Background: Surgical mortality data are collected routinely in high-income countries, yet virtually no low-or middle-income countries have outcome surveillance in place. The aim was prospectively to collect worldwide mortality data following emergency abdominal surgery, comparing findings across countries with a low, middle or high Human Development Index (HDI).Methods: This was a prospective, multicentre, cohort study. Self-selected hospitals performing emergency surgery submitted prespecified data for consecutive patients from at least one 2-week interval during July to December 2014. Postoperative mortality was analysed by hierarchical multivariable logistic regression.

Larvae of the barnacle Balanus amphltr~te amphltrite Darwin (Crustacea Cirnpedia) respond to microbial surface film cues at settlement (l e attachment and metamorphosis) The effects of fllms of varylng ages on the settlement behavlour of B amphitrite cypnds were examined in laboratory cholce assays uslng substrata preconditioned In natural seawater for longer penods (up to 18 d ) than previous studies Furthermore, in this study only known numbers of cyprids (either 1 or 20 larvae) per film treatment were investigated, allowing assessment of possible behavioural interactions between larvae Quantitative analyses of the multi-species films permitted oblective compansons between fllrn age treatments A general trend of a reversal of the effect of filmlng on cypnd settlement response -from ~nhibitory to facllitatory -was noted with increasing film age and isolated cypnds responded similarly to groups of 20 cypnds Microbial abundance and overall blotic diversity were found to be markedly greater in 'older films The fac~litation of cyprid settlement by 'older' fllms contrasts with previously published studies on B a m p l~~t~l t e and may be explained either by the greater ages of f~lms assayed In the present study or qual~tatlve/quantltative differences in fllms between studies

Environmental stresses profoundly altered accumulation of nonsense mRNAs including intron retaining (IR) transcripts in Arabidopsis. Temporal patterns of stress-induced IR mRNAs were dissected using both oscillating and non-oscillating transcripts. Broad range thermal cycles triggered a sharp increase in the long intron retaining CCA1 isoforms and altered their phasing to different times of day. Both abiotic and biotic stresses such as drought or P. syringae infection induced similar increase. Thermal stress induced a time delay in accumulation of CCA1 I4Rb transcripts whereas functional mRNA showed steady oscillations. Our data favor a hypothesis that stress-induced instabilities of the central oscillator can be in part compensated through fluctuations in abundance and out of phase oscillations of CCA1 IR transcripts. Altogether, our results support a concept that mRNA abundance can be modulated through altering ratios between functional and nonsense/IR transcripts. SR45 protein specifically bound to the retained CCA1 intron in vitro, suggesting that this splicing factor could be involved in regulation of intron retention. Transcriptomes of NMD-impaired and heat-stressed plants shared a set of retained introns associated with stress- and defense-inducible transcripts. Constitutive activation of certain stress response networks in an NMD mutant could be linked to disequilibrium between functional and nonsense mRNAs.

This paper discusses methods for evaluating the impacts of social programs prior to their implementation. Ex ante evaluation is useful for designing programs that achieve some optimality criteria, such as maximizing impact for a given cost. This paper illustrates the use of behavioral models in predicting the impacts of hypothetical programs in a way that is not functional form dependent. Among the programs considered are wage subsidy programs, conditional cash transfer programs, and income support programs. In some cases, the behavioral model justifies a completely nonparametric estimation strategy, even when there is no direct variation in the policy instrument. In other cases, stronger assumptions are required to evaluate a program ex ante. We illustrate the application of ex ante evaluation methods using data from the PROGRESA school subsidy randomized experiment in Mexico. We assess the effectiveness of the ex ante prediction method by comparing predictions of program impacts to the impacts measured under the randomized experiment. The subsamples pertain to girls and boys aged 12-15. For the girls, the predicted impacts are fairly similar to the actual impacts, both in magnitude and in replicating the age patterns, with larger impacts observed at higher ages. For boys, the predicted impacts tend to overstate the actual impacts. The ex-ante evaluation method is also used to predict the effects of counterfactal programs that include changes to the subsidy schedule and an unconditional income transfer.

Objective To evaluate the impact of treatment for erectile dysfunction on the quality of life of men and their partners. Patients and methods The study included 249 men with organic erectile dysfunction of more than 3 months’ duration who self‐administered transurethral alprostadil in an open‐label, dose‐escalating manner in an outpatient medical setting. Patients with a sufficient response (159) were randomly assigned in a double‐blind protocol to either active medication or placebo for 3 months at home. Patients and partners each completed quality‐of‐life questionnaires before and after treatment. Results In the clinic 159 of the 249 men (64%) had an erection sufficient for intercourse when using transurethral alprostadil. At home, 46 of 67 men (69%) reported intercourse at least once on transurethral alprostadil, compared with eight of 73 (11%) on placebo (P<0.001). Patients on alprostadil showed a 34% improvement in their ‘relationship with partner’, a 5% improvement in ‘personal wellness’, and a 71% improvement in ‘quality of erection’ domains, compared with a decline of 11%, 8% and 1%, respectively, in patients on placebo (P<0.005 for each comparison). Partners of patients on alprostadil showed a 35% improvement in the ‘relationship with partner’ domain, compared with a 12% improvement in the placebo group (P=0.028). There was a trend toward improvement in other partner domains. Urogenital pain was reported by 14% of patients during home treatment. Conclusion The resumption of sexual intercourse with the use of transurethral alprostadil was accompanied by an improvement in several important quality‐of‐life domains in patients and their partners.