The Guinea Pig Club: Forces and factors that revolutionised burns plastic surgery

The ‘Guinea Pig Club’ has been described as the most exclusive club in the world, but the entrance fee is something most men would care not to pay, and the conditions of membership are arduous in the extreme. The Guinea Pig Club was formed in July 1941 to support aircrew who were undergoing reconstructive plastic surgery after receiving burn injuries in the Second World War. This paper will explore the novel surgical techniques employed to treat the Guinea Pig Club members, their experiences at the hospital and their lives after the war and how Sir Archibald McIndoe and the Guinea Pig club members revolutionised burns plastic surgery as we know it today

3D climate modeling of close-in land planets: Circulation patterns, climate moist bistability and habitability

The inner edge of the classical habitable zone is often defined by the critical flux needed to trigger the runaway greenhouse instability. This 1D notion of a critical flux, however, may not be so relevant for inhomogeneously irradiated planets, or when the water content is limited (land planets). Here, based on results from our 3D global climate model, we find that the circulation pattern can shift from super-rotation to stellar/anti stellar circulation when the equatorial Rossby deformation radius significantly exceeds the planetary radius. Using analytical and numerical arguments, we also demonstrate the presence of systematic biases between mean surface temperatures or temperature profiles predicted from either 1D or 3D simulations. Including a complete modeling of the water cycle, we further demonstrate that for land planets closer than the inner edge of the classical habitable zone, two stable climate regimes can exist. One is the classical runaway state, and the other is a collapsed state where water is captured in permanent cold traps. We identify this "moist" bistability as the result of a competition between the greenhouse effect of water vapor and its condensation. We also present synthetic spectra showing the observable signature of these two states. Taking the example of two prototype planets in this regime, namely Gl581c and HD85512b, we argue that they could accumulate a significant amount of water ice at their surface. If such a thick ice cap is present, gravity driven ice flows and geothermal flux should come into play to produce long-lived liquid water at the edge and/or bottom of the ice cap. Consequently, the habitability of planets at smaller orbital distance than the inner edge of the classical habitable zone cannot be ruled out. Transiting planets in this regime represent promising targets for upcoming observatories like EChO and JWST.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics, complete abstract in the pdf, 18 pages, 18 figure

Mobilité de sexe et réussite scolaire au collégial

Cet article porte sur la vérification de certaines hypothèses relatives au lien entre sexe, identité de genre et réussite scolaire au collégial. Les chercheurs ont fait passer à tous les nouveaux inscrits au cégep d'Alma le questionnaire de BEM validé par Pelletier pour le Québec. Les résultats, exception faite de ce qui concerne les androgynes, semblent confirmer les hypothèses: ils indiquent que c'est le sexe plus que l'identité de genre qui influence la réussite scolaire au collégial et ce sont les étudiantes qui connaissent une véritable « mobilité de sexe » qui réussissent le mieux. Plus qu'une simple prise de distance du message social (transcendance des rôles sociaux de sexe), cette mobilité se traduit par une transgression de ce message social.This article examines various hypotheses describing the relationship between sex, gender identification and success at college. The authors administered the BEM questionnaire, validated in Quebec by Pelletier, to all newly enrolled students at Cegep Alma. The results show that except for androgynes, the hypotheses are confirmed: that sex more than gender identity influences success at college level; and that students who have "sexual mobility" have the highest success rate. This mobility seems to be manifested by a transgression of a social message which is more than a simple removal from this message ("transcendance of social sex roles").Este articulo estudia la verificacion de ciertas hipotesis sobre la relacion entre el sexo, la identidad del género y el éxito académico a nivel preuniversitario. Los investigadores aplicaron el cuestionario BEM, validado para el Québec por Pelletier, a todos los nuevos alumnos del colegio de Aima (Québec). Los resultados parecen confirmar que el sexo, mas que la identidad del género, tiene una influencia sobre el éxito académico a nivel preuniversitario excepto para androginos; y que los estudiantes con una verdadera "movilidad de sexo" obtienen un éxito mayor. Mas que un simple distanciamiento del mensaje social (la transcen-dencia de los papeles sociales del sexo), dicha movilidad se traduce en una transgresion de este mensaje social.Dieser Artikel behandelt die Verifikation gewisser Hypothesen beziiglich der Beziehung zwischen Geschlecht, sexueller Identitàt und Leistung auf dem College. Die Forscher haben aile neue Schiller des College von Alma den von Bern eingefuhrten und von Pelletier fur Quebec validierten Fragebogen ausftillen lassen. Abgesehen von den Zwittern scheinen die Ergebnisse die Hypothesen zu bestâtigen: der Erfolg im College hângt mehr vom Geschlecht ab als von der sexuellen Identitàt; aufierdem haben die Schiilerinnen mit richtiger "geschlechtsbezogener Mobilitât" den grôssten Erfolg. Uber eine einfache Abstandnahme gegeniiber der sozialen Regel (Transzendenz der geschlechtsbezogenen sozialen Rollen-verteilung) hinausgehend wird dièse Mobilitât zu einer Ubertretung dieser sozialen Regel

Increased insolation threshold for runaway greenhouse processes on Earth like planets

Because the solar luminosity increases over geological timescales, Earth climate is expected to warm, increasing water evaporation which, in turn, enhances the atmospheric greenhouse effect. Above a certain critical insolation, this destabilizing greenhouse feedback can "runaway" until all the oceans are evaporated. Through increases in stratospheric humidity, warming may also cause oceans to escape to space before the runaway greenhouse occurs. The critical insolation thresholds for these processes, however, remain uncertain because they have so far been evaluated with unidimensional models that cannot account for the dynamical and cloud feedback effects that are key stabilizing features of Earth's climate. Here we use a 3D global climate model to show that the threshold for the runaway greenhouse is about 375 W/m$^2$, significantly higher than previously thought. Our model is specifically developed to quantify the climate response of Earth-like planets to increased insolation in hot and extremely moist atmospheres. In contrast with previous studies, we find that clouds have a destabilizing feedback on the long term warming. However, subsident, unsaturated regions created by the Hadley circulation have a stabilizing effect that is strong enough to defer the runaway greenhouse limit to higher insolation than inferred from 1D models. Furthermore, because of wavelength-dependent radiative effects, the stratosphere remains cold and dry enough to hamper atmospheric water escape, even at large fluxes. This has strong implications for Venus early water history and extends the size of the habitable zone around other stars.Comment: Published in Nature. Online publication date: December 12, 2013. Accepted version before journal editing and with Supplementary Informatio

Eliciting risk preferences that predict risky health behaviour: A comparison of two approaches

Information on attitudes to risk could increase understanding of and explain risky health behaviors. We investigate two approaches to eliciting risk preferences in the health domain, a novel “indirect” lottery elicitation approach with health states as outcomes and a “direct” approach where respondents are asked directly about their willingness to take risks. We compare the ability of the two approaches to predict health-related risky behaviors in a general adult population. We also investigate a potential framing effect in the indirect lottery elicitation approach. We find that risk preferences elicited using the direct approach can better predict health-related risky behavior than those elicited using the indirect approach. Moreover, a seemingly innocuous change to the framing of the lottery question results in significantly different risk preference estimates, and conflicting conclusions about the ability of the indicators to predict risky health behaviors

Systems modelling predicts chronic inflammation and genomic instability prevent effective mitochondrial regulation during biological ageing

The regulation of mitochondrial turnover under conditions of stress occurs partly through the AMPK-NAD+-PGC1α-SIRT1 signalling pathway. This pathway can be affected by both genomic instability and chronic inflammation since these will result in an increased rate of NAD+ degradation through PARP1 and CD38 respectively. In this work we develop a computational model of this signalling pathway, calibrating and validating it against experimental data. The computational model is used to study mitochondrial turnover under conditions of stress and how it is affected by genomic instability, chronic inflammation and biological ageing in general. We report that the AMPK-NAD+-PGC1α-SIRT1 signalling pathway becomes less responsive with age and that this can prime for the accumulation of dysfunctional mitochondria

A dynamic network approach for the study of human phenotypes

The use of networks to integrate different genetic, proteomic, and metabolic datasets has been proposed as a viable path toward elucidating the origins of specific diseases. Here we introduce a new phenotypic database summarizing correlations obtained from the disease history of more than 30 million patients in a Phenotypic Disease Network (PDN). We present evidence that the structure of the PDN is relevant to the understanding of illness progression by showing that (1) patients develop diseases close in the network to those they already have; (2) the progression of disease along the links of the network is different for patients of different genders and ethnicities; (3) patients diagnosed with diseases which are more highly connected in the PDN tend to die sooner than those affected by less connected diseases; and (4) diseases that tend to be preceded by others in the PDN tend to be more connected than diseases that precede other illnesses, and are associated with higher degrees of mortality. Our findings show that disease progression can be represented and studied using network methods, offering the potential to enhance our understanding of the origin and evolution of human diseases. The dataset introduced here, released concurrently with this publication, represents the largest relational phenotypic resource publicly available to the research community.Comment: 28 pages (double space), 6 figure