A cyanide-free sample preparation methodology prior to determination of vitamin B in infant milk formula using hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection.

The analysis of vitamin B in infant formulas typically requires the use of cyanide during sample preparation to convert the unstable vitamers (hydroxocobalamin, methylcobalamin and adenosylcobalamin) to cyanocobalamin, the most stable form of vitamin B. To eliminate the risk to laboratory analysts in handling cyanide, alternative strategies are preferred for the analysis of vitamin B. This research demonstrates the use of cobalamin-derived α-ribazole (a nucleoside moiety of vitamin B) to determine total vitamin B content.

Existing evidence on the use of participatory scenarios in ecological restoration: a systematic map.

Background And Context: The scale of land degradation worldwide has led to nearly one billion hectares committed to restoration globally. However, achieving such restoration targets will necessitate complex trade-offs against limited time, competing knowledge, costs, resources and varying stakeholder and societal preferences. Participatory scenarios allow a way to identify collaborative solutions for restoration planning and implementation best suited for the local cultures and societies they are tied to.

Analysis of sulfur in soil and plant digests using methane as a reaction gas for ICP-MS.

Quantitation of sulfur (S) is vitally important for analysis of agricultural soil and plant samples due to the requirement of S in living organisms. Although inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) is a commonly used and robust instrument for multi-elemental detection, S is usually analysed by ICP-optical emission spectroscopy (OES) since S quantitation poses a particular challenge for ICP-MS due to interferences on all S isotopes. The requirement for analysis by two instruments increases time and cost for sample analysis, hence analysis by one instrument is desirable.

UK Electronic Healthcare Records for Research: A Scientometric Analysis of Respiratory, Cardiovascular, and COVID-19 Publications.

Background: Routinely collected electronic healthcare records (EHRs) document many details of a person's health, including demographics, preventive services, symptoms, tests, disease diagnoses and prescriptions. Although not collected for research purposes, these data provide a wealth of information which can be incorporated into epidemiological investigations, and records can be analysed to understand a range of important health questions. We aimed to understand the use of routinely collected health data in epidemiological studies relating to three of the most common chronic respiratory conditions, namely: asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and interstitial lung disease (ILD).

Investigation of the Potential of Repurposing Medium-Density Fiberboard Waste as an Adsorbent for Heavy Metal Ion Removal.

Medium-density fiberboard (MDF) waste generation has increased steadily over the past decades, and therefore, the investigation of novel methods to recycle this waste is very important. The potential of repurposing MDF waste as an adsorbent for the treatment of Cd(II), Cu(II), Pb(II), and Zn(II) ions in water was investigated using MDF offcuts. The highest adsorption potential in single-metal ion solution systems was observed for Pb(II) ions.

Decreasing ICU and Hospital Length of Stay through a Standardized Respiratory Therapist-driven Electronic Clinical Care Pathway for Status Asthmaticus.

Introduction: Status asthmaticus (SA) is a cause of many pediatric hospitalizations. This study sought to evaluate how a standardized asthma care pathway (ACP) in the electronic medical record impacted the length of stay (LOS).

Methods: An interdisciplinary team internally validated a standardized respiratory score for patients admitted with SA to a 25-bed pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) at a tertiary children's hospital.

Implementing code review in the scientific workflow: Insights from ecology and evolutionary biology.

Code review increases reliability and improves reproducibility of research. As such, code review is an inevitable step in software development and is common in fields such as computer science. However, despite its importance, code review is noticeably lacking in ecology and evolutionary biology.

Plasma concentration of prophylactic cefazolin best correlates with lean body mass measured by bioimpedance analysis in lumbar spine surgery: Results of a pilot study.

The aim of this study was to determine the association between measures of body composition and the concentration of plasma and paraspinal muscle cefazolin. Secondly, we aimed to confirm the efficacy of our hospital dosing regimen in achieving the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) at the surgical site. Patients undergoing posterior-based lumbar spine surgery had body composition analysed using bioimpedance analysis.

How effective are perches in promoting bird-mediated seed dispersal for natural forest regeneration? A systematic review protocol.

Background: Forest landscape restoration (FLR), often through tree planting, is one of the priorities in many global and national initiatives for carbon offsetting as part of climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation. However, active efforts to meet FLR objectives entail substantial costs for the procurement of planting stocks and require an experienced workforce for planting and nurturing tree seedlings. Alternatively, restoration projects can be more cost-effective and potentially may have greater biodiversity gain through assisting and accelerating natural forest regeneration.

Accelerated loss of diastase in mānuka honey: Investigation of mānuka specific compounds.

Diastase is used internationally as a quality monitor for excessive heat treatment and prolonged storage of honey; honey must contain an activity of at least 8 diastase numbers (DN) for it to be considered export quality. Freshly harvested mānuka honey can have diastase activity close to the export threshold of 8 DN without excess heating, increasing susceptibility for export failure. This research investigated the effect of compounds unique to or high in concentration in mānuka honey on diastase activity.

Environmental evidence in action: on the science and practice of evidence synthesis and evidence-based decision-making.

In civil society we expect that policy and management decisions will be made using the best available evidence. Yet, it is widely known that there are many barriers that limit the extent to which that occurs. One way to overcome these barriers is via robust, comprehensive, transparent and repeatable evidence syntheses (such as systematic reviews) that attempt to minimize various forms of bias to present a summary of existing knowledge for decision-making purposes.

Graphical Discrimination of New Zealand Honey from International Honey Using Elemental Analysis.

This study investigated the potential of utilising the elemental fingerprinting of honey to differentiate New Zealand (NZ) honey from that of international origin. Twenty elements were analysed by ICP-MS in 352 honeys from 34 various countries. Of these, 323 honeys (245 New Zealand honeys, 78 international) and two subsets of data (NZ and European origin, n = 306, and, NZ and Denmark/Germany, n = 280) were visualised using principal component analysis (PCA).

Method Reporting with Initials for Transparency (MeRIT) promotes more granularity and accountability for author contributions.

Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) has recently changed how author contributions are acknowledged. To extend and complement CRediT, we propose MeRIT, a new way of writing the Methods section using the author’s initials to further clarify contributor roles for reproducibility and replicability.

The conserved and high ratio in sunflower pollen: Possible implications for bee health and plant-bee interactions.

Sodium (Na) concentrations are low in plant tissues, and its metabolic function in plants is minor; however, Na is a key nutrient for plant consumers. Previous studies have thus far focused on Na concentration. Nevertheless, a balanced potassium (K) to Na ratio () is more important than Na concentration alone since food with high has detrimental effects on consumers irrespective of Na concentration.

Blood loss in total spondylectomy for primary spinal bone tumours: a comparison of estimated blood loss versus actual blood loss in a single centre over 10 years.

Background: Total en bloc spondylectomy (TES) is a widely accepted surgical technique for primary spinal bone tumours but is frequently accompanied by substantial peri-operative blood loss. Prior studies have reported estimated blood loss (EBL) can reach up to 3,200 mL. The aim of this study is to estimate the blood loss during TES procedures performed in the last ten years at our tertiary referral centre and compare EBL with actual blood loss (ABL).

ROBITT: A tool for assessing the risk-of-bias in studies of temporal trends in ecology.

Aggregated species occurrence and abundance data from disparate sources are increasingly accessible to ecologists for the analysis of temporal trends in biodiversity. However, sampling biases relevant to any given research question are often poorly explored and infrequently reported; this can undermine statistical inference. In other disciplines, it is common for researchers to complete 'risk-of-bias' assessments to expose and document the potential for biases to undermine conclusions.

Spinal Tumour en Bloc Surgery: A Series of Abandoned Surgical Cases.

Select spinal tumors can be treated with en bloc spondylectomy (EBS) but the surgical complexity and relatively low frequency of eligible tumors render EBS an uncommon procedure. The expanded surgical access encompasses acceptance of relatively high morbidity as a trade-off against improved oncological results and survival. EBS durations can be long with dynamic changes affecting the risk-benefit ratio as the surgery proceeds.

Low copper levels measured in the aortic wall of New Zealand patients with non-syndromic ascending thoracic aortic aneurysm.

Objectives: Studies in animals have shown causal relationships between copper (Cu) deficiency and the development of thoracic aortic aneurysms (TAAs) [1, 2]. Cu deficiency is widespread in New Zealand (NZ) soils; the high soil pH from the use of lime fertilizers reduces the bioavailability of Cu for grazing animals and growing plants; this, in turn, reduces Cu availability in the NZ human food chain. Our study is a pilot study to explore associations between Cu and TAA.

Machine Learning Improves Functional Upper Extremity Use Capture in Distal Radius Fracture Patients.

Current outcome measures, including strength/range of motion testing, patient-reported outcomes (PROs), and motor skill testing, may provide inadequate granularity in reflecting functional upper extremity (UE) use after distal radius fracture (DRF) repair. Accelerometry analysis also has shortcomings, namely, an inability to differentiate functional versus nonfunctional movements. The objective of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of machine learning (ML) analyses in capturing UE functional movements based on accelerometry data for patients after DRF repair.

A Radiologists' Guide to En Bloc Resection of Primary Tumors in the Spine: What Does the Surgeon Want to Know?

En bloc resection in the spine is performed for both primary and metastatic bone lesions and has been proven to lengthen disease-free survival and decrease the likelihood of local recurrence. It is a complex procedure, which requires a thorough multi-disciplinary approach. This article will discuss the role of the radiologist in characterizing the underlying tumor pathology, staging the tumor and helping to predict possible intraoperative challenges for en bloc resection of primary bone lesions.

Quantifying the checks and balances of collaborative governance systems for adaptive carnivore management.

Recovering or threatened carnivore populations are often harvested to minimise their impact on human activities, such as livestock farming or game hunting. Increasingly, harvest quota decisions involve a set of scientific, administrative and political institutions operating at national and sub-national levels whose interactions and collective decision-making aim to increase the legitimacy of management and ensure population targets are met. In practice, however, assessments of how quota decisions change between these different actors and what consequences these changes have on population trends are rare.

The role of participatory scenarios in ecological restoration: a systematic map protocol.

Background: The scale of land degradation worldwide has led the UN to declare the Decade of Ecosystem Restoration and movements such as the Bonn Challenge ( https://www.bonnchallenge.org/ ), have placed ecological restoration on the global policy agenda.

The evidence synthesis and meta-analysis in R conference (ESMARConf): levelling the playing field of conference accessibility and equitability.

Rigorous evidence is vital in all disciplines to ensure efficient, appropriate, and fit-for-purpose decision-making with minimised risk of unintended harm. To date, however, disciplines have been slow to share evidence synthesis frameworks, best practices, and tools amongst one another. Recent progress in collaborative digital and programmatic frameworks, such as the free and Open Source software R, have significantly expanded the opportunities for development of free-to-use, incrementally improvable, community driven tools to support evidence synthesis (e.

Citationchaser: A tool for transparent and efficient forward and backward citation chasing in systematic searching.

Systematic searching aims to find all possibly relevant research from multiple sources, the basis for an unbiased and comprehensive evidence base. Along with bibliographic databases, systematic reviewers use a variety of additional methods to minimise procedural bias. Citation chasing exploits connections between research articles to identify relevant records for a review by making use of explicit mentions of one article within another.