Benefit Sharing

Research cannot be done by researchers alone. In most cases, additional resources are required, including human research participants, access to biodiversity for biological and genetic resources, or traditional knowledge. Benefit sharing has been part of global conventions and international ethics guidelines for over 25 years, predicated on the understanding that those who contribute to the research process and its outcomes should share in the benefits as a matter of fairness. This chapter explores the different understandings of benefit sharing in a historical context, from the “Grand Bargain” of the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1992 to the Global Code of Conduct for Research in Resource-Poor Settings in 2018, and examines the contemporary potential for the UN Sustainable Development Goals (Agenda 2030) to facilitate benefit sharing. The discussion provides guidance to researchers, through examples and short case studies, on how to discharge the obligations of benefit sharing effectively and fairly, in pursuit of research integrity

Maternal smoking during pregnancy predicts adult offspring cardiovascular risk factors - evidence from a community-based large birth cohort study

Background: Maternal smoking during pregnancy is associated with offspring obesity. However, little is known about whether maternal smoking in pregnancy predicts other offspring cardiovascular risk factors including waist circumference (WC), waist-hip-ratio (WHR), pulse rate (PR), systolic (SBP), and diastolic blood pressure (DBP)

Characteristics of volcanic tremor accompanying the September 24th, 1986 explosive eruption of Mt. Etna (Italy)

Features of the volcanic tremor recorded before, during and after the eruptive event which occurred at Mt. Etna on September 24th 1986, are described. The whole eruption was particularly short in time (about eight hours) and characterized by an extremely violent explosive activity with lava fountains a few hundred meters high. As the complete record of the seismic signals generated during the whole eruptive episode was available, a detailed spectral analysis of the volcanic tremor recorded at four stations, located at increasing distance from the summit of the volcano, was carried out. Fourier analysis, that was performed using temporal windows of about 11 min in duration, pointed to some large fluctuations of the overall spectral amplitude, as well as some frequency variations of the dominant spectral peaks. The ratio of the overall spectral amplitude recorded at the highest station and at the peripheral ones, was calculated in the two spectral bands 1.0-2.5 and 2.6-6.0 Hz, respectively. The significant contribution of energy at low frequency values supports the hypothesis of a subvertical planar source, which was active during the paroxysmal stage of the eruption. Such results are also supported by the analysis of the attenuation function of the spectral amplitude