BACKGROUND The non-invasive assessment of airway inflammation is potentially advantageous in asthma management. Exhaled carbon monoxide (eCO) measurement is cheap and has been proposed to reflect airway inflammation and oxidative stress but current data are conflicting. The purpose of this meta-analysis is to determine whether eCO is elevated in asthmatics, is regulated by steroid treatment and...

Pyrosequencing analysis of 16S rRNA genes was used to examine impacts of elevated CO(2) (eCO(2)) on soil microbial communities from 12 replicates each from ambient CO(2) (aCO(2)) and eCO(2) settings. The results suggest that the soil microbial community composition and structure significantly altered under conditions of eCO(2), which was closely associated with soil and plant properties.

In light of the World Health Organization's declaration that non-dependent drinking contributes more to the global burden of alcohol-related disease than does drinking by those who meet diagnostic criteria for dependence, this paper argues that clinicians, researchers and decision-makers need to consider microsocial and macrosocial impacts of alcohol use, not just addiction and clinical effects...

The year 1997 is a historic year on many counts. It is on the one hand the Golden Jubilee year of our Nation, as also of the Indian Psychiatric Society. Our meeting here today is a historic event which marks an important epoch in the development in this field of specialisation - as it is the first ever meeting of Military Psychiatry section of Indian Psychiatric Society.However the world of tod...

9 Black, white or green: ‘race’, gender and avatars within the therapeutic space M A Graber , A D Graber 13 Royal ruptures: Caroline of Ansbach and the politics of illness in the 1730s E D Jones 18 Telling the Patient’s Story: using theatre training to improve case presentation skills R R Hammer , J D Rian , J K Gregory , J M Bostwick , C Barrett Birk , L Chalfant , P D Scanlon , D K Hall-Flavi...

Too little is known about human functioning amidst chronic adversity. We addressed that need by studying adult Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt), a population that has experienced longstanding economic and political hardships. Fourteen group interviews were conducted in February, 2010 in Arabic by local fieldworkers with 68 participants representing the main stratificat...

The state remains central in contemporary environmental politics and policies, although governance increasingly involves neoliberal non-state mechanisms. Environmental management China holds features of an ‘environmental state’ has been undergoing continuous restructuring, manifested by a recent city-regionalism turn. Informed the theories eco-state restructuring (ESR) eco-scalar fix, this pape...

This article explores informal environmental education (EE) experiences at eco-attractions. A consortium of three UK-based environmental charities designed an eco-attraction-based EE program aiming to inspire responses to environmental change. Over six months, educators at six eco-attractions delivered this two-day program to 430 young people. This article conveys qualitative insights into lear...

Eco-environmental stress refers to the pressure borne by the environment in sustaining the pre-existing non-industrialized state and/or in counteracting adverse impacts caused by natural and human factors. The present article introduces the concept, research progress, and method for assessing eco-environmental stress. An eco-environmental stress index (ESI) is established to assess the eco-envi...

Metastatic breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancerrelated deaths among women. Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a highly aggressive subcategory of breast cancer and currently lacks well-defined molecular targets for effective targeted therapies. Disease relapse, metastasis, and drug resistance render standard chemotherapy ineffective in the treatment of TNBC. Because previous ...