bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Excess hospital admissions for pneumonia and influenza in persons [ges ]65 years associated with influenza epidemics in three English health districts: 1987–95
Authors: NGUYEN-VAN-TAM J. S. , BROCKWAY C. R. , PEARSON J. C. G. , HAYWARD A. C. , FLEMING D. M. 
Published: August 2008

Objectives: To study the association between community influenza activity and acute hospital admissions for pneumonia and influenza among elderly persons.Design: Multiple regression analysis of acute hospital admissions against community influenza activity, air temperature and seasonal and long-term trends.Setting: Three English health districts: 1987–95.Subjects: Persons aged [ges ]65 years.Outcome measures: Acute hospital admissions for pneumonia and influenza (ICD9: 480–487); excess hospital admissions during epidemic periods.Results: The final regression model explained 70% of the total variation in hospital admissions for pneumonia and influenza, including 14% due to community influenza activity. However, most variation was explained by long-term and seasonal changes unrelated to influenza. In the large influenza epidemic of 1989/90 a typical health district (500000 total population) experienced 56 excess admissions for pneumonia and influenza attributable to epidemic influenza among persons aged [ges ]65 years, requiring 672 additional bed-days. However the figure varied widely between seasons and over the whole study period, the average winter excess was 17·5 admissions per health district, requiring an additional 210 bed-days.Conclusions: Influenza epidemics exert a variable impact on acute hospital admissions for pneumonia and influenza among elderly persons, which in the past have been poorly quantified. Although the absolute numbers of excess admissions is modest, their impact on bed availability may be considerable because of the duration of hospital stay in elderly persons.
Estimated varicella incidence on the basis of a seroprevalence survey
Authors: MUÑOZ M. P. , DOMÍNGUEZ A. , SALLERAS L. 
Published: August 2008

Varicella is a disease caused by varicella-zoster virus. It is transmitted via the respiratory route, is highly communicable and mainly affects young children. An effective vaccine is now available, whose routine use is advised by health authorities in the USA and which can prevent severe disease, although breakthrough infections do occur. In deciding whether or not to include a vaccine in the routine vaccination schedule, knowledge of the morbidity of the disease in question is fundamental. Although reporting of varicella is compulsory in Catalonia, doctors only have to report the weekly number of cases diagnosed, and not their age distribution. Given that recent data on the prevalence of the infection in Catalonia according to age groups is available, it was considered that, using these data, an estimation of age-related incidence could be made.The objective of the present study was to estimate the incidence of varicella in Catalonia on the basis of the available seroprevalence data. A curve was fitted to the observed prevalence and point prevalence estimates for all ages were obtained. The incidence was derived by smoothed prevalence for each of these age groups. Estimated variance of the estimated incidence was obtained by the delta method. Predicted prevalence in the 0–4 years age group was calculated by the smoothed prevalence.The model that best fitted the sample prevalence was the exponential function. The estimated number of varicella cases in this study was 46419 (95% CI 40507–52270). As the population in Catalonia in 1996 was 6090040, the previous results give an incidence rate of 762·2 per 100000 persons/year with their 95% CI (666·1–858·3).The method described may be applied to the study of incidence rates in relation to the prevalence of diseases if we accept that the infection produces permanent immunity; the risk of mortality is the same for infected and non-infected subjects and that the disease incidence and population remain constant in time.
Predictors of tuberculin reactivity among prospective Vietnamese migrants: the effect of smoking
Authors: PLANT A. J. , WATKINS R. E. , GUSHULAK B. , O'ROURKE T. , JONES W. , STREETON J. , SANG D. 
Published: August 2008

We investigated the prevalence and predictors of positive tuberculin skin test (TST) results among prospective Vietnamese migrants. We interviewed and medically screened 1395 Vietnamese people aged over 15 years who had applied to migrate to Australia. Approximately 44% of applicants had an induration of 10 mm or more, and 18·6% had an induration of 15 mm or more. A positive tuberculin skin test at 5 mm, 10 mm and 15 mm of induration cut-points was significantly associated with age (OR 1·01–1·02 per year) and duration of smoking (OR 1·03–1·12 per year). Smoking appears to be an important factor associated with increased susceptibility to mycobacterial infection. It is not yet clear whether the increased tuberculin reactivity associated with smoking reflects an increased risk of tuberculosis among these migrants.
Gastrointestinal illness associated with a long-haul flight
Authors: HOLMES J. D. , SIMMONS G. C. 
Published: August 2008

SUMMARYAn in-flight incident of vomiting in the cabin and toilet on a trans-Pacific aircraft flight resulted in an outbreak of gastrointestinal (GI) illness among passengers, some of whom subsequently joined a 14-day cruise in New Zealand and Australia. A retrospective cohort analysis of illness occurring in aircraft passengers was undertaken using routine GI illness surveillance data collected by medical staff on a cruise vessel. This was supplemented with data collected from some other passengers and crew on the aircraft. Information was gathered on 224 of the 413 (54·2%) people on the flight (222 passengers and 2 crew members). GI illness within 60 h of arrival in Auckland was reported by 41 of the 122 (33·6%, Fisher's 95% confidence interval 25·3–42·7) passengers seated in the two zones adjacent to the vomiting incident. The pattern of illness suggests a viral infection and highlights the potential of aerosol transmission as well as surface contamination in a closed environment. The spread of infection may have been enhanced by cross-contamination in the toilet cubicle. The significance of the vomiting event was not recognized by the aircraft cabin crew and no pre-arrival information about on-board illness was given to airport health authorities. Isolation of vomiting passengers, where possible, and promotion of appropriate hand hygiene on aircraft has the potential to reduce the spread of infection in passengers on long-haul flights.
The influence of socio-economic deprivation on tuberculosis treatment delays in England, 2000–2005
Authors: FRENCH C. E. , KRUIJSHAAR M. E. , JONES J. A. , ABUBAKAR I. 
Published: August 2008

SUMMARYThis study investigates the association between socio-economic deprivation and tuberculosis (TB) treatment delays in England, 2000–2005. Patients reported to the Enhanced TB Surveillance system were assigned a deprivation score based on residential postcode, and categorized into deprivation quartiles. Data were analysed using Cox regression. The median interval from symptom onset to treatment initiation was 67 days (inter-quartile range 30–131). The effect of deprivation on this interval was modified by ethnic group and place of birth/time since entry into the United Kingdom. Longer intervals were experienced by the most deprived black Africans, Indians/Pakistanis/Bangladeshis and recent entrants to the United Kingdom, compared to the least deprived. In contrast, among white and UK-born patients, longer intervals were experienced by the least deprived. In conclusion, the effect of deprivation on TB treatment delays varies in different population groups. Efforts are needed to reduce delays including improving awareness of TB and increasing the index of clinical suspicion.
Lover and Saint The Early Development of Ānandghan's Reputation
Authors: Bangha Imre 
Published: August 2008

AbstractThe article examines the material relating to the early reception of the eighteenth century Hindi poet Ānandghan (Ghanānand). Ānandghan's poetic ideas were not far from those expressed in Persian literature, popular at that time in India. Apart from an abundance of idiomatic usage and paradoxes his approach to love reflects his taste for Persian poetry: the beloved can be either a woman or an undefined God, or even Krishna. Ānandghan's ‘openness’ towards Persian poetry earned him disrepute. In this article three early schools of criticism of his quatrains are distinguished: those of his opponents, of his fellow-devotees and of Brajnāth, the secular connoisseur. All three parties expressed their views on Ānandghan through poetry sometimes employing bitter or pungent language.
Tirumala Nayaka's “New Hall” and the European Study of the South Indian Temple
Authors: Branfoot Crispin 
Published: August 2008

AbstractThe Pudu Mandapa (‘New Hall’) in Madurai is one of the best-known monuments from the Nayaka period of Tamilnadu (c. 1550–1700). It was built around 1630 under the patronage of Tirumala Nayaka as a major addition to the Minaksi-Sundaresvara temple complex that dominates the centre of this major Tamil town and Hindu pilgrimage centre. The Pudu Mandapa is well known in the West from the aquatint produced by Thomas and William Daniell, but this is only one of numerous other illustrations by Western and Indian artists in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century of this single Tamil temple structure. A discussion of the Pudu Mandapa as an example of a major architectural type, the festival mandapa, is followed by an examination of the structure's architectural sculpture. The final section discusses the Royal Asiatic Society's collection of drawings of this mandapa and the European documentation of the south Indian temple more generally.
Tachard's last appearance in Ayutthaya, 1699
Authors: Smithies Michael 
Published: August 2008

AbstractThe Jesuit Guy Tachard (1648–1712) first came to Siam with the Chaumont-Choisy embassy of 1685 as one of six Jesuits destined for missionary work in China. The group was headed by Fr de Fontaney (1643–1710). The decision of the Abbé de Choisy (1644–1724), who held the post of coadjutant ambassador, to withdraw from the diplomatic scene and effect a retreat prior to his ordination as a priest in Lopburi on 10 December 1685 enabled Tachard to replace him as interpreter of Phaulkon (c.1647–1688), the influential Levantine adventurer then holding the functions, though not the title, of minister of trade and foreign affairs (phra khlang) for King Narai (r.1656–1688). Tachard was then charged with secret negotiations with the court of Louis XIV, most particularly with Fr de La Chaize, the king's Jesuit confessor, and the Marquis de Seignelay, the secretary of state for the navy, to negotiate the lease of a port and the dispatch of persons of rank to occupy key posts in the Siamese kingdom. In Paris, he lost no time in publishing his account of the first French embassy to Siam, padding it with unacknowledged extracts from one of the other Jesuits in his party, Fr de Bouvet.
Chathamirhynchia kahuitara, a new genus and species of Late Cretaceous rhynchonellide brachiopod from the Chatham Islands, New Zealand: shell structure, palaeoecology and biogeography
Authors: Lee Daphne E. , Motchurova-Dekova Neda 
Published: August 2008

ABSTRACTA new rhynchonellide brachiopod has been collected from the Kahuitara Tuff (Campanian–Maastrichtian) of Pitt Island, Chatham Islands, New Zealand. Brachiopods are extremely rare in Cretaceous rocks from New Zealand, and this new genus and species is unlike any other rhynchonellide known from Australasia or elsewhere. Chathamirhynchia kahuitara is distinguished by its small size, strong ribbing, and well-developed sulciplicate folding, and internally by a large, robust cardinal process and raduliform crura. The shell structure of C. kahuitara is shown to be of typical fine fibrous ‘rhynchonellidine’ type. This brachiopod was probably strongly attached to volcanic rock or shells in a shallow-water, high-energy environment. Implications for the biogeography of brachiopods during the Late Cretaceous are briefly discussed.
Sampling taxa, estimating phylogeny and inferring macroevolution: an example from Devonian terebratulide brachiopods
Authors: Carlson Sandra J. , Fitzgerald Paul C. 
Published: August 2008

ABSTRACTThis study explores the implications of different decisions about taxon sampling in studies of phylogeny and macroevolution – how would phylogenetic results differ as decisions about inclusion of taxa differed? The focus is on investigating phylogenetic relationships among families of Devonian terebratulides, and include all 71 named genera in our analyses. Subsets of taxa were experimented with the most complete morphologically from fossil specimens; those that occur earliest in the stratigraphic record; those that include only the name-bearing genera from each family. Including only the most completely known genera produces a result essentially similar to one including all genera, even those for which less than half the characters can be coded. Including only the stratigraphically earliest genera produces a result at odds with the other analyses. Including only name-bearers, representing 13% of all genera, produces a result generally similar to the analysis including all taxa. None of the results of these phylogenetic experiments involving subsets of genera corresponds strongly with the recently revised classification in the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, but general similarities can be discerned. The lack of strong correspondence between classification and several different experimental phylogenetic hypotheses could be ascribed to their different overall goals, and highlights the potential dangers of ascribing evolutionary significance to simple counts of taxa, particularly families, as warned by Alwyn Williams 50 years ago.
Brachiopod biofacies in the Barr and Ardmillan groups, Girvan: Ordovician biodiversity trends on the edge of Laurentia
Authors: Harper David A. T. , Stewart Sarah E. 
Published: August 2008

ABSTRACTLocally abundant and diverse brachiopod faunas, associated with unstable outer shelf and slope environments, occur throughout the Barr and Ardmillan groups (middle Llanvirn–upper Ashgill) in the Girvan district of SW Scotland. A dataset of 350 brachiopod species from 30 horizons through the Middle–Upper Ordovician succession forms the basis for a description of brachiopod diversity through the succession and comparison with global patterns and trends through this time interval. The Middle Ordovician Barr Group incorporates shallow water carbonate and clastic facies, characterised by Valcourea confinis, with deeper-water facies. The trilobite-dominated Albany Group preserves outer shelf biofacies. Deep-water facies occur in the Balclatchie Formation of the lower Ardmillan Group, including an early occurrence of a Foliomena-type species. High diversity brachiopod faunas occur in clastic facies, though many of the biofacies have a transported component to them. Representatives of the deep-water Foliomena fauna occur intermittently throughout the Upper Ardmillan Group, appearing in both the Whitehouse and Drummuck subgroups. This distinctive assemblage of small, thin-shelled brachiopods, including Dedzetina, Christiania, Cyclospira and Foliomena itself, is interbedded with a variety of other less cosmopolitan deep-water assemblages, including the Onniella–Skenidioides and Lingulella–Trimurellina associations. Shallower-water environments in the middle Ashgill Lower Drummuck Subgroup hosted the Fardenia–Eopholidostrophia association in sands, and the Christiania–Leptaena association in muds and silts. The remarkable Lady Burn Starfish Beds in the upper part of the group contain a variety of brachiopod-dominated assemblages, including the Eochonetes and Plaesiomys–Schizophorella associations, transported from various shelf locations, within a very diverse mid Ashgill biota. The upper Ashgill High Mains Formation contains abundant elements of the terminal Ordovician Hirnantia fauna, including Eostropheodonta, Hindella and Hirnantia itself, but also some taxa more typical of the Laurentian Edgewood Province. As a whole, the changing brachiopod biodiversity biofacies reflect environmental fluctuations, on this part of the Laurentian margin, driven by mainly eustatic and tectonic events against a background of global biotic radiation.
A reappraisal of feeding current systems inferred for spire-bearing brachiopods
Authors: Manceñido Miguel O. , Gourvennec Rémy 
Published: August 2008

ABSTRACTSpire-bearing brachiopods formally comprise four different rhynchonelliform orders. A calcified spiral brachidium (presumably supporting a spirolophe when alive) and variable median fold and sulcus (probably aiding separation of incurrent from excurrent flows) are peculiar characteristics they all share. Inferences regarding feeding current systems for these extinct taxa have long remained controversial. Two rival models (the Williams–Ager model and the Rudwick–Vogel model) have been developed, each of which has gained supporters as well as critics over the years. In this present paper they are both contrasted and reassessed on the basis of available evidence, together with a new approach that combines: (a) a morpho-functional analysis applying the plankton net as a suitable seston-collecting paradigm; (b) a review of actualistic data showing that all extant spirolophes are functionally inhalant (irrespective of water entering the valves laterally or not); (c) an evaluation of known outcomes from flume experiments yielding consistent empirical results where gaping shells are oriented transversally and dorsally upcurrent; and (d) a reappraisal of the distributions of certain epizoobionts and endosymbionts revealing compatible patterns. The evidence thus accumulated supports the main conclusion that, in most groups (with laterally tapering spiralia), the inhalant current was located medially with the exhalant currents on either side; only in atrypides (with centrally to dorsally tapering spiralia) does the reverse situation appear to have occurred.
A review of the systematics, biogeography, and evolutionary relationships of Recent and fossil brachiopods of the Superfamily Kraussinoidea Dall, with descriptions of two new fossil species from New Zealand and Chile
Authors: Hiller Norton , MacKinnon David I. , Nielsen Sven N. 
Published: August 2008

ABSTRACTA review is presented of the genera and species, both living and fossil, comprising the Superfamily Kraussinoidea and of their geographic and stratigraphic distributions. Two new fossil species are described, Kraussina chilensis and Megerlina miracula, from the Miocene of Chile and New Zealand respectively. The ontogenetic development of the brachidium in each of the four kraussinid genera is described and on the basis of recognised differences it is proposed that a new taxonomic subdivision is made that places Megerlia in a new subfamily Megerliinae, distinct from the other three genera in the existing subfamily Kraussininae Dall. The loop ontogeny of kraussinoids is compared with that of other terebratellidines and a phylogenetic linkage between kraussinoids and laqueoids is suggested.
Brachiopods and climate change
Authors: Peck Lloyd S. 
Published: August 2008

ABSTRACTAnimals can respond in three main ways to environments that change and deteriorate. They can cope with their inherent physiological flexibility, evolve or adapt to new conditions, or migrate away to areas consistent with survival. The main factors dictating survival are the rates of change and capacities of species to cope. Articulated brachiopods are known as a group that employ low energy solutions and exhibit slow rates in life histories characters, especially in growth and metabolic rates. This way of life carries with it a range of consequences, including poor abilities to raise metabolic rates to perform work. This brings with it poor abilities to cope with elevated temperature. Slow growth, deferred maturity and low feeding rates make them less likely to produce novel adaptations compared with other marine invertebrate taxa. Being largely restricted to hard substrata and low energy supply environments also makes it harder for them to migrate to new sites compared to other groups, because of the large geographic distances between colonisable areas. The only clear area they may have that gives them advantages is in the flexibility of their larval release strategies, where settlement can be from very short, millimetre-scale distances to hundreds of kilometres.
The brachiopods Alwynella and Grorudia: homeomorphic plectambonitoids in the Middle and Upper Ordovician of Baltoscandia
Authors: Hints Linda , Harper David A. T. 
Published: August 2008

ABSTRACTTwo Ordovician plectambonitoid genera, Alwynella and Grorudia, occur in drill core sections of Latvia in the East Baltic, and in exposures and loose blocks on the Swedish Island of Öland in the Baltic Sea. The new material confirms differences between the two taxa that are assigned herein to separate families, Alwynellidae fam. nov. and Grorudiidae Cocks & Rong, 1989. In particular, the undercut cardinalia separates Alwynella from Grorudia and indicates its proximity to the sowerbyellids. The genus Grorudia, which is externally similar to Alwynella, is more closely related to the palaeostrophomenines. A new species Grorudia morrisoni sp. nov. is established in the East Baltic. The specimens from Öland are included tentatively within the genus Grorudia due to lack of interiors. Both Alwynella and Grorudia were confined to deeper-water facies in the Baltic palaeobasin, within successions ranging in age from latest Mid (late Llanvirn) to earliest Late Ordovician (mid Caradoc).
Bioerosion on brachiopod shells – a Cenozoic perspective
Authors: Taddei Ruggiero Emma , Bitner Maria Aleksandra 
Published: August 2008

ABSTRACTThis study describes bioerosion traces ascribed to either predation or endo- and epibiont activity in twenty assemblages from the Mediterranean region and Paratethys, spanning in age from Eocene to Recent. Statistical analysis of the distribution of bioerosion traces among genera and assemblages revealed that there is higher drilling predation intensity on smaller species. Larger species seem to be primarily affected by non-drilling predators. Greatest variety in types of bioerosion could be related to species’ ecology and body size. Both major categories of bioerosion (etchings and traces of predatory activity) vary considerably among samples. Different genera show significant differences in the frequency of different bioerosion types. Shell size seems a major factor contributing to these differences.