitive.At DSM, several routes, i.e., (chemoenzymatic) synthesis, towards L‐α‐H and D‐α‐H‐amino acids have been elaborated since the midseventies.A general process for the synthesis of natural as well as synthetic optically pure amino acids has been developed, using an enzymatic kinetic resolution step on racemic amino acid amides as the key step. In this case, both enantiomers of the α‐H‐amino acids are prepared in one single step. This process has been commercialized since 1988.More recent developments using L‐ or D‐amino peptidases in combination with amino acid amide racemases and an asymmetric transformation concept are discussed.<br/