Populations of many migratory taxa have been declining over recent decades. Although protected areas are a cornerstone for conservation, their role in protecting migratory species can be incomplete due to the dynamic distributions of these species. Here, we use a pan-European citizen science bird occurrence dataset (EurobirdPortal) with Spatiotemporal Exploratory Modelling to assess how the weekly distributions of 30 passerine and near passerine species overlap with protected areas in Europe and compare this to range adjusted policy protection targets.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Favourable Conservation status (FCS) is the overarching goal of the Habitats and Birds Directives, in which it is described as the situation in which a habitat or species is thriving throughout its natural range and is expected to continue to thrive. However, despite being introduced over thirty years ago, FCS has not been widely adopted as a conservation assessment framework. This systematic map aims to collate and characterise evidence to understand 1) how the term FCS is used in the literature, and 2) the context of its applications in policy and practice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOrotate phosphoribosyltransferase (OPRT) catalyzes the reaction that adds the pyrimidine base to the ribose in the penultimate step of the de novo biosynthesis of pyrimidine nucleotides. The OPRT structure consists of an obligate dimer, conserved throughout the phosphoribosyltransferase family. Here, we describe the structural characterization of Burkholderia cenocepacia OPRT (BcOPRT), both by X-ray crystallography and Cryo electron microscopy (Cryo-EM).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Patient-reported experience measures are tools used to gather feedback from patients about their experiences of healthcare services, which are crucial for improving the quality of care from the perspective of patients. The aim of this systematic review was to identify surgery-related patient-reported experience measures, evaluate their psychometric properties, appraise and identify recurring themes within qualitative studies on surgical care, and identify potential bias in study designs.
Methods: PubMed, MEDLINE, Embase, the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature database, and the Cochrane Library, along with clinical trial registries, were searched for articles on surgery-specific patient-reported experience measures and qualitative studies on patients' experiences up to 21 September 2023.
The impacts of highly pathogenic enveloped viruses, such as SARS-CoV-2, have turned scientific inquiry toward the fusion mechanisms responsible for viral pathogenesis and to seek cost-effective and adaptable strategies to mitigate future outbreaks. Current approaches for studying SARS-CoV-2 fusion include computational studies, pan-coronavirus viral inhibitors, and modified peptides and lipopeptides, along with various nanotechniques. Although these methodologies have illuminated the fusion mechanisms, they possess key limitations that prevent their widespread utility in outbreaks, including high financial or instrumental costs, operational proficiency, cytotoxicity, or viral specificity.
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