A simple method for estimating the major nuclide fractional fission rates within light water and advanced gas cooled reactors

The standard method for calculating anti-neutrino emissions from a reactor involves knowing the fractional fission rates for the most important fissioning nuclides in the reactor. To calculate these rates requires detailed reactor physics calculations based upon the reactor design, fuel design, burnup dependent fuel composition, location of specific fuel assemblies in the core and detailed operational data from the reactor. This has only been published for a few reactors during specific time periods, whereas to be of practical use for anti-neutrino reactor monitoring it is necessary to be able to predict these on the publicly available information from any reactor, especially if using these data to subtract the anti-neutrino signal from other reactors to identify an undeclared reactor and monitor its operation. This paper proposes a method to estimate the fission fractions for a specific reactor based upon publicly available information and provides a database based upon a series of spent fuel inventory calculations using the FISPIN10 code and its associated data libraries

The Cosmic Infrared Background: Measurements and Implications

The cosmic infrared background records much of the radiant energy released by processes of structure formation that have occurred since the decoupling of matter and radiation following the Big Bang. In the past few years, data from the Cosmic Background Explorer mission provided the first measurements of this background, with additional constraints coming from studies of the attenuation of TeV gamma-rays. At the same time there has been rapid progress in resolving a significant fraction of this background with the deep galaxy counts at infrared wavelengths from the Infrared Space Observatory instruments and at submillimeter wavelengths from the Submillimeter Common User Bolometer Array instrument. This article reviews the measurements of the infrared background and sources contributing to it, and discusses the implications for past and present cosmic processes.Comment: 61 pages, incl. 9 figures, to be published in Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 2001, Vol. 3

Obesity and nutrition behaviours in Western and Palestinian outpatients with severe mental illness

Extent: 7p.Background: While people with severe mental illness have been found to be more overweight and obese in Western nations, it is unknown to what extent this occurs in Middle Eastern nations and which eating behaviours contribute to obesity in Middle Eastern nations. Method: A total of 665 responses were obtained from patients with serious mental illness attending out-patient clinics in Western developed countries (Germany, UK and Australia; n = 518) and Palestine (n = 147). Patients were evaluated by ICD-10 clinical diagnosis, anthropometric measurements and completed a self-report measure of frequencies of consuming different food items and reasons for eating. Nutritional habits were compared against a Western normative group. Results: More participants from Palestine were overweight or obese (62%) compared to Western countries (47%). In the Western sample, obese patients reported consuming more low-fat products (OR 2.54, 95% CI 1.02-6.33) but also greater eating due to negative emotions (OR 1.84, 95% CI 1.31-2.60) than patients with a healthy body-mass index. In contrast, obese patients from Palestine reported increased consumption of unhealthy snacks (OR 3.73 95% CI 1.16-12.00). Conclusion: Patients with mental illness have poorer nutritional habits than the general population, particularly in Western nations. Separate interventions to improve nutritional habits and reduce obesity are warranted between Western nations and Palestine.David Jakabek, Frances Quirk, Martin Driessen, Yousef Aljeesh and Bernhard T Baun

What happens if you single out? An experiment

We present an experiment investigating the effects of singling out an individual on trust and trustworthiness. We find that (a) trustworthiness falls if there is a singled out subject; (b) non-singled out subjects discriminate against the singled out subject when they are not responsible of the distinct status of this person; (c) under a negative frame, the singled out subject returns significantly less; (d) under a positive frame, the singled out subject behaves bimodally, either selecting very low or very high return rates. Overall, singling out induces a negligible effect on trust but is potentially disruptive for trustworthiness

A study protocol to investigate the management of depression and challenging behaviors associated with dementia in aged care settings

Background:&nbsp;The high occurrence and under-treatment of clinical depression and behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) within aged care settings is concerning, yet training programs aimed at improving the detection and management of these problems have generally been ineffective. This article presents a study protocol to evaluate a training intervention for facility managers/registered nurses working in aged care facilities that focuses on organisational processes and culture as well as knowledge, skills and self-efficacy. Methods. A Randomised Control Trial (RCT) will be implemented across 18 aged care facilities (divided into three conditions). Participants will be senior registered nurses and personal care attendants employed in the aged care facility. The first condition will receive the training program (Staff as Change Agents - Enhancing and Sustaining Mental Health in Aged Care), the second condition will receive the training program and clinical support, and the third condition will receive no intervention. Results: Pre-, post-, 6-month and 12-month follow-up measures of staff and residents will be used to demonstrate how upskilling clinical leaders using our transformational training approach, as well as the use of a structured screening, referral and monitoring protocol, can address the mental health needs of older people in residential care. Conclusions: The expected outcome of this study is the validation of an evidence-based training program to improve the management of depression and BPSD among older people in residential care settings by establishing routine practices related to mental health. This relatively brief but highly focussed training package will be readily rolled out to a larger number of residential care facilities at a relatively low cost.</div

Consistent phenological shifts in the making of a biodiversity hotspot: the Cape flora

Background The best documented survival responses of organisms to past climate change on short (glacial-interglacial) timescales are distributional shifts. Despite ample evidence on such timescales for local adaptations of populations at specific sites, the long-term impacts of such changes on evolutionary significant units in response to past climatic change have been little documented. Here we use phylogenies to reconstruct changes in distribution and flowering ecology of the Cape flora - South Africa's biodiversity hotspot - through a period of past (Neogene and Quaternary) changes in the seasonality of rainfall over a timescale of several million years. Results Forty-three distributional and phenological shifts consistent with past climatic change occur across the flora, and a comparable number of clades underwent adaptive changes in their flowering phenology (9 clades; half of the clades investigated) as underwent distributional shifts (12 clades; two thirds of the clades investigated). Of extant Cape angiosperm species, 14-41% have been contributed by lineages that show distributional shifts consistent with past climate change, yet a similar proportion (14-55%) arose from lineages that shifted flowering phenology. Conclusions Adaptive changes in ecology at the scale we uncover in the Cape and consistent with past climatic change have not been documented for other floras. Shifts in climate tolerance appear to have been more important in this flora than is currently appreciated, and lineages that underwent such shifts went on to contribute a high proportion of the flora's extant species diversity. That shifts in phenology, on an evolutionary timescale and on such a scale, have not yet been detected for other floras is likely a result of the method used; shifts in flowering phenology cannot be detected in the fossil record

Electronic learning can facilitate student performance in undergraduate surgical education: a prospective observational study

BACKGROUND: Our institution recently introduced a novel internet accessible computer aided learning (iCAL) programme to complement existing surgical undergraduate teaching methods. On graduation of the first full cycle of undergraduate students to whom this resource was available we assessed the utility of this new teaching facility. METHOD: The computer programme prospectively records usage of the system on an individual user basis. We evaluated the utilisation of the web-based programme and its impact on class ranking changes from an entry-test evaluation to an exit examination in surgery. RESULTS: 74.4% of students were able to access iCAL from off-campus internet access. The majority of iCAL usage (64.6%) took place during working hours (08:00–18:00) with little usage on the weekend (21.1%). Working hours usage was positively associated with improvement in class rank (P = 0.025, n = 148) but out-of hours usage was not (P = 0.306). Usage during weekdays was associated with improved rank (P = 0.04), whereas weekend usage was not (P = 0.504). There were no significant differences in usage between genders (P = 0.3). Usage of the iCAL system was positively correlated with improvement in class rank from the entry to the exit examination (P = 0.046). Students with lower ranks on entry examination, were found to use the computer system more frequently (P = 0.01). CONCLUSION: Electronic learning complements traditional teaching methods in undergraduate surgical teaching. Its is more frequently used by students achieving lower class ranking with traditional teaching methods, and this usage is associated with improvements in class ranking

X-ray Absorption and Reflection in Active Galactic Nuclei

X-ray spectroscopy offers an opportunity to study the complex mixture of emitting and absorbing components in the circumnuclear regions of active galactic nuclei, and to learn about the accretion process that fuels AGN and the feedback of material to their host galaxies. We describe the spectral signatures that may be studied and review the X-ray spectra and spectral variability of active galaxies, concentrating on progress from recent Chandra, XMM-Newton and Suzaku data for local type 1 AGN. We describe the evidence for absorption covering a wide range of column densities, ionization and dynamics, and discuss the growing evidence for partial-covering absorption from data at energies > 10 keV. Such absorption can also explain the observed X-ray spectral curvature and variability in AGN at lower energies and is likely an important factor in shaping the observed properties of this class of source. Consideration of self-consistent models for local AGN indicates that X-ray spectra likely comprise a combination of absorption and reflection effects from material originating within a few light days of the black hole as well as on larger scales. It is likely that AGN X-ray spectra may be strongly affected by the presence of disk-wind outflows that are expected in systems with high accretion rates, and we describe models that attempt to predict the effects of radiative transfer through such winds, and discuss the prospects for new data to test and address these ideas.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astronomy and Astrophysics Review. 58 pages, 9 figures. V2 has fixed an error in footnote

Genome-wide association and HLA fine-mapping studies identify risk loci and genetic pathways underlying allergic rhinitis

Allergic rhinitis is the most common clinical presentation of allergy, affecting 400 million people worldwide, with increasing incidence in westernized countries1,2. To elucidate the genetic architecture and understand the underlying disease mechanisms, we carried out a meta-analysis of allergic rhinitis in 59,762 cases and 152,358 controls of European ancestry and identified a total of 41 risk loci for allergic rhinitis, including 20 loci not previously associated with allergic rhinitis, which were confirmed in a replication phase of 60,720 cases and 618,527 controls. Functional annotation implicated genes involved in various immune pathways, and fine mapping of the HLA region suggested amino acid variants important for antigen binding. We further performed genome-wide association study (GWAS) analyses of allergic sensitization against inhalant allergens and nonallergic rhinitis, which suggested shared genetic mechanisms across rhinitis-related traits. Future studies of the identified loci and genes might identify novel targets for treatment and prevention of allergic rhinitis

Zymographic assay of plant diamine oxidase on entrapped peroxidase polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. A study of stability to proteolysis

A zymographic assay of diamine oxidase (DAO, histaminase, EC 1.4.3.6), based on a coupled peroxidase reaction, and its behavior at proteolysis in simulated gastric and intestinal conditions, are described. The DAO activity from a vegetal extract of Lathyrus sativus seedlings was directly determined on sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide electrophoretic gels containing entrapped horseradish peroxidase, with putrescine as substrate of histaminase and ortho-phenylenediamine as co-substrate of peroxidase. The accumulation of azo-aniline, as peroxidase-catalyzed oxidation product, led to well-defined yellow-brown bands on gels, with intensities corresponding to the enzymatic activity of DAO. After image analysis of gels, a linear dependency of DAO content (Coomassie-stained protein bands) and of its enzymatic activity (zymographic bands) with the concentration of the vegetal extract was obtained. In simulated gastric conditions (pH 1.2, 37 °C), the DAO from the vegetal extract lost its enzymatic activity before 15 min of incubation, either in the presence or absence of pepsin. The protein pattern (Coomassie-stained) revealed that the DAO content from the vegetal extract was kept almost constant in the simulated intestinal fluid (containing pancreatin or not), with a slight diminution in the presence of pancreatic proteases. After 10 h of incubation at 37 °C, the DAO enzymatic activity from the vegetal extract was 44.7% in media without pancreatin and 13.6% in the presence of pancreatin, whereas the purified DAO retained only 4.65% of its initial enzymatic activity in the presence of pancreatin