Catching children as they fall : mental health promotion in residential child care in East Dunbartonshire

This article will outline the first years of a joint project to develop a dedicated mental health service for looked after and accommodated children, which was developed between residential child care managers in East Dunbartonshire and the North Glasgow Community Adolescent Mental Health (CAMH) team. It will start by describing the events that led up to the setting of the project, and go on to outline the project itself. It will conclude with a discussion of some of the philosophical underpinnings of the project and suggestions for future developments

Redshift distributions of galaxies in the Dark Energy Survey Science Verification shear catalogue and implications for weak lensing

We present photometric redshift estimates for galaxies used in the weak lensing analysis of the Dark Energy Survey Science Verification (DES SV) data. Four model- or machine learning-based photometric redshift methods—ANNZ2, BPZ calibrated against BCC-Ufig simulations, SKYNET, and TPZ—are analyzed. For training, calibration, and testing of these methods, we construct a catalogue of spectroscopically confirmed galaxies matched against DES SV data. The performance of the methods is evaluated against the matched spectroscopic catalogue, focusing on metrics relevant for weak lensing analyses, with additional validation against COSMOS photo-z’s. From the galaxies in the DES SV shear catalogue, which have mean redshift 0.72 0.01 over the range 0.3 < z < 1.3, we construct three tomographic bins with means of z ¼ f0.45; 0.67; 1.00g. These bins each have systematic uncertainties δz ≲ 0.05 in the mean of the fiducial SKYNET photo-z nðzÞ. We propagate the errors in the redshift distributions through to their impact on cosmological parameters estimated with cosmic shear, and find that they cause shifts in the value of σ8 of approximately 3%. This shift is within the one sigma statistical errors on σ8 for the DES SV shear catalogue. We further study the potential impact of systematic differences on the critical surface density, Σcrit, finding levels of bias safely less than the statistical power of DES SV data. We recommend a final Gaussian prior for the photo-z bias in the mean of nðzÞ of width 0.05 for each of the three tomographic bins, and show that this is a sufficient bias model for the corresponding cosmology analysis

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Seasonal variations in decomposition processes in a valley-bottom riparian peatland

A year-long field survey was carried out at a valley-bottom riparian peatland site in North Wales, UK from January 2002 to December 2002 to examine the seasonal variation of decomposition processes and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations. Peat temperature, physicochemistry, organic carbon pools, basal CO2 respiration and extracellular enzyme activities (β-glucosidase, phosphatase, sulphatase and phenol oxidase) were monitored monthly. The results of a principle component eigenanalysis of field data show that concentrations of basal CO2 respiration, soil solution DOC and phenolics were positively correlated to soil temperature (P < 0.01, F = 12.25; P < 0.001, F = 59.8; P < 0.001, F = 141.27) with Q10 responses of 2.29, 6.42 and 14.42, respectively. Extracellular enzyme activities, however, were more strongly associated with seasonal changes in ion concentrations and did not correspond significantly to temperature alone suggesting limitations attributable to a combination of continuous anaerobiosis and/or the suppressive compounds. Restraints on soil enzyme activities may limit the loss of CO2 from the microbial community that is dependent on soil enzyme activities for nutrient availability. The seasonal effect of temperature on DOC may be explained by increased plant rhizodeposition and microbial activity. These results do not imply that the long-term increasing trend in DOC export is explainable by temperature increase but suggest that temperature may be a key factor regulating the seasonal variation in DOC concentrations. Thus, seasonal temperature effects on DOC may represent an important component of long-term models of DOC export

Simultaneous quantitative analysis of Ni, VO, Cu, Zn and Mn geoporphyrins by liquid chromatography-high resolution multistage mass spectrometry: Method development and validation

© 2016 Elsevier B.V. A method is described for the identification and quantification of Cu, Ni, VO, Zn and Mn metalloporphyrins in geological samples using a high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) system coupled to a high resolution Thermo Orbitrap XL mass spectrometer (MS). The linear correlation of the detector response to the compound concentrations in Cu, Ni, VO, Zn and Mn porphyrin standards (R2 values between 0.9975 and 0.9994), verified the suitability of the methodology for the quantification of these compounds. Furthermore, the method was validated by the analysis of complex porphyrin distributions in geological sample isolates from the Australian Toolebuc Formation and Bight Basin. By using the high resolution of the Orbitrap MS detector it was not only possible to reproduce the porphyrin distributions reported from previous analyses of the same isolates, but also to identify and resolve a range of additional compounds such as an iso-butyl C34 VO porphyrin indicative of palaeoenvironmental photic zone euxinia and several Cu and Zn porphyrins. The methodology described here provides a new high resolution tool for routine analysis of complex metalloporphyrin distributions in geological sample extracts, enabling the simultaneous quantitative analysis of Cu, Ni, VO, Zn and Mn porphyrins without the need of prior de-metalation or further fractionation of the porphyrin extract. The high resolution of the Orbitrap MS combined with the ability to perform multistage mass spectrometry leads to a significant improvement in compound detection and identification, which shows a high potential in the analysis of low abundance porphyrins, such as high-molecular-weight porphyrins with extended alkyl side-chains

RedMaGiC: Selecting luminous red galaxies from the DES Science Verification data

We introduce redMaGiC, an automated algorithm for selecting luminous red galaxies (LRGs). The algorithm was specifically developed to minimize photometric redshift uncertainties in photometric large-scale structure studies. redMaGiC achieves this by self-training the colour cuts necessary to produce a luminosity-thresholded LRG sample of constant comoving density. We demonstrate that redMaGiC photo-zs are very nearly as accurate as the best machine learning-based methods, yet they require minimal spectroscopic training, do not suffer from extrapolation biases, and are very nearly Gaussian. We apply our algorithm to Dark Energy Survey (DES) Science Verification (SV) data to produce a redMaGiC catalogue sampling the redshift range z ∈ [0.2, 0.8]. Our fiducial sample has a comoving space density of 10−3 (h−1 Mpc)−3, and a median photo-z bias (zspec − zphoto) and scatter (σz/(1 + z)) of 0.005 and 0.017, respectively. The corresponding 5σ outlier fraction is 1.4 per cent. We also test our algorithm with Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 8 and Stripe 82 data, and discuss how spectroscopic training can be used to control photo-z biases at the 0.1 per cent level.The DES participants from Spanish institutions are partially supported by MINECO under grants AYA2012-39559, ESP2013- 48274, FPA2013-47986, and Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa SEV-2012-0234. Research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) including ERC grant agreements 240672, 291329, and 306478

Ecocentric education

Ecocentrism has roots in environmental philosophy, which questions the conceptual dichotomy between humans and the environment, acknowledging nonhuman species' right to flourish independently of human interest (Naess 1973). Generally, ecocentrism refers to a planet- and nature-centered as opposed to the human-centered (anthropocentric) system of values. Inspired by this philosophy, ecocentric education focuses on intrinsic values of the ecosystem, environment, and individual living beings and habitats in environmental education (EE) and education for sustainable development (ESD). https://rd.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-3-319-63951-2 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina