Street-level green spaces support a key urban population of the threatened Hispaniolan parakeet Psittacara chloropterus

While urbanisation remains a major threat to biodiversity, urban areas can sometimes play an important role in protecting threatened species, especially exploited taxa such as parrots. The Hispaniolan Parakeet Psittacara chloropterus has been extirpated across much of Hispaniola, including from most protected areas, yet Santo Domingo (capital city of the Dominican Republic) has recently been found to support the island’s densest remaining population. In 2019, we used repeated transects and point-counts across 60 1 km2 squares of Santo Domingo to examine the distribution of parakeets, identify factors that might drive local presence and abundance, and investigate breeding ecology. Occupancy models indicate that parakeet presence was positively related to tree species richness across the city. N-Mixture models show parakeet encounter rates were correlated positively with species richness of trees and number of discrete ‘green’ patches (> 100 m2) within the survey squares. Hispaniolan Woodpecker Melanerpes striatus, the main tree-cavity-producing species on Hispaniola, occurs throughout the city, but few parakeet nests are known to involve the secondary use of its or other cavities in trees/palms. Most parakeet breeding (perhaps 50–100 pairs) appears to occur at two colonies in old buildings, and possibly only a small proportion of the city’s 1500+ parakeets that occupy a single roost in street trees breed in any year. Our models emphasise the importance of parks and gardens in providing feeding resources for this IUCN Vulnerable species. Hispaniola’s urban centres may be strongholds for populations of parakeets and may even represent sources for birds to recolonise formerly occupied areas on the island

Focal-Plane Change Triggered Video Compression for Low-Power Vision Sensor Systems

Video sensors with embedded compression offer significant energy savings in transmission but incur energy losses in the complexity of the encoder. Energy efficient video compression architectures for CMOS image sensors with focal-plane change detection are presented and analyzed. The compression architectures use pixel-level computational circuits to minimize energy usage by selectively processing only pixels which generate significant temporal intensity changes. Using the temporal intensity change detection to gate the operation of a differential DCT based encoder achieves nearly identical image quality to traditional systems (4dB decrease in PSNR) while reducing the amount of data that is processed by 67% and reducing overall power consumption reduction of 51%. These typical energy savings, resulting from the sparsity of motion activity in the visual scene, demonstrate the utility of focal-plane change triggered compression to surveillance vision systems

Do Interventions Designed to Support Shared Decision-Making Reduce Health Inequalities? : A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Copyright: © 2014 Durand et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Background: Increasing patient engagement in healthcare has become a health policy priority. However, there has been concern that promoting supported shared decision-making could increase health inequalities. Objective: To evaluate the impact of SDM interventions on disadvantaged groups and health inequalities. Design: Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials and observational studies.Peer reviewe

A half-site multimeric enzyme achieves its cooperativity without conformational changes

Cooperativity is a feature many multimeric proteins use to control activity. Here we show that the bacterial heptose isomerase GmhA displays homotropic positive and negative cooperativity among its four protomers. Most similar proteins achieve this through conformational changes: GmhA instead employs a delicate network of hydrogen bonds, and couples pairs of active sites controlled by a unique water channel. This network apparently raises the Lewis acidity of the catalytic zinc, thus increasing the activity at one active site at the cost of preventing substrate from adopting a reactive conformation at the paired negatively cooperative site – a “half-site” behavior. Our study establishes the principle that multimeric enzymes can exploit this cooperativity without conformational changes to maximize their catalytic power and control. More broadly, this subtlety by which enzymes regulate functions could be used to explore new inhibitor design strategies

Differences in MEF2 and NFAT Transcriptional Pathways According to Human Heart Failure Aetiology

BACKGROUND:Ca(2+) handling machinery modulates the activation of cardiac transcription pathways involved in heart failure (HF). The present study investigated the effect of HF aetiology on Ca(+2) handling proteins and NFAT1, MEF2C and GATA4 (transcription factors) in the same cardiac tissue. METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:A total of 83 hearts from ischemic (ICM, n = 43) and dilated (DCM, n = 31) patients undergoing heart transplantation and controls (CNT, n = 9) were analyzed by western blotting. Subcellular distribution was analyzed by fluorescence and electron microscopy. When we compared Ca(+2) handling proteins according to HF aetiology, ICM showed higher levels of calmodulin (24%, p<0.01), calcineurin (26%, p<0.01) and Ca(2+)/Calmodulin-dependent kinase II (CaMKIIδ(b) nuclear isoform 62%, p<0.001) than the CNT group. However, these proteins in DCM did not significantly increase. Furthermore, ICM showed a significant elevation in MEF2C (33%, p<0.01), and GATA4 (49%, p<0.05); also NFAT1 (66%, p<0.001) was increased, producing the resultant translocation of this transcriptional factor into the nuclei. These results were supported by fluorescence and electron microscopy analysis. Whereas, DCM only had a significant increase in GATA4 (52%, p<0.05). Correlations between NFAT1 and MEF2C in both groups (ICM r = 0.38 and DCM r = 0.59, p<0.05 and p<0.01, respectively) were found; only ICM showed a correlation between GATA4 and NFAT1 (r = 0.37, p<0.05). CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE:This study shows an increase of Ca(2+) handling machinery synthesis and their cardiac transcription pathways in HF, being more markedly increased in ICM. Furthermore, there is a significant association between MEF2, NFAT1 and GATA4. These proteins could be therapeutic targets to improve myocardial function

Socioeconomic disparities in behavioral risk factors and health outcomes by gender in the Republic of Korea

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Few studies have examined socioeconomic disparities in health and behavioral risk factors by gender in Asian countries and in South Korea, specifically. We investigated the relationship between socioeconomic position (education, income, and occupation) and subjective and acute and chronic health outcomes and behavioral risk factors by gender, and compared results from 1998 and 2005, in the Republic of Korea.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We examined data from a nationally representative stratified random sample of 4213 men and 4618 women from the 1998 Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, and 8289 men and 8827 women from the 2005 Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey using General Linear Modeling and multiple logistic regression methods.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Controlling for behavioral risk factors (smoking, drinking, obesity, exercise, and sleep), those in lower socioeconomic positions had poorer health outcomes in both self-reported acute and chronic disease and subjective measures; differences were especially pronounced among women. A socioeconomic gradient for education and income was found for both men and women for morbidity and self-reported health status, but the gradient was more pronounced in women. In 1998, the odds ratios (ORs) of higher morbidity for illiterate vs. college educated females was 5.4:1 and 1.9:1 for females in the lowest income quintile vs. the highest. The OR for education decreased in 2005 to 2.9:1 and that for income quintiles remained the same at 1.9:1. The OR of lower self-reported health status for illiterate vs. college educated females was 2.9:1 and 1.6:1 for females in the lowest income quintile vs. the highest in 1998, and 3.3:1 and 2.3:1 in 2005.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Among Korean adults, men and women in lower socioeconomic position, as denoted by education, income, and somewhat less by occupation, experience significantly higher levels of morbidity and lower self-reported health status, even after controlling for standard behavioral risk factors. Disparities were more pronounced for women than for men. Efforts to reduce health disparities in South Korea require attention to the root causes of socioeconomic inequality and gender differences in the impact of socioeconomic position on health.</p

Circulating DNA: Diagnostic Tool and Predictive Marker for Overall Survival of NSCLC Patients

PURPOSE: The purpose of our study was to determine whether the amounts of circulating DNA (cDNA) could discriminate between NSCLC patients and healthy individuals and assess its value as a prognostic marker of this disease. METHODS: We conducted a study of 309 individuals and the cDNA levels were assessed through real-time PCR methodology. RESULTS: We found increased cDNA levels in NSCLC patients compared to control individuals. We also found a decreased overall survival time in patients presenting high cDNA levels, when compared to lower cDNA concentrations. CONCLUSIONS: Quantification of cDNA may be a good tool for NSCLC detection with potential for clinical applicability

Distribution Patterns of Infection with Multiple Types of Human Papillomaviruses and Their Association with Risk Factors

Background: Infection with multiple types of human papillomavirus (HPV) is one of the main risk factors associated with the development of cervical lesions. In this study, cervical samples collected from 1, 810 women with diverse sociocultural backgrounds, who attended to their cervical screening program in different geographical regions of Colombia, were examined for the presence of cervical lesions and HPV by Papanicolau testing and DNA PCR detection, respectively. Principal Findings: The negative binomial distribution model used in this study showed differences between the observed and expected values within some risk factor categories analyzed. Particularly in the case of single infection and coinfection with more than 4 HPV types, observed frequencies were smaller than expected, while the number of women infected with 2 to 4 viral types were higher than expected. Data analysis according to a negative binomial regression showed an increase in the risk of acquiring more HPV types in women who were of indigenous ethnicity (+37.8%), while this risk decreased in women who had given birth more than 4 times (-31.1%), or were of mestizo (-24.6%) or black (-40.9%) ethnicity. Conclusions: According to a theoretical probability distribution, the observed number of women having either a single infection or more than 4 viral types was smaller than expected, while for those infected with 2-4 HPV types it was larger than expected. Taking into account that this study showed a higher HPV coinfection rate in the indigenous ethnicity, the role of underlying factors should be assessed in detail in future studies.This project was funded by Asociacion Investigacion Solidaria SADAR, Caja Navarra (Navarra, Spain) and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) (Project 08-CAP2-0609)