Systematic reviews of qualitative evidence for environmental policy and management: An overview of different methodological options

This is the final version. Available from BMC via the DOI in this record. Qualitative research related to the human dimensions of conservation and environment is growing in quantity. Rigorous syntheses of such studies can help develop understanding and inform decision-making. They can combine findings from studies in varied or similar contexts to address questions relating to, for example, the lived experience of those affected by environmental phenomena or interventions, or to intervention implementation. Researchers in environmental management have adapted methodology for systematic reviews of quantitative research so as to address questions about the magnitude of intervention effects or the impacts of human activities or exposure. However, guidance for the synthesis of qualitative evidence in this field does not yet exist. The objective of this paper is to present a brief overview of different methods for the synthesis of qualitative research and to explore why and how reviewers might select between these. The paper discusses synthesis methods developed in other fields but applicable to environmental management and policy. These methods include thematic synthesis, framework synthesis, realist synthesis, critical interpretive synthesis and meta-ethnography. We briefly describe each of these approaches, give recommendations for the selection between them, and provide a selection of sources for further reading.European UnionSwedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research FORMASSweden’s innovation agency VINNOVAAcademy of FinlandNational Centre for Research and Development in Polan

A Globally Arbitrated Memory Tree for Mixed-Time-Criticality Systems

Embedded systems are increasingly based on multi-core platforms to accommodate a growing number of applications, some of which have real-time requirements. Resources, such as off-chip DRAM, are typically shared between the applications using memory interconnects with different arbitration polices to cater to diverse bandwidth and latency requirements. However, traditional centralized interconnects are not scalable as the number of clients increase. Similarly, current distributed interconnects either cannot satisfy the diverse requirements or have decoupled arbitration stages, resulting in larger area, power and worst-case latency. The four main contributions of this article are: 1) a Globally Arbitrated Memory Tree (GAMT) with a distributed architecture that scales well with the number of cores, 2) an RTL-level implementation that can be configured with five arbitration policies (three distinct and two as special cases), 3) the concept of mixed arbitration policies that allows the policy to be selected individually per core, and 4) a worst-case analysis for a mixed arbitration policy that combines TDM and FBSP arbitration.We compare the performance of GAMT with centralized implementations and show that it can run up to four times faster and have over 51 and 37 percent reduction in area and power consumption, respectively, for a given bandwidth

Abelian subgroups of Garside groups

In this paper, we show that for every abelian subgroup $H$ of a Garside group, some conjugate $g^{-1}Hg$ consists of ultra summit elements and the centralizer of $H$ is a finite index subgroup of the normalizer of $H$. Combining with the results on translation numbers in Garside groups, we obtain an easy proof of the algebraic flat torus theorem for Garside groups and solve several algorithmic problems concerning abelian subgroups of Garside groups.Comment: This article replaces our earlier preprint "Stable super summit sets in Garside groups", arXiv:math.GT/060258

Artery tertiary lymphoid organs control aorta immunity and protect against atherosclerosis via vascular smooth muscle cell lymphotoxin β receptors

Tertiary lymphoid organs (TLOs) emerge during nonresolving peripheral inflammation, but their impact on disease progression remains unknown. We have found in aged Apoe−/− mice that artery TLOs (ATLOs) controlled highly territorialized aorta T cell responses. ATLOs promoted T cell recruitment, primed CD4+ T cells, generated CD4+, CD8+, T regulatory (Treg) effector and central memory cells, converted naive CD4+ T cells into induced Treg cells, and presented antigen by an unusual set of dendritic cells and B cells. Meanwhile, vascular smooth muscle cell lymphotoxin β receptors (VSMC-LTβRs) protected against atherosclerosis by maintaining structure, cellularity, and size of ATLOs though VSMC-LTβRs did not affect secondary lymphoid organs: Atherosclerosis was markedly exacerbated in Apoe−/−Ltbr−/− and to a similar extent in aged Apoe−/−Ltbrfl/flTagln-cre mice. These data support the conclusion that the immune system employs ATLOs to organize aorta T cell homeostasis during aging and that VSMC-LTβRs participate in atherosclerosis protection via ATLOs

EXACT2: the semantics of biomedical protocols

© 2014 Soldatova et al.; licensee BioMed Central. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Background: The reliability and reproducibility of experimental procedures is a cornerstone of scientific practice. There is a pressing technological need for the better representation of biomedical protocols to enable other agents (human or machine) to better reproduce results. A framework that ensures that all information required for the replication of experimental protocols is essential to achieve reproducibility. Methods: We have developed the ontology EXACT2 (EXperimental ACTions) that is designed to capture the full semantics of biomedical protocols required for their reproducibility. To construct EXACT2 we manually inspected hundreds of published and commercial biomedical protocols from several areas of biomedicine. After establishing a clear pattern for extracting the required information we utilized text-mining tools to translate the protocols into a machine amenable format. We have verified the utility of EXACT2 through the successful processing of previously ‘unseen’ (not used for the construction of EXACT2) protocols. Results: The paper reports on a fundamentally new version EXACT2 that supports the semantically-defined representation of biomedical protocols. The ability of EXACT2 to capture the semantics of biomedical procedures was verified through a text mining use case. In this EXACT2 is used as a reference model for text mining tools to identify terms pertinent to experimental actions, and their properties, in biomedical protocols expressed in natural language. An EXACT2-based framework for the translation of biomedical protocols to a machine amenable format is proposed. Conclusions: The EXACT2 ontology is sufficient to record, in a machine processable form, the essential information about biomedical protocols. EXACT2 defines explicit semantics of experimental actions, and can be used by various computer applications. It can serve as a reference model for for the translation of biomedical protocols in natural language into a semantically-defined format.This work has been partially funded by the Brunel University BRIEF award and a grant from Occams Resources

A comparison of sexual behaviour and attitudes of healthy adolescents in a Danish high school in 1982, 1996, and 2001

AIM: To assess changes in sexual behaviour among students at a high school in Denmark from 1982 to 2001. METHODS: An anonymous self-administered questionnaire was used to compare data from three identical cross-sectional surveys performed in 1982, 1996, and 2001. RESULTS: Girls: More girls reported their first sexual intercourse before their 16th birthday in 2001 (42%) than in 1996 (29%) In 1982 it was also 42% (Chi-square for trend: p = 0.003). Fewer girls with no regular partner used condoms for their personal protection in 2001 (2%) than in 1996 (9%) and 1982 (0%) (Chi-square for trend p = 0.016). The proportion of girls with no regular partner who considered protection from sexually transmitted disease important for their choice of contraception was 39% in 2001 compared with 71% in 1996 and only 10% in 1982 (Chi-square for trend: p < 0.0001). Boys: More boys reported sexual debut before their 16th birthday in 2001 (40%) than in 1996 (37%) and 1982 (24%) (Chi-square for trend: p = 0.023). For boys with no regular partner, condom was preferred for personal protection by 85% in 2001, 91% in 1996 and 61% in 1982 (Chi-square for trend p = 0.007). Protection against sexually transmitted infection declined, especially among boys with no regular partner, from 51% in 2001 to 72% in 1996 and 21% in 1982 Chi-square for trend: p < 0.0001). The tendency towards earlier sexual debut and less use of safe sex practices to protect against sexually transmitted infections (STI) was accompanied by a rise in the number of detected STIs during this period. CONCLUSIONS: The period from 1982 to 1996 during which sexual attitudes were directed toward safer sex seems to have given way to a reverse trend in the period from 1996 to 2001. These findings may have significant implications for health care authorities organising preventive strategies for healthy adolescents

Applying refinement to the use of mice and rats in rheumatoid arthritis research

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a painful, chronic disorder and there is currently an unmet need for effective therapies that will benefit a wide range of patients. The research and development process for therapies and treatments currently involves in vivo studies, which have the potential to cause discomfort, pain or distress. This Working Group report focuses on identifying causes of suffering within commonly used mouse and rat ‘models’ of RA, describing practical refinements to help reduce suffering and improve welfare without compromising the scientific objectives. The report also discusses other, relevant topics including identifying and minimising sources of variation within in vivo RA studies, the potential to provide pain relief including analgesia, welfare assessment, humane endpoints, reporting standards and the potential to replace animals in RA research

Neutrophil swarming and extracellular trap formation play a significant role in Alum adjuvant activity

There are over 6 billion vaccine doses administered each year, most containing aluminium-based adjuvants, yet we still do not have a complete understanding of their mechanisms of action. Recent evidence has identified host DNA and downstream sensing as playing a significant role in aluminium adjuvant (aluminium hydroxide) activity. However, the cellular source of this DNA, how it is sensed by the immune system and the consequences of this for vaccination remains unclear. Here we show that the very early injection site reaction is characterised by inflammatory chemokine production and neutrophil recruitment. Intravital imaging demonstrates that the Alum injection site is a focus of neutrophil swarms and extracellular DNA strands. These strands were confirmed as neutrophil extracellular traps due to their sensitivity to DNAse and absence in mice deficient in peptidylarginine deiminase 4. Further studies in PAD4−/− mice confirmed a significant role for neutrophil extracellular trap formation in the adjuvant activity of Alum. By revealing neutrophils recruited to the site of Alum injection as a source of the DNA that is detected by the immune system this study provides the missing link between Alum injection and the activation of DNA sensors that enhance adjuvant activity, elucidating a key mechanism of action for this important vaccine component

CCL25/CCR9 Interactions Regulate Large Intestinal Inflammation in a Murine Model of Acute Colitis

CCL25/CCR9 is a non-promiscuous chemokine/receptor pair and a key regulator of leukocyte migration to the small intestine. We investigated here whether CCL25/CCR9 interactions also play a role in the regulation of inflammatory responses in the large intestine.Acute inflammation and recovery in wild-type (WT) and CCR9(-/-) mice was studied in a model of dextran sulfate sodium (DSS)-induced colitis. Distribution studies and phenotypic characterization of dendritic cell subsets and macrophage were performed by flow cytometry. Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) scores were assessed and expression of inflammatory cytokines was studied at the mRNA and the protein level.CCL25 and CCR9 are both expressed in the large intestine and are upregulated during DSS colitis. CCR9(-/-) mice are more susceptible to DSS colitis than WT littermate controls as shown by higher mortality, increased IBD score and delayed recovery. During recovery, the CCR9(-/-) colonic mucosa is characterized by the accumulation of activated macrophages and elevated levels of Th1/Th17 inflammatory cytokines. Activated plasmacytoid dendritic cells (DCs) accumulate in mesenteric lymph nodes (MLNs) of CCR9(-/-) animals, altering the local ratio of DC subsets. Upon re-stimulation, T cells isolated from these MLNs secrete significantly higher levels of TNFα, IFNγ, IL2, IL-6 and IL-17A while down modulating IL-10 production.Our results demonstrate that CCL25/CCR9 interactions regulate inflammatory immune responses in the large intestinal mucosa by balancing different subsets of dendritic cells. These findings have important implications for the use of CCR9-inhibitors in therapy of human IBD as they indicate a potential risk for patients with large intestinal inflammation