Dram Balances Care

In many developed countries the problem of allocating resources within the Health Care System is perennial. Health Care planners wish to know the consequences of changing the mix of resources. The Balance of Care (BOC) Model, designed to help Health Care Planners answer this question, has been successfully applied over the past few years in the Department of Health and Social Security, UK. The Disaggregated Resource Allocation Model (DRAM), developed at IIASA, is also designed to help Health Care planners answer the above question. This paper compares the performance of both models in two respects. Firstly, it indicates that DRAM is likely to be able to cope with problems of the same size and complexity as the BOC model. Secondly, the paper demonstrates that DRAM can more accurately model the use of alternative modes of care within treatment categories. Data collected for the allocation of care for the elderly in Devon, UK are used in the comparisons

Sticky stuff : redefining bedform prediction in modern and ancient environments

This work was funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) under the COHBED project (NE/1027223/1). Paterson was funded by the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland (MASTS).The dimensions and dynamics of subaqueous bedforms are well known for cohesionless sediments. However, the effect of physical cohesion imparted by cohesive clay within mixed sand-mud substrates has not been examined, despite its recognized influence on sediment stability. Here we present a series of controlled laboratory experiments to establish the influence of substrate clay content on subaqueous bedform dynamics within mixtures of sand and clay exposed to unidirectional flow. The results show that bedform dimensions and steepness decrease linearly with clay content, and comparison with existing predictors of bedform dimensions, established within cohesionless sediments, reveals significant over-prediction of bedform size for all but the lowermost clay contents examined. The profound effect substrate clay content has on bedform dimensions has a number of important implications for interpretation in a range of modern and ancient environments, including reduced roughness and bedform heights in estuarine systems and the often cited lack of large dune cross-sets in turbidites. The results therefore offer a step change in our understanding of bedform formation and dynamics in these, and many other, sedimentary environments.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

DXA-derived hip shape is related to osteoarthritis:findings from in the MrOS cohort

BF conducted this research whilst on a clinical research primer fellowship awarded by the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute, University of Bristol, UK. This study was funded by Arthritis Research UK project grant ref 20244. CG is funded by Arthritis Research UK grant ref 20000. The Osteoporotic Fractures in Men (MrOS) Study is supported by National Institutes of Health funding. The following institutes provide support: the National Institute on Aging (NIA), the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), and NIH Roadmap for Medical Research under the following grant numbers: R01 AR052000, K24 AR048841, U01 AG027810, U01 AG042124, U01 AG042139, U01 AG042140, U01 AG042143, U01 AG042145, U01 AG042168, U01 AR066160, and UL1 TR000128.Peer reviewedPostprin

Intertidal Flats: Ecosystem Functioning of Soft Sediment Systems

he terminology of ecology has been steadily evolving over the years since Eugenius Warming arguably first established the discipline in 1895 (Goodland, 1975). Early ecological work was largely descriptive of species and habitats, often concerned with changes in plant communities over time. This work formed the classical study of the successional progression of assemblages toward a putative vegetative climax. Therefore, ecological concepts and terms suitable for the scales and temporal variation of terrestrial habitats were initially developed. The abiotic component of the habitat was considered to provide the overarching framework within which species might compete and be successful, leading to Clement’s original monoclimax theory of successional change (Townsend et al., 2008). The physical environment was therefore the stage upon which the biotic actors played their roles. This paradigm is now largely rejected as too simplistic since it is now widely recognized that the organisms inhabiting an ecosystem have a range ofeffects on the physical structure and dynamics of the system and contribute as architects of their own habitat (Hansell, 2005). This is particularly true of aquatic depositional systems where organisms burrow, restructure, and process the material of their surroundings in a process known as bioturbation (Reise, 2002). However, ecological paradigms are still generally being developed for terrestrial habitats, and there is a clear lag in the application of these theories to aquatic systems (Raffaelli et al., 2005). However, there is a new urgency in addressing coastal ecology (Duarte et al., 2008), which is being driven by the challenge of managing marine systems under scenarios of global climate change. One of the strongest intellectual drivers is to understand the processes that occur in an ecosystem that are beneficial, or even essential, to humans. These beneficial processes or functions have been described as ecosystem services (Chapin et al., 1997), and understanding them requires knowledge of how the biota provide to these critical services. The biotic component of the system is often reported as some measure of the variety of species that contribute to the process, under the general term of “biodiversity” (Magurran, 2004). Thus the question becomes “How does biodiversity affect ecosystem function?