Coastal vegetation comprises a number of coastal specialists and terrestrial generalists. It remains unclear how they persist on disturbed and undisturbed coastal conditions. We tested the hypothesis that coastal specialists may be superior to terrestrial generalists on supratidal zones of coasts, but their superiority can be influenced by human disturbances. Eight separate sandy coasts of the ...

In Lithuania there are two types of specialists working in medical laboratories and having a university degree: laboratory medicine physicians and medical biologists. Both types of specialists are officially being recognized and regulated by the Ministry of Health of Lithuania. Laboratory medicine physicians become specialists in laboratory medicine after an accredited 4-year multidisciplinary ...

BACKGROUND Although empiric treatment regimens for acute bacterial meningitis are well established, there are many uncertainties regarding management of meningococcal disease. A survey was conducted among infectious disease specialists to assess meningococcal disease practice patterns and availability of antimicrobial susceptibility testing for Neisseria menigitidis. METHODS An online survey ...

Identifying the factors that promote or preclude the evolution of resource polymorphism is essential for understanding the origins of diversity. Although such polymorphisms have long been viewed as an adaptive response to intraspecific competition, they are by no means ubiquitous, even in populations experiencing strong competition. In the present study, we examined a potentially important cost...

OBJECTIVE To investigate how introducing early child-development specialists (Healthy Steps Specialists) and enhanced developmental services into routine pediatric care affects perspectives of clinicians and staff. METHODS Self-administered questionnaires were completed at baseline and at 30 months by clinicians, clinical staff, and nonclinical staff at pediatric sites participating in the ev...

A case-acquisition and decision-support system was developed to support the analysis of group-average lactation curves and to acquire example cases from domain specialists. This software was developed through several iterations of a three-step approach involving 1) problem analysis and formulation in consultation with two dairy nutrition specialists; 2) development of a case-acquisition and dec...

BACKGROUND The mobilization of hematopoietic stem cells can be a limiting factor for transplantation, yet little is known about how the availability of novel mobilizing agents has affected the practices of oncologists and transplant specialists. METHODS US-based oncologists (n = 48) and transplant specialists (n = 46) were separately surveyed with a partial overlap of assessed information. ...

We analyzed the impact of social networks on general practitioners' (GPs) referral behavior based on administrative panel data from 2,684,273 referrals to specialists made between 1998 and 2007. For the definition of social networks, we used information on the doctors' place and time of study and their hospital work history. We found that GPs referred more patients to specialists within their p...

Drug prescribing and referrals to specialists' consultations, as the indicators of the quality of health care, were not so often monitored in Croatian family medicine. The aims of the study are to determine the trends of referrals from family doctors to specialists' consultations and the trends of specialists' consultations utilization. The study is based on routinely collected data from the Cr...

The impact of adaptation on the persistence of a balanced polymorphism was explored using the lactose operon of Escherichia coli as a model system. Competition in chemostats for two substitutable resources, methylgalactoside and lactulose, generates stabilizing frequency-dependent selection when two different naturally isolated lac operons (TD2 and TD10) are used. The fate of this balanced poly...