Water vole (Arvicola amphibius) abundance in grassland habitats of Glasgow

Water vole (Arvicola amphibius) populations have undergone a serious decline throughout the UK, and yet a stronghold of these small mammals is found in the greater Easterhouse area of Glasgow. The water voles in this location are mostly fossorial, living a largely subterranean existence in grasslands, rather than the more typical semi-aquatic lifestyle in riparian habitats. In this study, we carried out capture-mark-recapture surveys on water voles at two sites: Cranhill Park and Tillycairn Drive. We made a total of 62 captures including retraps, and the resulting population estimates were 78 individuals (95% confidence interval 41-197) for Cranhill Park and 42 individuals (20-141) for Tillycairn Drive. From these figures we estimated a population density of water voles, which appeared to be higher than other reports from the UK. Despite the difficulties of sampling in urban environments that resulted in relatively low capture rates, our data suggest that the greater Easterhouse area of Glasgow holds water voles at relatively high population densities. These results will inform future conservation in the City of Glasgow and surrounding areas, as well as raise awareness of important water vole populations in urban environments

Water on Oxide Surfaces

Most oxidE.. surfaces interact with ambient water vapor to form a layer of chemisorbed hydroxyls. Physical adsorption of multilayer water readily starts by hydrogen bonding onto the hydroxyl array. The normally hydrophilic surface 0£ silica can be modified by heating to produce a predominantly hydrophobic matrix which contains but a few isolated hydrophilic sites, around which water adsorbs in clusters. The authors\u27 results on both hydrophilic and hydrophobed oxides are discussed and compared to results in the literature

Supporting security-oriented, inter-disciplinary research: crossing the social, clinical and geospatial domains

How many people have had a chronic disease for longer than 5-years in Scotland? How has this impacted upon their choices of employment? Are there any geographical clusters in Scotland where a high-incidence of patients with such long-term illness can be found? How does the life expectancy of such individuals compare with the national averages? Such questions are important to understand the health of nations and the best ways in which health care should be delivered and measured for their impact and success. In tackling such research questions, e-Infrastructures need to provide tailored, secure access to an extensible range of distributed resources including primary and secondary e-Health clinical data; social science data, and geospatial data sets amongst numerous others. In this paper we describe the security models underlying these e-Infrastructures and demonstrate their implementation in supporting secure, federated access to a variety of distributed and heterogeneous data sets exploiting the results of a variety of projects at the National e-Science Centre (NeSC) at the University of Glasgow

A non-paraphyletic classification of the afrotropical genus Acanthiops Waltz & McCafferty (Ephemeroptera: Baetidae)

Acanthiops Waltz & McCafferty (Ephemeroptera: Baetidae) is shown to be a monophyletic grouping defined by an anteromedially emarginate and laterally expanded and flattened pronotum in the larva. Attempts to restrict the concept of Acanthiops to Ac. marlieri (Demoulin) and re-erect Afroptiloides Gillies, syn. n., for Ac. elgonensis Lugo-Ortiz & McCafferty, Ac. griffithsi Lugo-Ortiz & McCafferty, Ac. tsitsa Barber-James & McCafferty, Ac. variegatus (Gillies), Ac. varius (Crass) and Ac. zomba Lugo-Ortiz & McCafferty, are shown to be based on inconsistent and inadequate morphological features that result in a paraphyletic taxonomy. The unofficial separate treatment of Ac. cooperi (Gillies & Wuillot) and Ac. erepens (Gillies) under Platycloeon Gillies & Wuillot is also shown to be paraphyletic. Acanthiops faro Barber-James & McCafferty, sp. n., is described from larvae from Guinea, and is distinguished by the combination of a papillate projection on labial palp segment 2, small tubercles on terga 1-8 and abdominal colour pattern. Acanthiops io Lugo-Ortiz & McCafferty, sp. n., is described from larvae from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and is distinguished by the combination of a papillate projection on palp segment 2, elongate tubercles on terga 1-9 and abdominal colour pattern. The larva of Ac. erepens (Gillies) is redescribed to incorporate morphological features and variability previously not accounted for, and larvae originally assigned to Baetis cataractae Crass are shown to be equivalent to Ac. erepens. New locality data or emendations on locality data are provided for Ac. griffithsi, Ac. tsitsa Barber-James & McCafferty and Ac. varius (Crass)

Successful reconstruction of whole mitochondrial genomes from ancient Central America and Mexico

The northern and southern peripheries of ancient Mesoamerica are poorly understood. There has been speculation over whether borderland cultures such as Greater Nicoya and Casas Grandes represent Mesoamerican outposts in the Isthmo-Colombian area and the Greater Southwest, respectively. Poor ancient DNA preservation in these regions challenged previous attempts to resolve these questions using conventional genetic techniques. We apply advanced in-solution mitogenome capture and high-throughput sequencing to fourteen dental samples obtained from the Greater Nicoya sites of Jícaro and La Cascabel in northwest Costa Rica (n = 9; A.D. 800–1250) and the Casas Grandes sites of Paquimé and Convento in northwest Mexico (n = 5; A.D. 1200–1450). Full mitogenome reconstruction was successful for three individuals from Jícaro and five individuals from Paquimé and Convento. The three Jícaro individuals belong to haplogroup B2d, a haplogroup found today only among Central American Chibchan-speakers. The five Paquimé and Convento individuals belong to haplogroups C1c1a, C1c5, B2f and B2a which, are found in contemporary populations in North America and Mesoamerica. We report the first successfully reconstructed ancient mitogenomes from Central America, and the first genetic evidence of ancestry affinity of the ancient inhabitants of Greater Nicoya and Casas Grandes with contemporary Isthmo-Columbian and Greater Southwest populations, respectively

Water on Oxide Surfaces

Most oxidE.. surfaces interact with ambient water vapor to form a layer of chemisorbed hydroxyls. Physical adsorption of multilayer water readily starts by hydrogen bonding onto the hydroxyl array. The normally hydrophilic surface 0£ silica can be modified by heating to produce a predominantly hydrophobic matrix which contains but a few isolated hydrophilic sites, around which water adsorbs in clusters. The authors\u27 results on both hydrophilic and hydrophobed oxides are discussed and compared to results in the literature

Quaternary ferrites by batch and continuous flow hydrothermal synthesis: a comparison

Crystalline spinel quaternary ferrites MxZn1−xFe2O4 (M = Co, Ni; x = 0.2, 0.35, 0.5, 0.65, 0.8) were synthesised through conventional batch hydrothermal synthesis (HT) at 135 °C as well as via continuous flow hydrothermal synthesis (CHFS). The as prepared compounds were thoroughly characterised from a compositional (ICP-MS, XPS) and structural (XRD) point of view in order to compare the synthetic approaches and achieve a greater understanding of how the chosen approach influences the characteristics of the resulting spinel

Managing healthcare budgets in times of austerity: the role of program budgeting and marginal analysis

Given limited resources, priority setting or choice making will remain a reality at all levels of publicly funded healthcare across countries for many years to come. The pressures may well be even more acute as the impact of the economic crisis of 2008 continues to play out but, even as economies begin to turn around, resources within healthcare will be limited, thus some form of rationing will be required. Over the last few decades, research on healthcare priority setting has focused on methods of implementation as well as on the development of approaches related to fairness and legitimacy and on more technical aspects of decision making including the use of multi-criteria decision analysis. Recently, research has led to better understanding of evaluating priority setting activity including defining ‘success’ and articulating key elements for high performance. This body of research, however, often goes untapped by those charged with making challenging decisions and as such, in line with prevailing public sector incentives, decisions are often reliant on historical allocation patterns and/or political negotiation. These archaic and ineffective approaches not only lead to poor decisions in terms of value for money but further do not reflect basic ethical conditions that can lead to fairness in the decision-making process. The purpose of this paper is to outline a comprehensive approach to priority setting and resource allocation that has been used in different contexts across countries. This will provide decision makers with a single point of access for a basic understanding of relevant tools when faced with having to make difficult decisions about what healthcare services to fund and what not to fund. The paper also addresses several key issues related to priority setting including how health technology assessments can be used, how performance can be improved at a practical level, and what ongoing resource management practice should look like. In terms of future research, one of the most important areas of priority setting that needs further attention is how best to engage public members

GABAB receptors regulate extrasynaptic GABAA receptors

Tonic inhibitory GABAA receptor-mediated currents are observed in numerous cell types in the CNS, including thalamocortical neurons of the ventrobasal thalamus, dentate gyrus granule cells, and cerebellar granule cells. Here we show that in rat brain slices, activation of postsynaptic GABAB receptors enhances the magnitude of the tonic GABAA current recorded in these cell types via a pathway involving Gi/o G proteins, adenylate cyclase, and cAMP-dependent protein kinase. Using a combination of pharmacology and knockout mice, we show that this pathway is independent of potassium channels or GABA transporters. Furthermore, the enhancement in tonic current is sufficient to significantly alter the excitability of thalamocortical neurons. These results demonstrate for the first time a postsynaptic crosstalk between GABAB and GABAA receptors.peer-reviewe