Boundary work

Extending the debate on interactions between climate science and policy, Morecroft et al. provide a useful view from those who advise policymakers and environmental managers. Their point about turning policy into practice more often should be welcomed as part of a plan to communicate tangible examples of success, and 'good news' stories, to policymakers. This is particularly vital in light of Viner and Howarth's Commentary, which highlighted the lack of practitioners' knowledge in IPCC reports.This is the accepted manuscript of a paper published in Nature Climate Change 4, 1038 (2014) doi: 10.1038/nclimate244

The UK Women's Cohort Study: comparison of vegetarians, fish-eaters and meat-eaters

Background: This paper describes the development of the UK Women's Cohort Study and presents cohort baseline characteristics. Methods: In total, 35 372 women, aged 35–69 years at recruitment, were selected to ensure a wide range of dietary intakes. Diet was assessed by a 217-item food-frequency questionnaire (FFQ). Detailed lifestyle information was collected by postal questionnaire. Vegetarians, fish-eaters and meat-eaters were compared. Results: The cohort women are mainly white, well-educated, middle-class and married with children. They are health-conscious with only 11% current smokers and 58% taking dietary supplements. Twenty-eight per cent of subjects self-report as being vegetarian and 1% as vegan. However, only 18% are defined as 'vegetarian' from the FFQ. Fat provides 32% of energy; vitamin and mineral intakes are high, with a broad range of intakes. Meat-eaters are older, with a higher body mass index (BMI) and the lowest intakes of carbohydrate, fibre, vitamin C, folate, iron and calcium. Other fish-eaters are similar to vegetarians. Vegetarians have the lowest intakes of protein, fat and saturated fat. Oily fish-eaters have the lowest BMI; are the least likely to smoke or use full-fat milk; and are the most likely to use dietary supplements and consume the most fruit and vegetables. Oily fish-eaters have the highest total energy intake and vegetarians the lowest. Semi-skimmed milk, bread, potatoes, wine, bananas and muesli are important contributors to energy for all groups

Mathematics difficulties in extremely preterm children : evidence of a specific deficit in basic mathematics processing

Background: Extremely preterm (EP, <26 wk gestation) children have been observed to have poor academic achievement in comparison to their term-born peers, especially in mathematics. This study investigated potential underlying causes of this difficulty. Methods: A total of 219 EP participants were compared with 153 term-born control children at 11 y of age. All children were assessed by a psychologist on a battery of standardized cognitive tests and a number estimation test assessing children’s numerical representations. Results: EP children underperformed in all tests in comparison with the term controls (the majority of Ps < 0.001). Different underlying relationships between performance on the number estimation test and mathematical achievement were found in EP as compared with control children. That is, even after controlling for cognitive ability, a relationship between number representations and mathematical performance persisted for EP children only (EP: r = 0.346, n = 186, P < 0.001; control: r = 0.095, n = 146, P = 0.256). Conclusion: Interventions for EP children may target improving children’s numerical representations in order to subsequently remediate their mathematical skills

Decision support tools for agriculture: Towards effective design and delivery

Decision support tools, usually considered to be software-based, may be an important part of the quest for evidence-based decision-making in agriculture to improve productivity and environmental outputs. These tools can lead users through clear steps and suggest optimal decision paths or may act more as information sources to improve the evidence base for decisions. Yet, despite their availability in a wide range of formats, studies in several countries have shown uptake to be disappointingly low. This paper uses a mixed methods approach to investigate the factors affecting the uptake and use of decision support tools by farmers and advisers in the UK. Through a combination of qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys, we found that fifteen factors are influential in convincing farmers and advisers to use decision support tools, which include usability, cost-effectiveness, performance, relevance to user, and compatibility with compliance demands. This study finds a plethora of agricultural decision support tools in operation in the UK, yet, like other studies, shows that their uptake is low. A better understanding of the fifteen factors identified should lead to more effective design and delivery of tools in the future.This research was funded as part of Defra's Sustainable Intensification Platform (Project Code LM0201). In addition, WJS was funded by Arcadia, LVD was funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council under the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service Sustainability (BESS) programme, grant code NE/K015419/1. T.A. was supported by the European Commission's Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship Programme (PIIF-GA-2011-303221) and the Isaac Newton Trust.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Elsevier via https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2016.09.00

Change and Aging Senescence as an adaptation

Understanding why we age is a long-lived open problem in evolutionary biology. Aging is prejudicial to the individual and evolutionary forces should prevent it, but many species show signs of senescence as individuals age. Here, I will propose a model for aging based on assumptions that are compatible with evolutionary theory: i) competition is between individuals; ii) there is some degree of locality, so quite often competition will between parents and their progeny; iii) optimal conditions are not stationary, mutation helps each species to keep competitive. When conditions change, a senescent species can drive immortal competitors to extinction. This counter-intuitive result arises from the pruning caused by the death of elder individuals. When there is change and mutation, each generation is slightly better adapted to the new conditions, but some older individuals survive by random chance. Senescence can eliminate those from the genetic pool. Even though individual selection forces always win over group selection ones, it is not exactly the individual that is selected, but its lineage. While senescence damages the individuals and has an evolutionary cost, it has a benefit of its own. It allows each lineage to adapt faster to changing conditions. We age because the world changes.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure

Quantum jump Monte Carlo approach simplified: Abelian symmetries

We consider Markovian dynamics of a finitely dimensional open quantum system featuring a weak unitary symmetry, i.e., when the action of a unitary symmetry on the space of density matrices commutes with the master operator governing the dynamics. We show how to encode the weak symmetry in quantum stochastic dynamics of the system by constructing a weakly symmetric representation of the master operator: a symmetric Hamiltonian, and jump operators connecting only the symmetry eigenspaces with a fixed eigenvalue ratio. In turn, this representation simplifies both the construction of the master operator as well as quantum jump Monte Carlo simulations, where, for a symmetric initial state, stochastic trajectories of the system state are supported within a single symmetry eigenspace at a time, which is changed only by the action of an asymmetric jump operator. Our results generalize directly to the case of multiple Abelian weak symmetries

Assessment of low-dose cisplatin as a model of nausea and emesis in beagle dogs, potential for repeated administration

Cisplatin is a highly emetogenic cancer chemotherapy agent, which is often used to induce nausea and emesis in animal models. The cytotoxic properties of cisplatin also cause adverse events that negatively impact on animal welfare preventing repeated administration of cisplatin. In this study, we assessed whether a low (subclinical) dose of cisplatin could be utilized as a model of nausea and emesis in the dog while decreasing the severity of adverse events to allow repeated administration. The emetic, nausea-like behavior and potential biomarker response to both the clinical dose (70 mg/m2) and low dose (15 mg/m2) of cisplatin was assessed. Plasma creatinine concentrations and granulocyte counts were used to assess adverse effects on the kidneys and bone marrow, respectively. Nausea-like behavior and emesis was induced by both doses of cisplatin, but the latency to onset was greater in the low-dose group. No significant change in plasma creatinine was detected for either dose groups. Granulocytes were significantly reduced compared with baseline (P = 0.000) following the clinical, but not the low-dose cisplatin group. Tolerability of repeated administration was assessed with 4 administrations of an 18 mg/m2 dose cisplatin. Plasma creatinine did not change significantly. Cumulative effects on the granulocytes occurred, they were significantly decreased (P = 0.03) from baseline at 3 weeks following cisplatin for the 4th administration only. Our results suggest that subclinical doses (15 and 18 mg/m2) of cisplatin induce nausea-like behavior and emesis but have reduced adverse effects compared with the clinical dose allowing for repeated administration in crossover studies

Integrating institutional and behavioural measures of bribery

Bribery involves individuals exchanging material benefits for a service of a public institution. To understand the process of bribery we need to integrate measures of individual behaviour and institutional attributes rather than rely exclusively on surveys of individual perceptions and experience or macro-level corruption indexes national institutions. This paper integrates institutional and behavioural measures to show that where you live and who you are have independent influence on whether a person pays a bribe. The analysis of 76 nationwide Global Corruption Barometer surveys from six continents provides a date set in which both institutional and individual differences vary greatly. Multi-level multivariate logit analysis is used to test hypotheses about the influence of institutional context and individual contact with public services, socio-economic inequalities and roles, and conflicting behavioural and ethical norms. It finds that path-determined histories of early bureaucratization or colonialism have a major impact after controlling for individual differences. At the individual level, people who frequently make use of public services and perceive government as corrupt are more likely to pay bribes, while socio-economic inequality has no significant influence. While institutional history cannot be changed, changing the design of public services offers is something that contemporary governors could do to reduce the vulnerability of their citizens to bribery

Systematic review and meta-analysis of the diagnostic accuracy of ultrasonography for deep vein thrombosis

Background Ultrasound (US) has largely replaced contrast venography as the definitive diagnostic test for deep vein thrombosis (DVT). We aimed to derive a definitive estimate of the diagnostic accuracy of US for clinically suspected DVT and identify study-level factors that might predict accuracy. Methods We undertook a systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression of diagnostic cohort studies that compared US to contrast venography in patients with suspected DVT. We searched Medline, EMBASE, CINAHL, Web of Science, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Cochrane Controlled Trials Register, Database of Reviews of Effectiveness, the ACP Journal Club, and citation lists (1966 to April 2004). Random effects meta-analysis was used to derive pooled estimates of sensitivity and specificity. Random effects meta-regression was used to identify study-level covariates that predicted diagnostic performance. Results We identified 100 cohorts comparing US to venography in patients with suspected DVT. Overall sensitivity for proximal DVT (95% confidence interval) was 94.2% (93.2 to 95.0), for distal DVT was 63.5% (59.8 to 67.0), and specificity was 93.8% (93.1 to 94.4). Duplex US had pooled sensitivity of 96.5% (95.1 to 97.6) for proximal DVT, 71.2% (64.6 to 77.2) for distal DVT and specificity of 94.0% (92.8 to 95.1). Triplex US had pooled sensitivity of 96.4% (94.4 to 97.1%) for proximal DVT, 75.2% (67.7 to 81.6) for distal DVT and specificity of 94.3% (92.5 to 95.8). Compression US alone had pooled sensitivity of 93.8 % (92.0 to 95.3%) for proximal DVT, 56.8% (49.0 to 66.4) for distal DVT and specificity of 97.8% (97.0 to 98.4). Sensitivity was higher in more recently published studies and in cohorts with higher prevalence of DVT and more proximal DVT, and was lower in cohorts that reported interpretation by a radiologist. Specificity was higher in cohorts that excluded patients with previous DVT. No studies were identified that compared repeat US to venography in all patients. Repeat US appears to have a positive yield of 1.3%, with 89% of these being confirmed by venography. Conclusion Combined colour-doppler US techniques have optimal sensitivity, while compression US has optimal specificity for DVT. However, all estimates are subject to substantial unexplained heterogeneity. The role of repeat scanning is very uncertain and based upon limited data