Sexual and geographic dimorphism in northern rockhopper penguins breeding in the South Atlantic Ocean

The Endangered northern rockhopper penguin Eudyptes moseleyi, like all penguins, is monomorphic, making sex determination of individuals in the field challenging. We examined the degree of sexual size dimorphism of adult birds across the species’ breeding range in the Atlantic Ocean and developed discriminant functions (DF) to predict individuals’ sex using morphometric measurements. We found significant site-specific differences in both bill length and bill depth, with males being the larger sex on each island. Across all islands, bill length contributed 78% to dissimilarity between sexes. Penguins on Gough Island had significantly longer bills, whilst those from Tristan da Cunha had the deepest. Island-specific DFs correctly classified 82-94% of individuals, and all functions performed significantly better than chance. The model for Nightingale Island correctly classified the greatest proportion of individuals (94-95%), while that for Tristan da Cunha performed the poorest (80-82%). A discriminant function derived from all sites accurately sexed 86-88% of northern rockhopper penguins achieving similar accuracy to island-specific functions. While molecular techniques conclusively determine an individual’s sex, morphometric measurements can provide a reliable estimate with close to 90% accuracy using a method that is less invasive and requires little technical expertise. Sexing is an important tool for meaningful interpretation of ecological data. Consideration of sex-specific differences in future studies will aid investigation of a potential sex-dependent vulnerability in this Endangered species.© The authors 2019. Open Access under Creative Commons by Attribution Licence. Use, distribution and reproduction are unrestricted. Authors and original publication must be credited. The attached file is the published pdf

Are there asymmetries in the effects of training on the conditional male wage distribution?

Recent studies have used quantile regression (QR) techniques to estimate the impact of education on the location, scale and shape of the conditional wage distribution. In our paper we investigate the degree to which work-related training – another important form of human capital – affects the location, scale and shape of the conditional wage distribution. Using the first six waves of the European Community Household Panel, we utilise both ordinary least squares and QR techniques to estimate associations between work-related training and wages for private sector men in ten European Union countries. Our results show that, for the majority of countries, there is a fairly uniform association between training and hourly wages across the conditional wage distribution. However, there are considerable differences across countries in mean associations between training and wages

Acute pancreatitis and hyperamylasemia in renal homograft recipients.

In a series of 301 renal homograft recipients, 17 (5.6%) had acute pancreatitis at some time after transplantation. Eleven of these patients died, for a mortality of 64.7%. In each instance, pancreatitis was a major factor in a complex chain of lethal events to which immunosuppression invariably contributed. An additional 43 patients (14.3%) developed asymptomatic hyperamylasemia after transplantation and, undoubtedly, some of these recipients also had pancreatitis. The factors causing pancreatitis in the renal transplantation patient include uremia, hyperparathyroidism, pancreatic injury by drugs, infections resulting from chronic immunosuppression, gallstones, and operative trauma to the pancreas. In cases of preexisting pancreatitis, transplantation is not necessarily precluded, but efforts should be made to find a specific cause of the pancreatitis and take corrective measures, such as biliary tract surgery or parathyroidectomy if indicated, in advance of transplantation

Comparison of bulk milk antibody and youngstock serology screens for determining herd status for Bovine Viral Diarrhoea Virus

BACKGROUND: This paper examines the use of Bulk Milk antibody (BM Ab), Youngstock (YS) serology (Check Tests) and Bulk Milk PCR (BM PCR) for determining the presence or absence of animals persistently infected (PI) with Bovine Viral Diarrhoea Virus (BVDV) within a herd. Data is presented from 26 herds where average herd sizes were 343 and 98 animals for dairy and beef units respectively. Seventeen herds had sufficient data to analyse using Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) and probability curves enabling calculation of the sensitivity and specificity of BM Ab and YS Check tests for determining the presence of PI animals within herds in this dataset. RESULTS: Using BM Ab to screen a herd for the presence of PI animals, achieved a herd level sensitivity and specificity of 80.00 % (44.39–97.48 %) and 85.71 % (42.13–99.64 %) respectively (95 % confidence intervals quoted). Sensitivity and specificity of YS Check Tests at a cut off of 3/10 Ab positive YS were 81.82 % (48.22–97.72 %) and 66.67 % (22.28–95.67 %) respectively (95 % confidence interval). These results were achieved by comparing the screening tests to whole herd PI searches that took place 1–19 months after the initial screen with a mean interval of 8 months. Removal of this delay by taking BM samples on the day of a whole herd test and simulating a YS Check Test from the herd test data produced improvements in the reliability of the Check Tests. BM Ab sensitivity and specificity remained unchanged. However, the Check Test sensitivity and specificity improved to 90.9 % (58.72–99.77 %) and 100 % (54.07–100 %) respectively (95 % confidence interval) at a cut of off 2.5/10 Ab positive animals. Our limited BM PCR results identified 5/23 dairy farms with a positive BM PCR result; two contained milking PIs, two had non-milking PIs and another had no PIs identified. CONCLUSIONS: Delaying a PI search following an initial herd screen decreased the diagnostic accuracy and relevance of our results. With careful interpretation, longitudinal surveillance using a combination of the techniques discussed can successfully determine farm status and therefore allow changes in BVDV status to be detected early, thus enabling prompt action in the event of a BVDV incursion

Experiencing EVA Park, A Multi-User Virtual World For People With Aphasia

Virtual worlds are used in wide-ranging ways by many people with long-term health conditions but their use by people with aphasia (PWA) has been limited. In contrast, this paper reports the use of EVA Park, a multi-user virtual world designed for PWA to practice conversations, focusing on people's emotional, social, and conversational experiences. An analysis of observation and interview data collected from 20 people with aphasia who participated in a 5 week therapy intervention revealed key themes related to user experience. The themes offer a rich insight into aspects of the virtual world experience for PWA that go beyond therapeutic outcomes. They are: affect (positive and negative), types of conversation, miscommunication and misunderstanding, immersion in the virtual world, social presence and initiative and flow. Overall, the study showed that participants experienced positive emotional and social outcomes. We argue that this was achieved as a consequence of EVA Park being not only accessible but also a varied and entertaining environment within which PWA experienced both the realistic and the quirky whilst engaging with others and having fun

On the Link Between Central Black Holes, Bar Dynamics, and Dark Matter Halos in Spiral Galaxies

The discovery of a relationship between supermassive black hole (SMBH) mass and spiral arm pitch angle (P) is evidence that SMBHs are tied to the overall secular evolution of a galaxy. The discovery of SMBHs in late-type galaxies with little or no bulge suggests that an underlying correlation between the dark matter halo concentration and SMBH mass (MBH) exists, rather than between the bulge mass and MBH. In this paper we measure P using a two-dimensional fast fourier transform and estimate the bar pattern speeds of 40 barred spiral galaxies from the Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey. The pattern speeds were derived by estimating the gravitational potentials of our galaxies from Ks-band images and using them to produce dynamical simulation models. The pattern speeds allow us to identify those galaxies with low central dark halo densities, or fast rotating bars, while P provides an estimate of MBH. We find that a wide range of MBH exists in galaxies with low central dark matter halo densities, which appears to support other theoretical results. We also find that galaxies with low central dark halo densities appear to follow more predictable trends in P versus de Vaucouleurs morphological type (T) and bar strength versus T than barred galaxies in general. The empirical relationship between MBH and total gravitational mass of a galaxy (Mtot) allows us to predict the minimum Mtot that will be observationally measured of our fast bar galaxies. These predictions will be investigated in a subsequent paper.Comment: 17 pages, 1 table, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Multivariate frailty models for multi-type recurrent event data and its application to cancer prevention trial

Multi-type recurrent event data arise in many situations when two or more different event types may occur repeatedly over an observation period. For example, in a randomized controlled clinical trial to study the efficacy of nutritional supplements for skin cancer prevention, there can be two types of skin cancer events occur repeatedly over time. The research objectives of analyzing such data often include characterizing the event rate of different event types, estimating the treatment effects on each event process, and understanding the correlation structure among different event types. In this paper, we propose the use of a proportional intensity model with multivariate random effects to model such data. The proposed model can take into account the dependence among different event types within a subject as well as the treatment effects. Maximum likelihood estimates of the regression coefficients, variance-covariance components, and the nonparametric baseline intensity function are obtained via a Monte Carlo Expectation-Maximization (MCEM) algorithm. The expectation step of the algorithm involves the calculation of the conditional expectations of the random effects by using the Metropolis-Hastings sampling. Our proposed method can easily handle recurrent event data that have more than two types of events. Simulation studies were used to validate the performance of the proposed method, followed by an application to the skin cancer prevention data.</p

Health services research in the public healthcare system in Hong Kong: An analysis of over 1 million antihypertensive prescriptions between 2004-2007 as an example of the potential and pitfalls of using routinely collected electronic patient data

&lt;b&gt;Objectives&lt;/b&gt; Increasing use is being made of routinely collected electronic patient data in health services research. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the potential usefulness of a comprehensive database used routinely in the public healthcare system in Hong Kong, using antihypertensive drug prescriptions in primary care as an example.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;b&gt;Methods&lt;/b&gt; Data on antihypertensive drug prescriptions were retrieved from the electronic Clinical Management System (e-CMS) of all primary care clinics run by the Health Authority (HA) in the New Territory East (NTE) cluster of Hong Kong between January 2004 and June 2007. Information was also retrieved on patients’ demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, visit type (new or follow-up), and relevant diseases (International Classification of Primary Care, ICPC codes). &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;b&gt;Results&lt;/b&gt; 1,096,282 visit episodes were accessed, representing 93,450 patients. Patients’ demographic and socio-economic details were recorded in all cases. Prescription details for anti-hypertensive drugs were missing in only 18 patients (0.02%). However, ICPC-code was missing for 36,409 patients (39%). Significant independent predictors of whether disease codes were applied included patient age &gt; 70 years (OR 2.18), female gender (OR 1.20), district of residence (range of ORs in more rural districts; 0.32-0.41), type of clinic (OR in Family Medicine Specialist Clinics; 1.45) and type of visit (OR follow-up visit; 2.39). &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; In the 57,041 patients with an ICPC-code, uncomplicated hypertension (ICPC K86) was recorded in 45,859 patients (82.1%). The characteristics of these patients were very similar to those of the non-coded group, suggesting that most non-coded patients on antihypertensive drugs are likely to have uncomplicated hypertension. &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;b&gt;Conclusion&lt;/b&gt; The e-CMS database of the HA in Hong Kong varies in quality in terms of recorded information. Potential future health services research using demographic and prescription information is highly feasible but for disease-specific research dependant on ICPC codes some caution is warranted. In the case of uncomplicated hypertension, future research on pharmaco-epidemiology (such as prescription patterns) and clinical issues (such as side-effects of medications on metabolic parameters) seems feasible given the large size of the data set and the comparability of coded and non-coded patients

Deformation of Codimension-2 Surface and Horizon Thermodynamics

The deformation equation of a spacelike submanifold with an arbitrary codimension is given by a general construction without using local frames. In the case of codimension-1, this equation reduces to the evolution equation of the extrinsic curvature of a spacelike hypersurface. In the more interesting case of codimension-2, after selecting a local null frame, this deformation equation reduces to the well known (cross) focusing equations. We show how the thermodynamics of trapping horizons is related to these deformation equations in two different formalisms: with and without introducing quasilocal energy. In the formalism with the quasilocal energy, the Hawking mass in four dimension is generalized to higher dimension, and it is found that the deformation of this energy inside a marginal surface can be also decomposed into the contributions from matter fields and gravitational radiation as in the four dimension. In the formalism without the quasilocal energy, we generalize the definition of slowly evolving future outer trapping horizons proposed by Booth to past trapping horizons. The dynamics of the trapping horizons in FLRW universe is given as an example. Especially, the slowly evolving past trapping horizon in the FLRW universe has close relation to the scenario of slow-roll inflation. Up to the second order of the slowly evolving parameter in this generalization, the temperature (surface gravity) associated with the slowly evolving trapping horizon in the FLRW universe is essentially the same as the one defined by using the quasilocal energy.Comment: Latex, 61 pages, no figures; v2, type errors corrected; v3, references and comments are added, English is improved, to appear in JHE

New approaches to measuring anthelminthic drug efficacy: parasitological responses of childhood schistosome infections to treatment with praziquantel

By 2020, the global health community aims to control and eliminate human helminthiases, including schistosomiasis in selected African countries, principally by preventive chemotherapy (PCT) through mass drug administration (MDA) of anthelminthics. Quantitative monitoring of anthelminthic responses is crucial for promptly detecting changes in efficacy, potentially indicative of emerging drug resistance. Statistical models offer a powerful means to delineate and compare efficacy among individuals, among groups of individuals and among populations.; We illustrate a variety of statistical frameworks that offer different levels of inference by analysing data from nine previous studies on egg counts collected from African children before and after administration of praziquantel.; We quantify responses to praziquantel as egg reduction rates (ERRs), using different frameworks to estimate ERRs among population strata, as average responses, and within strata, as individual responses. We compare our model-based average ERRs to corresponding model-free estimates, using as reference the World Health Organization (WHO) 90 % threshold of optimal efficacy. We estimate distributions of individual responses and summarize the variation among these responses as the fraction of ERRs falling below the WHO threshold.; Generic models for evaluating responses to anthelminthics deepen our understanding of variation among populations, sub-populations and individuals. We discuss the future application of statistical modelling approaches for monitoring and evaluation of PCT programmes targeting human helminthiases in the context of the WHO 2020 control and elimination goals