1,784 research outputs found
Ferguson-Smith, Malcolm: transcript of a video interview (06-Jun-2015)
No full textInterview with Professor Malcolm Ferguson-Smith, conducted by Ms Emma M. Jones, for the History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group, 06 June 2015, in Glasgow. Transcribed by Mrs Debra Gee, and edited by Professor Tilli Tansey and Mr Alan Yabsley. The project management was undertaken by Mr Adam Wilkinson. Professor Malcolm Ferguson-Smith (b. 1931) is Emeritus Professor of Pathology, University of Cambridge. He graduated in medicine at Glasgow University in 1955 and, while undertaking postgraduate training there in pathology, was introduced to research on sex chromatin under Bernard Lennox. An interest in Klinefelter’s syndrome in 1957 to 1958 led to his appointment as Fellow in Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, in 1959, where he established the first chromosome diagnostic service in the USA, and undertook cytogenetic research into Turner syndrome. Research interests include molecular cytogenetics, karyotype evolution, vertebrate sex determination and comparative genomics. He is joint author of 'Essential Medical Genetics'.The History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group is funded by the Wellcome Trust, which is a registered charity (no. 210183). The current interview has been funded by the Wellcome Trust Strategic Award entitled “Makers of modern biomedicine: testimonies and legacy” (2012-2017; awarded to Professor Tilli Tansey)
Supplemental Material, Suppl_Tables_1_and_2 - Determining the Validity and Accuracy of Multiple Activity-Tracking Devices in Controlled and Free-Walking Conditions
No full textSupplemental Material, Suppl_Tables_1_and_2 for Determining the Validity and Accuracy of Multiple Activity-Tracking Devices in Controlled and Free-Walking Conditions by Daniel V. Gaz, Thomas M. Rieck, Nolan W. Peterson, Jennifer A. Ferguson, Darrell R. Schroeder, Heather A. Dunfee, Jill M. Henderzahs-Mason and Philip T. Hagen in American Journal of Health Promotion</p
"The honor of firing before His Majesty": Patrick Ferguson's will and the Royal Armouries’ Ferguson rifle
No full textPatrick Ferguson (1744-80) designed the first breech-loading rifle to be used by the British Army. In November 2000, the Royal Armouries purchased an early example, formerly in the possession of the Fergusons of Pitfour, descendants of Patrick's younger brother, George. Patrick Ferguson's will has helped the author identify the Royal Armouries' Ferguson Rifle as the one which Patrick Ferguson used when he demonstrated it before George III and Queen Charlotte at Windsor in 1776
The sticky resting box, a new tool for studying resting behaviour of Afrotropical malaria vectors
No full textBackground:
Monitoring densities of adult mosquito populations is a major challenge in efforts to evaluate the epidemiology of mosquito-borne diseases, and their response to vector control interventions. In the case of malaria, collection of outdoor-resting Anophelines is rarely incorporated into surveillance and control, partially due to the lack of standardized collection tools. Such an approach, however, is increasingly important to investigate possible changes in mosquito behaviour in response to the scale up of Insecticide Treated Nets and Indoor Residual Spraying. In this study we evaluated the Sticky Resting Box (SRB) - i.e. a sticky variant of previously investigated mosquito Resting Box, which allows passive collection of mosquitoes entering the box – and compared its performance against traditional methods for indoor and outdoor resting mosquito sampling.<p></p>
Methods:
Daily collections were carried out in two neighbouring villages of Burkina Faso during rainy season 2011 and dry season 2012 by SRB located indoors and outdoors, and by Back-Pack aspiration inside houses (BP) and in ad hoc built outdoor pit-shelters (PIT).<p></p>
Results:
Overall, almost 20,000 Culicidae specimens belonging to 16 species were collected and morphologically identified. Malaria vectors included Anopheles coluzzii (53%), An. arabiensis (12%), An. gambiae s.s. (2.0%) and An. funestus (4.5%). The diversity of species collected in the two villages was similar for SRB and PIT collections outdoors, and significantly higher for SRB than for BP indoors. The population dynamics of An. gambiae s.l. mosquitoes, as obtained by SRB-collections was significantly correlated with those obtained by the traditional methods. The predicted mean estimates of An. gambiae s.l. specimens/sampling-unit/night-of-collections was 6- and 5-times lower for SRB than for BP indoors and PIT outdoors, respectively.<p></p>
Conclusions:
Overall, the daily performance of SRB in terms of number of malaria vectors/trap was lower than that of traditionally used approaches for in- and outdoor collections. However, unlike these methods, SRB could be set up to collect mosquitoes passively over at least a week. This makes SRB a promising tool for passively monitoring anopheline resting populations, with data presented here providing guidance for how to set up SRB-based collections to acquire information comparable to those obtained with other methods.<p></p>
Increasing the region of attraction in DC microgrids
No full textBased on the port-Hamiltonian framework, this paper proposes a novel control scheme for stabilising the voltage in DC networks affected by (i) unknown ZIP-loads, i.e., nonlinear loads consisting of the parallel combination of constant impedance (Z), current (I) and power (P) load types, and (ii) unknown (but bounded) time-varying disturbances. Differently from the results existing in the literature, where restrictive (sufficient) conditions on the load parameters, voltage trajectory and voltage reference are assumed to be satisfied, this is the first paper (to the best of our knowledge) proposing a controller that relaxes such conditions and guarantees the exponential stability of the desired equilibrium point, whose region of attraction can be increased by simply tuning the control gains. In the case the network is affected by unknown time-varying disturbances, local input-to-state stability (l-ISS) is ensured. Furthermore, if non-ideal P-loads are considered, excluding the unrealistic possibility that the load absorbs infinite current when the voltage approaches zero, the aforementioned stability results hold globally.(c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Dietary nitrate increases arginine availability and protects mitochondrial complex I and energetics in the hypoxic rat heart
No full textHypoxic exposure is associated with impaired cardiac energetics in humans and altered mitochondrial function, with suppressed complex I-supported respiration, in rat heart. This response might limit reactive oxygen species generation, but at the cost of impaired electron transport chain (ETC) activity. Dietary nitrate supplementation improves mitochondrial efficiency and can promote tissue oxygenation by enhancing blood flow. We therefore hypothesised that ETC dysfunction, impaired energetics and oxidative damage in the hearts of rats exposed to chronic hypoxia could be alleviated by sustained administration of a moderate dose of dietary nitrate. Male Wistar rats (n = 40) were given water supplemented with 0.7 mmol l(-1) NaCl (as control) or 0.7 mmol l(-1) NaNO3, elevating plasma nitrate levels by 80%, and were exposed to 13% O2 (hypoxia) or normoxia (n = 10 per group) for 14 days. Respiration rates, ETC protein levels, mitochondrial density, ATP content and protein carbonylation were measured in cardiac muscle. Complex I respiration rates and protein levels were 33% lower in hypoxic/NaCl rats compared with normoxic/NaCl controls. Protein carbonylation was 65% higher in hearts of hypoxic rats compared with controls, indicating increased oxidative stress, whilst ATP levels were 62% lower. Respiration rates, complex I protein and activity, protein carbonylation and ATP levels were all fully protected in the hearts of nitrate-supplemented hypoxic rats. Both in normoxia and hypoxia, dietary nitrate suppressed cardiac arginase expression and activity and markedly elevated cardiac l-arginine concentrations, unmasking a novel mechanism of action by which nitrate enhances tissue NO bioavailability. Dietary nitrate therefore alleviates metabolic abnormalities in the hypoxic heart, improving myocardial energetics
De afsluiting van het Haringvliet
No full textIr. H. A. Ferguson - Ten geleide ** H. J. Stuvel - BoIwerk en hoafdkraan ** Ir. P. Santema - De Haringvlietafsluiting aIs instrument vaor regionalewaterbeheersing in Zuidwest-Nedefland ** Prof. ir. P. A. van de Velde - Het ontwerp in hoofdlijnen vaor de uitwateringssluis ** H. J . Stuvel - De kraan van de Delta ** Ir. J. E. Prins - Haringvlietproject stuwde waterloopkundig ondefzoek naar hager plan ** lr. F. Spaargaren en iT. J. J. Vinje - Waterloopkundig onderzoek ten behoeve van vormgeving kunstwerk, vorm bouwput en vonn sluitgat ** H. J. Stroband, ing. - De'Deltar' ** Ir. P. H. van der Weele- De bodembescherming ter weerszijden van de spuisluizen ** W. Drooger - Mechanisch zinken ** Ir. C. A. ZuMerwijk - 'Grootgrondverzet' in het Haringvliet ** Ir. P. Blokland - De problemen van de schaalvergroting bij het ontwerpen en bouwen van de spnisluis in het Haringvliet ** H. J. Stuvel - De produktie van de nablaliggers ** Ir. A. van Dam en ir. Ph. Diderich - Terugblik op een inspirerende opdracht ** Ir. drs. H. Kuiper - De segmentschuiven met elektro-hydraulische aandrijving ** fr. M. Geleedst en ir. W. A. Venis - OnderLoek naar het dynamisch gedrag van de Haringvlietsluis ** Ir. R.I. Schor - De vervaardiging van de schuiven ** Ir. J. ter Brugge - De montage van de schuiven ** Ir. P. H. van der Weele - De kabelbaan ** Ir. T. G. van der Meer - De sluiling van het Rak van Scheelhoek ** Ir. A. 1. Woestenenk - Bijzondere toerassing van zandasfalt in de waterbouw ** Ir. J.J. Pilon- De Hydrometische begeleiding van de Haringvlietwerken ** W. A. A. van Eyden en ir. F. Langeweg - De functie van de Haringvlietsluizen binnen het waterbeheersingssysteem van het noordelijk Deltabekken ** Prof. ir. P. Ph. Jansen - Een historisch gebeurenDeltawerke
Eye movements reveal rapid concurrent access to factual and counterfactual interpretations of the world
No full textImagining a counterfactual world using conditionals (e.g., If Joanne had remembered her umbrella . . .) is common in everyday language. However, such utterances are likely to involve fairly complex reasoning processes to represent both the explicit hypothetical conjecture and its implied factual meaning. Online research into these mechanisms has so far been limited. The present paper describes two eye movement studies that investigated the time-course with which comprehenders can set up and access factual inferences based on a realistic counterfactual context. Adult participants were eye-tracked while they read short narratives, in which a context sentence set up a counterfactual world (If . . . then . . .), and a subsequent critical sentence described an event that was either consistent or inconsistent with the implied factual world. A factual consistent condition (Because . . . then . . .) was included as a baseline of normal contextual integration. Results showed that within a counterfactual scenario, readers quickly inferred the implied factual meaning of the discourse. However, initial processing of the critical word led to clear, but distinct, anomaly detection responses for both contextually inconsistent and consistent conditions. These results provide evidence that readers can rapidly make a factual inference from a preceding counterfactual context, despite maintaining access to both counterfactual and factual interpretations of events
Larval colonisation and recruitment in the Pacific giant salamander (Dicamptodon tenebrosus) in British Columbia
No full textDicamptodon tenebrosus is a species at risk in Canada and little is known about its ability to recover from disturbance at any scale. I tested whether stream-dwelling larvae are capable of recolonising regions subjected to small disturbances (25- to 40-m artificially depleted reaches) within 1 year, and compared the contributions of larval dispersal and adult reproduction to repopulation of barren areas. Numerical recovery from depletions in these stream sections was predicted to take 6-42 months. Only 4-5% of larvae in reaches adjacent to the depleted zones became colonists in 13 months. Colonisation occurred both by upstream and downstream movements and by larvae of different sizes. Local reproduction appears to be a more effective means of repopulating an area than larval immigration. In one reproductive event, an adult female could provide an equal or greater number of colonists than is supplied by neighbouring stream sections holding 200+ larvae
Establishment of a self-propagating population of the African malaria vector Anopheles arabiensis under semi-field conditions
No full textBackground: The successful control of insect disease vectors relies on a thorough understanding of their ecology and behaviour. However, knowledge of the ecology of many human disease vectors lags behind that of agricultural pests. This is partially due to the paucity of experimental tools for investigating their ecology under natural conditions without risk of exposure to disease. Assessment of vector life-history and demographic traits under natural conditions has also been hindered by the inherent difficulty of sampling these seasonally and temporally varying populations with the limited range of currently available tools. Consequently much of our knowledge of vector biology comes from studies of laboratory colonies, which may not accurately represent the genetic and behavioural diversity of natural populations. Contained semi-field systems (SFS) have been proposed as more appropriate tools for the study of vector ecology. SFS are relatively large, netting-enclosed, mesocosms in which vectors can fly freely, feed on natural plant and vertebrate host sources, and access realistic resting and oviposition sites.
Methods: A self-replicating population of the malaria vector Anopheles arabiensis was established within a large field cage (21 x 9.1 x 7.1 m) at the Ifakara Health Institute, Tanzania that mimics the natural habitat features of the rural village environments where these vectors naturally occur. Offspring from wild females were used to establish this population whose life-history, behaviour and demography under semi-field conditions was monitored over 24 generations.
Results: This study reports the first successful establishment and maintenance of an African malaria vector population under SFS conditions for multiple generations (> 24). The host-seeking behaviour, time from blood feeding to oviposition, larval development, adult resting and swarming behaviour exhibited by An. arabiensis under SFS conditions were similar to those seen in nature.
Conclusions: This study presents proof-of-principle that populations of important African malaria vectors can be established within environmentally realistic, contained semi-field settings. Such SFS will be valuable tools for the experimental study of vector ecology and assessment of their short-term ecological and longer-term evolutionary responses to existing and new vector control interventions
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