A Comparison of Fish Populations in Shallow Coastal Lagoons with Contrasting Shoalgrass (Halodule wrightii) Cover in the Northcentral Gulf of Mexico

A number of studies have examined the effects of reduced seagrass cover on local fish populations (e.g., Heck et al. 1989, Ferrell and Bell 1991, Hughes et al. 2002 and more), but few of those studies have focused on shoalgrass (e.g., Tolan et al. 1997, Rydene and Matheson 2003). We present a preliminary comparison of fish populations in three shallow coastal lagoons in the northcentral GOM that have varying levels of shoalgrass cover. Namely, we compare (1) abundances of individual species and the entire fish population, (2) fish population diversity, and (3) length-frequency distributions of the most abundant species

Predicting consistent foraging ecologies of migrating waterbirds: Using stable isotope and parasite measurements as indicators of landscape use

The emergence of novel human pathogens is frequently linked with zoonotic events and human-wildlife interactions that promote disease transmission. Consequently, surveillance of wildlife populations for candidate diseases that could spread to humans is beneficial, but requires widespread collections of numerous samples. A legitimate means to acquire large sample sizes of waterfowl is through cooperation between researchers and hunters, who also work in concert with natural resource managers, landowners, and agricultural entities -e.g., aquaculture facilities. In addition to understanding the occurrence and spread of parasites and pathogens by birds, these samples can be used to answer questions about the ecology of various waterbird species. Body mass and morphometric data on hunter-donated specimen are useful for understanding bird condition and other dynamics of birds; however, when breast meat is removed prior to the acquisition of specimen weight, samples might not be as desirable. Here, we evaluate the utility of data obtained from a bird species that might be targeted by hunters and subsequently used to learn about their disease dynamics. Lesser Scaup (Aythya affinis) collected at aquaculture facilities were assessed for their stable isotope concentrations and parasites communities to learn about the birds’ foraging ecology. Discriminant analyses designed to classify birds by the aquaculture pond type from which they were collected included isotope data, Principal Components derived from parasite community data of 7 types, and birds’ body mass. We compared these to Double-crested Cormorants (Nannopterum auritum) feeding on catfish and found the two waterbird species exhibited different infracommunities of parasites Furthermore, some scaup demonstrated fish aquaculture pond type fidelity. Bird body mass was an important metric to include in analytical models when all parasite datatypes were not available. However, the combination of stable isotope concentrations and parasite infracommunity data (that includes prevalence, abundance, volume, and energy use) in models resulted in host ecology differentiation equal or better than models where bird body mass was included. Hunter-derived samples should be encouraged as a means for sample acquisition and be considered as an approach for aquaculture-wildlife conflict management as the information that can be obtained through these samples is multifaceted

An occupational therapy intervention for residents with stroke related disabilities in UK care homes (OTCH): cluster randomised controlled trial

Objective To evaluate the clinical efficacy of an established programme of occupational therapy in maintaining functional activity and reducing further health risks from inactivity in care home residents living with stroke sequelae. Design Pragmatic, parallel group, cluster randomised controlled trial. Setting 228 care homes (>10 beds each), both with and without the provision of nursing care, local to 11 trial administrative centres across the United Kingdom. Participants 1042 care home residents with a history of stroke or transient ischaemic attack, including those with language and cognitive impairments, not receiving end of life care. 114 homes (n=568 residents, 64% from homes providing nursing care) were allocated to the intervention arm and 114 homes (n=474 residents, 65% from homes providing nursing care) to standard care (control arm). Participating care homes were randomised between May 2010 and March 2012. Intervention Targeted three month programme of occupational therapy, delivered by qualified occupational therapists and assistants, involving patient centred goal setting, education of care home staff, and adaptations to the environment. Main outcome measures Primary outcome at the participant level: scores on the Barthel index of activities of daily living at three months post-randomisation. Secondary outcome measures at the participant level: Barthel index scores at six and 12 months post-randomisation, and scores on the Rivermead mobility index, geriatric depression scale-15, and EuroQol EQ-5D-3L questionnaire, at all time points. Results 64% of the participants were women and 93% were white, with a mean age of 82.9 years. Baseline characteristics were similar between groups for all measures, personal characteristics, and diagnostic tests. Overall, 2538 occupational therapy visits were made to 498 participants in the intervention arm (mean 5.1 visits per participant). No adverse events attributable to the intervention were recorded. 162 (11%) died before the primary outcome time point, and 313 (30%) died over the 12 months of the trial. The primary outcome measure did not differ significantly between the treatment arms. The adjusted mean difference in Barthel index score at three months was 0.19 points higher in the intervention arm (95% confidence interval −0.33 to 0.70, P=0.48). Secondary outcome measures also showed no significant differences at all time points. Conclusions This large phase III study provided no evidence of benefit for the provision of a routine occupational therapy service, including staff training, for care home residents living with stroke related disabilities. The established three month individualised course of occupational therapy targeting stroke related disabilities did not have an impact on measures of functional activity, mobility, mood, or health related quality of life, at all observational time points. Providing and targeting ameliorative care in this clinically complex population requires alternative strategies

A study of the effectiveness of telepsychiatry-based culturally sensitive collaborative treatment of depressed Chinese Americans

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Chinese American patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) tend to underutilize mental health services and are more likely to seek help in primary care settings than from mental health specialists. Our team has reported that Culturally Sensitive Collaborative Treatment (CSCT) is effective in improving recognition and treatment engagement of depressed Chinese Americans in primary care. The current study builds on this prior research by incorporating telemedicine technology into the CSCT model.</p> <p>Methods/Design</p> <p>We propose a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the acceptability and effectiveness of a telepsychiatry-based culturally sensitive collaborative treatment (T-CSCT) intervention targeted toward Chinese Americans. Patients meeting the study's eligibility criteria will receive either treatment as usual or the intervention under investigation. The six-month intervention involves: 1) an initial psychiatric interview using a culturally sensitive protocol via videoconference; 2) eight scheduled phone visits with a care manager assigned to the patient, who will monitor the patient's progress, as well as medication side effects and dosage if applicable; and 3) collaboration between the patient's PCP, psychiatrist, and care manager. Outcome measures include depressive symptom severity as well as patient and PCP satisfaction with the telepsychiatry-based care management service.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>The study investigates the T-CSCT model, which we believe will increase the feasibility and practicality of the CSCT model by adopting telemedicine technology. We anticipate that this model will expand access to culturally competent psychiatrists fluent in patients' native languages to improve treatment of depressed minority patients in primary care settings.</p> <p>Trial Registration</p> <p><a href="http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00854542">NCT00854542</a></p

Adjunctive rifampicin for Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia (ARREST): a multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia is a common cause of severe community-acquired and hospital-acquired infection worldwide. We tested the hypothesis that adjunctive rifampicin would reduce bacteriologically confirmed treatment failure or disease recurrence, or death, by enhancing early S aureus killing, sterilising infected foci and blood faster, and reducing risks of dissemination and metastatic infection. METHODS: In this multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, adults (≥18 years) with S aureus bacteraemia who had received ≤96 h of active antibiotic therapy were recruited from 29 UK hospitals. Patients were randomly assigned (1:1) via a computer-generated sequential randomisation list to receive 2 weeks of adjunctive rifampicin (600 mg or 900 mg per day according to weight, oral or intravenous) versus identical placebo, together with standard antibiotic therapy. Randomisation was stratified by centre. Patients, investigators, and those caring for the patients were masked to group allocation. The primary outcome was time to bacteriologically confirmed treatment failure or disease recurrence, or death (all-cause), from randomisation to 12 weeks, adjudicated by an independent review committee masked to the treatment. Analysis was intention to treat. This trial was registered, number ISRCTN37666216, and is closed to new participants. FINDINGS: Between Dec 10, 2012, and Oct 25, 2016, 758 eligible participants were randomly assigned: 370 to rifampicin and 388 to placebo. 485 (64%) participants had community-acquired S aureus infections, and 132 (17%) had nosocomial S aureus infections. 47 (6%) had meticillin-resistant infections. 301 (40%) participants had an initial deep infection focus. Standard antibiotics were given for 29 (IQR 18-45) days; 619 (82%) participants received flucloxacillin. By week 12, 62 (17%) of participants who received rifampicin versus 71 (18%) who received placebo experienced treatment failure or disease recurrence, or died (absolute risk difference -1·4%, 95% CI -7·0 to 4·3; hazard ratio 0·96, 0·68-1·35, p=0·81). From randomisation to 12 weeks, no evidence of differences in serious (p=0·17) or grade 3-4 (p=0·36) adverse events were observed; however, 63 (17%) participants in the rifampicin group versus 39 (10%) in the placebo group had antibiotic or trial drug-modifying adverse events (p=0·004), and 24 (6%) versus six (2%) had drug interactions (p=0·0005). INTERPRETATION: Adjunctive rifampicin provided no overall benefit over standard antibiotic therapy in adults with S aureus bacteraemia. FUNDING: UK National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Parasites of Culled Resident and Migratory Double-Crested Cormorants

The Double-crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus: DCCO) is lethally managed in many states because of damage to farmed and recreational fisheries. Because a majority of birds culled in the U.S. are migratory cormorants, parasite assemblages may differ from resident birds, due to the diversity of feeding habitats and prey community assemblages encountered over their geographic range. We used multivariate techniques to identify if distinct assemblages and/or proportions of parasites could be identified at the genus level, among geographically different colonies of DCCO. Additionally, we assess the efficacy of models to predict the foraging location of a cormorant based on parasite assemblage. We assessed the intestinal parasites of 218 DCCO culled from 11 sites in Alabama, Minnesota, Mississippi, and Vermont. Intestines were frozen prior to analysis. Following thawing and defatting, contents including the endothelial layer, were collected from the entire length of the intestine. Parasites were identified to the lowest possible taxonomic level based on previously reported parasites of the Phalacrocorax genus in North America. The majority of parasites (87%) recovered were digenetic trematodes. Four species of trematode were found to change significantly in abundance (prevalence and/or intensity) with latitude and/or longitude. Similar diversity was noted for cestodes, nematodes, and acanthocephalans recovered from the samples

Influence of Double-Crested Cormorants on Food Web Productivity in Freshwater Ponds

Conflicts with wildlife are often based on the perceptions and concerns of citizens, industries, and managers. The gregarious nature of Double-crested Cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus; DCCO) makes their colonies highly conspicuous. Their feeding habits on forage and commercially important fishes have incited a human/wildlife conflict with this species. Colonies re-use roosting and nesting sites. In these areas guano deposits accumulate and are released into the environment where they have the potential to alter the food web through changes in productivity. This alteration can ultimately change the composition, abundance, and condition of fishery resources. We investigate the influence of bird-derived nutrients in a semi-controlled pond system. We used a combination of Seabird Guano® and Triple Super Phosphate ® to simulate nutrient excretions of P. auritus at densities of 40,000 birds water acre-1. Our experiment was conducted in 3 phases. Phase 1 simulated a low-impact treatment where nutrients were added once every three weeks. Samples of planktonic organisms were collected 12-48 hours before and after fertilization. Phase 2 was the high-impact treatment where fertilizer was added twice per week, and planktonic organisms were sampled weekly. Phase 3 was a recovery period where no additional nutrients were added to the system and samples were collected every 10 days. Six replicate collections occurred for each phase, and each set was comprised of six samples. Control ponds received no fertilizer and every effort was made to minimize cross-contamination of equipment and safety gear between fertilized and unfertilized ponds

Cost-Effectiveness of Two Small-Scale Salt Marsh Restoration Designs

Two small-scale Black needlerush (Juncus roemerianus) marsh restoration designs were examined for cost-effectiveness by analyzing a suite of morphological and physiological metrics, along with vegetated area over time. The restoration was conducted by harvesting marsh sods from an adjacent natural marsh and planting in the restoration site. Both restoration designs are on suitable scales for private property owners to conduct, but differed in initially planted coverage area. One design was fully planted (100% coverage of planted marsh sods; termed full density design) and the other design was planted at half the density of the fully planted design (50% coverage of planted marsh sods; termed half density design). We found no consistent differences in the measured metrics between the two restoration designs and few differences between restored sites and reference natural marsh stands. These findings suggest the potential similar functionality across all treatments. The only metrics with consistent differences among treatments were increased leaf nutrient and chlorophyll content in the restored plots when compared to natural stands. These differences are potentially attributable to nutrient-rich runoff from an adjacent parking lot to the restoration site. Total vegetated coverage area for half density plots was similar to full density plots at 2.1 years after planting. Cost-effectiveness analysis of both designs across eight differing restoration scenarios (based on hiring or donation of cost categories) resulted in half density plots having higher or equal cost-effectiveness in seven of the eight scenarios. Half density plots were approximately twice as cost-effective in scenarios with donated pre-planting site construction. Based on the similar vegetated area between the two designs and lower cost and restoration effort, we suggest the half density design as a more cost-effective restoration strategy than the full density design and should be considered for small-scale Black needlerush restoration projects. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved