Epilepsy in Sudan accounts for 1.6 annual mortality rates and 238.7 disability adjusted life years per 100 000. These figures are higher among females; children and young adults. It is associated with notable stigma and social burdens. Patients of epilepsy are subjected to various forms of social discrimination that affect their quality of life. They are isolated, neglected and deprived of their education and employments rights and not able to achieve normal social and family life. Aiming at highlighting social implications of epilepsy among Sudanese patients, this study found that social encumbrances due to epilepsy in Sudan are more prevalent among highly vulnerable groups like women, children and poor populations living in remote areas. Lack of trained medical personnel in neurology and the medical equipment's required for proper diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy in Sudan are key reasons aggravating social and health burden of epilepsy both among patients and their caregivers. Epilepsy is a chronic disease characterized by episodes of seizures that may vary from brief undetectable to long periods of vigorous shaking and could be accompanied by physical injuries like bone fractures . Eighty Epilepsy in Sudan is associated with notable stigma, social burden and generally affects the quality of life of patients . SubjectEpilepsy also affects the health services, inequality and the treatment gap. A simple definition of treatment gap in epilepsy is the number of people with a condition or disease who need treatment for it but do not get it. In the developing world, this gab is either arising from difficulty in accessing biomedical services or lack of adherence to anti-epileptic drugs . In SudaIn the other hand the marked impact in the education, employment and daily life activities is attributable to lack of education and awareness raising programs about epilepsy any of which Sudan lacks to help incorporate these patients into their social roles. In addition to health services centralization in metropolitan areas, depriving remote areas inhabitants from their goods. The findings of Women and children marked impediment by the diseases are consistent with similar results reporting lower parameters for quality of life in same social groups in Nigeria and Egypt . They reThe authors declare no competing interests.


The VA Geriatric Scholars Program is a workforce development program to integrate geriatrics into primary care in all VA clinics. The program has increased career satisfaction among clinicians, improved quality of care for aging Veterans, changed provider prescribing behaviors and improved patient outcomes. The core curriculum is an intensive course in geriatrics, an intensive workshop in quality improvement (QI) and a micro QI project to demonstrate application of new knowledge to local needs of patients and clinic processes; this is a longitudinal program and alumni continue to develop skills over time through a series of elective activities that tailor learning to self-identified gaps in career development and training. The program is a collaboration among the Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Centers (GRECC), centers of excellence that have been leveraged to create a network of expertise and creativity to develop the core and elective educational activities. This symposium focuses on recent outcomes of three educational components that improve quality of care for older Veterans. The Palo Alto GRECC developed an intensive course in gerontological psychology to enhance the skills and competencies of psychologists leading to greater job effectiveness. The Bronx GRECC developed an interdisciplinary training program for all clinical and non-clinical staff in rural clinics, leading to improved recognition of functional and safety concerns among older veterans. The Tennessee Valley GRECC developed the core QI component and many of these micro-QI projects have been sustained, spread or recognized by VA as Promising Practices.


Although more than 300 different techniques for hypospadias repair do exist, successful outcome depends mainly on the surgeon's skills, availability of adequate tissue for urethral reconstruction and choice of the best suitable technique in each case. Significant advancements in the management of hypospadias occurred over the last few decades but there remains great controversy on how to select the best technical options . The genWe acknowledge that such proposal lacks evidence support but it is an objective and consistent measurement that may be useful to surgeons deciding to graft or not the incised plate.TA has come up with the suggested UPR ratio. JP has validated the point and both wrote this manuscript.The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.


The updated American Heart Association (AHA)/American Stroke Association (ASA) Guidelines for the Early Management of Patients with Acute Ischemic Stroke were published in January 2018.Debate with regard to deciding the optimal diagnostic and treatment strategy for patients is healthy and anticipated with the release of new medical literature or recommendations. However, what is somewhat puzzling and unanticipated with the release of these new guidelines is that within two months of their release the AHA/ASA rescinded its recently released guidelines, publishing a “correction” in which several parts of the document have been deleted. The American Heart Association (AHA)/American Stroke Association (ASA) has released a correction to its “2018 Guidelines for the Early Management of Patients with Acute Ischemic Stroke: A Guideline for Healthcare Professionals from the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association.”Although the correction document reports continued support for the corrected version of the guidelines and its support for clinical decision-making, the rescinding of sections of the guidelines was done without the agreement of the Guideline Writing Committee.3Although with several new recommendations, there are a few new updates that bear particular relevance to emergency healthcare providers working in the prehospital and emergency department setting. One of the updates purported to have a significant impact on the initial evaluation and management of patients with suspected acute ischemic stroke is the window of time to perform endovascular thrombectomy, being increased to up to 24 hours in carefully selected patients. These recommendations are based on the results from the DAWN and DEFUSE 3 trials, which evaluated the effectiveness of endovascular therapy (thrombectomy) plus standard care vs. standard care alone in patients with large vessel occlusion acute ischemic stroke who had last been known to be well 6 to 24 hours (24 for DAWN and 16 hours for DEFUSE 3 studies) earlier with specific findings on advanced neuroimaging.5The extension of the window of thrombectomy for ischemic stroke patients up to 24 hours is particularly significant as this new extended window can increase the proportion of patients who may benefit from this intervention. Noting that the inclusion criteria is selective and only a subset of the acute ischemic stroke population will benefit, this extended therapeutic window for this intervention has tremendous implications for the prehospital care environment where systems are designed to transport patients to healthcare facilities that can optimize the likelihood of positive patient outcomes. Regionalization of diagnosis-specific care through specialty centers and transporting patients to those centers equipped with the human and capital resources to achieve optimal patient outcomes takes a tremendous amount of time, energy, effort, planning, and resources at the organizational level of any emergency medical services (EMS) system. These changes also have implications for protocols and procedures at the hospital and provider level. This may be one of the reasons why so much consternation over the new recommendation commenting on bypassing intravenous (IV) alteplase-capable hospitals to transport to a higher level of stroke care may have been deleted. Specifically, Section 1.3 EMS Systems, recommendation 4 stated that when several IV alteplase-capable hospital options exist within a defined geographic region, the benefit of bypassing the closest to bring the patient to one that offers a higher level of stroke care, including mechanical thrombectomy, is uncertain.2 target 30–34 millimeters of mercury) for patients with acute severe neurological decline from brain swelling as a bridge to more definitive therapy.The use of telemedicine evaluation of acute ischemic stroke patients is also a new recommendation that supports a service to assist community physicians who do not have access to on-site neurological services. Telemedicine allows physicians and patients in resource-poor  communities to benefit from the expertise of a neurology consultation via live audio/video communication or simply by phone. The recommendations report that the administration of IV alteplase guided by telestroke consultation for patients with acute ischemic stroke may be as safe and beneficial as that of stroke centers.The AHA/ASA has released a correction to the 2018 Guidelines for the Early Management of Patients with Acute Ischemic Stroke: A Guideline for Healthcare Professionals from the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association since its initial online publication in January 2018.


Background: Most previous studies consider advance directives as one single outcome, which conceals possible variations of individuals’ decisions on two different advance directives documents–living will (LW) and durable power of attorney for healthcare (PA). To advance the knowledge on advance planning among older adults in the US, this study examined how health status and education are associated with completions of LW and PA and whether such associations vary by age and race. Methods: Data are from the 2016 wave of Health and Retirement Study. Health status was indicated by chronic condition and ADL and IADL functional limitations. Logistic regression model was used to examine how the completions of LW and PA are associated with health and education variables respectively. Interaction terms were created to test the moderating effects of race and age. Results: The analysis results show that older adults with higher IADL functional limitation and more education were more likely to complete completing PA or LW. Being white and higher age will increase the probability for an older adult to complete PA, whereas the older adults with heart problem were more likely to complete LW. The association between IADL/ADL and PA was stronger in white than other racial groups, and the association between IADL and LW was stronger in young-old than the oldest-old. Conclusion: The findings highlight the importance of examining the completions of two advance directive documents respectively and indicate the necessity of developing distinct and concrete strategies to promote the completions of PA and LW.


Ever since mandatory long-term care insurance was introduced in Germany there has been concern about staffing of nursing homes. As attempts to introduce the Canadian PLAISIR system failed today staffing ratios between federal states differ by more than 20 % and perceived understaffing is a major reason for the lack of nurses. Against this background the reform act from December 2015 commissioned the development of a new instrument to identify necessary staffing ratios. The University of Bremen was mandated to develop this instrument, and will present the final product in August 2019 to the Commissioner. The contribution will describe the methods applied in developing the instrument and the resulting instrument itself which translates the number and characteristics of any given nursing home into staffing requirements according to certain degrees of qualification, thus replacing general quotas of registered nurses to auxiliary staff by individual ratios for each nursing home.


Colombia has the highest level of income inequality among Latin American countries, which likely translates into disparities in the aging experience. This study uses data on adults ages 60 and older from the 2017 National Survey of Quality of Life to examine socioeconomic stratification in physical health and psychological well-being. Colombians are assigned to estratos that reflect their residential location as well as social and economic position. Compared to those in the lowest estrato, older adults in the middle and high estratos are less likely to report having sensory impairment or difficulty with daily activities. They are also 1-2 times more likely to report feeling happy and calm. Those in the highest estratos are less likely to report feeling worried. Results suggest there is tremendous variation in the aging experience across socioeconomic strata and that older adults in the lowest strata are particularly disadvantaged with respect to health and well-being.


Concerns have been raised that the transplants performed in the local context at the time of procedures reported in this article  may haveDetails as to the donor sources and methods of obtaining informed consent from donors were not reported in , and wheThe authors state that no vulnerable populations were involved in their research and all organs were obtained voluntarily but did not provide ethics approval documentation or consent forms to support their claim or clarify whether organs had been procured from prisoners.The authors did not respond to inquiries about the availability of underlying data supporting this study.PLOS ONE Editors retract this article.Owing to the lack of documentation to demonstrate this study had prospective ethical approval, insufficient reporting, unresolved concerns around the source of transplanted organs and whether they included organs from prisoners, and in compliance with international ethical standards for organ/tissue donation and transplantation, the The corresponding author notified the journal that all authors disagree with the retraction. The other authors either could not be reached or did not respond directly.


Jun Wang was not included as an author in the published article. The corrected Author Contributions Statement appears below:“AT performed or assisted with all experiments and wrote the paper. AK performed the phase-separation characterization and helped write the paper. RA helped analyze data and edited the paper. NT helped analyze data and edited the paper. JW contributed to the initial concept of this work and assisted with experimental planning. JF oversaw all experiments and edited the paper.”The authors apologize for this error and state that this does not change the scientific conclusions of the article in any way. The original article has been updated.


Althougact test . Surprisact test  reached The authors stated that their data may have potential implications in clinical practice of acutely ill patients. According to our results, critical care clinicians should be wary of basing decisions about conservative or liberal oxygen therapy on the available information from this meta-analysis  includinFurthermore, these results came from fragile and not statistically significant RCTs. Maybe it is time to add the FI and/or statistical significance of the considered outcome as criteria for the evaluation of the quality of evidence.


This article examines the implementation of fish farming as an innovative and economic strategy for promoting food security and dietary diversities among vulnerable households in drought risk areas of Zimbabwe. The declining climatic conditions and lack of economic opportunities in Mwenezi district of Zimbabwe attracted the attention of three non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to implement fish farming as an innovative mechanism to stimulate food security and generate employment in the district. The article used a qualitative research approach that includes semi-structured interviews and secondary data. The purposive sampling technique was adopted to interview participants in Mwenezi district who were involved in fish farming to assess and explore the experiences and benefits they derive from such development projects. Results for the article revealed that fish farming was well embraced by local communities as it led to improvements in food security, household income and employment regeneration. The local government including traditional leadership (Chiefs and Headmen’s) supported the NGO activities as they benefited local communities. The article concludes that although fish farming was instrumental in regenerating employment, some participants still fail to participate because of laziness and desire to maintain dependency syndrome. The article recommends the NGOs to launch awareness campaigns in rural communities and increase networking with the donor community which is fundamental in attracting sustainable funding. The government can also promote fish farming in vulnerable rural communities by providing funding and capacity building programmes. The theory is fundamental as it draws on the remembrance of ways and strategies which had been used over time to try and cope with challenges affecting the livelihoods of rural people in drought risk regions Lin . ResilieGupta, Bartley and Acosta  state thIn sub-Saharan Africa, fish farming has quickly gained momentum as an innovative and economic mechanism for generating employment and increasing household income. According to FAO , TanzaniAt the launch of Zimbabwe Fish Producer’s Association (ZFPA) at Exhibition Park on 17 March, aquaculture or fish farming was integrated into agriculture as part of the livestock sub-sector. Fish farming was regarded as a livestock enterprise that has the potential to be developed into a full-fledged agricultural industry in Zimbabwe  and collect information from them  from this project is sold to local markets and some even exported beyond international boundaries. The article observes that the fish farming projects involve the farming of aquatic organisms, including fish, molluscs, crustaceans and aquatic plants. Fish farming as a poverty alleviation technique was very successful as food security and household income greatly improved. Kawarazuka  confirmeThe field officer interviewed remarked that:The day we launched the fisheries project many villagers became eager to join the fishing clubs within our project. The fisheries project was flooded since many people saw the benefits that were going to come out this project. Food security greatly improved as the produce (fish) was sold to the local markets and some exported at highly competitive prices. The project members were able to sustain their families and send their children to school. It can be deduced from this project that employment was created which improved the economic lives of the people in Mwenezi. However, a study by Brummett  shows thThe implementation of fish farming and other food security programmes in Mwenezi district was incapacitated by limited funding from the donor community. Findings reflected that donor agencies failed to adequately fund local NGOs which results in the selective implementation of fish farming projects as some communities were left marginalised. The challenges emanated from the high level bureaucracy in the donor community which requires strong accountability to boards of directors and government ministries that release funding.One participant states:Fish farming is a good poverty alleviation programme which is helping us in our villages. But ever since we joined the programme, we do not have adequate funding as the NGOs are running many fish farming projects resulting in us being underfunded. We appeal to the government and well-wishers to assist with funding to buy more materials and vehicles to transport our produce to nearby markets. Based on the financial challenges to fund fish farming, there is a need for NGOs to network and foster relations with other business people and financial institutions which can fund development programmes.The three NGOs under study admit to the shortage of financial resources which affect them in conducting Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) on fish farming projects. The article affirms that M&E was regarded as an expensive exercise that required excessive funding to undertake; hence, the three organisations chose to ignore it on grounds of poor revenue base. The findings revealed that the shortage of funds hindered the NGOs from hiring external evaluators that could have bankrupted their already bleeding accounts. The findings highlighted on the shortage of technology (i.e. computers) and technical expertise among NGOs’ employees which could have posed serious challenges in implementing M&E strategies. The participants from all NGOs openly state that many NGO staff members were technologically inefficient which shows weaknesses in managerial leadership or. Based on these scenarios the NGO top management was supposed to initiate training programmes which help to equip their staff with the necessary skills to cope with the trends in the economic and technological environment. A study by Belton and Little  endorsedThe success of NGOs in Zimbabwe rests on their ability to earn legitimacy with the people and government. The article revealed that legitimacy and political interference from government have been two major setbacks affecting fisheries and food security projects in Mwenezi district. NGOs indulging in fish farming projects are required to seek approval from traditional leadership  and local municipality which often derails this poverty reduction strategy.One NGO Programme Officer states that:Before we started fish farming projects we sought permission from the Council and Local Leaders to hold community meetings with the people. The reason was to earn legitimacy so that local people can understand and believe in our mission. We had to wait for some days whilst our application was being processed. The long period of waiting disappoint some communities who were waiting for the fish farming projects to start. These findings augur well with a ban imposed on NGOs in Masvingo province in 2013 by the Provincial Governor who accused them of being Western Imperialists who are driving an anti-government agenda under the mask of development aid The above assertions clearly show that participants embraced fish farming which was fundamental for employment creation, improving food security and household income to meet basic needs. Findings reflected further that NGOs in Mwenezi undertook an active role in mitigating high poverty levels in the district although there is a need to instil a sense of complete ownership among community members so that full participation is achieved for sustainable development.The success of any viable entrepreneurial venture rests on the availability of markets to export the produce. The article establishes that the lack of market opportunities and low cash injections hindered fish farming in Mwenezi district. The growing competition of fish farming in Zimbabwe saw markets becoming flooded owing to the decline in the economy, and so the businesses are fast losing their profits. The shortage of ready markets led to fish farmers selling fish to local neighbourhoods and businesses at a relatively low price because of unavailability of the external markets. Failure to obtain ready markets constrained fish farmers to expand into a more commercialised business; hence, they remain small at subsistence level. The majority of participants pointed to the lack of credit facilities to finance labour and technologies as NGOs often took time to provide the needed equipment to use in fish farming projects.One of the participants laments:After harvesting fish we face challenges in terms of transport and markets to sell our produce. The local businesses and growth points what are our main target are always full since the competition is very high in our district. We end up selling our fish to individuals such as teachers, business owners at low prices which is discouraging since fish farming is hard work and we sometimes get little. We do not have enough knowledge about where to sell our fish as other towns are very far and we do not have enough money to hire trucks to transport the fish to other big towns. The reason is that the participants who are of rural origin lack collateral security to solicit loans from local banks such as Agricultural Bank (AGRIBANK). The lack of borrowing power often exposes rural people to donor dependency syndrome. This limited access to markets was acknowledged in a study by Wetengere  where fiThe trends in the technological environment globally require organisations to adopt and cope with a wave of transformation which can improve the viability and profit margins of a business. The participants cited the limited technology application in the fish farming projects. This reduces the opportunity of fish farming to flourish into a more commercialised sector. On the issues of technology usage in fish farming, the participants lacked proper storage facilities, hatchery and improved fish feeds among others. The article points out further that fish farming in Mwenezi district has shown the need for extension services; however, there is inadequacy or non-viability of the extension services to disseminate information on the proper use of medicines, suitable fish farming technology and good management practises for fish farming. Research by Adinya, Offem and Ikpi  supportsAccording to Myer , ethics The findings of the article show that NGOs in Mwenezi district have been playing a vital role in fish farming projects that were regenerating employment and increasing household income and food security. Nonetheless, limited technological application hinders the transformation of fish farming into a more commercialised income generating venture. NGOs are often regarded as the third sector in the economy of the country and have been advancing several innovations and new models that have been adopted by various stakeholders in developmental circles. Because of their generally flexible organisational structures and characteristics such as organisational autonomy and participatory structures, NGOs have added value to fish farming projects in Mwenezi district as they have abundant time to engage relevant stakeholders such as community members to discuss and teach them the nature and way to self-sustain in the drought risk district. Therefore, fish farming as an innovative mechanism for improving food security in the drought stricken district led to socio-economic improvements in most rural areas under study. Nevertheless, NGOs need to improve their managerial capacities to achieve effective food security and employment creation among vulnerable households in Mwenezi district.The article observes that the implementation of fish farming projects by three NGOs in Mwenezi district has been widely embraced as it helped reduce the dependency syndrome among rural communities by generating employment for sustainable food security. Various factors such as poor infrastructure, limited market opportunities, shortage of finance, lack of research training extension, M&E and legitimacy affect the NGOs in the district. However, the study has shown a positive relationship between employment regeneration and improved food security through fish farming. As a drought prone area, fish farmers in Mwenezi district have since improved their household income; hence, fish farming can be regarded as an innovative and economic mechanism for transforming rural livelihoods.The study faced various challenges ranging from the remoteness of the study area, time constraints and limited financial resources as it involves traveling to fish farming projects within the district. The other main constraint was the reluctance by other participants to respond to interview questions. To mitigate these challenges, some friends and family assisted with funding to be able to finish this study.Based on the conclusions drawn from this article, NGOs need to improve on their research culture to widen the scope of fish farming, for instance implementing cage fish farming which is easy to manage. Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) are vital for NGOs to subsidise fish farming and offer incentives to feed production and processing industries as fish farming as an economic sub-sector improves food security, nutrition and creates employment. The government needs to support fish farmers with access to credit facilities to finance aquaculture projects. NGOs need to provide skills training on fish farming to rural communities to bridge the technology skills gap. The contribution of fish farming to the economy of Zimbabwe needs to be embraced by including it the national budget as a viable poverty alleviation technique.


This paper explores the associations of depressive symptoms with social supports and social networks among dementia caregivers. It has been well documented that dementia caregivers are at greater risk of experiencing negative mental health and poorer physical health than non-caregivers. This paper describes a collaborative process between two universities and a community-based provider in designing a Social Network Analyses to examine the network structures used by dementia caregivers participating in a community-based support program. The relationship between the caregiver support networks and depressive symptoms, were analyzed using multivariate regression models. Given the small sample size and missing data multiple imputation was applied to the data. The findings suggest the effects of a variety of supports in the caregiver network on mental health and depressive symptoms. Among the findings it was found that the presence of financial support  and frequency of contacts  support resulted in a decrease in depressive symptoms and better mental health than for caregivers without similar supports in their networks. This paper will conclude with a discussion of potential uses of social network analysis to better understand how the structure of caregivers’ network can address the concrete physical, emotional and financial needs of dementia caregivers.


Nature and Science ran completely different news line-ups this week. But their lead stories agreed on one thing: patients matter. Nature led with a story about a group of patients who will share in a patent after giving blood and tissue samples to scientists. Science chose to lead with the controversial World Medical Association decision to recommend restricting the use of placebos in certain clinical trials.


The number of people above 60 years old will double by 2050. There is a considerate variability in the health status of older people. The identification of the different trajectories that people follow as they grow older constitutes one of the aims of the ATHLOS project. In the current study, we created a metric of health in the four available waves  of the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS) by employing Bayesian multilevel Item Response Theory. Growth mixture modelling indicated that older Mexicans  age by following four distinct pathways . Adherence to healthy lifestyle behaviours  was associated with better health trajectories. Preliminary analyses in the ATHLOS harmonised dataset also suggest that older people age by following four distinct pathways. The impact of lifestyle behaviours within the harmonised dataset will be investigated and also presented.


Animals have evolved a dramatic diversity of aging rates with lifespans ranging from 2 years to 200 years. This natural diversity of lifespan can be exploited to understand the mechanisms of longevity and develop anti-aging interventions. Our goal is to identify mechanisms that allow such exceptionally long-lived animals to live long and healthy lives and then use these mechanisms to benefit human health. Naked mole rat is the longest-lived rodent with the maximum lifespan of 32 years. We discovered that the mechanism of longevity and cancer resistance in the naked mole rat mediated by high molecular weight hyaluronan. I will discuss the mouse model we generated that mimics the naked mole rat and shows increased healthspan and lifespan. I will also the role of SIRT6 in mediating longevity across mammals and in human centenarians by improving DNA repair and silencing transposable elements.


Most academic institutions welcome partnerships with industry and state government. These collaborations can lead to interventions to create social and environmental changes on a broad scale. Along with the opportunities, some challenges are inherent with these working relationships. The Kansas State University Center on Aging and the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services has been working together for more than 15 years on the Promoting Excellent Alternatives for Kansas nursing homes (PEAK) program. This collaboration has led to beneficial changes for nursing home residents and provided fertile ground for researchers wanting to examine these environments. This symposium will offer researcher insights as well as to elucidate process and procedures related to developing and maintaining collaborations with a state agency.


This symposium addresses the issue of extended working life policy by considering the influence of gender and health on the experiences of older workers. In response to population ageing, policies designed to extend working life have been introduced in many countries. These policies include raising state pension age and linking the amount of state pensions more closely to years spent in paid employment. Such policies tend to be undifferentiated by gender or health status – in most countries, state pension age has been raised to the same age for men and women. Yet, research evidence indicates that women in all countries are disadvantaged in relation to employment at older ages and pensions. There are also health inequalities for older workers, depending on their occupation and whether they are in precarious or secure employment. Extended working life is of pressing societal concern. This symposium brings together the work of a group of leading international scholars who have been researching and reflecting on its implications in a forthcoming book on the topic across 34 countries. The symposium begins with an overview and analysis of the empirical landscape of older employment and pension policy by Martina Rasticova and Jim Ogg; Paper 2 offers a discussion of the theoretical perspectives and policy debates across 34 countries by Clary Krekula; there will be an analysis of extended working life policy in Ireland by Aine Ni Leime and a final presentation synthesising policy recommendations and mapping future research directions in extended working life by Debra Street.


Materials [The authors have found two errors in the paper published in aterials . The errThe authors wish to make the following corrections (in both formulas of the paragraph) to this paper:“In the two-dimensional space, the maximal packing density for identical circles is given by These changes have no material impact on the conclusions of the paper. The authors would like to apologize for any inconvenience caused to the readers by these changes.


Frontiers in Chemistry features papers that utilize phenolic compounds such as catechols for designing functional coatings and materials. Recently, scientists worldwide have incorporated catechols and various phenolic compounds in designing advanced and multifunctional materials with unique properties  , on the polymerization process of dopamine to form a polydopamine coating. HMDA promoted intermolecular crosslinking between the oxidized form of catechol and subsequently promoted film deposition. This article further confirmed the use of resorcinol as an inhibitor to polydopamine formation.The formation of polydopamine coatings involves the autoxidation and crosslinking of dopamine to form an adhesive primer for additional surface functionalization  when the coating was hydrated in an aqueous solution. H2O2 is generated as a byproduct during catechol autoxidation  and coated onto various elastomers commonly used to fabricate urethral catheters. The coating significantly lowered the friction coefficient of the elastomers. Additionally, incorporation of silver nanoparticles into the coating enhanced the antimicrobial property of the coating.All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.


In medicine, we still cannot objectively assess who will recover from health stressors imposed by disease or its treatment. If resilience, the dynamic ability to respond to and recover from health stressors, is considered as an emergent feature of a complex system, then methodology from complexity science may help us quantify the health-promoting features that support the recovery process. This presentation describes ongoing work aimed at empirically testing the concept and predictive value of resilience by examining the extent to which small-scale responses of bodily systems  to natural (micro)perturbations and indicators of loss of complexity are related to physical functioning and recovery throughout the journey of 120 geriatric inpatients. Dynamic indicators of resilience  and multiscale entropy measures were estimated from continuous heart rate and accelerometer data and compared to measures of patients’ physical functioning  at admission, discharge and 3 months later.


The authors of the paper originally entitled "Sources of Information and Behavioral Patterns in Online Health Forums: Qualitative Study" :e10) wish to correct the title of their publication. The subtitle "Qualitative Study" is misleading because the analysis was primarily quantitative. The title has now been changed to read "Sources of Information and Behavioral Patterns in Online Health Forums: Observational Study". This error has been corrected in the online version of the paper on the JMIR website on January 31, 2014, together with publishing this correction notice. There are no changes to the contents of the paper. A correction notice has been sent to PubMed. This was done before submission to Pubmed Central and other full-text repositories.


Despite global trends in rural population ageing, relatively little attention within research and policy has been directed to understanding what it means for rural people, communities and institutions to be at the forefront of twenty-first century demographic change. To build understanding of rural ageing, this symposium draws together papers from four countries to provide insights in the gaps in rural ageing research – specifically the in context of productive and active rural ageing by examining rural work, retirement and volunteering through the critical perspectives of citizenship, contestation and complexity. Winterton and Warburton will explore how active citizenship trends among rural older adults support or hinder the capacity of rural settings to support health ageing. Colibaba and Skinner will discuss the contestation of rural ageing by examining a volunteer-based rural library and the emergent ‘contested spaces of older voluntarism’ whereby older volunteer negotiate their rights and responsibilities associated with ageing and volunteering in rural communities. Duvvury and Ni Leime will examine the interactions between the twin phenomena of feminisation of agriculture and the feminisation of ageing in the consequent implications for rural women’s work and retirement. Skinner and Joseph offer a critical perspective on voluntarism in ageing rural communities by examining volunteer leadership biographies as another means of understanding the contribution of older rural adults.


Impact Factor (IF) of academic journals continues to gain further importance with not only science community but also academic institutions, funding agencies as well as the Editors of academic journals the world over with every passing day. Despite lot of criticism IF has attracted over the last decade in particular and lot of drawbacks, it is still considered as the best available Scientometrics to judge the standard of an academic journal.It may be mentioned here that Impact Factor is a citation based metrics based on the average number of times an article published in a particular journal has been cited by authors in other journals.ISI has about 34,171 journals published in academic disciplines which includes 12,271 journals covering medical and social sciences.4Faced with this new situation the Editors and Publishers have started using different strategies to increase their Impact Factor i.e by refusing to publish supplements, encouraging authors and reviewers to cite papers published in their journals. Ensure early publication of papers which are likely to be cited early in the year and making the papers electronically accessible through their websites as early as possible.8San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) issued in December 2012 during the American Society of Biology meeting was considered almost a fatal blow to Impact Factor. DORA emphasized to stop the use of “Journal Impact Factor” in judging the scientists’ work.13The increasing importance of Impact Factor is evident from the fact that many publishers and Editors who fail to get indexed by Web of Sciences feel proud to decorate the title of their journals with various fake Impact Factors. Some of these commonly known fake IF include the following:The twelve academic journals from Pakistan which includes three medical journals which enjoy Impact Factor are shown in Table-IIWhile the editors should concentrate on improving the quality of the manuscripts they accept for publication and accelerate their efforts to improve the standard of the journal, manipulating and artificially boosting their Impact Factor is highly unethical. They should follow author friendly policy, help and guide them to improve their manuscripts with the help of members of the editorial board and peer reviewers. It is nice for the editors to know their rights but they must also remember their duties and responsibilities which include teaching and training through workshops. Many journal editors and bodies of Editors including World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), Eastern Mediterranean Association of Medical Editors (EMAME), Asia-Pacific Association of Medical Editors (APAME), Pakistan Association of Medical Editors (PAME) and editor’s bodies in many other countries are already doing this by organizing workshops and these efforts should not only be continued but also accelerated in collaboration with other professional specialty organizations and medical institutions.


Recruitment of African American (AA) participants into clinical research trials in the area of aging and dementia is a major problem facing the field. Although AAs are at a significantly elevated risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD), they are underrepresented in clinical trials and research studies. While previous research has identified a number of barriers to participation, relatively little is known about how to overcome these barriers and engage AA individuals in research. Photovoice may provide a novel approach to advance our understanding of AA perceptions in regards to barriers and strategies to increase AA engagement in brain aging research. The purpose of this project is to add to existing understanding of barriers and facilitators and identify strategies to enhance engagement. Three AA research advocates served as community facilitators to identify and guide groups of AA adults though an 8-10 session photovoice project. Group sessions involved discussions and sharing of images pertaining to various prompts in the area of brain health and research participation. Sessions were audio-taped and transcribed verbatim and photos were uploaded. Participants identified four categories of barriers to AA research participation: Mistrust, the belief that all research involves medication, avoidance and fear of acknowledging problems, and seeing the risks of research but not the need. Participants had various suggestions and approaches for ameliorating each of these barriers. This photovoice community engagement process revealed unique insights into barriers and opportunities for increasing AA engagement in brain aging research.


In the original article, there was an error. The statement of written informed consent procedures was incorrect because of inappropriate wording.Materials and Methods, subsection Participant Selection, paragraph two:A correction has been made to the “This study was approved by the Ethical Committee of Tianjin Medical University General Hospital and written informed consent was obtained from all participants or their guardians.”The authors apologize for this error and state that this does not change the scientific conclusions of the article in any way. The original article has been updated.


Almost 25% of US military veterans live in rural areas and over 70% of these are age 55 years or older. The physical, cognitive, and functional declines common to aging coupled with accumulated physical and psychological traumas often incurred through military service make caring for older Veterans an especially difficult challenge. Furthermore, the geographic distances associated with rural living pose a significant barrier to timely access to care for aging Veterans and caregivers living in remote communities. Significant gaps remain in VA’s understanding of the needs of this population, which is essential for developing adequate models of care. This symposium highlights various aspects of the rural older Veteran experience and will suggest opportunities for improving access to care for this population. The first presentation estimates the differential impact of rural status on mortality rates among older Veterans using mortality data from the General Social Survey . A second study is an analysis of urban/rural differences in PTSD symptoms as function of multiple co-factors and accounting for geographic location . Seaman et al present qualitative data regarding the experience of Veterans with head and neck cancer to understand how rurality impacts cancer survival . The final presentation will highlight a model to address mental health problems in older Veterans in primary care  and will specifically highlight how this VA program may be adapted to address such needs the needs of older Veterans in rural areas.


Bionic Radiologist is a concept that combines humanity and digitalization for better health care integration of radiology. At a practical level, this concept will achieve critical goals: (1) testing decisions being made scientifically on the basis of disease probabilities and patient preferences; (2) image analysis done consistently at any time and at any site; and (3) treatment suggestions that are closely linked to imaging results and are seamlessly integrated with other information. The Bionic Radiologist will thus help avoiding missed care opportunities, will provide continuous learning in the work process, and will also allow more time for radiologists’ primary roles: interacting with patients and referring physicians. To achieve that potential, one has to cope with many implementation barriers at both the individual and institutional levels. These include: reluctance to delegate decision making, a possible decrease in image interpretation knowledge and the perception that patient safety and trust are at stake. To facilitate implementation of the Bionic Radiologist the following will be helpful: uncertainty quantifications for suggestions, shared decision making, changes in organizational culture and leadership style, maintained expertise through continuous learning systems for training, and role development of the involved experts. With the support of the Bionic Radiologist, disparities are reduced and the delivery of care is provided in a humane and personalized fashion.Radiology images and reports have long been digitalized. However, the potential of the more than 3.6 billion radiology examinations performed annually worldwide has largely gone unused in the effort to digitally transform health care. The  This provides the opportunity for greater involvement of radiologists in shared decisions making with patients, which in turn is a solution in itself to avoid poor work satisfaction,es Table .34 For instance, neural networks can be used to predict the probability of brain injuries in elderly patients presenting with head injury after a fall which may be used for guiding testing decision.38 Natural language processing of clinical information provided by referring physicians and demographic data can be used to predict the protocol and priority of brain MRI examinations.39 Clinical prediction models can provide probabilities for instance of pulmonary embolism which has shown to improve the yield of imaging and avoid imaging in those not needing it.40 It is also know that patients with stable chest pain and low-to-intermediate clinical probability of coronary artery disease (7–67%) benefit most from coronary CT angiography.41 This information can readily be integrated into decision making about further testing in patients presenting with chest pain. An important barrier to implementation of such decision support systems in clinical practice is the hesitation of physicians to refrain from diagnostic testing in patients who are actually suggested to not need further imaging tests.42 Another practical challenge is that the half-life of clinical data for training decision support systems is just four months indicating that most recent data are needed and continuous updating is crucial.43There are already at present several examples for guiding decision making about imaging tests with the help of other clinical information for instance from the medical records or laboratory tests.15 The potential of this becomes clear when noting that present-day artificial neural networks are as accurate as radiologists in detecting breast cancer on a mammogram.44 However, there are also more false positive findings using current deep learning image analysis techniques for instance for detection of critical findings in head CT,45 which may lead to radiologists’ fatigue posing a safety risk and should thus be avoided using better technology. The Bionic Radiologist as a combined approach to leverage both the consistency of automatic analysis and individual nuances of human image analysis would possibly have greater value for clinical practice. This however implies considerable changes in the work flow and will require a revolutionary shift in how radiology is practiced today: data science and artificial intelligence will be practically and physically integrated into the workplace of radiologists and interrelated functions. The Bionic Radiologist will be a radiologist supervising the results generated by machine learning algorithms and integrating them with other clinical data for the final interpretation.14 Interestingly, such a hybrid approach might also be most acceptable to patients according to a survey at Charité among 100 patients clinically referred to computed tomography; 85% preferred an analysis by radiologists and computers compared to either of them alone.A true augmented radiologists’ image analysis by machine intelligence may increase consistency and avoid perception and interpretation errors when reviewing patients’ radiology images.Bionic Radiologist approach would be similar to the situation in the airplane cockpit where the autoflight system is used most of the time, but for the situations in which human interaction cannot be replaced one prefers to have a pilot on board. Interestingly, the human pilot can better control for anomalies than the autopilot46 and shared control architecture should thus be considered for medical use. We also need to continue to advance the currently rather basic information technology infrastructure in health care so that it can integrate multifaceted information from all disciplines including radiology.47 This will allow radiologists more time for what should be their two primary roles in addition to interpreting images: talking empathetically to patients who are undergoing procedures and consulting with referring physicians. In general, this effect has potential to revitalize the patient-physician relationship. However, if the role shifts toward only supervising results generated by artificially intelligence a decrease in image perception and interpretation skills among physicians has to be expected to occur in the future. Expertise should thus be maintained through training that includes automated and individualized feedback systems to the human reader about his or her cases which is fed by patient events and outcomes  as well as efforts leading to more widespread use of quantitative imaging biomarkers such as the Quantitative Imaging Biomarkers Alliance (www.rsna.org/QIBA) and global health data sharing from pivotal clinical trials in radiology.75The 77 This can be addressed—in analogy to the interplay between human pilot and autopilot—by e.g. a greater role of humans in quality control and oversight of any treatment decisions before they are put into effect (Table 78 Job design and job development have to face the criteria which are related to such a role development and open mindset for new forms of human-computer collaboration.31Structured reporting will thus transform the culture of radiology reporting practice from prose text documents towards structured reports which have greater standardization and enable searchability. This requires acceptance on the human side for changes in the workplace which affect the culture of radiology as a clinical discipline. This includes overcoming the perception that patient safety and trust may be at stake if treatment recommendations are automatically generated by algorithms based on integration of imaging findings with other clinical information using computer-led systems.ct Table . This gr72 Similar electronic solutions are available for breast,79 coronary artery,80 and prostate imaging. There are also IT solutions that standardize radiology reports of abdominal aortic aneurysms and facilitate communication of results and patient follow-up.81 Importantly, natural language processing methods now allow to automatically extract and characterize the clinical significance of findings in radiology reports82 and convolutional neural networks have better accuracy for radiology text report classification than rule-based models,83 which holds potential to facilitate linking treatment recommendations with findings provided that a sufficient level of standardization is present in reports.73Several examples of structured reporting for improved linking of imaging findings with treatment suggestions exist. For instance, structured reporting of multiphasic CT of pancreatic cancer improves the completeness of reports while structured rectal cancer MR imaging reports reduce the need for further treatment planning consultations.Bionic Radiologist about whether or not to do an imaging test depends on a consistently obtained patient history and clinical background, clinical prediction rules, and models for decision making. To implement this integration of human and machine decision making in medical care requires uncertainty quantifications for decisions and predictions in order to obtain acceptance by the human radiologists. Integration of artificial and individual intelligence will also benefit from the digital transformation as a socio–technical system with dynamics that balance interests on all sides.84 Using the opportunities of artificial intelligence for image analysis in clinical practice requires a seamless integration with human image analysis. This will also provide the radiologist with greater freedom for involvement in shared decision making with patients which will increase work satisfaction.85 This is in line with a recent survey of radiologists who expect an increase in the time spent with patients as a result of artificial intelligence implementations as well as a lower risk of imaging-related medical errors.86 Acceptance by human radiologists will be further increased by automated and individualized feedback systems to the human readers about outcomes of his or her patients and thus enhancement of the expert role. Bionic radiologists will use structured reports that include automatically generated reminders about imaging findings that require follow-up as well as treatment recommendations to avoid missed care opportunities and increase patient safety and trust of all stakeholders involved in health care by oversight of treatment decisions. The overall goal is to provide better integrated health care through the Bionic Radiologist combining digitalization with human input at all stages. Success in the implementation will ensure that advances in artificial intelligence and digital medicine benefit diagnostic management decisions by providing calculated disease probabilities to avoid disparities and provide humane and personalized health care universally. The implementation of the Bionic Radiologist depends on the interplay between the new technological potential, individual behavior and institutional organizational properties whether the positive outcome in terms of better decisions and medical care can be attained.88 The most critical influencing factors are summarized in Fig. Enabling better decisions by the Bionic Radiologists promises better outcomes and lower costs through better integration of diagnostic imaging in clinical care processes. In this perspective we outlined the characteristics and facilitating factors with respect to the technology development itself, the surrounding institutional conditions and resistance due to the required change in culture as well as the prerequisites for individual acceptance and adaptation (see Fig. The see Fig. . FurtherIt is an issue of future research to further analyze what the interaction between these fields can look like and what the specific characteristics of relevant variables are for gaining better outcomes in terms of appropriateness, completeness, and timeliness. A longitudinal socio–technical system analysis with time-series analysis of health care data which are related to the characteristics of the workplace is supposed to be a suitable approach. This also implies that medical technology research could and should be further aligned to organizational studies and that the question of trust in AI-assisted medical imaging should play a central role in future research.


Empirical applications of cumulative dis/advantage primarily focus on accumulative processes within an individual life course as a mechanism generating growing intracohort inequality with age. However, adult health reflects the accumulation of exposures to advantages and disadvantages across the individual life course as well as the transmission of resources and practices across generations within one’s family of origin, which forms the foundation from which children are launched and inequality is reproduced. In analyses using two panel studies , we integrate literature on the early-life origins of health with the concept of linked lives and the intergenerational transmission of resources to examine the relationship between parents’ health and the health of their children in adulthood. Results indicate an intergenerational persistence in health and demonstrate the importance of looking beyond the individual life course to better understand cumulative dis/advantage in health as a process operating across generations within families.


Vaccines. [The authors wish to make the following corrections to this paper due to a typesetting error in the conclusion of this article which was recently published in accines. . The conBifidobacterium breve) as an adjuvant therapy for the modulation of chemotherapy efficacy and toxicity has been reported [87].“Studies that investigate the relationship between the intestinal microbiome and the development and function of the immune system continue to demonstrate novel concepts that increase knowledge-based concepts for disease treatment. Cancer immunotherapy is such an example where for more than a decade in the field of oncology, the objective to harness the patient’s immune system to kill tumours has remained a key goal . Recent research strongly suggests and shows that the intestinal bacterial cohort can significantly facilitate the efficacy of checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapies in cancer treatments [83–86]. As a consequence of this research activity, the administration of probiotics  and autoimmune pathologies . There is hence a logical step established for the inclusion and administration of probiotic formulations in the treatment of cancers with immunotherapies [88] as well as an adjuvant for vaccines in early and late life.”The authors would like to apologize for any inconvenience caused to the readers by these changes.


Dutch nutrient policy aims at reducing leaching of agricultural nutrients by internalizing the negative externalities associated with inefficient nutrient use. This is done by taxation of nitrogen and phosphate surpluses that exceed a hectare-based threshold of maximum-allowed surpluses. One management strategy farmers may use to reduce the nutrient surpluses on their farms is to improve the nutrient efficiency of the agricultural production process. This study employs Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to calculate nitrogen and phosphate efficiencies and an overall nutrient efficiency measure for a 3-year panel of 114 Dutch dairy farms. Subsequent analyses show the impact of both farm intensity and nutrient efficiency on the nitrogen and phosphate surpluses. It appears that farm intensity has a positive effect on efficiency, but efficiency and intensity exert opposite influences on nutrient surpluses. This is especially the case for nitrogen. The magnitude of a possible reduction of nitrogen surpluses through a strategy of efficiency improvement is therefore limited by the intensity of the farming system, unless the technology with which nutrients are used by the farming system can be further improved or input/output ratios will be altered.


Data in Brief comprises the curated data and species overlaps in the mentioned prioritization schemes. It aims to facilitate further critical and extended analysis and to highlight the importance of record keeping and management of aquatic species in zoological institutions across the globe for the conservation of these species.The data presented in this article are related to the research article entitled “Assessing the Conservation Potential of Fish and Corals in Aquariums Globally”. This article unveils the number of fish and coral species held by members of the Species360 network, from records in the Zoological Information Management Systems (ZIMS). Furthermore, we provide data for species in ZIMS that are under the following global prioritization and conservation assessments: i) the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), ii) the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, iii) Vulnerability to Climate Change, iv) Evolutionary Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) and v) the Alliance for Zero Extinction (AZE). The material in this  Specifications tableValue of the data•This is the most comprehensive overlap of 3511 species of fish and corals with five global species conservation assessments and prioritization schemes. We aim to inform how many of the species in aquariums members of the Species360 global network registered in ZIMS align with those schemes.•ex situ populations for species of conservation concern.These data will assist further research on •These data could support the decision-making process of aquariums and zoological institutions on captive management and collection planning.•The dataset may also assist in further assessments by identifying existing gaps and opportunities for conservation.1The data incorporates 3511 species in aquariums with five conservation assessments and prioritization schemes.2The creation of this dataset is based on an extensive analysis of six online datasets: i) species holdings from the Species360׳s Zoological Information Management System (ZIMS) R package taxizemerge function from R. We identified the species currently managed in a studbook in the European Association of Zoos and Aquariums (EAZA) The species names were standardized according to the accepted scientific name in Catalogue of Life (CoL) In


Oryza sativa) was domesticated in Asia many thousands of years ago and more recently independently in Africa. Wild rice populations are found around the tropical world. The extensive production of rice in many areas has displaced the wild populations that were the basis of the original domestications by humans. Recent research, reviewed here, has identified wild rice species in northern Australia that have been isolated from the impact of domestication in Asia. Wild rice populations contain novel alleles that are a source of desirable traits such as erect habit, disease resistance, large grain size, and unique starch properties. These populations include the most divergent genotypes within the primary gene pool of rice and more distant wild relatives. Genome sequencing also suggests the presence of populations that are close relatives of domesticated rice. Hybrid populations that demonstrate mechanisms of ongoing evolution of wild Oryza have been identified in the wild. These populations provide options for both new domestications and utilization of novel alleles to improve or adapt domesticated rice using conventional or preferably new breeding technologies. Climate change and growing food demands associated with population and economic growth are major challenges for agriculture including rice production. The availability of diverse genetic resources to support crop adaptation and new crop domestication is critical to continued production, and increased efforts to support in situ and ex situ conservation of wild Oryza and related species are warranted.Rice is one of the most important food crops contributing to the diet of large numbers of people especially in Asia. Rice ( Oryza genus is distributed around the tropical world. Domesticated rice has been cultivated in many of the areas that would have been native habits for wild Oryza species. Australia is a region that has escaped from the impact of rice domestication until very recently resulting in the persistence of many extensive populations of wild Oryza  includes the two domesticated species and six wild relatives. The genus has 11 genome types with the AA, CC, and EE genomes types found in Australia. Other members of the Oryzeae tribe are also found in Australia . The indica and japonica types correspond to distinct chloroplast sequences in wild populations indicating capture of these in separate domestication events. The aus type was found to include individuals with either wild chloroplast types  in the domesticated rice gene pool , making Oryza species, Oryza officinalis, and Oryza australiensis and other species from within the tribe Oryzeae such as Potamophila  has been reported only in the extreme north of Australia on the mainland and on Moa Island in the Torres Strait. Collect of this species has not been reported recently, and the status of the Australian populations is uncertain. The author was unable to locate populations on Moa Island during a visit in 2016. This species is part of the CC genome group of Oryza species. Populations reported in Australia may not be permanently established and may be the result of occasional migration from Asia suggesting that the current presence of this species in Australia requires confirmation.O. australiensis .Potamophila parviflora; Zizania of North America than to Oryza. Cold adaptation and the presence of separate male and female flowers are potentially useful traits. This species grows just south of the border between Queensland and New South Wales but has not been reported in Queensland despite some searching by the author and others.River grass  is found throughout temperate Australia demonstrating adaptation to cooler climates. Attempts have been made to domesticate this species as a cool climate dryland rice crop. Mutagenesis  had high amylose contents and gelatinization temperatures. Pasting properties varied. Analysis of starch structure suggested the presence of shorter chain amylose in O. australiensis . Specific descriptors were developed for sensory evaluation of these rices. The Australian wild rice was similar to the red rice and red basmati having a mild aroma and flavor but without the lingering aftertaste. The wild rice had a firmer texture and required a longer cooking time. The overall cooking profiles, sensory, and physical attributes suggest and that Australian wild rice has potential for commercialization in the colored rice market and may be a useful genetic resource for rice breeding.Sensory evaluation of Australian wild rice has indicated acceptable eating qualities . AustralProduction of domesticated Asian rice in northern Australia has been limited by a high incidence of disease relative to rice production further south in Australia. The southern production areas have been well outside the natural range of rice and rice pathogens. Rice and associated rice pathogens  are natiThe wild populations are extensive in the extreme north but are threatened by developments including the improvements of roads and the resulting more rapid spread of invasive weeds into new areas, associated with increased traffic. Aquatic weeds are displacing wild populations at some locations including protected areas such as national parks. Greater awareness of the presence of these populations and their potential to contribute to global food security is necessary to ensure adequate measures are taken to protect the wild populations.The Australian landscapes in which rice is found in Australia have been inhabited by humans for a very long time. The way in which rice was used as food is not well documented. It is possible that human use has impacted on the genetics of wild rice populations in Australia. The large grain size of some Australian populations  might reOryza could be targeted for direct domestication as new rice types. The key trait to be overcome in domestication is probably shattering, with wild populations all demonstrating high shattering characteristics. The option of domestication needs to be considered along with the potential to source many genes for useful traits in these populations for transfer into domesticated rice. The traits that are most desirable are disease resistance, grain size, grain color, and grain quality (starch properties). The strategy of new domestication may be especially useful in developing rice varieties adapted to new climates with advancing or rapid climate change especially with the availability of extensive genomics resources for rice (In addition to their use in rice improvement, the Australian for rice .ex situ collections in seed banks need to be supplemented by much more extensive collections. The in situ conservation of these species would be aided by greater awareness of the populations and their importance and may involve efforts to control weeds invading the aquatic habitats of the wild Oryza. Revision of the taxonomy of the A genome species is suggested by the available molecular evidence. Clarification of the taxonomy may aid conservation efforts by ensuring efforts to conserve rarer populations, including suspected hybrid populations. The growing genomic resources for the Oryza genus (Wild rice populations in Australia include species at varying distances from domesticated rice. These provide a rich resource for use in rice improvement. Both novel alleles and novel traits might be sourced from the Australian wild genotypes. Increased efforts to conserve these genetic resources would be justified. The current very limited za genus  would beThis manuscript is the work of the author.The Australian Research Council provided support for much of the research reviewed here.The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.


Concerns have been raised that the transplants performed in the local context at the time of procedures reported in this article  may haveInternational ethics standards call for transparency in organ donor and transplantation programs and clear informed consent procedures including considerations to ensure that donors are not subject to coercion. Details as to the donor sources and methods of obtaining informed consent from donors were not reported in . In respThe first author expressed that they stand by the results reported in this article but the individual-level data underlying the study’s results are no longer available.PLOS ONE Editors retract this article.Owing to the lack of documentation to demonstrate this study had prospective ethical approval, insufficient reporting, unresolved concerns around the source of transplanted organs and whether they included organs from prisoners, and in compliance with international ethical standards for organ/tissue donation and transplantation, the The authors did not respond to express whether they agree with the retraction decision.


How does the integrated and unified conscious experience arise from the vastly distributed activities of the nervous system? How is the information from the many cones of the retina bound with information coming from the cochlea to create the association of sounds with objects in visual space? In this perspective article, we assert a novel viewpoint on the “binding problem” in which we explain a metastable operation of the brain and body that may provide insight into this problem. In our view which is a component of the Default Space Theory (DST), consciousness arises from a metastable synchronization of local computations into a global coherence by a framework of widespread slow and ultraslow oscillations coordinated by the thalamus. We reinforce a notion shared by some consciousness researchers such as Revonsuo and the Fingelkurts that a spatiotemporal matrix is the foundation of phenomenological experience and that this phenomenology is directly tied to bioelectric operations of the nervous system. Through the oscillatory binding system we describe, cognitive neuroscientists may be able to more accurately correlate bioelectric activity of the brain and body with the phenomenology of human experience. Phenomenology is the reflection on and analysis of the essential structure and form of conscious experience Husserl, . An undeThe Default Space Theory (DST; Jerath et al., There still exists a debate as to whether neural oscillations play a functional role in cognition and consciousness, if they arise simply as a epiphenomenal byproduct of spiking activity, or even if they interfere with normal processing (Koepsell et al., The binding problem is a considerable mystery in cognitive science which ponders how a unified experience could arise from the distributed and disparate activities of the nervous system (Revonsuo and Newman, The temporal binding model proposes neurons responding to identical sensory objects or scenes in space synchronize in the millisecond range while this synchronization does not exist between neurons representing separate objects in external space (Singer and Gray, In our perspective shared by a subset of consciousness researchers, the most fundamental aspect of human experience is a subconscious Damasio, , unifyinWe share the view that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon resulting from a functional representation or simulation of the external world and that the ontology of our phenomenological space-time is a direct replication of the dimensional nature of the physical universe Siegel, . This alWhile there is significant support for a phenomenological space-time coordinate matrix as a foundation of experience, not much research has been invested in how this is reflected neurophysiologically. Our novel interpretation of this bridge between the material and experiential may provide great insight into binding and multisensory integration. This interpretation includes the notion that this subconscious space-time matrix is isomorphic to an ongoing, global, dynamic architecture of harmonious oscillatory activity (Jerath and Beveridge, via synchronization. Other theories of consciousness have also correlated higher frequency activity with consciousness and lower frequency with unconsciousness such as the Dynamic Core Hypothesis (Murphy and Brown, We propose this underlying, global, operational structure provides a coherence mechanism for all sensory modalities to unify based upon their spatial coordinates in external space and may provide an explanation for baseline neural activity. Baseline activity was traditionally considered noise (Emadi et al., Our perspective that the global cognitive architecture consists of multiple oscillatory layers (Jerath and Crawford, According to most perspectives in phenomenology, qualia must have structure, composed of several experiential distinctions such as visual color, a location, or sound Husserl, . The lowvia spatial attention (Sasaki et al., via inter-hemispheric connectivity provide a more sound explanation (Corbetta, Synchrony of Alpha oscillations in addition may mediate the rise of these frameworks into conscious awareness via the base oscillatory layer ultra-slow oscillations responsible for the spatial coordinate matrix we have described. The integration is primarily accomplished by binding and entrainment through similarity in space and time (Molholm et al., via synchrony and filled into their respective phenomenological frameworks which are themselves filled into the 3D coordinate virtual matrix.Imagine yourself along a busy street while you attempt to cross. Auditory and visual stimuli from passing cars provide reciprocal information on passing cars allowing you to safely cross, however these distinct categories of information must be integrated and unified for effective perception of crossing safety. Research has shown that different sensory modalities are indeed spatially and temporally integrated so that different qualities belonging to the same object are registered in the same space and time (Treisman, The dynamic nature and functional importance of audiovisual integration is demonstrated in a pioneering study showing incongruent auditory-visual speech signals result in a fused speech percept (Mcgurk and Macdonald, Gamma band activity is shown to increase when auditory and visual signals are presented close in time (~25 ms; Senkowski et al., via corticothalamic connections (Tyll et al., In our view, the thalamus and the thalamocortical oscillations are additional key coordinators of oscillatory activity among the cortex and among the cortex and sensory receptors [our novel proposition (Jerath et al., In asserting our perspective on phenomenal space-time and its isomorphic bioelectric structure, we have endeavored to provide insight into the binding problem regarding multimodal integration. We have focused on audiovisual integration in this article to provide an important instance of how this underlying oscillatory structure may entrain and organize multisensory streams into a unified whole resulting in the integrated experience. We have put forth a hierarchical view on oscillatory cognitive frameworks which include a basal, unconscious virtual coordinate matrix characterized by slow oscillations and the subconscious sensory frameworks characterized largely by Alpha oscillations. The sensory frameworks are bound to the space-time framework upon which qualia are further bound represented by even higher frequency oscillations. This hierarchy is supported by research revealing functional baseline activity and the fact that slow oscillations underlie and entrain faster ones. By describing how the slow oscillations produce a virtual space-time matrix, we describe a means for disparate sensory modalities to be integrated. In addition to empirically identifying a global oscillatory framework underlying sensory frameworks, further research should investigate the role of different frequencies in multisensory integration.Theory developed by RJ with some writing with majority of the manuscript written by CB.The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.


This study by Lieber and colleagues published in 1975 is one of a few seminal articles written in the past 25 years that has made a critical impact on the subsequent direction of research conducted on the mechanism of alcoholic liver disease (ALD), which usually progresses from fatty liver to hepatitis (inflamed liver with dead liver tissue) to liver fibrosis (scarring liver) to cirrhosis (severe and irreversible scarring of the liver). To comprehend fully the significance of this article, it is helpful to have a good historical perspective on the controversy that dominated the field at the time it was published. At the center of the controversy was this question: Does alcohol itself or do other factors such as dietary deficiency cause ALD? Not only was this issue scientifically important, but it also had serious practical implications.Because patients with ALD often have accompanying malnutrition, deficiencies of key nutrients were thought to be a primary cause of this disease. This view was exemplified by the early studies of In their study, Lieber and colleagues fed a liquid diet containing alcohol that was originally developed for rats to a species related more closely to humans—the baboon. The researchers chose baboons because an earlier study had shown that, as a result of their aversion to alcohol, rats fed this liquid diet derived no more than 36 percent of their total calories from alcohol and failed to reproduce liver disease beyond fatty liver. Lieber and colleagues hypothesized that baboons might overcome this limiting factor and consume enough alcohol to induce more advanced ALD. Indeed, their study demonstrated that the baboons’ alcohol consumption reached 50 percent of their total calories, a percentage approximating the calorie amount that many human alcoholics derive from alcohol. In addition, these animals exhibited the sequential development of the whole spectrum of ALD, ranging from fatty liver and hepatitis to cirrhosis. Because the liquid diet was designed to provide adequate nutrition, the baboons’ development of liver disease was interpreted as evidence supporting alcohol’s causal role in the development of ALD.Epidemiological studies of alcoholic patients by Over the past two decades, Lieber and colleagues’ findings indicating that alcohol is a primary causative agent for ALD inspired more aggressive studies on the biochemical basis for alcohol’s injurious effects on the liver. As a result, several hypotheses emerged, all of which linked the chemical breakdown of alcohol  to the development of ALD. Alcohol metabolism generates harmful chemical products and byproducts  and creates deleterious metabolic and physiologic conditions that make the liver more susceptible to injury. Lieber continues to play a leadership role in much of this research.Lieber and colleagues’ article described the first animal model for the spectrum of progressive and advanced ALD. The baboon model offered great potential for investigations examining the biochemistry, cell biology, and molecular biology of ALD. Further research by Lieber demonstrated the following:Fibrosis surrounding a vein in the middle of a small anatomical unit of the liver  signals the beginning of progressive alcoholic liver fibrosisTransformation of the liver cells that store vitamin A (hepatic stellate cells) to the cells involved in scarring (myofibroblasts) is the cellular basis of the development of alcoholic liver fibrosisThe role of acetaldehyde in stimulating production of fibrous proteins by hepatic stellate cellsThe effectiveness of using polyunsaturated lethicin  as a therapy in alcoholic liver cirrhosis.Most of these findings would not have been possible without the baboon model.Although the baboon model has produced an enormous volume of new information concerning the mechanism of ALD, this model has not been reproduced by others . The pos


Research in the field of embodied cognition is occupied with a variety of research questions stemming from the idea that cognition is deeply connected with bodily aspects such as perception and action  categorization in reference to the dimensions of embodied learning research that hinges upon the two dimensions bodily engagement and task integration. They define low levels of bodily engagement as tasks with only minor bodily movement that occurs while sitting (Skulmowski and Rey, incidental manipulations are said to be reliant on cues that alter cognitive variables while Skulmowski and Rey (integrated manipulations to be strongly intertwined with tasks.Skulmowski and Rey  presente and Rey  state inAlthough the taxonomy of Skulmowski and Rey  is mainlBesides embodiment studies that are focused on tasks, others revolve around metaphor-based effects and priming (Wilson and Golonka, Lakens  reviews Fay and Maner  recentlyIn addition, it should be noted that some types of measures are more appropriate for embodied cognition research than others (Meier et al., In light of the current controversy surrounding the replicability of psychological science, we wish to emphasize a variety of aspects that may warrant a higher sample size or other amendments to embodied cognition study designs. One method of assessment concerns the degree of bodily engagement and the extent to which an embodiment manipulation affects how a task can be solved as described by Skulmowski and Rey . AnotherAS and GDR drafted and revised the article and approved the submitted version for publication.The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.


The authors are testing the hypothesis that hybridization is more common between species that are sufficiently genetically similar so that they can cross, but also genetically distinct enough to prevent homoeologous chromosome pairing and multivalent formation during meiosis in offspring, which can lead to sterility or reduced fertility in the gametes  were employed for detection of hybridization. To provide a time frame for the evolutionary events, a molecular clock was calibrated using *Beast (Heled & Drummond, Artemisia.To assess genomic divergence and traces of hybridization, Leucanthemum are clearly more divergent among each other than those in Rhodanthemum. The data also showed that the diploid species of Leucantheumum carried more genomic signatures of past interspecific hybridization events than did those of Rhodanthemum. The importance of genetic divergence as a stimulus for hybridization had been proposed by Darlington (et al., et al., The data revealed that the diploid species of rlington , and it Leucanthemum hybridize so frequently? A map of present distribution of the genus reveals localization in many of the previous refugial areas in Europe during the Pleistocene. As Rhodanthemum southward in the Atlas mountains of Morocco would have been much less affected by Pleistocene climatic changes, and this, plus the lower genetic divergence among species, may explain the absence of polyploids in this lineage.The remaining question was why did the species of The important conclusion by


We read with interest the study by Liu and coworkers in which they have addressed the role of hemodynamics in the development of aortopathy in bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) patients  between BAV and TAV patients by using a new matric integrating the magnitude and angular distribution uniformity of the local WSS vector. We however do not completely agree with their suggested direct correlation between hemodynamics and aortopathy in BAV patients. As the main issue is that only a proportion of all BAV patients develop aortopathy, whereas Liu et al. performed calculations on a whole cohort.all BAV patients, it could not select those patients with an increased risk for aortic complications. In search of predictive factors for aortopathy, several studies have searched for serological and immunohistochemical factors  (Grewal et al., In search of rheologic markers, several studies revealed helical blood flow in BAV patients as compared to TAV patients, with eccentric outflow jet patterns disrupting laminar flow and flow impingement zones along the greater curvature of the ascending aorta (Girdauskas et al., Recent literature further focused on the hemodynamic influences for the different raphe positions in the BAV population. Normalized flow displacement is a reliable quantification of flow eccentricity as compared to systolic flow angle (Mahadevia et al., An obvious increase in α smooth muscle actin positive VSMC was seen in the outer intima, whereas the inner media shows a significant decrease in expression of α smooth muscle actin of the VSMCs (Grewal et al., We further observed a trend in transition of squamous endothelial cells in the non-jet specimen to more cuboidal endothelial cells in the jet specimen of both BAV and TAV patients. Although the 2D magnetic resonance is not appropriate to describe wall shear stress features as the flow is observed in a flat plane, we could correlate the maximum jet stream in the ascending aorta to the histopathological findings in the aortic specimen.The main limitation of the findings of the hemodynamic studies published till date is that the WSS is observed is all BAV patients. Whereas, 20–40% of BAV patients do not develop aortic complications, implicating that the development of aortopathy in BAV cannot be explained by hemodynamic influences alone. WSS, together with the intrinsically immature aortic media which is also seen in all BAV patients, increases the vulnerability of the ascending aorta (Grewal et al., Thus, with the currently available data, a hypothesis of WSS causing aortopathy in BAV patients is hardly sustainable without ruling out the contribution of additional genetic influences.NG: first draft of article; AG-dG: revision of article. All authors conception and design of the paper and contributed to manuscript revision, read and approved the submitted version.The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.


The commentary by Luyck and colleagues on our paper provides many stimulating viewpoints and interpretations of our original study on dissociable responses in the amygdala and bed nucleus of the stria terminalis in threat processing. Here, we reply to some of the points raised and while agreeing with most of the comments also provide some alternative viewpoints. We end by putting forward a research agenda for how to further investigate the roles of these regions in threat processing, with an emphasis on studying their roles in defensive action. We thank Luyck et al.  for a thIn our original publication . While Luyck and colleagues’ interpretation rests on a solid theoretical framework linking the BNST to temporal unpredictability , which was greater in the second sample. While this is an interesting suggestion, we would like to point out that interpretation of the differences in results between our two samples lacks solid ground without a formal statistical test demonstrating that numerical differences in the mean group response are robust relative to the variance observed within each group. A direct comparison of amygdala and BNST responses to threat anticipation and confrontation with an aversive outcome between our two samples failed to reach significance  function of emotions is to invigorate the propensity of appropriate behavioral responses Frijda, . When thPhilosophers, psychologists and behavioral neuroscientists alike regard conflict between approach and avoidance motivational tendencies as central to anxiety (Kierkegaard, Finally, as described above, conflicting motivational tendencies might be central to anxiety and therefore it will be highly informative for a better understanding of clinically relevant mechanisms to include conditions of conflicting motivational tendencies in research on defensive-reactions. As opposed to the majority of previous work on defensive reactions, daily life rarely involves situations with unambiguously optimal behavioral reactions and including these conflicting motivational conditions in threat studies would thus allow more accurate modelling of pathological avoidance (Pittig et al.,


Any density gradient for the isolation of mammalian cells should ideally only expose the sedimenting particles to an increasing concentration of the gradient solute. Thus they will experience only an increasing density and viscosity, other parameters such as osmolality, pH, ionic strength and the concentration of important additives  should remain as close to constant as possible. This Protocol Article describes the strategies for the dilution of OptiPrep™ in order to prepare such solutions for mammalian cells.


The emotional state of the learner is an important factor that must be taken into consideration during evaluating learning process and managing learning flows in computer based learning environments. This factor has a significant impact on the process of interaction between the learner and the learning environment. Enriching this type of interaction make the learning flow more dynamic based on emotional and mental responses of the learners. This approach can manage various learning flows based on learner's capabilities which lead to enhance the learning process outcome. This article provides data on learners' emotional states during their interaction with learning environment and other data that describe their learning activities and learning flows. The learning activities data is a combination of data that represents summary of learners' emotional states and data that represents the mental responses per learning session. All of emotional states data and mental responses data are used to provide the next learning level for each learner using fuzzy rules. The datasets are hosted in the Mendeley Dataset Repository . First type of data describes the features of learners’ emotional states as emotional responses, while the other type of data describes the combination of data that represents summary of learners' emotional states and mental responses per learning session.The emotional response of the learner is represented by seven classes of expressions which are angry, disgust, fear, happy, neutral, sad, and surprise. While the mental response is represented by other factors which are managed by the learning environment; these factors are learner id, learning activity id, answer validity ratio, test elapsed time, current learning level, and desired learning level.answer validity ratio describes the validation degree of learner's answer to all the test questions. The test elapsed time describes the time that spent by the learner to finish a provided test. The current learning level represents the learner's learning level at the start of the learning activity. The desired learning level represents a value that is generated by a fuzzy system to redirect the learner to the next learning level based on the level and degree of emotional and mental responses of the learner.The •Learners' emotional states dataset describes the learners' emotional states during their interaction with the learning environment. The description of this dataset is explained in Table 1•a.Aggregated emotional states of five learners across four learning activities for each learner as shown in Fig. 1b.Learning paths for five learners during their learning sessions and the impact of summarized emotional states using mean on the learning flows as shown in Fig. 3Learning activities dataset using mean describes the summarized emotional states using mean and its impact on the value of the next learning level of the learner which is generated by a fuzzy system. The description of this dataset is explained in •a.Aggregated emotional states of five learners across four learning activities for each learner as shown in Fig. 2b.Learning paths for five learners during their learning sessions and the impact of summarized emotional states using median on the learning flows as shown Fig. 4Learning activities dataset using median describes the summarized emotional states using median and its impact on the value of the next learning level of the learner which is generated by a fuzzy system. The description of this dataset is explained in The collected data are divided into three datasets 2We developed a dynamic learning environment integrated with real time facial expressions detection model using deep learning to detect the learner's facial expressions and fuzzy system to provide the learning environment with the next learning level based on learner emotional and mental responses.To test our approach we prepared a test with six levels of difficulties on English language to represent a learning curriculum to a sample group consisted of twelve volunteer people with different ages between 25 and 35 years old, and have different learning background in English language. The sample members have been selected randomly with different ages to verify our approach on different learning levels across different ages, as well to obtain different emotional responses during their interaction with our learning environment. They have participated in the collected data with 72 learning activities represent different learning flows and 1735 data rows of vary emotional states.We logged all detected facial expressions during the learning sessions except emotional states data records those total value equal to zero in order to provide a consistent and meaningful emotional states data set.In order to summarize the detected set of emotional states to provide a meaningful crisp value for each facial expression  we used two different statistical methods. These statistical methods are mean and median to determine which statistical processing on the detected emotional states during the learning sessions is more accurate and realistic to prepare crisp values of emotions for the fuzzy system. The emotional states crisp values were combined with other captured factors  to represent the crisp inputs to a fuzzy system to provide the next learning level which draws the learning flow.