Climate readiness indicators for agriculture

Countries vary in their institutional technical and financial abilities to prepare for climate change in agriculture and to balance food security, adaptation, and mitigation goals.Indicators for climate readiness provide guidance to countries and enable monitoring progress. Readiness assessments can enable donors, investors and national decision-makers to identify where investments are needed or likely to be successful. Examples of climate readiness indicators are provided for five work areas: 1. governance and stakeholder engagement, 2. knowledge and information services, 3. climate-smart agricultural strategy and implementation frameworks, 4. national and subnational capabilities and 5. national information and accounting systems

Scaffolding as a Tool for Environmental Education in Early Childhood

This paper describes the process of “scaffolding” as a teaching strategy in early childhood education, and demonstrates how scaffolding can promote children’s learning about the natural environment. Examples of scaffolding are provided from seventy-four running record observations made over a two-year period in a nature-based preschool program. Qualitative analysis examined the extent to which scaffolding was used to support children’s learning about nature; the types of scaffolding strategies used by teachers; whether high- and low-support strategies were used in specific types of situations; the effectiveness of scaffolding; and what children learned when teachers engaged them in scaffolding. Examples illustrate specific pedagogical strategies used in scaffolding. Scaffolding was used relatively frequently within the program (21% of events analyzed), and inferential questioning was the most frequently used strategy. Analysis did not reveal a pattern of high- or low-support strategies used in specific types of situations, but teachers flexibly used a variety of scaffolding strategies to support children’s learning about the natural environment. Preparation of physical and social environments for effective scaffolding is discussed, as well as the role of scaffolding in socializing children to engage in a culture of inquiry

The formation of vortex loops (strings) in continuous phase transitions

The formation of vortex loops (global cosmic strings) in an O(2) linear sigma model in three spatial dimensions is analyzed numerically. For over-damped Langevin dynamics we find that defect production is suppressed by an interaction between correlated domains that reduces the effective spatial variation of the phase of the order field. The degree of suppression is sensitive to the quench rate. A detailed description of the numerical methods used to analyze the model is also reported.Comment: LaTeX, 17 pages, 6 eps figures 2 references and a footnote adde

US Cosmic Visions: New Ideas in Dark Matter 2017: Community Report

This white paper summarizes the workshop "U.S. Cosmic Visions: New Ideas in Dark Matter" held at University of Maryland on March 23-25, 2017.Comment: 102 pages + reference

Tumours of the thymus: a cohort study of prognostic factors from the European Society of Thoracic Surgeons database

OBJECTIVES A retrospective database was developed by the European Society of Thoracic Surgeons, collecting patients submitted to surgery for thymic tumours to analyse clinico-pathological prognostic predictors. METHODS A total of 2151 incident cases from 35 institutions were collected from 1990 to 2010. Clinical-pathological characteristics were analysed, including age, gender, associated myasthenia gravis stage (Masaoka), World Health Organization histology, type of thymic tumour [thymoma, thymic carcinoma (TC), neuroendocrine thymic tumour (NETT)], type of resection (complete/incomplete), tumour size, adjuvant therapy and recurrence. Primary outcome was overall survival (OS); secondary outcomes were the proportion of incomplete resections, disease-free survival and the cumulative incidence of recurrence (CIR). RESULTS A total of 2030 patients were analysed for OS (1798 thymomas, 191 TCs and 41 NETTs). Ten-year OS was 0.73 (95% confidence interval 0.69-0.75). Complete resection (R0) was achieved in 88% of the patients. Ten-year CIR was 0.12 (0.10-0.15). Predictors of shorter OS were increased age (P < 0-001), stage [III vs I HR 2.66, 1.80-3.92; IV vs I hazard ratio (HR) 4.41, 2.67-7.26], TC (HR 2.39, 1.68-3.40) and NETT (HR 2.59, 1.35-4.99) vs thymomas and incomplete resection (HR 1.74, 1.18-2.57). Risk of recurrence increased with tumour size (P = 0.003), stage (III vs I HR 5.67, 2.80-11.45; IV vs I HR 13.08, 5.70-30.03) and NETT (HR 7.18, 3.48-14.82). Analysis using a propensity score indicates that the administration of adjuvant therapy was beneficial in increasing OS (HR 0.69, 0.49-0.97) in R0 resections. CONCLUSIONS Masaoka stages III-IV, incomplete resection and non-thymoma histology showed a significant impact in increasing recurrence and in worsening survival. The administration of adjuvant therapy after complete resection is associated with improved surviva

A Solve-RD ClinVar-based reanalysis of 1522 index cases from ERN-ITHACA reveals common pitfalls and misinterpretations in exome sequencing

Purpose Within the Solve-RD project (https://solve-rd.eu/), the European Reference Network for Intellectual disability, TeleHealth, Autism and Congenital Anomalies aimed to investigate whether a reanalysis of exomes from unsolved cases based on ClinVar annotations could establish additional diagnoses. We present the results of the “ClinVar low-hanging fruit” reanalysis, reasons for the failure of previous analyses, and lessons learned. Methods Data from the first 3576 exomes (1522 probands and 2054 relatives) collected from European Reference Network for Intellectual disability, TeleHealth, Autism and Congenital Anomalies was reanalyzed by the Solve-RD consortium by evaluating for the presence of single-nucleotide variant, and small insertions and deletions already reported as (likely) pathogenic in ClinVar. Variants were filtered according to frequency, genotype, and mode of inheritance and reinterpreted. Results We identified causal variants in 59 cases (3.9%), 50 of them also raised by other approaches and 9 leading to new diagnoses, highlighting interpretation challenges: variants in genes not known to be involved in human disease at the time of the first analysis, misleading genotypes, or variants undetected by local pipelines (variants in off-target regions, low quality filters, low allelic balance, or high frequency). Conclusion The “ClinVar low-hanging fruit” analysis represents an effective, fast, and easy approach to recover causal variants from exome sequencing data, herewith contributing to the reduction of the diagnostic deadlock

Cardiopoietic cell therapy for advanced ischemic heart failure: results at 39 weeks of the prospective, randomized, double blind, sham-controlled CHART-1 clinical trial

Cardiopoietic cells, produced through cardiogenic conditioning of patients' mesenchymal stem cells, have shown preliminary efficacy. The Congestive Heart Failure Cardiopoietic Regenerative Therapy (CHART-1) trial aimed to validate cardiopoiesis-based biotherapy in a larger heart failure cohort