Veranderingen in avifauna en flora van de noordelijke Gelderse Vallei

Zowel in het begin van de jaren 1970 (voor vogels) en rond 1980 (voor planten) als in 2002 zijn inventarisaties uitgevoerd in het noordwesten van de provincie Gelderland in de gemeenten Nijkerk, Putten en Barneveld. In grote lijnen is het oorspronkelijke landschap hier nog steeds zichtbaar. Door de inventarisaties te vergelijken werd het mogelijk om grote veranderingen in biodiversiteit vast te stellen. Het gebied lijkt representatief te zijn voor de ontwikkeling van natuurwaarden in het landelijk gebie

Alendronate or alfacalcidol in glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis

BACKGROUND: Treatment with glucocorticoids is associated with bone loss starting soon after therapy is initiated and an increased risk of fracture. METHODS: We performed a randomized, double-placebo, double-blind clinical trial of 18 months' duration among patients with a rheumatic disease who were starting glucocorticoids at a daily dose that was equivalent to at least 7.5 mg of prednisone. A total of 201 patients were assigned to receive either alendronate (10 mg) and a placebo capsule of alfacalcidol daily or alfacalcidol (1 mu g) and a placebo tablet of alendronate daily. The primary outcome was the change in bone mineral density of the lumbar spine in 18 months; the secondary outcome was the incidence of morphometric vertebral deformities. RESULTS: A total of 100 patients received alendronate, and 101 received alfacalcidol; 163 patients completed the study. The bone mineral density of the lumbar spine increased by 2.1 percent in the alendronate group (95 percent confidence interval, 1.1 to 3.1 percent) and decreased by 1.9 percent in the alfacalcidol group (95 percent confidence interval, -3.1 to -0.7 percent). At 18 months, the mean difference of change in bone mineral density between the two groups was 4.0 percent (95 percent confidence interval, 2.4 to 5.5 percent). Three patients in the alendronate group had a new vertebral deformity, as compared with eight patients in the alfacalcidol group (of whom three had symptomatic vertebral fractures) (hazard ratio, 0.4; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.1 to 1.4). CONCLUSIONS: During this 18-month trial in patients with rheumatic diseases, alendronate was more effective in the prevention of glucocorticoid-induced bone loss than was alfacalcidol

Safe food and feed through an integrated toolbox for mycotoxin management: the MyToolBox approach

There is a pressing need to mobilise the wealth of knowledge from the international mycotoxin research conductedover the past 25-30 years, and to perform cutting-edge research where knowledge gaps still exist. This knowledgeneeds to be integrated into affordable and practical tools for farmers and food processors along the chain inorder to reduce the risk of mycotoxin contamination of crops, feed and food. This is the mission of MyToolBox – a four-year project which has received funding from the European Commission. It mobilises a multi-actorpartnership (academia, farmers, technology small and medium sized enterprises, food industry and policystakeholders) to develop novel interventions aimed at achieving a significant reduction in crop losses due tomycotoxin contamination. Besides a field-to-fork approach, MyToolBox also considers safe use options ofcontaminated batches, such as the efficient production of biofuels. Compared to previous efforts of mycotoxin reduction strategies, the distinguishing feature of MyToolBox is to provide the recommended measures to theend users along the food and feed chain in a web-based MyToolBox platform (e-toolbox). The project focuseson small grain cereals, maize, peanuts and dried figs, applicable to agricultural conditions in the EU and China. Crop losses using existing practices are being compared with crop losses after novel pre-harvest interventionsincluding investigation of genetic resistance to fungal infection, cultural control (e.g. minimum tillage or cropdebris treatment), the use of novel biopesticides suitable for organic farming, competitive biocontrol treatment and development of novel modelling approaches to predict mycotoxin contamination. Research into post-harvestmeasures includes real-time monitoring during storage, innovative sorting of crops using vision-technology, novelmilling technology and studying the effects of baking on mycotoxins at an industrial scale

Vicinal Surfaces and the Calogero-Sutherland Model

A miscut (vicinal) crystal surface can be regarded as an array of meandering but non-crossing steps. Interactions between the steps are shown to induce a faceting transition of the surface between a homogeneous Luttinger liquid state and a low-temperature regime consisting of local step clusters in coexistence with ideal facets. This morphological transition is governed by a hitherto neglected critical line of the well-known Calogero-Sutherland model. Its exact solution yields expressions for measurable quantities that compare favorably with recent experiments on Si surfaces.Comment: 4 pages, revtex, 2 figures (.eps

Pulsed Molecular Optomechanics in Plasmonic Nanocavities: From Nonlinear Vibrational Instabilities to Bond-Breaking

Small numbers of surface-bound molecules are shown to behave as would be expected for opto-mechanical oscillators placed inside plasmonic nano-cavities that support extreme confinement of optical fields. Pulsed Raman scattering reveals superlinear Stokes emission above a threshold, arising from the stimulated vibrational pumping of molecular bonds under pulsed excitation shorter than the phonon decay time, and agreeing with pulsed optomechanical quantum theory. Reaching the parametric instability (equivalent to a phonon laser or ‘phaser’ regime) is however hindered by motion of gold atoms and molecular reconfiguration at phonon occupations approaching unity. We show how this irreversible bond breaking can ultimately limit the exploitation of molecules as quantum mechanical oscillators, but accesses optically-driven chemistry

Caring for Children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder:Factors Associating with Health- and Care-Related Quality of Life of the Caregivers

This study investigated the association of child, caregiver, and caregiving measurements with the quality of life (QoL) in 81 caregivers (mostly parents) of clinically referred children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We used the EuroQol five-dimensional (EQ-5D) questionnaire and the care-related QoL questionnaire (CarerQol) to respectively assess health-related QoL and care-related QoL. Health-related QoL was associated with the caregiver's internalizing problems and adaptive coping, explaining 38% of the variance. Parenting stress and adaptive coping were associated with the care-related QoL and explained 60% of the variance. Child variables were not associated with the caregiver's health- and care-related QoL if caregiver and caregiving variables were taken into account. Findings indicate the importance of the caregiver's mental health, coping, and parenting stress in caring for children with ASD

Interrogating Nanojunctions Using Ultraconfined Acoustoplasmonic Coupling

Single nanoparticles are shown to develop a localized acoustic resonance, the bouncing mode, when placed on a substrate. If both substrate and nanoparticle are noble metals, plasmonic coupling of the nanoparticle to its image charges in the film induces tight light confinement in the nanogap. This yields ultrastrong “acoustoplasmonic” coupling with a figure of merit 7 orders of magnitude higher than conventional acousto-optic modulators. The plasmons thus act as a local vibrational probe of the contact geometry. A simple analytical mechanical model is found to describe the bouncing mode in terms of the nanoscale structure, allowing transient pump-probe spectroscopy to directly measure the contact area for individual nanoparticles.This work is supported by UK EPSRC grants EP/G060649/1, EP/L027151/1 and ERC grant LINASS 320503, as well as the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability (FB, YdV-IR, JM), the Dr Manmohan Singh Scholarship from St John’s College (RC)

De consultatie-liaisonpsychiatrie in de Belgische ziekenhuizen van de eenentwintigste eeuw : quo vadis?

In een tijd waarin de geneeskunde zich uitsplitst in een groeiend aantal specialismen, subspecialismen en superspecialismen is er in de algemene en de universitaire ziekenhuizen een toenemende nood aan multidisciplinaire samenwerking. Deze vorm van samenwerking is nodig om hoogstaande holistische zorg te blijven verlenen aan de patiënt als centrale figuur in het zorgproces. De technologische mogelijkheden in de geneeskundige zorg nemen toe, maar er is een belangrijke comorbiditeit tussen de medische aandoeningen. De consultatie-liaisonpsychiatrie (CLP) is een van de disciplines die hierop inspeelt. Deze discipline focust vanuit een multidisciplinaire en integrale zorgvisie op de psychiatrische diagnostiek en behandeling van patiënten met psychiatrische en somatische comorbiditeit die hiervoor behandeld en opgevolgd worden in een algemeen ziekenhuis. Dit artikel wil een overzicht geven van de functies van de CLP zowel binnen als buiten het ziekenhuis en licht het historische en huidige Belgische beleid en de wetgeving ter zake toe. Er worden ook aanbevelingen geformuleerd voor de toekomst en men pleit voor de implementatie van de CLP als een volwaardige en structurele klinische activiteit en opdracht in de algemene ziekenhuizen