Palaeoenvironmental proxies indicate long-term development of agro-pastoralist landscapes in Inner Asian mountains.

A growing body of archaeological research on agro-pastoralist populations of the Inner Asian mountains indicates that these groups adapted various systems of mobile herding and cultivation to ecotopes across the region from as early as 5000 BP. It has been argued that these adaptations allowed the development of flexible social-ecological systems well suited to the long-term management of these mountain landscapes. At present, less attention has been paid to examining the long-term ecological legacy of these adaptations within the sedimentary or palaeoenvironmental record.

Effects of a robot intervention on visuospatial hemineglect in postacute stroke patients: a randomized controlled trial.

Objective: To evaluate the effects of an intervention using the robot device PARO on visuospatial hemineglect and activities of daily living, and its acceptance during stroke rehabilitation. PARO is an interactive robotic toy with the appearance of a baby seal, which can move, produce sounds, and react to speech and touch.

Design: A randomized controlled trial.

[Animal-assisted therapy for demented patients in acute care hospitals].

Introduction: In nursing homes animal-assisted therapy has been applied in demented elderly patients for several years. There are no studies on this treatment in hospitals, especially in geriatric departments.

Methods: From September 2010 to November 2011 105 in-patients, among them 77 female, participated in a 30 min dog-assisted group therapy (mean age 84,4 ± 6,56 years).

Methylmalonic acidemia: 6 years' clinical experience with two variants unresponsive to vitamin B12 therapy.

Two infants with lethargy, vomiting, convulsions, coma and marked metabolic acidosis were found to have very high concentrations of methylmalonic acid in their serum and urine. In vitro studies of fibroblasts demonstrated that the infants had different variants of methylmalonic acidemia.Vitamin B(12) was given in two different forms at 1 month of age and at 12 months of age.