Digital Commons Network^™

Oral Health And Pathology: A Macrophage Account., Rebecca Merry, Louise Belfield, Paul Mcardle, Andrew Mclennan, Stjohn Crean, Andrew Foey

School of Biomedical Sciences

Macrophages are present in healthy oral mucosa and their numbers increase dramatically during disease. They can exhibit a diverse range of phenotypes characterised as a functional spectrum from pro-inflammatory to anti-inflammatory (regulatory) subsets. This review illustrates the role of these subsets in the oral inflammatory disease lichen planus, and the immunosuppressive disease oral squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). We conclude that the role of macrophages in driving progression in oral disease identifies them as potential therapeutic targets for a range of oral pathologies.

Reflective Practice For Marine Planning: A Case Study Of Marine Nature-Based Tourism Partnerships, Claire Kelly, Stephen Essex, Gillian Glegg

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

An essential component of ecosystem-based approaches in coastal zone management and the emerging field of marine planning are partnerships and collaborations between a range of multi-sector organisations and individuals. Ensuring that partnerships are effective is a priority for those responsible for planning and management in coastal and marine environments. Current partnership evaluation approaches, however, tend to view effectiveness as the cumulative end result of a set of variables acting in a linear process at a specific point in time. Given that governance and participation are acknowledged as non-linear and multifaceted processes, more reflective and nuanced approaches that take account of …

Measuring The Performance Of Partnerships: Why, What, How, When?, C Kelly

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Partnerships have become increasingly prevalent across a wide range of sectors for the delivery of services and implementation of policy. Partnerships are seen as a more effective way of delivering policy interventions than state-led or ‘top-down’ approaches. Evaluating partnership performance is therefore crucial in order to determine whether partnerships really are better than more traditional methods of policy implementation. To date, however, partnership effectiveness has often been conceptualised as cumulative; the result of a set of variables acting in a one dimensional, linear way which results in the ability (or not) of a partnership to achieve its goals. This paper …

High Metabolic Potential May Contribute To The Success Of St131 Uropathogenic Escherichia Coli., Tarek M. Gibreel, Andrew R. Dodgson, John Cheesbrough, Frederick J. Bolton, Andrew J. Fox, Mathew Upton

School of Biomedical Sciences

Uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) is the predominant cause of urinary tract infection in both hospital and community settings. The recent emergence of multidrug-resistant clones like the O25b:H4-ST131 lineage represents a significant threat to health, and numerous studies have explored the virulence potential of these organisms. Members of the ST131 clone have been described as having variable carriage of key virulence factors, and it has been suggested that additional unidentified factors contribute to virulence. Here we demonstrated that ST131 isolates have high metabolic potential and biochemical profiles that distinguish them from isolates of many other sequence types (STs). A collection of …

Underweight And Overweight Men Have Greater Exercise-Induced Dyspnoea Than Normal Weight Men, Mmf Subhan, Sa Ali, Ssi Bokhari, Mn Khan, Hr Ahmad

School of Biomedical Sciences

No abstract provided.

Contribution Of Spores To The Ability Of Clostridium Difficile To Adhere To Surfaces, Lovleen Tina Joshi, Daniel S. Phillips, Catrin F. Williams, Abdullah Alyousef, Les Baillie

Peninsula Dental School

ABSTRACT Clostridium difficile is the commonest cause of hospital-acquired infection in the United Kingdom. We characterized the abilities of 21 clinical isolates to form spores; to adhere to inorganic and organic surfaces, including stainless steel and human adenocarcinoma cells; and to germinate. The composition of culture media had a significant effect on spore formation, as significantly more spores were produced in brain heart infusion broth (Student's t test; P = 0.018). The spore surface relative hydrophobicity (RH) varied markedly (14 to 77%) and was correlated with the ability to adhere to stainless steel. We observed no correlation between the ribotype …

Ethnic Group Affiliation And Social Exclusion In Cornwall; Analysis, Adjustment And Extension Of The 2001 England And Wales Census Data, Kerryn Husk

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences Theses

This thesis provides a critical understanding of the size and relative position of the Cornish in Cornwall, a county in the south-west of the UK. Cornwall is a region which has experienced increased levels of disadvantage for a prolonged period of time. The indigenous people, whilst seeing a rise in their inclusion in ethnicity variables in the region, have remained under-researched in terms of their socio-economic position relative to the non-Cornish in the same geographic area. This thesis addresses this gap in the literature and represents the first in-depth examination of the group. The 2001 Census included an option to …

Exploring The Effect Of Pelvic Belt Configurations Upon Athletic Lumbopelvic Pain, Leanne Sawle, Jennifer Freeman, Jonathan Marsden, M Mathews

School of Health Professions

No abstract provided.

Iterative Orthology Prediction Uncovers New Mitochondrial Proteins And Identifies C12orf62 As The Human Ortholog Of Cox14, A Protein Involved In The Assembly Of Cytochrome C Oxidase, R Szklarczyk, Bfj Wanschers, Td Cuypers, Jj Esseling, Et Al

School of Biomedical Sciences

BACKGROUND: Orthology is a central tenet of comparative genomics and ortholog identification is instrumental to protein function prediction. Major advances have been made to determine orthology relations among a set of homologous proteins. However, they depend on the comparison of individual sequences and do not take into account divergent orthologs. RESULTS: We have developed an iterative orthology prediction method, Ortho-Profile, that uses reciprocal best hits at the level of sequence profiles to infer orthology. It increases ortholog detection by 20% compared to sequence-to-sequence comparisons. Ortho-Profile predicts 598 human orthologs of mitochondrial proteins from Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe with 94% …

Plymouth Families Project Evaluation 2011, Z James

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Moving Image Production And The Pedagogical Development Of Media Literacy, K Parker, L French, S Moore

School of Art, Design and Architecture

No abstract provided.

Sustainability Of Solid Brick Walls With Retrofitted External Hemp-Lime Insulation, R Griffiths, S Goodhew

School of Art, Design and Architecture

No abstract provided.

There Is No Evidence For A Temporal Link Between Pathogen Arrival And Frog Extinctions In North-Eastern Australia., Ben L. Phillips, Robert Puschendorf, Jeremy Vanderwal, Ross A. Alford

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Pathogen spread can cause population declines and even species extinctions. Nonetheless, in the absence of tailored monitoring schemes, documenting pathogen spread can be difficult. In the case of worldwide amphibian declines the best present understanding is that the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) has recently spread, causing amphibian declines and extinction in the process. However, good evidence demonstrating pathogen arrival followed by amphibian decline is rare, and analysis of putative evidence is often inadequate. Here we attempt to examine the relationship between Bd arrival and amphibian decline across north-eastern Australia, using sites where a wave-like pattern of amphibian decline was …

Temperate And Tropical Brown Macroalgae Thrive, Despite Decalcification, Along Natural Co2 Gradients, Vivienne R. Johnson, Bayden D. Russell, Katharina E. Fabricius, Colin Brownlee, Jason M. Hall-Spencer

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

No abstract provided.

Energy And Animals: A History Of Conflict, Alexandra B. Klass

San Diego Journal of Climate & Energy Law

Environmental groups, federal and state agencies, and others who support the development of renewable energy have struggled in recent years with the adverse impacts of such development on animals and animal habitat. Although renewable energy development has the benefit of creating energy without the greenhouse gas emissions associated with traditional energy development, it does so through an intensive use of land, including federal public lands, thus competing with habitats for protected species and other wildlife. Conflicts between energy and animals, of course, are nothing new. Congress, agencies, and courts have attempted for decades to balance the public interest in domestic …

Port And Coastal State Control Of Atmospheric Pollution, Michael W. Reed

San Diego Journal of Climate & Energy Law

Controlling atmospheric pollution which originates beyond national borders always presents difficult issues. The problems are multiplied when the source is a merchant vessel, registered under a foreign flag of convenience and operating seaward of state and federal sovereign limits. Nevertheless, international law provides alternative approaches through which the coastal sovereign may protect its onshore environmental interests.

The purpose of this paper is to lay out the problems, both factual and legal, and discuss means by which they may be resolved. California is used as a case study. The state has long suffered from excessive air pollution. Congress acknowledged the state?s …

The Politics Of Clean Energy: Moving Beyond The Beltway, Joseph P. Tomain

San Diego Journal of Climate & Energy Law

This Article argues that the United States can achieve a new and smart energy policy and that we are taking active steps in this direction. Off of the Hill, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, there is clear thinking about clean energy. Consider President Obamas choice for Secretary of Commerce, John Bryson. Bryson has been the CEO of a public electric utility, a founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, and sits on the boards of such organizations as Boeing and Disney and clean energy firms like Coda Automotive and BrightSource Energy exactly the right job description for a clean energy advocate. …

Perspectives On The Use Of Grounded Theory In Social Development Studies, Ernesto L. Bumatay

Journal of Public Affairs and Development

This methodology paper introduces insights and perspectives on Grounded Theory (GT) as a social science research methodology. While GT emanates from the field of education, this paper shows that it can also be potentially used in development studies. The concept of the GT is first explained including the alternative views on its implementation. It has limited application in the Philippine context, and the current application that is cited is based on an education study called “Becoming Gift: A Classic Grounded Theory of Charism in Sectarian Institutions”. The end goal of the paper is to argue for the application of GT …

Introduction, Ossi Naukkarinen, Yuriko Saito

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Pending On Art, Pauline Von Bonsdorff

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Artification is mostly approached from a contextualist perspective where “art” refers to objects that are presented and appreciated within socially recognized art institutions. Artification then means that the notion of art is extended to non-art areas. Yet it can be argued that contextualism is circular, since it starts with an unquestioned assumption about what art is. Another weakness of contextualism is that by privileging theory it tends to downplay the role of creative and appreciative practices. Alternative approaches are possible, and this article explores in a preliminary way what a naturalist approach could mean for how we see art and …

Artification For Well-Being: Institutional Living As A Special Case, Susann Vihma

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Millions of people live in institutional residences that differ significantly from their homes. This article looks closely into the quality of these habitations and points out some critical characteristics based on a research project called CoWell. One salient question circles around the concept of homeyness, which in many countries is the main objective to realize in institutional living. Some kind of artification is implemented and is seen as a means for achieving a homey atmosphere and of stimulating the inhabitants and the staff. However, very little research has been done on homeyness. Cleanliness, permanence, and randomness are often recognizable in …

Artification Of Sport: The Case Of Distance Running, Matti Tainio

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This article deals with the possibilities of artification in sport, using distance running as an example. Sport is viewed as one phenomenon in the history of physical cultures, with both predecessors and also the possibility of developing into something new. Sport was first defined primarily as a competitive activity but, by the end of the twentieth century, it had developed as part of the athletic trend towards exploring experience-seeking fitness sports. Through the developments of contemporary visual art, sport has also become a possible medium of art. These developments, both in sport and art, provide an opportunity to look for …

A Kinanthropometric Analysis Of Accurate And Inaccurate Kickers: Implications For Kicking Accuracy In Australian Football, Nicolas H. Hart

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

A paucity of research exists investigating the potential relationship between the technical and temporal strategy of accurate and inaccurate kickers in response to physical parameters modifiable by athletic conditioning. While recent studies have produced improvements in performance when kicking for distance following structured resistance training interventions, no studies have examined the influence of such interventions on the enhancement of kicking accuracy. It was therefore the purpose of this thesis to extend scientific understanding of those mechanisms which might underpin accurate kicking performances through examining kinanthropometric, strength and muscularity profiles of accurate and inaccurate kickers in Australian Football using a series …

Culprit-Vessel Percutaneous Coronary Intervention Followed By Contralateral Angiography Versus Complete Angiography In Patients With St-Elevation Myocardial Infarction, Chadi Dib, Elias B Hanna, Muhammad A Chaudhry, Thomas A Hennebry, Stavros Stavrakis, Mazen S Abu-Fadel

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

In patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction, delay in door-to-balloon time strongly increases mortality rates. To our knowledge, no randomized studies to date have focused on reducing delays within the catheterization laboratory.

We performed a retrospective analysis of all patients who presented with ST-elevation myocardial infarction at our institution from July 2006 through June 2010, looking primarily at time differences between percutaneous coronary intervention in the culprit vessel on the basis of ECG criteria, followed by contralateral angiography (Group 1), versus complete coronary angiography followed by culprit-vessel percutaneous intervention (Group 2).

There were 49 patients in Group 1 and 57 patients …

Cellular Retrograde Cardiomyoplasty And Relaxin Therapy For Postischemic Myocardial Repair In A Rat Model, Gabriella Di Lascio, Guy Harmelin, Mattia Targetti, Cristina Nanni, Giacomo Bianchi, Tommaso Gasbarri, Sandro Gelsomino, Daniele Bani, Sandra Zecchi Orlandini, Massimo Bonacchi

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

We sought to determine whether skeletal myoblasts, wild-type or engineered to express relaxin, might improve myocardial viability and performance in a rat model of chronic myocardial infarction. Our purpose was to investigate a potential new therapy for heart failure.

From October 2005 through September 2009, we surgically induced acute myocardial infarction in 80 male Wistar rats. Thirty days after surgery, the rats underwent reoperation for the retrograde coronary venous infusion of skeletal myoblasts, relaxin, or both. The animals were randomly assigned to 4 experimental groups: R1 (the control group, which underwent saline-solution infusion), R2 (systemic relaxin therapy), R3 (myoblast infusion), …

Early Cardiac Metastasis From Squamous Cell Carcinoma Of The Tongue In 2 Patients, Jean Onwuchekwa, Jose Banchs

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

Cardiac metastasis from primary tumors is rare. Cardiac metastasis from squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue is rare; in the English-language medical literature, we read of only 4 patients with this condition. Here, we discuss the cases of 2 such patients who presented at our institution only a few months apart. In both, with the use of 2-dimensional echocardiography, we incidentally found cardiac metastasis from squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue. Resection of the cardiac masses was precluded. These cases illustrate the usefulness of early cardiac evaluation with 2-dimensional echocardiography in patients with head and neck cancer and known metastatic …

Intramyocardial Hematoma From Blunt Trauma Mimicking Apical Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, Meta Linda Mobula, Sammy Zakaria, Glenn A Hirsch

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

No abstract provided.

Coronary Arteriovenous Fistulae: The Complexity Of Coronary Artery-To-Coronary Sinus Connections, Todd L Kiefer, Anna Lisa Crowley, James Jaggers, J Kevin Harrison

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

Coronary artery fistulae are a rare cardiovascular anomaly. Even less common are multiple fistulae involving more than 1 coronary artery. Herein we report the case of a 47-year-old woman who had fistulae from both the right coronary and left circumflex coronary arteries draining into the coronary sinus. These lesions we attempted to close percutaneously but subsequently closed surgically. We discuss diagnostic imaging approaches, along with closure indications, closure options, and outcomes.

Potential Role Of Plasma Myeloperoxidase Level In Predicting Long-Term Outcome Of Acute Myocardial Infarction, Mehmet Gungor Kaya, Ridvan Yalcin, Kaan Okyay, Fatih Poyraz, Nilufer Bayraktar, Hatice Pasaoglu, Bulent Boyaci, Atiye Cengel

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

We investigated the prognostic importance of plasma myeloperoxidase levels in patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) at long-term follow-up, and we analyzed the correlations between plasma myeloperoxidase levels and other biochemical values.

We evaluated 73 consecutive patients (56 men; mean age, 56 ±11 yr) diagnosed with acute STEMI and 46 age- and sex-matched healthy control participants. Patients were divided into 2 groups according to the median myeloperoxidase level (Group 1: plasma myeloperoxidase ≤68 ng/mL; and Group 2: plasma myeloperoxidase >68 ng/mL). Patients were monitored for the occurrence of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE), which were defined as cardiac death; reinfarction; …

The History Of Art Versus The Art Of Surgery, Ugo Filippo Tesler

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

No abstract provided.