Avian population dynamics and human induced change in an urban environment

The predominantly urban boroughs of Warrington and Halton straddle the river Mersey in northwest England. Since the 1970s there has been a major change in land-use associated with both innovative town design and the decline of manufacturing and chemical industries in the boroughs. Also, co-ordinated programmes have directly addressed air and water pollution. The breeding birds of the two boroughs were surveyed in 1978-84 and 2004-06 as part of the bird atlases of Cheshire and Wirral, based on tetrads (2x2 km squares). We divided the breeding species into eight guilds based on broad ecological characteristics of habitat or food, omitting the generalists and colonial species, and compared the change between our two atlases in the number of occupied tetrads in Halton and Warrington and in the rest of the county. Four of our eight guilds have fared significantly better within our study area: waterbirds (24 species), those feeding on invertebrates (16 species), woodland specialists (21 species) and the two species that decorate their nests with lichens. The remaining four guilds showed no difference between Halton and Warrington and the rest of Cheshire and Wirral: raptors (5 species) have increased throughout, while breeding waders (7 species), farmland seedeaters (7 species) and aerial insectivores (5 species) have declined throughout. We interpret these results in relation to improved quality of water and air and changing patterns of land-use in the urban greenspace, especially an increase in woodland cover and connectivity

A methodological approach for assessing the uptake of core outcome sets using ClinicalTrials.gov: findings from a review of randomised controlled trials of rheumatoid arthritis

Objective To assess the uptake of the rheumatoid arthritis core outcome set using a new assessment method of calculating uptake from data in clinical trial registry entries. Design Review of randomised trials. Setting ClinicalTrials.gov. Subjects 273 randomised trials of drug interventions for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and registered in ClinicalTrials.gov between 2002 and 2016. Full publications were identified for completed studies from information in the trial registry or from an internet search using Google and the citation database Web of Science. Main outcome measure The percentage of trials reporting or planning to measure the rheumatoid arthritis core outcome set calculated from the information presented in the trial registry and compared with the percentage reporting the rheumatoid arthritis core outcome set in the resulting trial publications. Results The full rheumatoid arthritis core outcome set was reported in 81% (116/143) of trials identified on the registry as completed (or terminated) for which results were found in either the published literature or the registry. For trials identified on the registry as completed (or terminated), using information only available in the registry gives an estimate for uptake of 77% (145/189). Conclusions The uptake of the rheumatoid arthritis core outcome set in clinical trials has continued to increase over time. Using the information on outcomes listed for completed or terminated studies in a trial registry provides a reasonable estimate of the uptake of a core outcome set and is a more efficient and up-to-date approach than examining the outcomes in published trial reports. The method proposed may provide an efficient approach for an up-to-date assessment of the uptake of the 300 core outcome sets already published

Leaf-applied sodium chloride promotes cadmium accumulation in durum wheat grain

Cadmium (Cd) accumulation in durum wheat grain is a growing concern. Among the factors affecting Cd accumulation in plants, soil chloride (Cl) concentration plays a critical role. The effect of leaf NaCl application on grain Cd was studied in greenhouse-grown durum wheat (Triticum turgidum L. durum, cv. Balcali-2000) by immersing (10 s) intact flag leaves into Cd and/or NaCl-containing solutions for 14 times during heading and dough stages. Immersing flag leaves in solutions containing increasing amount of Cd resulted in substantial increases in grain Cd concentration. Adding NaCl alone or in combination with the Cd-containing immersion solution promoted accumulation of Cd in the grains, by up to 41%. In contrast, Zn concentrations of grains were not affected or even decreased by the NaCl treatments. This is likely due to the effect of Cl complexing Cd and reducing positive charge on the metal ion, an effect that is much smaller for Zn. Charge reduction or removal (CdCl2 0 species) would increase the diffusivity/lipophilicity of Cd and enhance its capability to penetrate the leaf epidermis and across membranes. Of even more significance to human health was the ability of Cl alone to penetrate leaf tissue and mobilize and enhance shoot Cd transfer to grains, yet reducing or not affecting Zn transfer

Intracellular Interleukin-1 Receptor 2 Binding Prevents Cleavage and Activity of Interleukin-1α, Controlling Necrosis-Induced Sterile Inflammation

Necrosis can induce profound inflammation or be clinically silent. However, the mechanisms underlying such tissue specificity are unknown. Interleukin-1α (IL-1α) is a key danger signal released upon necrosis that exerts effects on both innate and adaptive immunity and is considered to be constitutively active. In contrast, we have shown that necrosis-induced IL-1α activity is tightly controlled in a cell type-specific manner. Most cell types examined expressed a cytosolic IL-1 receptor 2 (IL-1R2) whose binding to pro-IL-1α inhibited its cytokine activity. In cell types exhibiting a silent necrotic phenotype, IL-1R2 remained associated with pro-IL-1α. Cell types possessing inflammatory necrotic phenotypes either lacked IL-1R2 or had activated caspase-1 before necrosis, which degraded and dissociated IL-1R2 from pro-IL-1α. Full IL-1α activity required cleavage by calpain after necrosis, which increased its affinity for IL-1 receptor 1. Thus, we report a cell type-dependent process that fundamentally governs IL-1α activity postnecrosis and the mechanism allowing conditional release of this blockade

Greenbury Report (UK)

The Greenbury Report on Directors Remuneration (1995) (hereafter called the Greenbury Report) was one of the first comprehensive governance codes directly addressing executive and director remuneration. The Greenbury Report was commissioned by the Confederation of British Industry in response to public concerns over recently privatized public utilities and the salaries and bonuses earned by executives, while they implemented job cuts, and service price increases. The Greenbury Report recommended an independent remuneration committee, linking executive pay to corporate financial and operational performance measures, and increased the requirements for disclosure and transparency on directors’ remuneration. However, the credibility of the Greenbury Report was challenged due to the composition of the group; it was not deemed to be independent of the sector it was to investigate, and it was argued that its recommendations did not go far enough. The financial crisis of 2008 highlighted the failure of the Greenbury Report’s recommendations for limiting excessive executive pay. In particular, the Walker Review of the Banking Sector found that performance-based bonus schemes in banking corporations that are supposed to align executive objectives with shareholder objectives increased corporate risk in the period leading up to the financial crisis. In addition, during the crisis, executive pay in large publicly listed corporations (PLCs) continued to increase, while workers’ wages stagnated. Therefore, despite Greenbury’s recommendations, executive pay continued, and still continues, to be a concern for the public and policymakers alike. Nonetheless, improved transparency on remuneration and a greater linking of pay to performance followed from the Greenbury Report and most corporations now include operational measures linked to performance and sustainability

Expression of interfacial Seebeck coefficient through grain boundary engineering with multi-layer graphene nanoplatelets

Expression of energy filtering to boost thermoelectric performance through grain boundary engineering utilising graphene.</p

The Impact of Global Warming and Anoxia on Marine Benthic Community Dynamics: an Example from the Toarcian (Early Jurassic)

The Pliensbachian-Toarcian (Early Jurassic) fossil record is an archive of natural data of benthic community response to global warming and marine long-term hypoxia and anoxia. In the early Toarcian mean temperatures increased by the same order of magnitude as that predicted for the near future; laminated, organic-rich, black shales were deposited in many shallow water epicontinental basins; and a biotic crisis occurred in the marine realm, with the extinction of approximately 5% of families and 26% of genera. High-resolution quantitative abundance data of benthic invertebrates were collected from the Cleveland Basin (North Yorkshire, UK), and analysed with multivariate statistical methods to detect how the fauna responded to environmental changes during the early Toarcian. Twelve biofacies were identified. Their changes through time closely resemble the pattern of faunal degradation and recovery observed in modern habitats affected by anoxia. All four successional stages of community structure recorded in modern studies are recognised in the fossil data (i.e. Stage III: climax; II: transitional; I: pioneer; 0: highly disturbed). Two main faunal turnover events occurred: (i) at the onset of anoxia, with the extinction of most benthic species and the survival of a few adapted to thrive in low-oxygen conditions (Stages I to 0) and (ii) in the recovery, when newly evolved species colonized the re-oxygenated soft sediments and the path of recovery did not retrace of pattern of ecological degradation (Stages I to II). The ordination of samples coupled with sedimentological and palaeotemperature proxy data indicate that the onset of anoxia and the extinction horizon coincide with both a rise in temperature and sea level. Our study of how faunal associations co-vary with long and short term sea level and temperature changes has implications for predicting the long-term effects of “dead zones” in modern oceans

Neonatal umbilical cord blood transplantation halts skeletal disease progression in the murine model of MPS-I

Umbilical cord blood (UCB) is a promising source of stem cells to use in early haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) approaches for several genetic diseases that can be diagnosed at birth. Mucopolysaccharidosis type I (MPS-I) is a progressive multi-system disorder caused by deficiency of lysosomal enzyme α-L-iduronidase, and patients treated with allogeneic HSCT at the onset have improved outcome, suggesting to administer such therapy as early as possible. Given that the best characterized MPS-I murine model is an immunocompetent mouse, we here developed a transplantation system based on murine UCB. With the final aim of testing the therapeutic efficacy of UCB in MPS-I mice transplanted at birth, we first defined the features of murine UCB cells and demonstrated that they are capable of multi-lineage haematopoietic repopulation of myeloablated adult mice similarly to bone marrow cells. We then assessed the effectiveness of murine UCB cells transplantation in busulfan-conditioned newborn MPS-I mice. Twenty weeks after treatment, iduronidase activity was increased in visceral organs of MPS-I animals, glycosaminoglycans storage was reduced, and skeletal phenotype was ameliorated. This study explores a potential therapy for MPS-I at a very early stage in life and represents a novel model to test UCB-based transplantation approaches for various diseases