Project description:BackgroundIn the last few decades, Iraq's health care capacity has been severely undermined by the effects of different wars, international sanctions, sectarian violence and political instability. In the aftermath of the 2003 US-led invasion, the Ministry of Health has set plans to expand health service delivery, by reorienting the public sector towards primary health care and attributing a larger role to the private sector for hospital care. Quantitative assessments of the post-2003 health policy outcomes have remained scant. This paper addresses this gap focusing on a key outcome indicator that is the expansion of health facilities.MethodsThe analysis is based on data on health facilities provided by the World Health Organisation and Iraq's Ministry of Health. For each governorate, we calculated the change in the absolute number of facilities by type from early 2003 to the end of 2012. To account for population growth, we computed the change in the number of facilities per 100,000 population. We compared trends in the autonomous northern Kurdistan region, which has been relatively stable from 2003 onwards, and in the rest of Iraq (centre/south), where fragile institutions and persistent sectarian strife have posed major challenges to health system recovery.ResultsThe countrywide number of primary health care centres per 100,000 population rose from 5.5 in 2003 to 7.4 in 2012. The extent of improvement varied significantly within the country, with an average increase of 4.3 primary health care centres per 100,000 population in the Kurdistan region versus an average increase of only 1.4 in central/southern Iraq. The average number of public hospitals per 100,000 population rose from 1.3 to 1.5 in Kurdistan, whereas it remained at 0.6 in centre/south. The average number of private hospitals per 100,000 population rose from 0.2 to 0.6 in Kurdistan, whereas it declined from 0.3 to 0.2 in centre/south.ConclusionsThe expansion of both public and private health facilities in the Kurdistan region appears encouraging, but still much should be done to reach the standards of neighbouring countries. The slow pace of improvement in the rest of Iraq is largely attributable to the dire security situation and should be a cause for major concern.
Project description:Mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics is often performed in a shotgun format, in which as many peptide precursors as possible are selected from full or MS1 scans so that their fragment spectra can be recorded in MS2 scans. Although achieving great proteome depths, shotgun proteomics cannot guarantee that each precursor will be fragmented in each run. In contrast, targeted proteomics aims to reproducibly and sensitively record a restricted number of precursor/fragment combinations in each run, based on prescheduled mass-to-charge and retention time windows. Here we set out to unify these two concepts by a global targeting approach in which an arbitrary number of precursors of interest are detected in real-time, followed by standard fragmentation or advanced peptide-specific analyses. We made use of a fast application programming interface to a quadrupole Orbitrap instrument and real-time recalibration in mass, retention time and intensity dimensions to predict precursor identity. MaxQuant.Live is freely available (www.maxquant.live) and has a graphical user interface to specify many predefined data acquisition strategies. Acquisition speed is as fast as with the vendor software and the power of our approach is demonstrated with the acquisition of breakdown curves for hundreds of precursors of interest. We also uncover precursors that are not even visible in MS1 scans, using elution time prediction based on the auto-adjusted retention time alone. Finally, we successfully recognized and targeted more than 25,000 peptides in single LC-MS runs. Global targeting combines the advantages of two classical approaches in MS-based proteomics, whereas greatly expanding the analytical toolbox.
Project description:ObjectivesTerrorist attacks and civilian mass-casualty events are frequent, and some countries have implemented tourniquet use for uncontrollable extremity bleeding in civilian settings. The aim of this study was to summarize current knowledge on the use of prehospital tourniquets to assess whether their use increases the survival rate in civilian patients with life-threatening hemorrhages from the extremities.DesignSystematic literature review in Medline (Ovid), Embase (Ovid), Cochrane Library, and Epistemonikos was performed using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) Guidelines. The search was performed in January 2019.SettingAll types of studies that examined use of tourniquets in a prehospital setting published after January 1, 2000 were included.Primary/secondary outcomesThe primary outcome was mortality with and without tourniquet, while adverse effects of tourniquet use were secondary outcomes.ResultsAmong 3,460 screened records, 55 studies were identified as relevant. The studies were highly heterogeneous with low quality of evidence. Most studies reported increased survival in the tourniquet group, but few had relevant comparators, and the survival benefit was difficult to estimate. Most studies reported a reduced need for blood transfusion, with few and mainly transient adverse effects from tourniquet use.ConclusionDespite relatively low evidence, the studies consistently suggested that the use of commercial tourniquets in a civilian setting to control life-threatening extremity hemorrhage seemed to be associated with improved survival, reduced need for blood transfusion, and few and transient adverse effects.
Project description:Terrorists and other transnational extremist groups are responsible for thousands of civilian deaths. In confronting extremists, governments have relied heavily on threats, demands, denunciations, and other forms of verbal conflict. Do these efforts at verbal coercion have any effect on terrorist behavior? This analysis focuses on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which continues to be the world's deadliest terrorist group and was responsible for recent high-profile attacks in Baghdad, Vienna, Kabul, and Russia. We use Bayesian structural vector autoregression models to analyze daily event data on interactions between ISIS and foreign governments for the 2014-2020 period. We find that verbal conflict initiated by governments not only failed to deter ISIS but in fact increased the frequency of ISIS's attacks on civilians. Additional empirical analyses, combined with evidence from ISIS's publications and public statements, suggest that this effect resulted from a perceived credibility deficit. Extremists use terror attacks to signal that they have the capabilities and willingness to inflict pain and suffering on civilian targets. Government attempts to coerce extremist groups verbally, rather than militarily, reflect an underestimation of the group's capabilities and resolve. In an effort to solidify their reputations, extremists engage in further violence toward civilians, thus leading to worse humanitarian consequences. We extend the analysis to Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Boko Haram and find similar results.
Project description:Macromolecular protein complexes carry out most functions in the cell including essential functions required for cell survival. Unfortunately, we lack the subunit composition for all human protein complexes. To address this gap we integrated >25,000 mass spectrometry experiments using a machine learning approach to identify > 15,000 human protein complexes. We show our map of protein complexes is highly accurate and more comprehensive than previous maps, placing ~75% of human proteins into their physical contexts. We globally characterize our complexes using protein co-variation data (ProteomeHD.2) and identify co-varying complexes suggesting common functional associations. Our map also generates testable functional hypotheses for 472 uncharacterized proteins which we support using AlphaFold modeling. Additionally, we use AlphaFold modeling to identify 511 mutually exclusive protein pairs in hu.MAP3.0 complexes suggesting complexes serve different functional roles depending on their subunit composition. We identify expression as the primary way cells and organisms relieve the conflict of mutually exclusive subunits. Finally, we import our complexes to EMBL-EBI's Complex Portal (https://www.ebi.ac.uk/complexportal/home) as well as provide complexes through our hu.MAP3.0 web interface (https://humap3.proteincomplexes.org/). We expect our resource to be highly impactful to the broader research community.
Project description:Metastatic progression is the main cause of death in cancer patients, whereas the underlying genomic mechanisms driving metastasis remain largely unknown. Here, we assembled MSK-MET, a pan-cancer cohort of over 25,000 patients with metastatic diseases. By analyzing genomic and clinical data from this cohort, we identified associations between genomic alterations and patterns of metastatic dissemination across 50 tumor types. We found that chromosomal instability is strongly correlated with metastatic burden in some tumor types, including prostate adenocarcinoma, lung adenocarcinoma, and HR+/HER2+ breast ductal carcinoma, but not in others, including colorectal cancer and high-grade serous ovarian cancer, where copy-number alteration patterns may be established early in tumor development. We also identified somatic alterations associated with metastatic burden and specific target organs. Our data offer a valuable resource for the investigation of the biological basis for metastatic spread and highlight the complex role of chromosomal instability in cancer progression.
Project description:The spatial distribution of large earthquakes in slowly deforming continental regions (SDCR) is poorly documented and, thus, has often been deemed to be random. Unlike in high strain regions, where seismic activity concentrates along major active faults, earthquakes in SDCR may seem to occur more erratically in space and time. This questions classical fault behavior models, posing paramount issues for seismic hazard assessment. Here, we investigate the M7, 1967, Mogod earthquake in Mongolia, a region recognized as a SDCR. Despite the absence of visible cumulative deformation at the ground surface, we found evidence for at least 3 surface rupturing earthquakes during the last 50,000 years, associated with a slip-rate of 0.06 ± 0.01 mm/year. These results show that in SDCR, like in faster deforming regions, deformation localizes on specific structures. However, the excessive length of return time for large earthquakes along these structures makes it more difficult to recognize earthquake series, and could conversely lead to the misconception that in SDCR earthquakes would be randomly located. Thus, our result emphasizes the need for systematic appraisal of the potential seismogenic structures in SDCR in order to lower the uncertainties associated with the seismogenic sources in seismic hazard models.
Project description:Phylogenetic analysis of bacteria preserved within an ice wedge from the Fox permafrost tunnel was undertaken by cultivation and molecular techniques. The radiocarbon age of the ice wedge was determined. Our results suggest that the bacteria in the ice wedge adapted to the frozen conditions have survived for 25,000 years.