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Suitable Environment (suitable + environment)
Selected AbstractsCauses and management of nursing practice errors: a questionnaire survey of hospital nurses in IranINTERNATIONAL NURSING REVIEW, Issue 3 2008M. Anoosheh rn Background:, Some human error in health care is inevitable. Research into the predisposing factors for these errors is an important step in their management. Aim:, To survey nurse perceptions of the contributing factors to nursing practice errors. Methods:, A descriptive survey was carried out in three selected educational hospitals in Tehran city. Data were collected by questionnaire and analysed using descriptive statistics. The study sample consisted of 96 nurses and nursing managers. A multistage sampling strategy was used. Results:, Results showed that from nurses' and nursing managers' perspectives, various factors could contribute to the occurrence of nursing errors in the ,management', ,environment' and ,nursing care' sections. In addition, there were differences between nurses working on various wards about the causes of nursing errors in each section. Conclusion:, A culture of safety recognizes that safety is ,no accident'. Rather, it requires a change in management practices, providing a suitable environment with the requisite supply of resources and infrastructure, and increasing nurses' knowledge. Outcomes that are identified from the process of practice error management should promote interventions designed to prevent future practice errors based on the above contributing factors. Limitations:, The study relied on self-report by a sample of nurses. These responses should now be tested by empirical research into actual nursing practice errors in order to test whether the nurses' perceived ideas of causation are substantiated. [source] Fresh insights into long-term changes in flora, vegetation, land use and soil erosion in the karstic environment of the Burren, western IrelandJOURNAL OF ECOLOGY, Issue 5 2009Ingo Feeser Summary 1. ,The study focuses on species-rich, upland, heathy vegetation with arctic-alpine floristic affinities and Sesleria grasslands in the karstic Burren region, western Ireland. The investigations aimed at reconstructing the long-term development of these high conservation-value communities and the role of farming in their formation and long-term survival. 2. ,The methods used included pollen analysis and 14C-dating of short monoliths and investigation of grykes (fissures in karstic limestone) for evidence of soil erosion. Special attention was paid to fossil, coprophilous fungal spores as indicators of local grazing. The strong local character of the pollen records facilitated identification of inter-site differences as well as regional patterns. It is shown that open pine woodland characterized the Cappanawalla uplands between c. 1500 BC and 500 BC. It is proposed that such woodlands, with floristic affinities to Scandinavian open pine woodlands on calcareous soils, provided a suitable environment for the present-day, open heath vegetation with species such as Dryas octopetala, Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, Geranium sanguineum and Empetrum nigrum. 3. ,Burning of vegetation as a management tool was important in the uplands over most of the last two millennia. Firing seems to have ceased with the onset of more intensive grazing regimes in the 18th century. 4. ,Synthesis. Upland palaeoarchives, derived from shallow peaty deposits, show that the upland Burren supported mainly plagioclimax Corylus -dominated woody vegetation and grasslands from c. 1500 BC (beginning of present record), until possibly as late as the 17th century AD. In the uplands of the north-western Burren, open, species-rich pinewoods with hazel dominated. The northern-arctic elements in the present-day upland flora survived clearances, involving initially Pinus sylvestris (c. 500 BC) and subsequently Corylus avellana (c. AD 1600). Colluvial material retrieved from grykes supports the idea of considerable soil loss occurring as late as the first and early 2nd millennium AD. The investigations highlight the potential of upland palaeoarchives, consisting of short sequences, for elucidating vegetation and land-use dynamics in karstic environments such as the Burren. [source] Growth of malignant oral epithelial stem cells after seeding into organotypical cultures of normal mucosaJOURNAL OF ORAL PATHOLOGY & MEDICINE, Issue 2 2004Ian C. Mackenzie Background:, Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is associated both with the local expansion of clones of malignant cells and with their further migration to regional and distant sites. The interactions that occur between normal and malignant cells during these events are not well modelled by standard culture conditions, but organotypical cultures, in which epithelial cells are grown on a matrix containing fibroblasts, provide a suitable environment for such investigations. Methods:, Cells from five cell lines, each derived from OSCC and marked by retroviral transduction with alkaline phosphatase, were incorporated as small subpopulations (0.1,5%) in uniformly differentiating organotypical cultures constructed from normal oral mucosal cells. The patterns of growth of the malignant cells within the normal epithelium were examined for 3 weeks. Results:, There was variation between the different cell lines in their rates and patterns of growth, but all cell lines produced clusters of malignant cells that had expanded within 3 weeks to replace the normal epithelium. The appearance and spacing of these clusters suggested that each was derived from a single progenitor cell. The number of malignant cells initially present within a given area of organotypical epithelium was much greater than the number of expanding cell clusters subsequently formed. Cluster-forming cells thus represented only a subpopulation of the tumour cells. Conclusions:, The organotypical model allows examination of interactions occurring between cells derived from OSCC and normal epithelia. The three-dimensional nature of organotypical cultures, together with their more normal patterns of differentiation, provides an environment that more closely mimics the in vivo environment in which tumours develop. The finding that only a subpopulation of tumour cells forms expanding tumour colonies suggests a range of growth potentials within a tumour population and may provide preliminary evidence for some form of stem and amplifying cell pattern. [source] The Role of Philanthropy in Local Government FinancePUBLIC BUDGETING AND FINANCE, Issue 3 2005Renée A. Irvin Nonprofit organizations thrive on the altruism of citizens, and actively court donors for major gifts. Yet individual gifts to government agencies are often unexpected, sporadic, and initiated by the donor. This article introduces the phenomenon of private giving to local governments and tests hypotheses regarding the expected forms of giving to public agencies. Results indicate that philanthropy is and will likely remain a minor and highly variable source of revenue, making it an ill-suited replacement for broad-based tax revenue. However, deliberate government efforts to provide a suitable environment for private donations appear to succeed in attracting more gifts per capita. [source] Design and validation of a pulsatile perfusion bioreactor for 3D high cell density culturesBIOTECHNOLOGY & BIOENGINEERING, Issue 6 2009Julie A. Chouinard Abstract This study presents the design and validation of a pulsatile flow perfusion bioreactor able to provide a suitable environment for 3D high cell density cultures for tissue engineering applications. Our bioreactor system is mobile, does not require the use of traditional cell culture incubators and is easy to sterilize. It provides real-time monitoring and stable control of pH, dissolved oxygen concentration, temperature, pressure, pulsation frequency, and flow rate. In this bioreactor system, cells are cultured in a gel within a chamber perfused by a culture medium fed by hollow fibers. Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) suspended in fibrin were found to be living, making connections and proliferating up to five to six times their initial seeding number after a 48-h culture period. Cells were uniformly dispersed within the 14.40,mm,× 17.46,mm,×,6.35,mm chamber. Cells suspended in 6.35-mm thick gels and cultured in a traditional CO2 incubator were found to be round and dead. In control experiments carried out in a traditional cell culture incubator, the scarcely found living cells were mostly on top of the gels, while cells cultured under perfusion bioreactor conditions were found to be alive and uniformly distributed across the gel. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2009; 104: 1215,1223. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] Broad-scale environmental response and niche conservatism in lacustrine diatom communitiesGLOBAL ECOLOGY, Issue 5 2010Joseph R. Bennett ABSTRACT Aim, (1) To resolve theoretical debates regarding the role of environment versus dispersal limitation, the conservatism of niches across distances and the prevalence of environmental specialists in diatom communities. (2) To provide guidance on the use of diatom communities and other microbial analogues to analyse ecological response to environmental change. Location, Eight hundred and ninety-one lakes in five regional datasets from north-western Europe and four regional datasets from north-eastern North America. Methods, Lacustrine diatom communities were analysed at three scales: inter-continental, intra-continental and regional. Nested partial redundancy analyses (RDAs) were used to determine spatial versus environmental components of community variation. Weighted-averaging (WA) regression and calibration, as well as logistic and quadratic regressions, were used to detect niche conservatism and the prevalence of environmental specialists. Results, Community patterns indicate that dispersal limitation acts predominantly at the inter-continental scale, while at the regional (less than c. 1,000,000 km2) scale, a single environmental variable (pH) explains more than five times the community variation as spatial (dispersal-related) variables. In addition, pH niche components appear to be conserved at the inter-continental scale, and environmental specialization does not impose relative rarity, as specialists apparently readily disperse to suitable environments. Main conclusions, Analysis at multiple scales is clearly important in determining the influences of community variation. For diatom communities, dispersal limitation acts most strongly at the broadest scales, giving way to environment at the scales considered by most analyses. The availability of a wide variety of propagules with consistent niches across regions indicates that diatom communities reflect the succession of taxa according to local environmental conditions, rather than disequilibrium with the environment or adaptation of local populations. While multi-scale analyses must be undertaken for other groups to resolve debates over community drivers and determine appropriate scales for prediction, for diatoms (and probably other microbial communities), responses to environmental change can be inferred using analogue datasets from large geographic areas. [source] Peat bog restoration by floating raft formation: the effects of groundwater and peat qualityJOURNAL OF APPLIED ECOLOGY, Issue 3 2002Alfons J. P. Smolders Summary 1,A prerequisite for the restoration of desiccated bog remnants is rewetting the peat surface. Frequently in Europe, extensive areas are flooded in order to maximize water retention, and growth of peat mosses is often observed in the shallow zones. In deeper waters, regeneration appears to depend on whether residual peat will become buoyant and form floating rafts. 2,In order to study the initial stages of peat bog regeneration, conditions required for peat buoyancy were studied on peat monoliths collected from three cut-over bog remnants in the Netherlands. The effects of different peat quality and water chemistry on buoyancy of the monoliths, as well as growth of Sphagnum cuspidatum and nutrient availability, were followed in a glasshouse experiment. 3,Both groundwater and peat quality affected the buoyancy of the monoliths and the growth of S. cuspidatum. When groundwater containing bicarbonate (1 mmol l,1 HCO3,, pH 6·0) was applied, the pH of peat monoliths increased from c. 3·5 to c. 4·5 due to acid buffering. As a result, two of the peat types became more buoyant and the concentration, production and emissions of methane (CH4) increased. It was concluded that the increase in CH4 production, induced by the increased pH, was responsible for the buoyancy. 4,When groundwater contained both HCO3, (1 mmol l,1) and sulphate (1 mmol l,1), pH was further increased to approximately pH 5·0 due to alkalinity generated by the SO42, reduction process. CH4 production, however, decreased because of interference from the SO42,, as confirmed in additional incubation experiments. Phosphate concentrations, however, greatly increased in the HCO3,/SO42, addition treatment due to the interaction between sulphide and iron phosphate precipitates. 5,In one of the peat types, treatments did not influence CH4 production and buoyancy, most probably because of its low decomposability. The chemical characteristics of the peat, notably the concentrations of lignin and soluble phenolics as well as C:N, C:P and C:K ratios, were all higher than in the other two peat types. 6,The increase of S. cuspidatum biomass during the experiment appeared to be strongly related to the N:P ratios of the capitula, which differed considerably among the three peat types. 7,We conclude that when bog remnants are inundated the prospects for bog regeneration are largely determined by peat quality and water chemistry. Peat mats with low concentration of lignin and phenolics and low C:N ratios are most likely to become buoyant in water with a higher pH, so providing suitable environments for Sphagnum species. When peat quality is inadequate, either shallow inundation or the addition of suitable peat from elsewhere is indicated. [source] Proteases in pathogenesis and plant defenceCELLULAR MICROBIOLOGY, Issue 10 2004Yiji Xia Summary Plant pathogens deliver a variety of virulence factors to host cells to suppress basal defence responses and create suitable environments for their propagation. Plants have in turn evolved disease resistance genes whose products detect the virulence factors as a signal of invasion and activate effective defence responses. Understanding how a virulence effector contributes to virulence on susceptible hosts but becomes an avirulence factor that triggers defence responses on resistance hosts has been a major focus in plant research. Recent studies have shown that a growing list of pathogen-encoded effectors functions as proteases that are secreted into plant cells to modify host proteins. In addition, several plant proteases have been found to function in activation of the defence mechanism. These findings reveal that post-translational modification of host proteins through proteolytic processing is a widely used mechanism in regulating the plant defence response. [source] | |||||||||||||