Cotton in the new millennium: advances, economics, perceptions and problems

Cotton is the most significant natural fibre and has been a preferred choice of the textile industry and consumers since the industrial revolution began. The share of man-made fibres, both regenerated and synthetic fibres, has grown considerably in recent times but cotton production has also been on the rise and accounts for about half of the fibres used for apparel and textile goods. To cotton’s advantage, the premium attached to the presence of cotton fibre and the general positive consumer perception is well established, however, compared to commodity man-made fibres and high performance fibres, cotton has limitations in terms of its mechanical properties but can help to overcome moisture management issues that arise with performance apparel during active wear. This issue of Textile Progress aims to: i. Report on advances in cotton cultivation and processing as well as improvements to conventional cotton cultivation and ginning. The processing of cotton in the textile industry from fibre to finished fabric, cotton and its blends, and their applications in technical textiles are also covered. ii. Explore the economic impact of cotton in different parts of the world including an overview of global cotton trade. iii. Examine the environmental perception of cotton fibre and efforts in organic and genetically-modified (GM) cotton production. The topic of naturally-coloured cotton, post-consumer waste is covered and the environmental impacts of cotton cultivation and processing are discussed. Hazardous effects of cultivation, such as the extensive use of pesticides, insecticides and irrigation with fresh water, and consequences of the use of GM cotton and cotton fibres in general on the climate are summarised and the effects of cotton processing on workers are addressed. The potential hazards during cotton cultivation, processing and use are also included. iv. Examine how the properties of cotton textiles can be enhanced, for example, by improving wrinkle recovery and reducing the flammability of cotton fibre

AD51B in Familial Breast Cancer

Common variation on 14q24.1, close to RAD51B, has been associated with breast cancer: rs999737 and rs2588809 with the risk of female breast cancer and rs1314913 with the risk of male breast cancer. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of RAD51B variants in breast cancer predisposition, particularly in the context of familial breast cancer in Finland. We sequenced the coding region of RAD51B in 168 Finnish breast cancer patients from the Helsinki region for identification of possible recurrent founder mutations. In addition, we studied the known rs999737, rs2588809, and rs1314913 SNPs and RAD51B haplotypes in 44,791 breast cancer cases and 43,583 controls from 40 studies participating in the Breast Cancer Association Consortium (BCAC) that were genotyped on a custom chip (iCOGS). We identified one putatively pathogenic missense mutation c.541C>T among the Finnish cancer patients and subsequently genotyped the mutation in additional breast cancer cases (n = 5259) and population controls (n = 3586) from Finland and Belarus. No significant association with breast cancer risk was seen in the meta-analysis of the Finnish datasets or in the large BCAC dataset. The association with previously identified risk variants rs999737, rs2588809, and rs1314913 was replicated among all breast cancer cases and also among familial cases in the BCAC dataset. The most significant association was observed for the haplotype carrying the risk-alleles of all the three SNPs both among all cases (odds ratio (OR): 1.15, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.11–1.19, P = 8.88 x 10−16) and among familial cases (OR: 1.24, 95% CI: 1.16–1.32, P = 6.19 x 10−11), compared to the haplotype with the respective protective alleles. Our results suggest that loss-of-function mutations in RAD51B are rare, but common variation at the RAD51B region is significantly associated with familial breast cancer risk

The hummingbird-plant community of a lowland Amazonian rainforest

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D176414 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Quality vs. quantity: energetic and nutritional trade-offs in parental provisioning strategies

1. When faced with increased brood demand, parent birds provisioning young in the nest can make a variety of adjustments to their foraging and food allocation strategies. Logical extensions of classic optimal foraging theory predict increased provisioning effort to larger broods to be accompanied by changes in load size, foraging distance from the nest, as well as possible changes in the type and size of prey delivered. 2. We assessed such behavioural adjustments and their consequences in pairs of European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) responding to a range of experimental brood sizes. Parents feeding larger broods increased their visit rates by spending less time in the nestbox and less time around the nestbox colony. High visit rates to larger broods were also associated with larger loads per visit and changes in the type of prey delivered to the nest. As a consequence, chicks in large and small broods receive 3. Parental energetic expenditure, measured through doubly labelled water analyses, showed no effect of the brood size treatment. The greater proportion of indigestible material per gram of food delivered to the larger experimental brood sizes (i.e. soil from the guts of earthworms) was probably responsible for the fact that these chicks grew at slower rates and fledged at lower body masses, although we cannot rule out the possibility of lower growth rates due to higher energetic costs of siblin 4. We discuss the adaptive significance of the provisioning trade-off between quantity and quality of food items delivered by parents to the nest, with reference to natural variation in foraging conditions and brood demand. [KEYWORDS: chick nutrition, diet choice, energetic costs, parental care, starlings]

Reference ranges of bone mineral density for women in southern England: the impact of local data on the diagnosis of osteoporosis.

The construction of reference ranges that accurately represent the population at large is essential for the correct identification of osteoporosis from bone mineral density (BMD) measurements. In this study, reference data supplied by the manufacturer of the Lunar DPX+ bone densitometer were compared with data obtained locally. Lumbar spine, proximal femur and total body BMD measurements were made in an age-stratified random sample of 702 Southampton women aged 20 to 89 years. Relevant demographic and medical data were recorded for each subject using a questionnaire. Reference curves of BMD (mean +/- SD) were plotted against age for each measurement site and were found to be higher than the manufacturer's reference values at all ages and sites. Exclusion of women with factors known to affect bone mass only served to increase this discrepancy. According to World Health Organisation definitions, osteoporosis may be identified from BMD values alone. Based upon neck of femur BMD values, 100 (14.8%) of the women in this study group were categorized as osteoporotic using local young normal reference data, compared with only 39 (5.8%) using the manufacturer's data. By normalizing for age distribution, these findings were extrapolated to the local population where it was predicted that 26.0% and 10.1% of females over 50 years of age would be classified as osteoporotic using the respective reference ranges. This study clearly illustrates how the numbers of women diagnosed as osteoporotic vary with the use of different reference populations