Fighting proud: the untold story of the gay men who served in two world wars

Stephen Bourne draws on his latest book to tell the previously untold story of gay men who joined the British armed forces during the two world wars. Stephen will be talking about his book at a public LSE event on 27 July 2017

Guide for Quantifying Post-Treatment Fuels in the Sagebrush Steppe and Juniper Woodlands of the Great Basin

Invasive species and woodland encroachment have caused extensive changes in the fire regimes of sagebrush steppe over the past 150 years. Land managers and resource specialists of the Great Basin are increasingly required to implement vegetation treatments to maintain habitat, reduce fire risk and restore landscapes to a more desirable state. Often it is difficult to measure treatment effectiveness because gathering pre- and post-treatment data is time-consuming and costly. In two years of post-treatment sampling across six Great Basin states, researchers from the Sagebrush Steppe Treatment and Evaluation Project (SageSTEP) measured the vegetation response to prescribed fire, tree mastication and cutting, shrub mowing, and herbicide application. Treated plots were compared to untreated control plots. This Guide for Quantifying Post-treatment Fuels in the Sagebrush Steppe and Juniper Woodlands of the Great Basin assimilates the SageSTEP post-treatment vegetation and fuels data into an assessment tool that will help users better estimate post-treatment percent cover, stem density and fuel loadings. Designed similarly to the Natural Fuels Photo Series, produced by USDA Forest Service Fire and Environmental Research Applications (FERA) team, this Guide provides the necessary landscape-level inputs required by fire behavior and fire effects models and may also be used when building custom fuel beds. Through the use of photographs and tables with the range of values for each vegetation type, users should be able to quickly appraise sites by fuel stratum. When used in conjunction with the pre-treatment Guide for Quantifying Fuels in the Sagebrush Steppe and Juniper Woodlands of the Great Basin (Stebleton and Bunting 2009), this post-treatment Guide has the capability to aid users as they predict vegetation and fuel response to the various treatment applications, assess target conditions, set management objectives for restoration projects, choose treatments to meet objectives and determine treatment effectiveness

Claims Made Insurance Policies in New Zealand and Australia: Should New Zealand Enact a Statutory Deeming Regime?

A claims made policy protects an insured person or business in relation to claims made against that person or business during the policy period, regardless of when the cause of loss occurred, and regardless of when the claim is notified to the insurer (subject always to the terms of cover and the relevant law). The trigger event for a claim against the insurer is the receipt of the claim or demand by the insured. However, issues can arise when the insured has knowledge of circumstances that may lead to a claim, but the claim itself is delayed, a situation sometimes addressed by way of a contractual 'notice of circumstances' provision coupled with a deeming provision. The proposition in this dissertation is that New Zealand should have a statutory deeming regime affecting claims made insurance policies, similar to that contained within section 40 of Australia’s Insurance Contracts Act 1984 (Cth). However, to properly consider that proposition, it is necessary to review the context within which section 40 arose, its practical effect in that context, and the perceived issues that might be addressed in New Zealand by way of a statutory deeming regime. In particular, it is necessary to acknowledge the juxtaposition of sections 40 and 54 of the Insurance Contracts Act (Cth), and the implications of section 9 of New Zealand's Insurance Law Reform Act 1977

Probabilistic earthquake locations of induced seismicity in the Groningen region, the Netherlands

The Groningen gas reservoir, situated in the northeast of the Netherlands, is western Europe’s largest producing gas field and has been in production since 1963. The gas production has induced both subsidence and seismicity. Seismicity is detected and located using the Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut shallow-borehole array for the period 2015–2017, incorporating the back projection techniques of QuakeMigrate and the nonlinear location procedure to constrain earthquake locations and depths. The uncertainties on the estimated depths are estimated taking into account velocity model, changes in station array geometry and uncertainties in the measurement of arrival times of the P and S waves. We show that the depth distribution of seismicity is consistent with nucleation within the reservoir (28 per cent) or in the overburden (60 per cent) within ∼500 m from the top of the reservoir. Earthquakes with hypocentres in the overburden likely originate from overlying Zechstein anhydrite caprock. Based on their depth distribution, it seems like the earthquakes are primarily driven by the elastic strain in the reservoir and overburden, induced by the reservoir compaction. We estimate the probability of earthquakes nucleating beneath the reservoir in the underlying Carboniferous limestone and basement, to be no more than 12 per cent

A socio-ecological approach for identifying and contextualising spatial ecosystem-based adaptation priorities at the sub-national level

Climate change adds an additional layer of complexity to existing sustainable development and biodiversity conservation challenges. The impacts of global climate change are felt locally, and thus local governance structures will increasingly be responsible for preparedness and local responses. Ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) options are gaining prominence as relevant climate change solutions. Local government officials seldom have an appropriate understanding of the role of ecosystem functioning in sustainable development goals, or access to relevant climate information. Thus the use of ecosystems in helping people adapt to climate change is limited partially by the lack of information on where ecosystems have the highest potential to do so. To begin overcoming this barrier, Conservation South Africa in partnership with local government developed a socio-ecological approach for identifying spatial EbA priorities at the sub-national level. Using GIS-based multi-criteria analysis and vegetation distribution models, the authors have spatially integrated relevant ecological and social information at a scale appropriate to inform local level political, administrative, and operational decision makers. This is the first systematic approach of which we are aware that highlights spatial priority areas for EbA implementation. Nodes of socio-ecological vulnerability are identified, and the inclusion of areas that provide ecosystem services and ecological resilience to future climate change is innovative. The purpose of this paper is to present and demonstrate a methodology for combining complex information into user-friendly spatial products for local level decision making on EbA. The authors focus on illustrating the kinds of products that can be generated from combining information in the suggested ways, and do not discuss the nuance of climate models nor present specific technical details of the model outputs here. Two representative case studies from rural South Africa demonstrate the replicability of this approach in rural and peri-urban areas of other developing and least developed countries around the world

Lessons learned from the development and implementation of a patient-reported outcome and experience measure (POEM) in an Australian glaucoma practice.

BACKGROUND: A patient's perception of how their glaucoma is managed will influence both adherence to their medication and outcome measures such as quality of life. METHODS: Prospective consecutive study using a Glaucoma Patient-reported Outcome and Experience Measure (POEM) modified for an Australian ophthalmic private clinical practice setting. The Australian Glaucoma POEM consists of eight items related to the patient's understanding of the diagnosis and management, acceptability of the treatment, whether they feel their glaucoma is getting worse, interfering with their daily life and concerns regarding loss of vision as well as addressing whether they feel safe under the care of their glaucoma team and how well their care is organised. RESULTS: Two hundred and two patients (M:F 91:111) participated in the study. Mean ± standard deviation for subject age was 69 ± 13 years. Patient's overall perception of their treatment and outcome was favourable. Younger patients felt their glaucoma interfered more with their daily lives and were more worried about losing vision from glaucoma. The greater the number of medications in use, the more they felt their glaucoma was getting worse and that glaucoma interfered with their daily lives. With all other variables accounted for by the multivariate linear model, female patients more strongly agreed that they understood their glaucoma diagnosis and glaucoma management. The patients with a severe visual defect in their worse eye, reported a greater perceived understanding of their glaucoma diagnosis and management and that they felt that glaucoma had a greater interference on their daily life. They were also more concerned about losing vision from glaucoma than their fellow glaucoma patients with less severe or no visual field deficit in the worse eye. CONCLUSIONS: The modified POEM demonstrates potential to capture the concerns of a practice's glaucoma cohort with a view to enhancing the quality of glaucoma care delivered

The RCSB Protein Data Bank: views of structural biology for basic and applied research and education.

The RCSB Protein Data Bank (RCSB PDB, http://www.rcsb.org) provides access to 3D structures of biological macromolecules and is one of the leading resources in biology and biomedicine worldwide. Our efforts over the past 2 years focused on enabling a deeper understanding of structural biology and providing new structural views of biology that support both basic and applied research and education. Herein, we describe recently introduced data annotations including integration with external biological resources, such as gene and drug databases, new visualization tools and improved support for the mobile web. We also describe access to data files, web services and open access software components to enable software developers to more effectively mine the PDB archive and related annotations. Our efforts are aimed at expanding the role of 3D structure in understanding biology and medicine