Migration Patterns, Use of Stopover Areas, and Austral Summer Movements of Swainson\u27s Hawks

From 1995 to 1998, we tracked movements of adult Swainson’s Hawks (Buteo swainsoni), using satellite telemetry to characterize migration, important stopover areas, and movements in the austral summer. We tagged 46 hawks from July to September on their nesting grounds in seven U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. Swainson’s Hawks followed three basic routes south on a broad front, converged along the east coast of central Mexico, and followed a concentrated corridor to a communal area in central Argentina for the austral summer. North of 20°N, southward and northward tracks differed little for individuals from east of the continental divide but differed greatly (up to 1700 km) for individuals from west of the continental divide. Hawks left the breeding grounds mid-August to mid-October; departure dates did not differ by location, year, or sex. Southbound migration lasted 42 to 98 days, northbound migration 51 to 82 days. Southbound, 36% of the Swainson’s Hawks departed the nesting grounds nearly 3 weeks earlier than the other radio-marked hawks and made stopovers 9.0–26.0 days long in seven separate areas, mainly in the southern Great Plains, southern Arizona and New Mexico, and northcentral Mexico. The birds stayed in their nonbreeding range for 76 to 128 days. All used a core area in central Argentina within 23% of the 738 800-km2 austral summer range, where they frequently moved long distances (up to 1600 km). Conservation of Swainson’s Hawks must be an international effort that considers habitats used during nesting and non-nesting seasons, including migration stopovers

Health, education, and social care provision after diagnosis of childhood visual disability

Aim: To investigate the health, education, and social care provision for children newly diagnosed with visual disability.Method: This was a national prospective study, the British Childhood Visual Impairment and Blindness Study 2 (BCVIS2), ascertaining new diagnoses of visual impairment or severe visual impairment and blindness (SVIBL), or equivalent vi-sion. Data collection was performed by managing clinicians up to 1-year follow-up, and included health and developmental needs, and health, education, and social care provision.Results: BCVIS2 identified 784 children newly diagnosed with visual impairment/SVIBL (313 with visual impairment, 471 with SVIBL). Most children had associated systemic disorders (559 [71%], 167 [54%] with visual impairment, and 392 [84%] with SVIBL). Care from multidisciplinary teams was provided for 549 children (70%). Two-thirds (515) had not received an Education, Health, and Care Plan (EHCP). Fewer children with visual impairment had seen a specialist teacher (SVIBL 35%, visual impairment 28%, χ2p < 0.001), or had an EHCP (11% vs 7%, χ2p < 0 . 01).Interpretation: Families need additional support from managing clinicians to access recommended complex interventions such as the use of multidisciplinary teams and educational support. This need is pressing, as the population of children with visual impairment/SVIBL is expected to grow in size and complexity.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P &lt; 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Simplified Framework Evaluation of Large Water Resource Project Impacts

The document most frequently used to support a water resource project\u27s economic feasibility is the commercial benefit-cost analysis, which quantifies tangible and direct project consequences. The objective of this type of analysis is simply to maximize net monetary benefits. This analysis assigns an arbitrary monetary value to ecological and social disruptions, if it does not ignore these effects entirely. An improvement on this method is the social benefit-cost analysis, which assesses sane intangible costs such as air and noise pollution. Unfortunately, even the social analysis usually neglects the sometimes profound effects that a large water resource project has upon quality of life, particularly with regards to massive relocations. The purpose of this dissertation is to resolve these problems by presenting a method by which a water resource study team may use five unique viewpoints - technical, organizational, personal, social, and environmental - to quantify and compare the true benefits and costs of project construction and operation. The study team begins by rigorously documenting the three general categories of project consequence (economic, social and environmental) and assigning each benefit or cost a relative value within category according to perceived positive or negative effects. The second step is to use these quantifications to produce three impact vs. dam height curves. The final and most difficult step in this study process is to assign a relative weight to the respective economic, social, and enviromental impact clusters, depending on national priorities and the biases and personal viewpoints of the decisiomaker (s). The final product of this procedure is a single curve which is used to further investigate and assess the overall feasibility of a water resource project and the \u27optimum\u27 range of dam heights. All of the possible impacts of a large water resource project, whether they be tangible or intangible, should be investigated in order to produce an authentic indicator of project efficiency. The only way to insure that all impacts are properly accounted for is to perform an exhaustive examination of a water resource project from the five perspectives mentioned above. The body of this dissertation is an example analysis based upon the proposed Three Gorge Dam and Reservoir on the Yangtze River in the People\u27s Republic of China. This project will be the world\u27s largest power plant at 13,000 megawatts. Because of its size, anticipated impacts, and the interest it has generated all over the world, the Three Gorge project is considered the ideal subject of a comprehensive multiple perspective analysis as described in this study

REPRODUCTIVE-PERFORMANCE, AGE STRUCTURE, AND NATAL DISPERSAL OF SWAINSONS-HAWKS IN THE BUTTE-VALLEY, CALIFORNIA

Volume: 29Start Page: 187End Page: 19