Patient-specific prediction of long-term outcomes will change stroke rehabilitation for the better.

Stroke is the most common cause of neurological disability and yet our ability to predict long-term outcomes remains poor. The paper by Selles et al1 used upper limb outcomes from 450 patients with first-time ischaemic stroke to take a refreshingly different approach to the prediction problem. First, allowing repeated clinical measures to contribute to the prediction acknowledges what most clinicians already know—that rate of clinical change is helpful in prognostication. Second, rather than predict outcome at a single future time point, they have created likely recovery trajectories (with CIs) for individual patients. Third, access to this predictive model is freely available online, so that stroke services around the world can more accurately begin to make predictions of individual recovery. Although the current approach concerns upper limb recovery, the principle should apply to all domains

Complementary effects of cell wall degrading enzymes together with lactic acid fermentation on cassava tuber cell wall breakdown

Entrapment of starch granules within cassava parenchyma cells constitutes a major challenge in starch extraction from cassava tuber. This was addressed by applying cellulolytic and hemicellulolytic enzymes coupled with spontaneous lactic acid bacteria fermentation in the pre-treatment of wet milled cassava. The hydrolytic activities of the enzymes and pH lowering by the fermentation resulted in fragmentation of the cassava cell walls, with improved release of free starch granules. The residual cell wall material after the treatments was characterized by microscopy and gas chromatography. Lignified material was resistant to hydrolysis. Material that was not hydrolysed by the enzymes consisted of arabinose, galactose, rhamnose, xylose and glucose, with the latter two the most abundant. It appears that the gums and hemicelluloses were hydrolysed first, enabling subsequent hydrolysis of the cellulosic materials. The complementary effects of these treatments could improve wet milling extraction of cassava starch.SABMiller Africahttp://www.elsevier.com/locate/indcrop2017-11-30hb2016Food Scienc

Research Diary: A Tool for Scaffolding

Diaries have long been seen as tools for reflection in learning languages, and learning about teaching. Despite this recognition of the importance of narratives in diary writing, little attention has been paid to the role of research diaries in the process of learning about research, and learning how to be a researcher. During the author\u27s own research into the construction of teaching knowledge by pre-service trainees, she became aware that her research diary was scaffolding her own construction of research knowledge. In this article the author discusses the role of a research diary based on a socio-cultural theory of learning. The diary acts as the expert other in the scaffolding of research knowledge by the novice researcher. The discussion of the nature of the scaffolding and the role of diary writing draws on examples from the author\u27s research diary written during her doctoral studies

Precision measurements of g1g_1 of the proton and the deuteron with 6 GeV electrons

The inclusive polarized structure functions of the proton and deuteron, g1p and g1d, were measured with high statistical precision using polarized 6 GeV electrons incident on a polarized ammonia target in Hall B at Jefferson Laboratory. Electrons scattered at lab angles between 18 and 45 degrees were detected using the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS). For the usual DIS kinematics, Q^2>1 GeV^2 and the final-state invariant mass W>2 GeV, the ratio of polarized to unpolarized structure functions g1/F1 is found to be nearly independent of Q^2 at fixed x. Significant resonant structure is apparent at values of W up to 2.3 GeV. In the framework of perturbative QCD, the high-W results can be used to better constrain the polarization of quarks and gluons in the nucleon, as well as high-twist contributions

Measurement of Exclusive π0\pi^0 Electroproduction Structure Functions and their Relationship to Transversity GPDs

Exclusive $\pi^0$ electroproduction at a beam energy of 5.75 GeV has been measured with the Jefferson Lab CLAS spectrometer. Differential cross sections were measured at more than 1800 kinematic values in $Q^2$, $x_B$, $t$, and $\phi_\pi$, in the $Q^2$ range from 1.0 to 4.6 GeV$^2$,\ $-t$ up to 2 GeV$^2$, and $x_B$ from 0.1 to 0.58. Structure functions $\sigma_T +\epsilon \sigma_L, \sigma_{TT}$ and $\sigma_{LT}$ were extracted as functions of $t$ for each of 17 combinations of $Q^2$ and $x_B$. The data were compared directly with two handbag-based calculations including both longitudinal and transversity GPDs. Inclusion of only longitudinal GPDs very strongly underestimates $\sigma_T +\epsilon \sigma_L$ and fails to account for $\sigma_{TT}$ and $\sigma_{LT}$, while inclusion of transversity GPDs brings the calculations into substantially better agreement with the data. There is very strong sensitivity to the relative contributions of nucleon helicity flip and helicity non-flip processes. The results confirm that exclusive $\pi^0$ electroproduction offers direct experimental access to the transversity GPDs.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure