Changes in population susceptibility to heat and cold over time: assessing adaptation to climate change.

BACKGROUND: In the context of a warming climate and increasing urbanisation (with the associated urban heat island effect), interest in understanding temperature related health effects is growing. Previous reviews have examined how the temperature-mortality relationship varies by geographical location. There have been no reviews examining the empirical evidence for changes in population susceptibility to the effects of heat and/or cold over time. The objective of this paper is to review studies which have specifically examined variations in temperature related mortality risks over the 20(th) and 21(st) centuries and determine whether population adaptation to heat and/or cold has occurred. METHODS: We searched five electronic databases combining search terms for three main concepts: temperature, health outcomes and changes in vulnerability or adaptation. Studies included were those which quantified the risk of heat related mortality with changing ambient temperature in a specific location over time, or those which compared mortality outcomes between two different extreme temperature events (heatwaves) in one location. RESULTS: The electronic searches returned 9183 titles and abstracts, of which eleven studies examining the effects of ambient temperature over time were included and six studies comparing the effect of different heatwaves at discrete time points were included. Of the eleven papers that quantified the risk of, or absolute heat related mortality over time, ten found a decrease in susceptibility over time of which five found the decrease to be significant. The magnitude of the decrease varied by location. Only two studies attempted to quantitatively attribute changes in susceptibility to specific adaptive measures and found no significant association between the risk of heat related mortality and air conditioning prevalence within or between cities over time. Four of the six papers examining effects of heatwaves found a decrease in expected mortality in later years. Five studies examined the risk of cold. In contrast to the changes in heat related mortality observed, only one found a significant decrease in cold related mortality in later time periods. CONCLUSIONS: There is evidence that across a number of different settings, population susceptibility to heat and heatwaves has been decreasing. These changes in heat related susceptibility have important implications for health impact assessments of future heat related risk. A similar decrease in cold related mortality was not shown. Adaptation to heat has implications for future planning, particularly in urban areas, with anticipated increases in temperature due to climate change

The health effects of hotter summers and heat waves in the population of the United Kingdom: a review of the evidence.

It is widely acknowledged that the climate is warming globally and within the UK. In this paper, studies which assess the direct impact of current increased temperatures and heat-waves on health and those which project future health impacts of heat under different climate change scenarios in the UK are reviewed.This review finds that all UK studies demonstrate an increase in heat-related mortality occurring at temperatures above threshold values, with respiratory deaths being more sensitive to heat than deaths from cardiovascular disease (although the burden from cardiovascular deaths is greater in absolute terms). The relationship between heat and other health outcomes such as hospital admissions, myocardial infarctions and birth outcomes is less consistent. We highlight the main populations who are vulnerable to heat. Within the UK, these are older populations, those with certain co-morbidities and those living in Greater London, the South East and Eastern regions.In all assessments of heat-related impacts using different climate change scenarios, deaths are expected to increase due to hotter temperatures, with some studies demonstrating that an increase in the elderly population will also amplify burdens. However, key gaps in knowledge are found in relation to how urbanisation and population adaptation to heat will affect health impacts, and in relation to current and future strategies for effective, sustainable and equitable adaptation to heat. These and other key gaps in knowledge, both in terms of research needs and knowledge required to make sound public- health policy, are discussed

Nature-based guided imagery as an intervention for state anxiety

Anxiety is a significant mental health issue in modern society and empirical research into effective interventions to address anxiety has been extensive. Spending time in nature is one approach that has demonstrated anxiolytic effects. However, in some situations and contexts spending time in nature in order to reduce anxiety symptoms may not be possible. For example, in therapeutic settings delivered in a space with no access or exposure to any nature stimuli in the immediate surrounding environment. Guided imagery (GI) has also proven to be effective for reducing anxiety symptoms. Thus, nature-based GI might help to overcome the limitation of access to nature and strengthen the impact of GI interventions

Regional Cooperative and Competitive Forces Driving Industry Cluster Development and Renewal in the Swedish Periphery

This research paper assembles regional industry clusters cooperative and competitive relations into a conceptual framework and reports upon an empirical study that captured initial developments of a regional biorefinery industry cluster in a peripheral region of Sweden. Key findings from the research illustrate how forces of intra-regional cooperation and inter-regional competition drove the new biorefinery industry clusters development, which in turn aided the peripheral region?s renewal. For the development and renewal of regional industry, the role of not-for-profit collaborative organisations is evident. As a result, this single case-study provides new implications for research and practice in specific relation to regional renewal and industry cluster development within peripheral regions

Sexual Autonomy, Prostitution, and The Law

Prostitution is a morally loaded word. More than just sex for money, it implies something debased, dishonourable, corrupt. But there is something puzzling about the wrong, if any, of prostitution. Intuition suggests there is something peculiar about sex that distinguishes prostitution from other bodily services. However, if we discount out-dated prejudice about promiscuity, it remains mysterious why adding money to sex should change the permissibility of the act. The current debate broadly falls into three camps: 1) Qualms about prostitution are based on mere social prejudice about sex; 2) Sex has a special value which is debased or degraded when exchanged for money; 3) Prostitution perpetuates skewed power relations that feed into wider gender inequalities. Too often these stances respectively ignore relevant points of disanalogy between sex and other bodily activities; rely on undefended essentialist views about the value of sex and how it is debased or destroyed; or focus too heavily on contingent empirical and sociological evidence, without analysing the nature of the activity itself. This thesis takes a step back, analysing the nature of sex and money to identify what sets prostitution apart from other bodily services. I suggest prostitution blurs the boundaries between a personal service and an exchange of the body as property. This raises the question to what extent individuals can willingly surrender powers over their body to others, as one might do with a piece of property. Should a liberal state allow individuals to freely transact with their bodies in this way or not? Closer examination of these puzzles serves to shed light on the tension inherent in prostitution and helps to clarify key notions in the debate, including the concept of sexual autonomy, the objectification and commodification of bodies, and the relevance of the particular risk of harm inherent in the activity

Development and psychometric properties of the client's assessment of treatment scale for supported accommodation (CAT-SA)

This paper presents independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under its Programme Grants for Applied Research scheme (RP-PG-0610-10097)

Electron Microscope Studies of Bacteriophages

Abstract Not Provided

How consistent are the transcriptome changes associated with cold acclimation in two species of the Drosophila virilis group?

This work was financially support by a Marie Curie Initial Training Network grant, “Understanding the evolutionary origin of biological diversity” (ITN-2008–213780 SPECIATION), grants from the Academy of Finland to A.H. (project 132619) and M.K. (projects 268214 and 272927), a grant from NERC, UK to M.G.R. (grant NE/J020818/1), and NERC, UK PhD studentship to D.J.P. (NE/I528634/1).For many organisms the ability to cold acclimate with the onset of seasonal cold has major implications for their fitness. In insects, where this ability is widespread, the physiological changes associated with increased cold tolerance have been well studied. Despite this, little work has been done to trace changes in gene expression during cold acclimation that lead to an increase in cold tolerance. We used an RNA-Seq approach to investigate this in two species of the Drosophila virilis group. We found that the majority of genes that are differentially expressed during cold acclimation differ between the two species. Despite this, the biological processes associated with the differentially expressed genes were broadly similar in the two species. These included: metabolism, cell membrane composition, and circadian rhythms, which are largely consistent with previous work on cold acclimation/cold tolerance. In addition, we also found evidence of the involvement of the rhodopsin pathway in cold acclimation, a pathway that has been recently linked to thermotaxis. Interestingly, we found no evidence of differential expression of stress genes implying that long-term cold acclimation and short-term stress response may have a different physiological basis.PostprintPeer reviewe

Revolts in Andalusia, 1647-1652: The Little Ice Age, Markets and Popular Politics

This work uses a series of urban revolts that occurred in Andalusia, Spain between 1647 to 1652 to investigate the links between past climate, grain markets, and popular politics. It builds on theories about the disruptive impact of Little Ice Age climate in the seventeenth century, advanced by historians such as Geoffrey Parker, and tries to think more concretely about how episodes of extreme climate can help explain episodes of popular unrest. Using data from recent climate reconstructions it finds that there is suggestive evidence that Andalusian cereal harvests were negatively affected by Little Ice Age climate in the mid-seventeenth century. But rather than drawing a simple straight line between poor harvests, high food prices, and revolt, this work tries to drill down into the political economy of grain provisioning in the region, in order to explain why markets were so badly affected by regional crop failures. Using a large range of sources from Andalusia's municipal archives, I take a qualitative approach to investigating market integration in the region, positing that the particular structure of the Habsburg monarchy, which left substantial power in the hands of local municipal governments, was a major factor in increased market disintegration during times of dearth. When local shortages hit, the poorly coordinated and often competing policy efforts of both national and municipal governments in Andalusia led to intense competition over grains, a plethora of local and international trade embargoes, and disputes over import tax regimes; which only served to further hinder provisioning efforts. With municipal governments being responsible for provisioning and bread price controls, their failure to uphold either of these responsibilities converted the issue into a political one, which in turn can help shed light on the nature of and participants in popular politics in early modern Europe

A Neural Network Model of Inhibitory Processing in Subliminal Priming

Masked Priming Experiments have revealed a precise set of facilitatory and inhibitory visual-motor control processes. Most notably, inhibitory effects have been identified in which prime-target compatibility induces performance costs and prime-target incompatibility induces performance benefits. We argue that this profile of data is commensurate with an ?emergency braking mechanism?, whereby responses can be retracted as a result of changing sensory evidence. The main contribution of this paper is to provide a neural network based explanation of this phenomenon. This is obtained through the use of feedforward inhibition to implement backward masking, lateral inhibition to implement response competition and opponent processing mechanisms to implement response retraction. Although the model remains simple, it does a very good job of reproducing the available masked priming data. For example, it reproduces a large spectrum of reaction time data across a number of different experimental conditions. Perhaps most notably however, it also reproduces Lateralized Readiness Potentials that have been recorded while subjects perform different conditions. In addition, it provides a concrete set of testable predictions