A stakeholder approach to sustainable development in UK aviation

Aviation has become an integral component of a modern transportation system. The economic and social benefits of flight are numerous and extensive. Increasing concern about the negative environmental and social costs of aviation has begun to question projected growth of the industry. Sustainable development has become an accepted principle of development in both government policy and business. Aviation development involves the complex interaction of a wide network of stakeholders, and the resultant perceived socio-economic and environmental impacts. This complex interaction forms the basis of this thesis. The development of UK aviation is concerned with not just the development of new infrastructure and technology, but also the utilisation of existing infrastructure and technology. Future development could be by any number of alternative scenarios. However, which future scenario is superior to others? And, how should this comparison be assessed? Sustainable development evolved as a multi-disciplinary concept and this thesis draws from a wide variety of disciplines to explore the phenomenon. The stakeholder research tradition is utilised to develop a participatory stakeholder-based methodology to identify and measure the relevant impacts of sustainable development. This new ‘stakeholder-sustainable development framework’ can analyse and evaluate the current system and inform the selection and integration of assessment techniques, and the rationale behind their selection. This methodology is applied to UK aviation to identify perceived impacts and explore epistemological interpretations of sustainable development. Through semi-structured interviews, participants are invited to share the perceived impacts and their understanding of sustainable development in relation to aviation. Methods of assessment, for the identified impact of noise, are reviewed and one applied. The research proposes a network of stakeholder actors key to the future development of aviation in the UK, and whose needs should be considered. The make-up of stakeholder representation at the airport level is relatively consistent at different airport scales

Flying in the face of environmental concern: why green consumers continue to fly.

Some unsustainable consumer behaviours have proved extremely hard to change or even challenge. Despite the fact that flying can be more damaging than any other activity that an individual can undertake, many otherwise green consumers still choose to fly, offering an opportunity to elicit narratives about the differences between their attitudes and behaviours. Qualitative interview data were gathered from self-selected green consumers and set within a cognitive dissonance analytical framework. Four strategies were uncovered: not changing travel behaviour (but offering justifications related to travel product, travel context or personal identity); reducing or restricting flights; changing other behaviours to compensate for flying; and stopping flying. This analysis furthers research on green consumer rationales for (un)sustainable behaviours and suggests several avenues for sustainable marketing management

Prognosis research strategy (PROGRESS) 1: a framework for researching clinical outcomes.

The PROGRESS series (www.progress-partnership.org) sets out a framework of four interlinked prognosis research themes and provides examples from several disease fields to show why evidence from prognosis research is crucial to inform all points in the translation of biomedical and health related research into better patient outcomes. Recommendations are made in each of the four papers to improve current research standards What is prognosis research? Prognosis research seeks to understand and improve future outcomes in people with a given disease or health condition. However, there is increasing evidence that prognosis research standards need to be improved Why is prognosis research important? More people now live with disease and conditions that impair health than at any other time in history; prognosis research provides crucial evidence for translating findings from the laboratory to humans, and from clinical research to clinical practice This first article introduces the framework of four interlinked prognosis research themes and then focuses on the first of the themes - fundamental prognosis research, studies that aim to describe and explain future outcomes in relation to current diagnostic and treatment practices, often in relation to quality of care Fundamental prognosis research provides evidence informing healthcare and public health policy, the design and interpretation of randomised trials, and the impact of diagnostic tests on future outcome. It can inform new definitions of disease, may identify unanticipated benefits or harms of interventions, and clarify where new interventions are required to improve prognosis

Prognosis research strategy (PROGRESS) 4: Stratified medicine research

In patients with a particular disease or health condition, stratified medicine seeks to identify thosewho will have the most clinical benefit or least harm from a specific treatment. In this article, thefourth in the PROGRESS series, the authors discuss why prognosis research should form acornerstone of stratified medicine, especially in regard to the identification of factors that predictindividual treatment respons

Sensory substitution information informs locomotor adjustments when walking through apertures

The study assessed the ability of the central nervous system (CNS) to use echoic information from sensory substitution devices (SSDs) to rotate the shoulders and safely pass through apertures of different width. Ten visually normal participants performed this task with full vision, or blindfolded using an SSD to obtain information regarding the width of an aperture created by two parallel panels. Two SSDs were tested. Participants passed through apertures of +0%, +18%, +35%, and +70% of measured body width. Kinematic indices recorded movement time, shoulder rotation, average walking velocity across the trial, peak walking velocities before crossing, after crossing and throughout a whole trial. Analyses showed participants used SSD information to regulate shoulder rotation, with greater rotation associated with narrower apertures. Rotations made using an SSD were greater compared to vision, movement times were longer, average walking velocity lower and peak velocities before crossing, after crossing and throughout the whole trial were smaller, suggesting greater caution. Collisions sometimes occurred using an SSD but not using vision, indicating that substituted information did not always result in accurate shoulder rotation judgements. No differences were found between the two SSDs. The data suggest that spatial information, provided by sensory substitution, allows the relative position of aperture panels to be internally represented, enabling the CNS to modify shoulder rotation according to aperture width. Increased buffer space indicated by greater rotations (up to approximately 35% for apertures of +18% of body width), suggests that spatial representations are not as accurate as offered by full vision

Suitability Of Nitisinone In Alkaptonuria 1 (SONIA 1): an international, multicentre, randomised, open-label, no-treatment controlled, parallel-group, dose-response study to investigate the effect of once daily nitisinone on 24-h urinary homogentisic acid excretion in patients with alkaptonuria after 4 weeks of treatment.

BACKGROUND: Alkaptonuria (AKU) is a serious genetic disease characterised by premature spondyloarthropathy. Homogentisate-lowering therapy is being investigated for AKU. Nitisinone decreases homogentisic acid (HGA) in AKU but the dose-response relationship has not been previously studied. METHODS: Suitability Of Nitisinone In Alkaptonuria 1 (SONIA 1) was an international, multicentre, randomised, open-label, no-treatment controlled, parallel-group, dose-response study. The primary objective was to investigate the effect of different doses of nitisinone once daily on 24-h urinary HGA excretion (u-HGA24) in patients with AKU after 4 weeks of treatment. Forty patients were randomised into five groups of eight patients each, with groups receiving no treatment or 1 mg, 2 mg, 4 mg and 8 mg of nitisinone. FINDINGS: A clear dose-response relationship was observed between nitisinone and the urinary excretion of HGA. At 4 weeks, the adjusted geometric mean u-HGA24 was 31.53 mmol, 3.26 mmol, 1.44 mmol, 0.57 mmol and 0.15 mmol for the no treatment or 1 mg, 2 mg, 4 mg and 8 mg doses, respectively. For the most efficacious dose, 8 mg daily, this corresponds to a mean reduction of u-HGA24 of 98.8% compared with baseline. An increase in tyrosine levels was seen at all doses but the dose-response relationship was less clear than the effect on HGA. Despite tyrosinaemia, there were no safety concerns and no serious adverse events were reported over the 4 weeks of nitisinone therapy. CONCLUSIONS: In this study in patients with AKU, nitisinone therapy decreased urinary HGA excretion to low levels in a dose-dependent manner and was well tolerated within the studied dose range. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: EudraCT number: 2012-005340-24. Registered at ClinicalTrials.gov: NCTO1828463

Single Molecule PCR Reveals Similar Patterns of Non-Homologous DSB Repair in Tobacco and Arabidopsis

DNA double strand breaks (DSBs) occur constantly in eukaryotes. These potentially lethal DNA lesions are repaired efficiently by two major DSB repair pathways: homologous recombination and non-homologous end joining (NHEJ). We investigated NHEJ in Arabidopsis thaliana and tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) by introducing DNA double-strand breaks through inducible expression of I-SceI, followed by amplification of individual repair junction sequences by single-molecule PCR. Using this process over 300 NHEJ repair junctions were analysed in each species. In contrast to previously published variation in DSB repair between Arabidopsis and tobacco, the two species displayed similar DSB repair profiles in our experiments. The majority of repair events resulted in no loss of sequence and small (1–20 bp) deletions occurred at a minority (25–45%) of repair junctions. Approximately ∼1.5% of the observed repair events contained larger deletions (>20 bp) and a similar percentage contained insertions. Strikingly, insertion events in tobacco were associated with large genomic deletions at the site of the DSB that resulted in increased micro-homology at the sequence junctions suggesting the involvement of a non-classical NHEJ repair pathway. The generation of DSBs through inducible expression of I-SceI, in combination with single molecule PCR, provides an effective and efficient method for analysis of individual repair junctions and will prove a useful tool in the analysis of NHEJ

Recent Acceleration of Plastid Sequence and Structural Evolution Coincides with Extreme Mitochondrial Divergence in the Angiosperm Genus Silene

The angiosperm genus Silene exhibits some of the most extreme and rapid divergence ever identified in mitochondrial genome architecture and nucleotide substitution rates. These patterns have been considered mitochondrial specific based on the absence of correlated changes in the small number of available nuclear and plastid gene sequences. To better assess the relationship between mitochondrial and plastid evolution, we sequenced the plastid genomes from four Silene species with fully sequenced mitochondrial genomes. We found that two species with fast-evolving mitochondrial genomes, S. noctiflora and S. conica, also exhibit accelerated rates of sequence and structural evolution in their plastid genomes. The nature of these changes, however, is markedly different from those in the mitochondrial genome. For example, in contrast to the mitochondrial pattern, which appears to be genome wide and mutationally driven, the plastid substitution rate accelerations are restricted to a subset of genes and preferentially affect nonsynonymous sites, indicating that altered selection pressures are acting on specific plastid-encoded functions in these species. Indeed, some plastid genes in S. noctiflora and S. conica show strong evidence of positive selection. In contrast, two species with more slowly evolving mitochondrial genomes, S. latifolia and S. vulgaris, have correspondingly low rates of nucleotide substitution in plastid genes as well as a plastid genome structure that has remained essentially unchanged since the origin of angiosperms. These results raise the possibility that common evolutionary forces could be shaping the extreme but distinct patterns of divergence in both organelle genomes within this genus