Socio‐economic impact classification of alien taxa (SEICAT)

1 Many alien taxa are known to cause socio‐economic impacts by affecting the different constituents of human well‐being (security; material and non‐material assets; health; social, spiritual and cultural relations; freedom of choice and action). Attempts to quantify socio‐economic impacts in monetary terms are unlikely to provide a useful basis for evaluating and comparing impacts of alien taxa because they are notoriously difficult to measure and important aspects of human well‐being are ignored. 2 Here, we propose a novel standardised method for classifying alien taxa in terms of the magnitude of their impacts on human well‐being, based on the capability approach from welfare economics. The core characteristic of this approach is that it uses changes in peoples' activities as a common metric for evaluating impacts on well‐being. 2 Impacts are assigned to one of five levels, from Minimal Concern to Massive, according to semi‐quantitative scenarios that describe the severity of the impacts. Taxa are then classified according to the highest level of deleterious impact that they have been recorded to cause on any constituent of human well‐being. The scheme also includes categories for taxa that are not evaluated, have no alien population, or are data deficient, and a method for assigning uncertainty to all the classifications. To demonstrate the utility of the system, we classified impacts of amphibians globally. These showed a variety of impacts on human well‐being, with the cane toad (Rhinella marina) scoring Major impacts. For most species, however, no studies reporting impacts on human well‐being were found, i.e. these species were data deficient. 2 The classification provides a consistent procedure for translating the broad range of measures and types of impact into ranked levels of socio‐economic impact, assigns alien taxa on the basis of the best available evidence of their documented deleterious impacts, and is applicable across taxa and at a range of spatial scales. The system was designed to align closely with the Environmental Impact Classification for Alien Taxa (EICAT) and the Red List, both of which have been adopted by the International Union of Nature Conservation (IUCN), and could therefore be readily integrated into international practices and policies

Trends and cardiovascular mortality effects of state-level blood pressure and uncontrolled hypertension in the United States.

BACKGROUND: Blood pressure is an important risk factor for cardiovascular disease and mortality and has lifestyle and healthcare determinants that vary across states. Only self-reported hypertension status is measured at the state level in the United States. Our aim was to estimate levels and trends in state-level mean systolic blood pressure (SBP), the prevalence of uncontrolled systolic hypertension, and cardiovascular mortality attributable to all levels of higher-than-optimal SBP. METHODS AND RESULTS: We estimated the relationship between actual SBP/uncontrolled hypertension and self-reported hypertension, use of blood pressure medication, and a set of health system and sociodemographic variables in the nationally representative National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. We applied this relationship to identical variables from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to estimate state-specific mean SBP and uncontrolled hypertension. We used the comparative risk assessment methods to estimate cardiovascular mortality attributable to higher-than-optimal SBP. In 2001-2003, age-standardized uncontrolled hypertension prevalence was highest in the District of Columbia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Texas, Georgia, and South Carolina (18% to 21% for men and 24% to 26% for women) and lowest in Vermont, Minnesota, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Colorado (15% to 16% for men and approximately 21% for women). Women had a higher prevalence of uncontrolled hypertension than men in every state by 4 (Arizona) to 7 (Kansas) percentage points. In the 1990s, uncontrolled hypertension in women increased the most in Idaho and Oregon (by 6 percentage points) and the least in the District of Columbia and Mississippi (by 3 percentage points). For men, the worst-performing states were New Mexico and Louisiana (decrease of 0.6 and 1.3 percentage points), and the best-performing states were Vermont and Indiana (decrease of 4 and 3 percentage points). Age-standardized cardiovascular mortality attributable to higher-than-optimal SBP ranged from 200 to 220 per 100,000 (Minnesota and Massachusetts) to 360 to 370 per 100,000 (District of Columbia and Mississippi) for women and from 210 per 100,000 (Colorado and Utah) to 370 per 100,000 (Mississippi) and 410 per 100,000 (District of Columbia) for men. CONCLUSIONS: Lifestyle and pharmacological interventions for lowering blood pressure are particularly needed in the South and Appalachia, and with emphasis on control among women. Self-reported data on hypertension diagnosis from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System can be used to obtain unbiased state-level estimates of blood pressure and uncontrolled hypertension as benchmarks for priority setting and for designing and evaluating intervention programs

Ideas for the Arcturus personal workstation

In order to achieve more effective use of interpersonal collaboration, management lifecycle activities, and dynamic retrieval of as well as for ordinary programming chores, it may be useful to take a fresh look at the devices we use to help us conduct our transactions with computers.This paper presents some new ideas for using large flatscreen displays and dedicated computers as personal workstations

Training materials for different categories of users

Agricultural and Food Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management, Land Economics/Use, Production Economics, Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Development of a conceptual framework for integrated analysis and assessment of agricultural systems in SEAMLESS-IF

Production Economics,

Cultural and Demic Diffusion of First Farmers, Herders, and their Innovations Across Eurasia

Was the spread of agropastoralism from the Eurasian founder regions dominated by demic or by cultural diffusion? This study employs a mathematical model of regional sociocultural development that includes different diffusion processes, local innovation and societal adaptation. Simulations hindcast the emergence and expansion of agropastoral life style in 294 regions of Eurasia and North Africa. Different scenarios for demic and diffusive exchange processes between adjacent regions are contrasted and the spatiotemporal pattern of diffusive events is evaluated. This study supports from a modeling perspective the hypothesis that there is no simple or exclusive demic or cultural diffusion, but that in most regions of Eurasia a combination of demic and cultural processes were important. Furthermore, we demonstrate the strong spatial and temporal variability in the balance of spread processes. Each region shows sometimes more demic, and at other times more cultural diffusion. Only few, possibly environmentally marginal, areas show a dominance of demic diffusion. This study affirms that diffusion processes should be investigated in a diachronic fashion and not from a time-integrated perspective.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, revised version submitted to Documenta Prehistori