The Ontario Court of Appeal and Speedy Justice

The authors use a data sample collected from the Ontario Court of Appeal minute books between 1983 and 1987 to analyze how appeals move through the province\u27s highest court. Criminal and, chiefly, sentence appeals dominate the Court\u27s agenda. Hearing times-the duration of argument and rendering of judgment-are shorter than commonly believed, most often lasting less than twenty minutes. Elapsed times-the period between end of trial and beginning of hearing-are, on average, 77 per cent longer for civil than criminal appeals, 52 per cent longer for defendant than crown appeals, and 23 per cent longer for fall than spring appeals. Elapsed times are also compared with data on United States appeal courts, and the use of appellate case-flow management is considered

The Ontario Court of Appeal and Speedy Justice

The authors use a data sample collected from the Ontario Court of Appeal minute books between 1983 and 1987 to analyze how appeals move through the province\u27s highest court. Criminal and, chiefly, sentence appeals dominate the Court\u27s agenda. Hearing times-the duration of argument and rendering of judgment-are shorter than commonly believed, most often lasting less than twenty minutes. Elapsed times-the period between end of trial and beginning of hearing-are, on average, 77 per cent longer for civil than criminal appeals, 52 per cent longer for defendant than crown appeals, and 23 per cent longer for fall than spring appeals. Elapsed times are also compared with data on United States appeal courts, and the use of appellate case-flow management is considered

Optimum Pass-fail Testing Decisions

Electrical Engineering

A new phylodynamic model of Mycobacterium bovis transmission in a multi-host system uncovers the role of the unobserved reservoir

Multi-host pathogens are particularly difficult to control, especially when at least one of the hosts acts as a hidden reservoir. Deep sequencing of densely sampled pathogens has the potential to transform this understanding, but requires analytical approaches that jointly consider epidemiological and genetic data to best address this problem. While there has been considerable success in analyses of single species systems, the hidden reservoir problem is relatively under-studied. A well-known exemplar of this problem is bovine Tuberculosis, a disease found in British and Irish cattle caused by Mycobacterium bovis, where the Eurasian badger has long been believed to act as a reservoir but remains of poorly quantified importance except in very specific locations. As a result, the effort that should be directed at controlling disease in badgers is unclear. Here, we analyse densely collected epidemiological and genetic data from a cattle population but do not explicitly consider any data from badgers. We use a simulation modelling approach to show that, in our system, a model that exploits available cattle demographic and herd-to-herd movement data, but only considers the ability of a hidden reservoir to generate pathogen diversity, can be used to choose between different epidemiological scenarios. In our analysis, a model where the reservoir does not generate any diversity but contributes to new infections at a local farm scale are significantly preferred over models which generate diversity and/or spread disease at broader spatial scales. While we cannot directly attribute the role of the reservoir to badgers based on this analysis alone, the result supports the hypothesis that under current cattle control regimes, infected cattle alone cannot sustain M. bovis circulation. Given the observed close phylogenetic relationship for the bacteria taken from cattle and badgers sampled near to each other, the most parsimonious hypothesis is that the reservoir is the infected badger population. More broadly, our approach demonstrates that carefully constructed bespoke models can exploit the combination of genetic and epidemiological data to overcome issues of extreme data bias, and uncover important general characteristics of transmission in multi-host pathogen systems

Extracting non-linear integrate-and-fire models from experimental data using dynamic I–V curves

The dynamic I–V curve method was recently introduced for the efficient experimental generation of reduced neuron models. The method extracts the response properties of a neuron while it is subject to a naturalistic stimulus that mimics in vivo-like fluctuating synaptic drive. The resulting history-dependent, transmembrane current is then projected onto a one-dimensional current–voltage relation that provides the basis for a tractable non-linear integrate-and-fire model. An attractive feature of the method is that it can be used in spike-triggered mode to quantify the distinct patterns of post-spike refractoriness seen in different classes of cortical neuron. The method is first illustrated using a conductance-based model and is then applied experimentally to generate reduced models of cortical layer-5 pyramidal cells and interneurons, in injected-current and injected- conductance protocols. The resulting low-dimensional neuron models—of the refractory exponential integrate-and-fire type—provide highly accurate predictions for spike-times. The method therefore provides a useful tool for the construction of tractable models and rapid experimental classification of cortical neurons

Comparison of anadromous and landlocked Atlantic salmon genomes reveals signatures of parallel and relaxed selection across the Northern Hemisphere

Most Atlantic salmon (Salmo salarL.) populations follow an anadromous life cycle, spending early life in freshwater, migrating to the sea for feeding, and returning to rivers to spawn. At the end of the last ice age similar to 10,000 years ago, several populations of Atlantic salmon became landlocked. Comparing their genomes to their anadromous counterparts can help identify genetic variation related to either freshwater residency or anadromy. The objective of this study was to identify consistently divergent loci between anadromous and landlocked Atlantic salmon strains throughout their geographical distribution, with the long-term aim of identifying traits relevant for salmon aquaculture, including fresh and seawater growth, omega-3 metabolism, smoltification, and disease resistance. We used a Pool-seq approach (n = 10-40 individuals per population) to sequence the genomes of twelve anadromous and six landlocked Atlantic salmon populations covering a large part of the Northern Hemisphere and conducted a genomewide association study to identify genomic regions having been under different selection pressure in landlocked and anadromous strains. A total of 28 genomic regions were identified and includedcadm1on Chr 13 andppargc1aon Chr 18. Seven of the regions additionally displayed consistently reduced heterozygosity in fish obtained from landlocked populations, including the genes gpr132, cdca4, and sertad2 on Chr 15. We also found 16 regions, includingigf1on Chr 17, which consistently display reduced heterozygosity in the anadromous populations compared to the freshwater populations, indicating relaxed selection on traits associated with anadromy in landlocked salmon. In conclusion, we have identified 37 regions which may harbor genetic variation relevant for improving fish welfare and quality in the salmon farming industry and for understanding life-history traits in fish.Peer reviewe

Grazing cattle exposure to neighbouring herds and badgers in relation to bovine tuberculosis risk

Publication history: Accepted - 28 September 2020; Published online - 30 September 2020.Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) can be spread between and among cattle and wildlife hosts e.g. European badger (Meles meles). The majority of cattle in the UK and Ireland are grazed during the summer, potentially exposing them to Mycobacterium bovis. 18 farms were surveyed (39% dairy, 61% beef; fields n = 697) for one grazing season (May-November 2016, n = 148,461 field days) to quantify the co-occurrence of cattle with badger setts and latrines and adjacency to neighbouring cattle herds. 3% (n = 24) of the fields had a badger sett or latrine recorded, dairy cattle were significantly more likely to co-occur with badger setts and latrines than beef cattle. Most farms (89%) grazed cattle adjacent to a neighbouring herd, which accounted for 18% of the grazing season. Potential exposure to neighbouring herds did not differ between production systems but did vary between life stages. A significant positive association between the proportion of time cattle spent grazing fields with setts present and the historic 1-, 3- and 5- year bTB status (p = 0.007, p = 0.013 and p = 0.013 respectively) was found. However, when cattle were grazed in fields with latrines, a significant negative association was found between the proportion of time cattle spent grazing fields with latrines present and the historic 3- and 5- year bTB status (p = 0.033 and p = 0.012 respectively). Historic bTB status and percentage of days spent beside a neighbouring herd was unrelated. Idiosyncrasies at farm-level and between risk factors indicated that individual farm assessments would be beneficial to understand potential exposure risk.This research was funded as part of a PhD studentship by the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affair

Relative abundance of Mycobacterium bovis molecular types in cattle:a simulation study of potential epidemiological drivers

Background: The patterns of relative species abundance are commonly studied in ecology and epidemiology to provide insights into underlying dynamical processes. Molecular types (MVLA-types) of Mycobacterium bovis, the causal agent of bovine tuberculosis, are now routinely recorded in culture-confirmed bovine tuberculosis cases in Northern Ireland. In this study, we use ecological approaches and simulation modelling to investigate the distribution of relative abundances of MVLA-types and its potential drivers. We explore four biologically plausible hypotheses regarding the processes driving molecular type relative abundances: sampling and speciation; structuring of the pathogen population; historical changes in population size; and transmission heterogeneity (superspreading). Results: Northern Irish herd-level MVLA-type surveillance shows a right-skewed distribution of MVLA-types, with a small number of types present at very high frequencies and the majority of types very rare. We demonstrate that this skew is too extreme to be accounted for by simple neutral ecological processes. Simulation results indicate that the process of MVLA-type speciation and the manner in which the MVLA-typing loci were chosen in Northern Ireland cannot account for the observed skew. Similarly, we find that pathogen population structure, assuming for example a reservoir of infection in a separate host, would drive the relative abundance distribution in the opposite direction to that observed, generating more even abundances of molecular types. However, we find that historical increases in bovine tuberculosis prevalence and/or transmission heterogeneity (superspreading) are both capable of generating the skewed MVLA-type distribution, consistent with findings of previous work examining the distribution of molecular types in human tuberculosis. Conclusion: Although the distribution of MVLA-type abundances does not fit classical neutral predictions, our simulations show that increases in pathogen population size and/or superspreading are consistent with the pattern observed, even in the absence of selective pressures acting on the system