5 research outputs found
Translation and adaptation of an international questionnaire to measure usage of complementary and alternative medicine (I-CAM-G)
No full textBACKGROUND: The growing body of data on prevalence of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) usage means there is a need to standardize measurement on an international level. An international team has published a questionnaire0020 (I-CAM-Q), but no validation has yet been provided. The aim of the present study was to provide a German measurement instrument for CAM usage (I-CAM-G) which closely resembles the original English version, and to assess it's performance in two potential samples for measuring CAM usage.
METHODS: The English I-CAM-Q questionnaire was translated into German, and adapted slightly. The resulting I-CAM-G questionnaire was then pre-tested on N=16 healthy volunteers, and 12 cognitive interviews were carried out. The questionnaire was employed in a sample of breast cancer patients (N=92, paper and pencil), and a sample from the general population (N=210, internet survey). Descriptive analyses of items and missing data, as well as results from the cognitive interviews, are presented in this paper.
RESULTS: The translated questionnaire had to be adapted to be consistent with the German health care system. All items were comprehensible, whereby some items were unambiguous (e.g. CAM use yes/no, helpfulness), while others gave rise to ambiguous answers (e.g. reasons for CAM use), or high rates of missing data (e.g. number of times the CAM modality had been used during the last 3 months). 78% of the breast cancer patients and up to 85% of a sample of the general population had used some form of CAM.
CONCLUSIONS: Following methodologically sound and comprehensive translation, adaptation and assessment processes using recognized translation procedures, cognitive interviews, and studying the performance of the questionnaire in two samples, we arrived at a German questionnaire for measuring CAM use which is comparable with the international (English) version. The questionnaire appropriately measures CAM use, with some items being more appropriate than others. We recommend the development of a short version
Post-transcriptional regulation of 5-lipoxygenase mRNA expression via alternative splicing and nonsense-mediated mRNA decay
No full text5-Lipoxygenase (5-LO) catalyzes the two initial steps in the biosynthesis of leukotrienes (LT), a group of inflammatory lipid mediators derived from arachidonic acid. Here, we investigated the regulation of 5-LO mRNA expression by alternative splicing and nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD). In the present study, we report the identification of 2 truncated transcripts and 4 novel 5-LO splice variants containing premature termination codons (PTC). The characterization of one of the splice variants, 5-LOΔ3, revealed that it is a target for NMD since knockdown of the NMD factors UPF1, UPF2 and UPF3b in the human monocytic cell line Mono Mac 6 (MM6) altered the expression of 5-LOΔ3 mRNA up to 2-fold in a cell differentiation-dependent manner suggesting that cell differentiation alters the composition or function of the NMD complex. In contrast, the mature 5-LO mRNA transcript was not affected by UPF knockdown. Thus, the data suggest that the coupling of alternative splicing and NMD is involved in the regulation of 5-LO gene expression
Water and sanitation services in Europe: do legal frameworks provide for "good governance"?
No full textWater is life – and yet not everyone has safe and secure access to this finite resource. Over 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water and around 2.6 billion people have no access to adequate sanitation. This situation is estimated to cause more than five million deaths each year from water-related diseases, mostly preventable. The current global water crisis is widely considered a crisis of governance and not of scarcity: insufficiency of water, particularly for drinking water supply and sanitation, is primarily caused by inefficient management, corruption, and lack of appropriate institutions, rather than by water shortages. The United Nations and other relevant institutions claim that lack of governance is one of the obstacles to improve access to water supply and sanitation. Improved governance is argued to be essential to provide for better water services, especially in the current context of population growth, increasing water demands and global climate change
SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and COVID-19 disease severity are associated with genetic variants affecting gene expression in a variety of tissues
No full textVariability in SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and COVID-19 disease severity between individuals is partly due to genetic factors. Here, we identify 4 genomic loci with suggestive associations for SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and 19 for COVID-19 disease severity. Four of these 23 loci likely have an ethnicity-specific component. Genome-wide association study (GWAS) signals in 11 loci colocalize with expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) associated with the expression of 20 genes in 62 tissues/cell types (range: 1:43 tissues/gene), including lung, brain, heart, muscle, and skin as well as the digestive system and immune system. We perform genetic fine mapping to compute 99% credible SNP sets, which identify 10 GWAS loci that have eight or fewer SNPs in the credible set, including three loci with one single likely causal SNP. Our study suggests that the diverse symptoms and disease severity of COVID-19 observed between individuals is associated with variants across the genome, affecting gene expression levels in a wide variety of tissue types. © 2021 The Author(s
Reanalysed (depth and temperature consistent) surface ocean CO₂ atlas (SOCAT) version 2021
No full textThe Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT) version 2021 (v2021) dataset (Bakker et al., 2016, Bakker et al., 2021) is a quality-controlled dataset containing 30.6 million surface ocean gaseous CO2 measurements collated from thousands of individual submissions. These gaseous CO2 measurements are typically collected at many different depths (of the order of several metres below the surface) using many different systems, and the sampling depth varies dependent upon the sampling platform and/or setup. Different platforms (e.g. ships of opportunity, research vessels) and systems will collect water samples at different depths, and the sampling depth can even vary dependent upon sea state. Therefore, the collated SOCAT dataset contains high quality data, but these data are all valid for different and inconsistent depths. This means that the SOCAT provided individual gaseous CO2 measurements and gridded data are sub-optimal for calculating global or regional atmosphere-ocean gas exchange (and the resultant net CO2 sinks) and sub-optimal for verifying gas fluxes from (or assimilation into) numerical models.
Accurate calculations of CO2 flux between the atmosphere and oceans require CO2 concentrations at the top and bottom of the mass boundary layer, the ~100 μm deep layer that forms the interface between the ocean and the atmosphere (Woolf et al., 2016). Ignoring vertical temperature gradients across this very small layer can result in significant biases in the concentration differences and the resulting gas fluxes (e.g. ~5 to 29% underestimate in global net CO2 sink values, Woolf et al., 2016). It is currently impossible to measure the CO2 concentrations either side of this very thin layer, but it is possible to calculate the concentrations either side of this layer using the SOCAT data, satellite observations and knowledge of the carbonate system.
Therefore to enable the SOCAT data to be optimal for an accurate atmosphere-ocean gas flux calculation, a reanalysis methodology was developed to enable the calculation of the fugacity of CO2 (fCO2) for the bottom of the mass boundary layer (termed sub-skin value). The theoretical basis and justification for this is described in detail within Woolf et al., (2016) and the re-analysis methodology is described in detail in (Goddijn-Murphy et al., 2015). The re-analysis calculation exploits paired in situ temperature and fCO2 measurements in the SOCAT dataset, and uses an Earth observation dataset to provide a depth-consistent (sub-skin) temperature field to which all fugacity data are reanalysed. The outputs provide paired fCO2 (and partial pressure of CO2) and temperature data that correspond to a consistent sub-skin layer temperature. These can then be used to accurately calculate concentration differences and atmosphere-ocean CO2 gas fluxes.
This data submission contains a reanalysis of the fugacity of CO2 (fCO2) from the SOCAT version 2021 dataset to a consistent sub-skin temperature field. The reanalysis was performed using a tool that is distributed within the FluxEngine V4.0.1 open source software toolkit (https://github.com/oceanflux-ghg/FluxEngine) (Shutler et al., 2016; Holding et al., 2019). All data processing and driver scripts are available from the FluxEngine Ancillary Tools (FEAT) repository https://github.com/oceanflux-ghg/FluxEngineAncillaryTools. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (OISST) dataset (Reynolds et al., 2007) were used to provide the climate quality and depth consistent temperature data. The original ¼ degree OISST weekly data (v2.1) were first resampled to provide monthly mean values on a 1º by 1º degree grid (using the Python tools provided in the FEAT repository). These monthly 1º by 1º data were then used as the temperature input for the reanalysis.
The resulting reanalysed data are provided as a tab-separated value file (individual data points) and as netCDF-5 file (gridded monthly means). These are the same file formats as provided by SOCAT and analogous to the SOCAT single data point and gridded data. Each row in the tab-separated value file corresponds to a row in the original SOCAT version 2021 dataset. The original SOCAT version 2021 data are included in full, with four additional columns containing the reanalysed data:
* T_reynolds - The temperature (in degrees C) taken from the consistent OISST temperature field for the corresponding time and location.
* fCO2_reanalysed - The fugacity of CO2 (in μatm) reanalysed to the consistent surface temperature indicated by T_reynolds.
* pCO2_SST - The partial pressure of CO2 (in μatm) corresponding to the in situ (measured) temperature.
* pCO2_reanalysed - The partial pressure of CO2 (in μatm) reanalysed to the consistent surface temperature indicated by T_reynolds.
The netCDF gridded version of the reanalysed dataset contains monthly mean data, binned into a 1º by 1º grid and uses the same units, missing value indicators and time and space resolution as the original SOCAT gridded product to maximise compatibility. The gridding is performed using the SOCAT gridding methodology (Sabine et al. 2013). The implementation of the gridding has been verified by performing the gridding on the original (non-reanalysed) SOCAT data and all results were identical to 8 decimal places. The result of gridding the original SOCAT data are included within these netCDF data, along with additional variables containing the equivalent results for the reanalysed SOCAT data. Statistical sample mean, minimum, maximum, standard deviation and count data for each grid cell are included, with unweighted and cruise-weighted versions (following the convention used by SOCAT). Full meta data are included within the file
