Ancient Amazonian populations left lasting impacts on forest structure

Amazonia contains a vast expanse of contiguous tropical forest and is influential in global carbon and hydrological cycles. Whether ancient Amazonia was highly disturbed or modestly impacted, and how ancient disturbances have shaped current forest ecosystem processes, is still under debate. Amazonian Dark Earths (ADEs), which are anthropic soil types with enriched nutrient levels, are one of the primary lines of evidence for ancient human presence and landscape modifications in settings that mostly lack stone structures and which are today covered by vegetation. We assessed the potential of using moderate spatial resolution optical satellite imagery to predict ADEs across the Amazon Basin. Maximum entropy modeling was used to develop a predictive model using locations of ADEs across the basin and satellite‐derived remotely sensed indices. Amazonian Dark Earth sites were predicted to be primarily along the main rivers and in eastern Amazonia. Amazonian Dark Earth sites, when compared with randomly selected forested sites located within 50 km of ADE sites, were less green canopies (lower normalized difference vegetation index) and had lower canopy water content. This difference was accentuated in two drought years, 2005 and 2010. This is contrary to our expectation that ADE sites would have nutrient‐rich soils that support trees with greener canopies and forests on ADE soils being more resilient to drought. Biomass and tree height were lower on ADE sites in comparison with randomly selected adjacent sites. Our results suggested that ADE‐related ancient human impact on the forest is measurable across the entirety of the 6 million km2 of Amazon Basin using remotely sensed data

Low carbon infrastructure investment: extending business models for sustainability

Investment in infrastructure is recognized as a key enabler of economic prosperity, but it is also important for addressing social and environmental challenges, including climate change mitigation and addressing fuel poverty. The UK Government Strategy Investing in Britain’s Future argues that significant investment in “resilient, cost effective and sustainable energy supplies” is needed to meet these challenges. However, current methods of assessing the costs and benefits of infrastructure investment, and the subsequent design of business models needed to deliver this investment, often prioritise partial economic gains over social and environmental objectives. This paper extends the business model canvas approach to allow designing business models and evaluation methods that can incorporate social and environmental value streams and propositions as well as economic values in order to facilitate genuinely sustainable infrastructure investment. It demonstrates the usefulness of this extension through two case studies of the development of smart grids for electricity distribution and local heat delivery networks in the UK. Smart grids are essential for maintaining the security and reliability of electricity systems whilst incorporating increasing amounts of low carbon generation in distribution networks. District heat networks can facilitate the efficient supply of low carbon heat. However, both will require significant levels of investment, co-ordination between public, private and regulatory actors, and will deliver a range of economic, social and environmental costs and benefits to these actors. Drawing on empirical interviews with local actors involved in smart grid and heat network developments, and recent work on valuation and business model canvas analysis, the paper challenges the traditional view of a business model as only creating one form of value. Accounting for multiple types of value helps to identify business models that are more likely to achieve the environmental and social goals of infrastructure transformation and opens the door for new actors. Finally, the paper introduces an approach to complex systems modelling of infrastructure investment decisions to take into account the range of actors and the diversity of motivations of these actors

START REACTS Clinical Trial : Physiotherapy Manual

In the START REACTS Trial, participants are referred to physiotherapy after having the surgical intervention. This manual provides information and background to the clinical trial to physiotherapists who will be treating trial participants. It has been written to ensure the post-operative physiotherapy is consistent across the trial population

Convergence towards a European strategic culture? A constructivist framework for explaining changing norms.

The article contributes to the debate about the emergence of a European strategic culture to underpin a European Security and Defence Policy. Noting both conceptual and empirical weaknesses in the literature, the article disaggregates the concept of strategic culture and focuses on four types of norms concerning the means and ends for the use of force. The study argues that national strategic cultures are less resistant to change than commonly thought and that they have been subject to three types of learning pressures since 1989: changing threat perceptions, institutional socialization, and mediatized crisis learning. The combined effect of these mechanisms would be a process of convergence with regard to strategic norms prevalent in current EU countries. If the outlined hypotheses can be substantiated by further research the implications for ESDP are positive, especially if the EU acts cautiously in those cases which involve norms that are not yet sufficiently shared across countries

Development of a single-session physiotherapy and self-management intervention for the treatment of primary traumatic anterior shoulder dislocation for the ‘Acute Rehabilitation following Traumatic anterior shoulder dISlocAtioN (ARTISAN)’ multi centre RCT

Objective Optimum physiotherapy management for people with a conservatively managed primary traumatic anterior shoulder dislocation is not known. The purpose of the ARTISAN trial is to compare the clinical and cost-effectiveness of a course of usual care physiotherapy with a single session of physiotherapy and self-management, the ARTISAN intervention. ARTISAN is a UK multi-centre, two-arm, parallel group, randomised controlled trial with 1:1 treatment allocation. Design The intervention was developed following the Medical Research Council framework for developing and evaluating complex interventions and will be reported in line with the template for intervention description and replication checklist (TIDieR) and the Consensus on Exercise Reporting Template (CERT). It was informed by published research, national clinical guidelines, current clinical practice and patient and public involvement. Results The ARTISAN intervention comprises education (Phase 1), progressive exercise (Phase 2 and Phase 3) and an optional return to sport component (Phase 4). Behaviour change strategies are embedded throughout intervention. The single session of physiotherapy is delivered by a chartered physiotherapist, within the first six weeks of injury, in an NHS outpatient setting. At the end of the initial session, paper-based booklets and/or a patient website with the same content are provided to participants to aid self-management and progression though the four phases of the trial intervention. Conclusion The ARTISAN intervention was successfully implemented throughout the internal pilot and is suitable for testing in the subsequent definitive RCT ARTISAN trial

Worldwide Prevalence of Lentivirus Infection in Wild Feline Species: Epidemiologic and Phylogenetic Aspects

The natural occurrence of lentiviruses closely related to feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) in nondomestic felid species is shown here to be worldwide. Cross-reactive antibodies to FIV were common in several free-ranging populations of large cats, including East African lions and cheetahs of the Serengeti ecosystem and in puma (also called cougar or mountain lion) populations throughout North America. Infectious puma lentivirus (PLV) was isolated from several Florida panthers, a severely endangered relict puma subspecies inhabiting the Big Cypress Swamp and Everglades ecosystems in southern Florida. Phylogenetic analysis of PLV genomic sequences from disparate geographic isolates revealed appreciable divergence from domestic cat FIV sequences as well as between PLV sequences found in different North American locales. The level of sequence divergence between PLV and FIV was greater than the level of divergence between human and certain simian immunodeficiency viruses, suggesting that the transmission of FIV between feline species is infrequent and parallels in time the emergence of HIV from simian ancestors

Manual / Issue 7 / Alchemy

Manual, a journal about art and its making. Alchemy. The seventh issue. Manual 7 (Alchemy) prompts the unexpected and emergent to manifest. To engage as an alchemist/artist is to be the perpetual student of the present moment, to synthesize culture, so-called science, and the implications of existential borders into a discipline that is repeatable, a practice. Art and alchemy are not singular, unified pursuits. Their practitioners are trans-disciplinary, disjointed, and solitary in their practice, and their labor and the ordering of their lives become porous, overlaid in the pursuit of other-than or beyond-dominant modes of understanding. Alchemy and art are not about finding resolution, but building the capacity for curiosity, formulating questions that invest fields of knowledge with possibility, prompting the unexpected and emergent to manifest. —Bryan McGovern Wilson, from the introduction to Issue 7: Alchemy Softcover, 76 pages. Published 2016 by the RISD Museum. Manual 7 (Alchemy) contributors include Markus Berger, Rachel Berwick, Stephen S. Bush, CA Conrad, Florence Friedman, Doreen Garner, Michael Grugl, Kate Irvin, Mimi Leveque, Dominic Molon, Douglas R. Nickel, Emily J. Peters, Elizabeth A. Williams, Bryan McGovern Wilson, and Diming Stella Zhong.https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/risdmuseum_journals/1033/thumbnail.jp

Comparison of F(ab') versus Fab antivenom for pit viper envenomation: A prospective, blinded, multicenter, randomized clinical trial

BACKGROUND: Crotalidae Polyvalent Immune Fab (Ovine) has been the only antivenom commercially available in the US since 2007 for treatment of Crotalinae envenomation. Late coagulopathy can occur or recur after clearance of Fab antivenom, often after hospital discharge, lasting in some cases more than 2 weeks. There have been serious, even fatal, bleeding complications associated with recurrence phenomena. Frequent follow-up is required, and additional intervention or hospitalization is often necessary. F(ab')2 immunoglobulin derivatives have longer plasma half life than do Fab. We hypothesized that F(ab')2 antivenom would be superior to Fab in the prevention of late coagulopathy following treatment of patients with Crotalinae envenomation. METHODS: We conducted a prospective, double-blind, randomized clinical trial, comparing late coagulopathy in snakebitten patients treated with F(ab')2 with maintenance doses [F(ab')2/F(ab')2], or F(ab')2 with placebo maintenance doses [F(ab')2/placebo], versus Fab with maintenance doses [Fab/Fab]. The primary efficacy endpoint was coagulopathy (platelet count < 150 K/mm(3), fibrinogen level < 150 mg/dL) between end of maintenance dosing and day 8. RESULTS: 121 patients were randomized at 18 clinical sites and received at least one dose of study drug. 114 completed the study. Of these, 11/37 (29.7%) in the Fab/Fab cohort experienced late coagulopathy versus 4/39 (10.3%, p < 0.05) in the F(ab')2/F(ab')2 cohort and 2/38 (5.3%, p < 0.05) in the F(ab')2/placebo cohort. The lowest heterologous protein exposure was with F(ab')2/placebo. No serious adverse events were related to study drug. In each study arm, one patient experienced an acute serum reaction and one experienced serum sickness. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, management of coagulopathic Crotalinae envenomation with longer-half-life F(ab')2 antivenom, with or without maintenance dosing, reduced the risk of subacute coagulopathy and bleeding following treatment of envenomation