Improving Access to Mental Health Care in an Orthodox Jewish Community: A Critical Reflection Upon the Accommodation of Otherness

The English National Health Service (NHS) has significantly extended the supply of evidence based psychological interventions in primary care for people experiencing common mental health problems. Yet despite the extra resources, the accessibility of services for ‘under-served’ ethnic and religious minority groups, is considerably short of the levels of access that may be necessary to offset the health inequalities created by their different exposure to services, resulting in negative health outcomes. This paper offers a critical reflection upon an initiative that sought to improve access to an NHS funded primary care mental health service to one ‘under-served’ population, an Orthodox Jewish community in the North West of England

Hydrological and water quality assessment of the Aghien Lagoon hydrosystem (Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire)

To face the difficulties involved in supplying freshwater to Abidjan (Cote d'Ivoire), the Aghien Lagoon connected by a channel to the Potou-ebrie lagoon is a potential resource for production of drinking water. A hydro-meteorological network was installed with the objective of assessing the sustainability of the lagoon in terms of both quantity and quality, and 10 sampling campaigns were conducted between June 2015 and December 2016 to evaluate the water quality. Even if the annual flow of the two peri-urban tributaries is just equivalent to the volume of the lagoon, the large daily inflow by the channel can secure the future quantitative demand. Unfortunately, the main tributaries in the peri-urban zones have lacked sanitation services and present numerous markers of pollution. Even if the water quality status of the lagoon remains quite good with respect to total nitrogen and total phosphorus, it nevertheless presents a high potential risk of eutrophication

Stable heteroplasmy at the single-cell level is facilitated by intercellular exchange of mtDNA

Eukaryotic cells carry two genomes, nuclear (nDNA) and mitochondrial (mtDNA), which are ostensibly decoupled in their replication, segregation and inheritance. It is increasingly appreciated that heteroplasmy, the occurrence of multiple mtDNA haplotypes in a cell, plays an important biological role, but its features are not well understood. Accurately determining the diversity of mtDNA has been difficult, due to the relatively small amount of mtDNA in each cell (90%) mtDNA and its ability to detect rare variants is limited only by sequencing depth, providing unprecedented sensitivity and specificity. Using Mseek, we confirmed the ubiquity of heteroplasmy by analyzing mtDNA from a diverse set of cell lines and human samples. Applying Mseek to colonies derived from single cells, we find heteroplasmy is stably maintained in individual daughter cells over multiple cell divisions. We hypothesized that the stability of heteroplasmy could be facilitated by intercellular exchange of mtDNA. We explicitly demonstrate this exchange by co-culturing cell lines with distinct mtDNA haplotypes. Our results shed new light on the maintenance of heteroplasmy and provide a novel platform to investigate features of heteroplasmy in normal and diseased states

IMPACTS DES CHANGEMENTS CLIMATIQUES SUR L'ÉVOLUTION DES CONDITIONS AGROCLIMATIQUES DU BASSIN IVOIRIEN DE LA COMOÉ

International audienceThe Comoe river Basin is a conventional rainfed agricultural area that has been subject to environmental and climatic changes, since the 1970s and 1980s. This research assesses the impact of climate change on the evolution of water production conditions. The frequency analysis of crop seasons by simulation of the crop water balance and the estimation of annual accumulated water deficits highlight the impacts of climate change on water production conditions: agroclimatic indicators, notably crop water requirements and calculated annual accumulated water deficits, show a heterogeneous spatiotemporal evolution of the basin's agroclimatic potentialsZone d'agriculture pluviale conventionnelle, le bassin de la Comoé subit des modifications environnementales et climatiques, depuis les décennies 1970 et 1980. Cette recherche évalue l'impact des changements climatiques sur l'évolution des conditions hydriques de production ; l'analyse fréquentielle des saisons culturales par simulation du bilan hydrique de culture et l'estimation des cumuls annuels de déficits hydriques, mettent en évidence les impacts du changement climatique sur les conditions hydriques de production: les indicateurs agroclimatiques, notamment les besoins en eau de culture et les cumuls annuels de déficits hydriques calculés, montrent une évolution spatiotemporelle hétérogène des potentialités agroclimatiques du bassin.</div