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A series of workshops and exchanges have been conducted in the last years in order to increase the precision of age estimation of European hake (1997, 1999, 2001, 2003). The last exchange in 2003 was undertaken mainly due to uncertainty in age estimation of older fish. In 2002 the ICES Working Group on Hake, Monk and Megrim (WGHMM) had shown difficulties in the assessment of hake stocks because of older ages primarily. This has led the WGHMM to continue to use a 8+ group. To address these problems a hake otolith exchange programme focused mainly on older fish was recommended between readersand subsequently an international workshop to discuss the results. Ages were estimated using internationally agreed ageing criteria, which have not been validated. The results of the 2003 otolith exchange programme indicate that the precision of age readings has decreased compared with the precision of the 2001 exchange and a strong bias has been found in estimates of older fish. The overall Average Percent of Error (APE) and coefficient of variation (CV) obtained in 2003 were 35 and 48% respectively while those obtained in 2001 were 19 and 25%, respectively. This loss of precision highlights the problems associated with applying ageing criteria, which are not validated. A second reading of a subset of the otolith collection used in the 2003 was done during the 2004 workshop. The results indicate that ageing fish older than 3 years is not possible with an acceptable level of precision. In addition, recent results from mark-recapture experiments have provided evidence that ages estimated using the internationally agreed criteria are overestimated (De Pontual et al., 2003). Taking into account the two aspects referred, the used of age readings data in stock assessment can introduce high uncertainty. Therefore, the workshop recommends to interrupt the supply of age reading data to elaborate Age Length Keys (ALK) for the WGHMM until validated ageing criteria become available.

Leveraging current state-of-the-art denoisers to tackle other inverse problems in imaging is a challenging task, which has recently been the topic of significant research effort. In this paper, we present several contributions to this research front, based on two fundamental building blocks: 1) the recently proposed plug-and-play framework, which allows combining iterative algorithms for imaging inverse problems with state-of-the-art image denoisers, used in black-box fashion; and 2) patch-based denoisers, using Gaussian mixture models (GMM). We exploit the adaptability of GMM to learn class-adapted denoisers, which opens the door to embedding a patch classification step in the algorithmic loop, yielding simultaneous restoration and semantic segmentation. We apply the proposed approach to several standard imaging inverse problems (deblurring, compressive sensing reconstruction, and super-resolution), obtaining results that are competitive with the state of the art.

Near-inertial oscillations (NIO) are intermittent motions with a frequency close to the inertial frequency and represent an important fraction of the energy to the currents in the upper ocean. Based on hourly velocity records at the shelf break covering the top 50 m of the water column in 5 locations and one additional location at Cabo Frio upwelling system (22° S) covering the top 200 m of water column with hourly velocity and temperature measurements, the aim of the present study is to characterize NIO along the Brazilian continental shelf break (16° S–31.5° S) describing the spatial variability of inertial energy in the mixed layer and the role of the NIO in the high-frequency hydrodynamic. The sites between 31.5° S and 28.5° S were those that revealed more near-inertial energy and higher relative importance of the near-inertial band for the variance of the currents (29% and 31%, respectively). This is associated with the proximity between the inertial frequency and the sea breeze frequency in this region, which delimits an inertial resonance area for the NIO around 30° S. The near-inertial currents between 31.5° S and 23.5° S range between 30 and 50 cm s−1 and decrease toward the locations at lower latitudes, where the range is between 5 and 25 cm s−1. Vertical shear of the order of 10−3 s−1 was reached during NIO events between 31.5° S and 23.5° S in the upper layer of the ocean (mixed layer, seasonal thermocline, and upper permanent thermocline) and can play an important role in the vertical mixing along the Brazilian continental shelf break. The NIO events analyzed at Cabo Frio upwelling system exhibited a mean duration of around 7.6 days, upward vertical phase velocity of the order of 10−1 cm s−1, vertical wavelengths of the order of 102 m, and vertical downward group velocity of the order of 10−2 cm s−1. Nevertheless, the magnitude of the vertical propagation of energy and duration of the events demonstrate the importance of NIO as a source of kinetic energy to the ocean interior.

Ionic liquids are critical reagents for science and technical processes nowadays. Metals are the most used reagents in the industry. It is crucial to have a deeper understanding of how ionic liquids and metals could interact. In this article the interaction of those two families of compounds is accessed. The dissolution (reaction) of metals with ionic liquids is studied, namely the influence of temperature, redox potential, and availability of an oxidant in the process. The final state achieved by the iron metal samples was also addressed by Mössbauer spectroscopy.

CRISPR interference (CRISPRi) is a powerful tool to link essential and nonessential genes to specific phenotypes and to explore their functions. Here we describe a protocol for CRISPRi screenings to assess genome-wide gene fitness in a single sequencing step (CRISPRi-seq). We demonstrate the use of the protocol in Streptococcus pneumoniae, an important human pathogen; however, the protocol can easily be adapted for use in other organisms. The protocol includes a pipeline for single-guide RNA library design, workflows for pooled CRISPRi library construction, growth assays and sequencing steps, a read analysis tool (2FAST2Q) and instructions for fitness quantification. We describe how to make an IPTG-inducible system with small libraries that are easy to handle and cost-effective and overcome bottleneck issues, which can be a problem when using similar, transposon mutagenesis-based methods. Ultimately, the procedure yields a fitness score per single-guide RNA target for any given growth condition. A genome-wide screening can be finished in 1 week with a constructed library. Data analysis and follow-up confirmation experiments can be completed in another 2-3 weeks.

Key summary pointsAim To investigate pharmacists' interventions and impact at institutional Long-Term Care (LTC) settings, particularly the therapeutic outcomes in elderly populations. Findings LTC pharmacists deliver a comprehensive set of activities, especially in clinical pharmacy (e.g. medication review, deprescribing) and education, addressing elderly populations under LTC and their therapeutic needs. Message Pharmacists' expertise in medicines optimisation is a useful resource in improving healthcare towards institutionalised LTC patients, often a geriatric population. Purpose Long-Term Care (LTC) systems have experienced recent developments driven by changes in healthcare and demography (e.g. population ageing). As well, pharmacists are changing from traditional roles to more patient-oriented services. The present study aimed to identify and assess pharmacists' and/or pharmacy-based interventions in institutional LTC settings, also mapping relevant medications. Methods The review was undertaken in general accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA), using three main literature databases (PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Knowledge). A set of 16 keywords, divided into three domains (professional, type of care and type of setting), were combined into search equations. Selected studies were assessed through the Quality Assessment Tool for Quantitative Studies. Results Twenty-six studies met the inclusion criteria, out of 794 initial hits. Most studies (12) described pharmacist/pharmacy-driven interventions assessing Medication Management Reviews' impact in different endpoints or outcomes. Other studies (3) assessed pharmacists' interventions on specific medication groups. Good Administration Practices, new pharmaceutical care models, antibiotic stewardship programs, and studies assessing other pharmacists' interventions, such as pharmacy-managed informatics and education, were addressed by 11 other papers. Six studies were classified as Strong after quality assessment. Conclusion LTC is a clinically complex type of care benefiting from interdisciplinary work. Despite the overall lower quality of the identified studies, pharmacists perform in a wide array of LTC areas. The broad implementation of pharmaceutical activities in institutional LTC settings opens opportunities to optimise medicines' use. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Background: Community pharmacy teams (CPTs) have an established role in assisting self-medication, contributing to the safe and effective use of non-prescription medicines. Objective: The study aimed to describe CPTs’ performance in self-medication consultation, client-reported outcomes, and satisfaction. A secondary purpose was to develop an explanatory model for better understanding clients’ satisfaction with this service. Methods: Descriptive, cross-sectional exploratory study. Data were collected in a purposive sample of pharmacy clients recruited in six community pharmacies in Portugal. CPTs adopted a structured approach to self-medication consultations, encompassing 11 quality criteria (five for case evaluation and six for counselling). An evaluation score, a counselling score and an overall quality score were estimated. Client-reported outcomes and satisfaction were ascertained via a follow-up telephone interview. Besides descriptive statistics, the association with several independent variables on the clients’ overall satisfaction was explored, using linear regression. Results: Product-based dispensing was more frequent for lower educated clients. Reported compliance with the criteria by CPTs was overall high (93.95% of maximum compliance), mostly missing the ‘other medication’ questioning. Most clients (93%) reported improvement after the consultation. Clients’ satisfaction score was 4.70 out of 5. The variables that seem to better explain clients’ overall satisfaction are pharmacy loyalty, the evaluation score, and the female gender. Conclusions: Clients’ reported outcomes were favourable, as well as satisfaction with the service. Clients’ satisfaction appears to be determined by consultation quality (evaluation score), suggesting the advancement of the pharmacists’ clinical role. A larger study is warranted to confirm these findings. publishersversion published

Long-Term Care (LTC) systems have experienced recent developments driven by changes in healthcare and demography (e.g. population ageing). As well, pharmacists are changing from traditional roles to more patient-oriented services. The present study aimed to identify and assess pharmacists' and/or pharmacy-based interventions in institutional LTC settings, also mapping relevant medications.The review was undertaken in general accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA), using three main literature databases (PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Knowledge). A set of 16 keywords, divided into three domains (professional, type of care and type of setting), were combined into search equations. Selected studies were assessed through the Quality Assessment Tool for Quantitative Studies.Twenty-six studies met the inclusion criteria, out of 794 initial hits. Most studies (12) described pharmacist/pharmacy-driven interventions assessing Medication Management Reviews' impact in different endpoints or outcomes. Other studies (3) assessed pharmacists' interventions on specific medication groups. Good Administration Practices, new pharmaceutical care models, antibiotic stewardship programs, and studies assessing other pharmacists' interventions, such as pharmacy-managed informatics and education, were addressed by 11 other papers. Six studies were classified as Strong after quality assessment.LTC is a clinically complex type of care benefiting from interdisciplinary work. Despite the overall lower quality of the identified studies, pharmacists perform in a wide array of LTC areas. The broad implementation of pharmaceutical activities in institutional LTC settings opens opportunities to optimise medicines' use.

We propose a new approach to image fusion, inspired by the recent plug-and-play (PnP) framework. In PnP, a denoiser is treated as a black-box and plugged into an iterative algorithm, taking the place of the proximity operator of some convex regularizer, which is formally equivalent to a denoising operation. This approach offers flexibility and excellent performance, but convergence may be hard to analyze, as most state-of-the-art denoisers lack an explicit underlying objective function. Here, we propose using a scene-adapted denoiser (i.e., targeted to the specific scene being imaged) plugged into the iterations of the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). This approach, which is a natural choice for image fusion problems, not only yields state-of-the-art results, but it also allows proving convergence of the resulting algorithm. The proposed method is tested on two different problems: hyperspectral fusion/sharpening and fusion of blurred-noisy image pairs.

The objective of this study is to apply data-based models to improve sea level prediction along the southeastern Brazilian coast. Focus is placed on the atmospheric-forced low-frequency variability ( ∼ 0,3 to 0,03 day −1), which is associated primarily with propagation of Coastal Trapped Waves along the continental shelf, and possibly with local wind forcing. Process-based hydrodynamic models, that solve complex physical equations to simulate a dynamical system, have been traditionally used to predict sea level. These models, however, may present inaccuracies related to their physical formulation, numerical approximations, unresolved small scale processes, model parameterizations, or initial and boundary conditions. A combined approach, using a neural network to update the outputs of a hydrodynamic model (Hycom) in order to correct the errors, allows for the integration of all available knowledge to generate more reliable predictions. Time series of coastal sea level at three stations (Cananeia, Ilha Fiscal and Imbituba) and atmospheric data from the CFSR reanalysis were used to train the data-based model. A novel methodology to preprocess the input data is presented, and it was critical to the reduction of predictions errors. Correlation maps between coastal sea level and the atmospheric forcing were calculated, and the areas of highest correlation were defined. While a purely data-based model is able to match the predictions of the hydrodynamic model for these stations, the combined approach goes a step further, reducing the errors in ∼ 50% for the frequency band of the atmospherically forced sea level variability.