444 research outputs found
Novel approaches for vaccination against HPV-induced cancers
No full textTo date, more than 5 % of all cancers are as a result of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, and this incidence is increasing. Early recognition of disease is associated with good survival, but late presentation results in devastating consequences. Prevention is better than cure, and there are now successful prophylactic vaccination programmes in place. We discuss these and the prospect of therapeutic vaccinations in the near future to address a growing need for improved therapeutic options
Catching waves: the historical geography of the general practitioner fundholding initiative in England and Wales
No full textGeneral practitioner fundholding is often represented as one of the more successful elements of the 1989/90 Conservative reforms of the UK National Health Service (NHS). Successive annual ‘waves’ of fundholding practices were approved from 1990 through to 1997 and, over time, the initiative came to involve some 50% of UK general practitioners. Fundholding is known to have had a strong regional geography that changed with evolving fundholding eligibility criteria. Further, there have been persistent allegations that fundholding tended to occur disproportionately in areas of higher social status. Past studies of fundholding have tended to consider single waves or the overall impact of the initiative rather than its development over time. They have also tended to work at a single geographic scale or through single-region case studies when exploring the statistical regularities underlying the uptake of fundholding. Using multilevel analysis, this paper seeks to enhance understanding of fundholding through an examination of the interaction of district health authority and practice characteristics across all implemented waves for all general medical practices in England and Wales. We conclude that wave mattered on a national scale, that deprivation was relatively unimportant and that there were certain types of area that exhibited persistent but unexpected high uptake
User involvement in a Cochrane systematic review: using structured methods to enhance the clinical relevance, usefulness and usability of a systematic review update
No full textBackground: This paper describes the structured methods used to involve patients, carers and health professionals in an update of a Cochrane systematic review relating to physiotherapy after stroke and explores the perceived impact of involvement.Methods: We sought funding and ethical approval for our user involvement. We recruited a stakeholder group comprising stroke survivors, carers, physiotherapists and educators and held three pre-planned meetings during the course of updating a Cochrane systematic review. Within these meetings, we used formal group consensus methods, based on nominal group techniques, to reach consensus decisions on key issues relating to the structure and methods of the review.Results: The stakeholder group comprised 13 people, including stroke survivors, carers and physiotherapists with a range of different experience, and either 12 or 13 participated in each meeting. At meeting 1, there was consensus that methods of categorising interventions that were used in the original Cochrane review were no longer appropriate or clinically relevant (11/13 participants disagreed or strongly disagreed with previous categories) and that international trials (which had not fitted into the original method of categorisation) ought to be included within the review (12/12 participants agreed or strongly agreed these should be included). At meeting 2, the group members reached consensus over 27 clearly defined treatment components, which were to be used to categorise interventions within the review (12/12 agreed or strongly agreed), and at meeting 3, they agreed on the key messages emerging from the completed review. All participants strongly agreed that the views of the group impacted on the review update, that the review benefited from the involvement of the stakeholder group, and that they believed other Cochrane reviews would benefit from the involvement of similar stakeholder groups.Conclusions: We involved a stakeholder group in the update of a Cochrane systematic review, using clearly described structured methods to reach consensus decisions. The involvement of stakeholders impacted substantially on the review, with the inclusion of international studies, and changes to classification of treatments, comparisons and subgroup comparisons explored within the meta-analysis. We argue that the structured approach which we adopted has implications for other systematic reviews.</p
Art and the unconscious : a semiotic case study of the painting process
No full textThis dissertation is an attempt to design an interpretation model for the comprehension of unconscious content in artworks, as well as to find painting techniques to free the unconscious mind, allowing it to be expressed through artwork. The interpretation model, still in its infancy, is ripe for further development. The unconscious mind is a fascinating subject—in art production as well as in many scientific fields. This hidden part of the mind, being the source of creativity, constitutes an important foundation for many possible and valuable inquiries in multiple areas of knowledge. In the present study, the unconscious is approached from an art-educational perspective.
The nature of the unconscious is addressed through the theories of Carl Gustav Jung and Charles Sanders Peirce, as well as through the information gained from data the author produced herself during the experimental painting process she devised for this study. For psychological distinctions not addressed by Jung, the theories of Sigmund Freud are used to forward this inquiry into the unconscious mind.
A research method was created to bring Peirce’s theories into consonance with Jung’s amplification method. Since Peirce’s theories are challenging to read, to avoid misinterpretation, the author used Phyllis Chiasson’s 2001 book Peirce’s Pragmatism: The Design for Thinking as a secondary source. Peirce’s three modes of reality—firstness, secondness, and thirdness—were utilized to interpret artworks. This three-mode reality allows interpreters to reflect on their subjective feelings and then to compare them to collected data. The interpreters’ intuitive self-interpretations often correlate well with the more objective data.
In this approach to interpretation, the work of art is seen as a sign, in the Jungian as well as in the Peircean sense, and interpretation seeks to discover a sign’s objects—icon, index, and symbol. Additionally, the objects are studied in combination with Peirce’s designation of the sign’s character elements—sinsign, qualisign, and legisign. Peirce’s theory offers a logical and productive structure for approaching a variety of signs and reaching a multiplicity of interpretations.
Jungian theories inculcated a combined psychological and artistic perspective for the interpretation of artworks. Jung’s method of amplification is an effort to bring a symbol to life, and it is used as a technique to discover—through the seeking of parallels—a possible context for any unconscious content that an image might have. In amplification, a word or element—from a fantasy, dream, or, in this study, artwork—is associated, through use of what Jung called the active imagination, with another context where it also occurs. It must be remembered that unconscious images in artworks do not easily open themselves up for interpretation. One way to interpret possibly unconscious images is for the interpreter to become vulnerable by employing his or her own unconscious mind to interpret an artwork; such use of the active imagination can enable a subjective experience of the artwork on the part of the interpreter, who might thereby uncover unconscious content.
Moreover, in this study, Jung’s theory of archetypes is employed, in parallel with Peirce’s and Jung’s theories of the sign, to illuminate an artwork’s images by connecting them with collective unconscious archetypes. The author relied upon The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images (Ronnberg and Martin 2010) as the main source for interpreting possibly unconscious elements in the artworks. This approach is especially powerful when artists interpret their own artwork—possibly leading to a galvanizing self-discovery as they revisit past encounters, personal highlights, and other pieces of unconscious content that might reveal previously unknown meaning important to their life. By comparing archetypes to the unconscious content in their own lives, people can discover themselves.
Unconscious phenomena were approached on both the theoretical and empirical levels. Different methods and ideas were used to stimulate the author’s unconscious thinking while performing artwork analyses of three paintings: surrealist Salvador Dalí’s (1904–1989) Assumpta Corpuscularia Lapislazulina; abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock’s (1912-1956) The Deep; and one painting by the author herself, and for which the process of painting is videorecorded (www.astagallery.com/academic.html).
With regard to the third painting interpreted, the author is the study subject, and her artistic production is used as an opportunity to explore the unconscious mind. During the act of painting, an attempt is made to free unconscious thinking by fusing Dalí’s and Pollock’s methods as well as by testing multiple other methods. The author’s artistic production was conjoined with use of a technique that is called the verbal protocol method, which generates additional data not necessarily visible in the final artwork. This method unseals the artist’s tacit knowledge, which in normal circumstances remains silent.
In the verbal protocol method, the author, while engaged in the act of painting, speaks aloud the stream of consciousness that accompanies and guides the art-making activity; the recorded and transcribed monologue from the artistic production is supplied, in both Finnish and English, in appendices. This thinking-aloud technique allows a person to become more self-aware and to create more solutions while struggling with emergent artistic problems. Such narratives can reveal more about the painting than the completed artwork alone can convey. Along with the artist’s finished painting and the videorecorded material, narratives produced during the painting activity were interpreted. Moreover, the discoveries arising from the author’s interpretation of her own artwork are correlated with some of the latest research on the unconscious.
This study allows the reader-viewer an intimate glimpse into the author’s subjective painting experience and demonstrates the participation of the unconscious in an artwork’s creation. The interpretations methodology constitutes an interpretation model suitable for other artists and art educators to follow.
Keywords: unconscious, art, archetype, mandalaei tietoa saavutettavuudest
Nonadaptive Amino Acid Convergence Rates Decrease over Time.
No full textConvergence is a central concept in evolutionary studies because it provides strong evidence for adaptation. It also provides information about the nature of the fitness landscape and the repeatability of evolution, and can mislead phylogenetic inference. To understand the role of adaptive convergence, we need to understand the patterns of nonadaptive convergence. Here, we consider the relationship between nonadaptive convergence and divergence in mitochondrial and model proteins. Surprisingly, nonadaptive convergence is much more common than expected in closely related organisms, falling off as organisms diverge. The extent of the convergent drop-off in mitochondrial proteins is well predicted by epistatic or coevolutionary effects in our "evolutionary Stokes shift" models and poorly predicted by conventional evolutionary models. Convergence probabilities decrease dramatically if the ancestral amino acids of branches being compared have diverged, but also drop slowly over evolutionary time even if the ancestral amino acids have not substituted. Convergence probabilities drop-off rapidly for quickly evolving sites, but much more slowly for slowly evolving sites. Furthermore, once sites have diverged their convergence probabilities are extremely low and indistinguishable from convergence levels at randomized sites. These results indicate that we cannot assume that excessive convergence early on is necessarily adaptive. This new understanding should help us to better discriminate adaptive from nonadaptive convergence and develop more relevant evolutionary models with improved validity for phylogenetic inference
Diphtheria-like disease caused by Toxigenic Corynebacterium ulcerans strain
No full textToxigenic Corynebacterium ulcerans is an increasingly reported cause of diphtheria in the United Kingdom and is often associated with a zoonotic origin (1,2). Here, we report a case of diphtheria caused by toxigenic C. ulcerans in a woman, 51 years of age, from Scotland, UK, who was admitted to a hospital in August 2013 with a swollen, sore throat and a gray-white membrane over the pharyngeal surface. The patient had returned from a 2-week family holiday in the state of Florida, United States, before the admission and also reported recent treatment of a pet dog for pharyngitis. The patient was believed to have been vaccinated against diphtheria during childhood. She was immediately admitted to an isolation ward and treated with a combination of clindamycin, penicillin, and metronidazole
Effects of drinking-water filtration on Cryptosporidium Seroepidemiology, Scotland
No full textContinuous exposure to low levels of Cryptosporidium oocysts is associated with production of protective antibodies. We investigated prevalence of antibodies against the 27-kDa Cryptosporidium oocyst antigen among blood donors in 2 areas of Scotland supplied by drinking water from different sources with different filtration standards: Glasgow (not filtered) and Dundee (filtered). During 2006–2009, seroprevalence and risk factor data were collected; this period includes 2007, when enhanced filtration was introduced to the Glasgow supply. A serologic response to the 27-kDa antigen was found for ≈75% of donors in the 2 cohorts combined. Mixed regression modeling indicated a 32% step-change reduction in seroprevalence of antibodies against Cryptosporidium among persons in the Glasgow area, which was associated with introduction of enhanced filtration treatment. Removal of Cryptosporidium oocysts from water reduces the risk for waterborne exposure, sporadic infections, and outbreaks. Paradoxically, however, oocyst removal might lower immunity and increase the risk for infection from other sources
Austroconomorphus slipinskii Hsiao & Pollock 2022, SP. NOV.
No full textAUSTROCONOMORPHUS SLIPINSKII SP. NOV. (FIGS 3A–C, 4, 5) Z o o b a n k r e g i s t r a t i o n: u r n: l s i d: z o o b a n k. org:act: 66BB3996-30A0-4D77-BD13-FCFC939C8F3D. Type material: Holotype, ♂, NSW: ‘ 28.53 S 152.34 E / 3kmE Tabulam NSW / 23 Nov.1983 / M.S. Harvey and/ D.C.F. Rentz. ’ (ANIC). Paratypes: NSW: 2♀♀, ‘Yuragir NP NSW/ Station Creek / 20 Nov.1982 / J. & E. Doyen // Collected/ at light’ (ANIC). QLD: 1♀, ‘ Calliope River, Q. / (23.50S 151.13E)/ 23km. SE. of/ Gladstone, 23.i.70 / light trap. S. Misko’ (ANIC); 1♀, ‘ Barakula / via Chinchilla / Queensland / 4 Oct.1994 / M. De Baar // Barakula QLD/ via Chinchilla’ (ANIC). Diagnosis: As for the genus. Description: Body length: 3.1–3.5 mm (3.5 in holotype); width: 1.0– 1.2 mm (1.2 in holotype). Male (Fig. 3A). Body long oval, parallel-sided; head brown, with compound eyes black and antennae yellowish brown, prothorax, meso- and metaventrite and abdomen brown, elytra and legs yellowish brown; surface sparsely covered with short, fine yellowish setae, setae on elytra slightly longer and denser than on head, pronotum and ventral side. Head (Fig. 4A) short and rounded, slightly wider than long, with frontoclypeal region flattened to slightly convex and vertex moderately convex; surface semilustrous, coarsely and densely punctate, with fine, sparse, decumbent yellowish setae. Compound eyes small, globular and prominent, protruding laterally, ratio of eye diameter to interocular space 1:3.0. Clypeus short, flat, broad, distal margin truncate, with some yellowish setae on the distal margin of the disc. Apical maxillary palpomeres (Fig. 4B) securiform. Apical labial palpomere (Fig. 4C) oval, narrowing apicad.Antennae (Fig.4D) short, barely extending to the posterior angles of pronotum; scape and pedicel robust, antennomeres III–IV filiform, V–X scaphiform, forming a weak club, XI oval, pointed apically; scape longest, pedicel and antennomeres III subequal in length, slightly longer than IV–X, slightly shorter than XI, IV–X subequal in length. Pronotum (Fig. 4E) subquadrate, slightly wider anteriorly, 1.3× wider than head, 0.7× longer than wide; surface semilustrous, coarsely and densely punctate, with fine, sparse, decumbent yellowish setae; lateral margins distinctly rounded, widest near midlength, with two small, weakly developed tubercles basically; anterior margin nearly straight; posterior margin weakly arcuate; anterior angles rounded; basal angles angular; disc weakly convex, without paired shallow depressions medially, with paired small, deep posterior foveae, foveae connected by shallow groove along posterior margin. Scutellar shield distinctly wider than long, weakly convex, obtuse apically; surface semilustrous, coarsely and densely punctate, with few decumbent yellowish setae sparsely distributed. Elytra (Figs 3A, 4H) 1.3× wider than pronotum, 2.0× longer than wide, nearly parallel-sided; surface semilustrous, coarsely and densely punctate, with fine decumbent yellowish setae relatively densely distributed. Ventral surface coarsely and densely punctate, punctation on abdomen fine, covered with fine, sparse, decumbent yellowish setae. Abdominal ventrite II (Fig. 5A) without sex patch. Pygidium broadly rectangular, apical margin weakly and widely emarginate medially, sparsely pubescent. Abdominal sternite VIII subtruncate apically, slightly protuberant medially, sparsely pubescent apically. Legs slender, relatively short. Claws simple, with basal swelling. Male genitalia with median lobe oriented dorsad the tegmen; abdominal sternite IX forming ring-like sclerite. Tegmen (Fig. 5B) with basale relatively short, stout, deeply concave basally, sides narrowed distally, 1.7× longer than apicale; apicale approximate basally, becoming widely separated apically, acuminate and strongly incurvate distally. Median lobe (Fig. 5B) stout, hastate, divided into broad basal disc and ensiform apex, basal disc with length approximately 1.2× ensiform apex; basal disc explanate, produced basolaterally; apex ensiform, tapered apically. Female (Fig. 3B, C). Similar to male holotype externally. Ovipositor with sides subparallel, moderately narrowed apically. Paraproct elongate, with length 2.2× coxite, 3.6× longer than wide; proctiger with apex rounded; two distinct ventral and dorsal baculi present. Coxites segmented, sparsely pubescent. Styli short, subcylindrical, inserted subapically. Bursa copulatrix sac-like, distinctly rounded. Etymology: The specific epithet is given in honour of Stanislaw Adam Ślipiński, one of lead editors of the Australian beetles book series and advisor to the senior author of this paper. His contribution to the development of systematic coleopterology in Australia is invaluable. Distribution: This species occurs in the northern regions of New South Wales and southern Queensland (Fig. 8). Remarks: Based on label data, individuals of this species have been attracted to light traps and appear during the austral summer (October to January).Published as part of Hsiao, Yun & Pollock, Darren A., 2022, Morphology-based phylogeny of oval palm and flower beetles (Coleoptera: Mycteridae: Eurypinae), with descriptions of new genera and species from Australia, pp. 677-703 in Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 196 on pages 688-691, DOI: 10.1093/zoolinnean/zlab122, http://zenodo.org/record/718678
Comparison of walleye pollock target strength estimates determined from in situ measurements and calculations based on swimbladder form
No full textAuthor Posting. © Acoustical Society of America, 1988. This article is posted here by permission of Acoustical Society of America for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 83 (1988): 9-17, doi:10.1121/1.396190.The target strength of walleye pollock (Theragra chalcogramma) at 38 kHz has been determined in each of two ways: (1) in situ measurement with dual‐beam and split‐beam echo sounders, and (2) theoretical calculation based on the swimbladder form. Respective probability density functions of target strength are compared. The several estimates of mean target strength (T̄S̄) determine the relation T̄S̄=20 log l−66.0, where l is the fish fork length in centimeters
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