We report three cases of a rare pattern of mid-thoracic spine injuries after horse racing falls and discuss possible causative factors and prevention measurements to reduce injury rates in professional riding and racing. Three patients, 2 male and 1 female with a mean age of 28 years old, underwent surgical treatment for mid-thoracic fractures after professional equestrian activities. The ASIA ...

Consumers are increasingly interested in the “values” associated with the food they eat and are often willing to pay more for food for which there is a “story” that links farm to fork. The “values” associated with these foods may be that they are locally produced, by small or mid-scale farms, or use production practices that enhance the environment. Wholesale channels that provide marketing opt...

Using observation-driven simulations of global terrestrial hydrology and a cluster algorithm that searches for spatially connected regions of soil moisture, the authors identified 296 large-scale drought events (greater than 500 000 km and longer than 3 months) globally for 1950–2000. The drought events were subjected to a severity–area–duration (SAD) analysis to identify and characterize the m...

OBJECTIVE To develop a clinical prediction rule to identify patients with patellofemoral pain (PFP) who are more likely to benefit from foot orthoses. DESIGN Posthoc analysis of one treatment arm of a randomised clinical trial. SETTING Single-centre trial in a community setting in Brisbane, Australia. PARTICIPANTS 42 participants (mean age 27.9 years) with a clinical diagnosis of PFP (med...

The conifer needle scale, Nuculaspis abietis (Schrank) emerged as an important pest of conifers in the Kelardasht region of Mazandaran province, Iran, in the late 1990’s. This pest feeds on conifer needles and twigs causing needle drop and branch desiccation. Its discovery in Kelardasht in Mazandaran Province necessitated a local quarantine of conifers in the genera Picea, Abies, and Pinus. We ...

background: to evaluate the intermediate-term outcomes of radius shortening as a treatment for kienbock’s disease. materials and methods: in a historical cohort, 16 skeletally mature patients (9 men and 7 women) with kienbock disease, who were treated with radial shortening osteotomy between 2002 and 2012, were reviewed in our study. the mean age of our patients was 30 (range 18-43) years old. ...