Habitat Utilization and Dive Characterization of Blue Marlin (Makaira nigricans) and White Marlin (Kajikia albida) in the Western Atlantic Ocean

Blue marlin Makaira nigricans and white marlin Kajikia albida (formerly Tetrapturus albidus) are overfished in the Atlantic Ocean, with the vast majority of fishing mortality resulting from the pelagic longline fishery that targets tunas (Thunnus spp.) and swordfish Xiphias gladius. Time series of catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) data have been fundamental to assessments of blue marlin and white marlin stocks, but these time series have been affected by a shift over time in pelagic longline fishing practices from shallow to deeper sets. One method for adjusting CPUE data for changes in fishing practices is a habitat-based standardization that modifies fishing effort in proportion to the vertical distribution of the species of interest and the fishing gear. For these models to be successfully applied to population assessments, the vertical habitat utilized by blue marlin and white marlin must be known. Pop-up satellite archival tags (PSATs) provide a means of collecting high resolution vertical movement and distribution data for billfishes. In my study, 62 blue marlin and 40 white marlin were caught in recreational fisheries off the U.S. mid-Atlantic, Yucatan Peninsula, northern Caribbean, Venezuela, and Brazil, tagged with Microwave Telemetry, Inc. PTT-100 HR PSATs, and released. Data were recovered from PSATs attached to 57 surviving blue marlin and 36 surviving white marlin. PSATs successfully transmitted 18-100% of the data they recorded (mean 72%). The minimum 10-day displacements of both species averaged 242 km (range 9 to 942 km) and varied significantly between tagging locations, but not between species. Blue marlin spent a significantly higher (62%) amount of time in the upper 10 m of water than white marlin (56%). Both species spent greater than 95% of the time in water that was within 8o C of the sea surface temperature. Only 3.1% of white marlin demonstrated diel differences in the maximum depth of dives, while 29% of blue marlin dove into deeper waters during the day. Variables identified as explaining the most variation in dives were total dive duration, bottom time, ascent time, number of wiggles, wiggle depth, interdive interval, skew of ascent and descent, % time ascending, and % time descending. Using these variables, two dive types were identified through cluster analysis: simple dives representing traditional U and V shapes, and complex dives with multiple descents, plateaus, and wiggles. There were significant differences in dive variables among locations, individuals, diel periods, and dive types. There was significant overlap in range, habitat use, and vertical movement patterns, and therefore no strong evidence of niche partitioning between blue marlin and white marlin. My analyses can be used to further define the physical and physiological factors limiting marlins\u27 vertical movements and therefore improve stock assessments based on longline CPUE data by correcting for changes in fishing practices

Addendum to “Bending the Medicare Cost Curve in 12 Months or Less”: AHS Analysis for Sample of Pure North Seniors (55-plus)

As part of our analysis in the paper published in January 2015, “Bending the Medicare Cost Curve in 12 Months or Less: How Preventative Health Care Can Yield Significant Near-Term Savings for Acute Care in Alberta,”1 we had carried out analyses of sub-groups of interest, such as workers at Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNRL) and seniors (participants aged 55-plus) that, for reasons of length, we did not include in the published paper. The details for the data, the models estimated, the statistics calculated and the sample inclusion and exclusion restrictions are described in the full paper that was peer reviewed. This addendum discusses the results of the analysis of the sample of seniors (participants aged 55 and up at the time of joining Pure North, n=5,516, made up of 2,758 Pure North participants and 2,758 age- and sex-matched controls). The models estimated are described on pages 9 and 10 of the published paper. Persisting participants are Pure North joiners who have a 25OHD (vitamin D blood serum) measure at the time of joining and one year later. We interpret participants with two 25OHD one year apart as persisting in the Pure North program but we do not infer the degree of adherence to the program. The In-Clinic Seniors Program (ICP) sub-sample of Pure North senior participants had over 90 per cent persistence in the program for at least one year. For this sub-sample, relative to the frequency of hospital and emergency department visits of the ICP seniors program participants and matched controls in the year prior to joining the program, the program reduces hospital visits for seniors in the program by 22 per cent, emergency department visits by 34 per cent and avoids 22 per cent of annual health-care costs. For the 68 per cent of the full sample of Pure North participants aged 55 and over who we can confirm persisted in the program for at least one year, relative to the frequency of hospital and emergency department visits of the program participants and matched controls in the year prior to joining the program, the program reduces hospital visits for seniors persisting in the program by 39 per cent and emergency department visits by 24 per cent. These reductions in health care system contacts result in public health-care expenditures avoided of 35 per cent per year. These magnitudes are comparable to what we calculated for the overall and Vital 2.2 samples in the full 2015 report.Not accounted for in those direct health-care costs avoided is the relief that preventative care can provide to the medical treatment system. Scaled to the population level, the reductions observed in the Pure North seniors sample would represent at least six per cent fewer visits to Alberta emergency departments per year and reduce the need for hospital beds by at least six per cent in the Alberta hospital system. In terms of freed-up hospital beds, this is equivalent to adding another Foothills Medical Centre to the Alberta health-care system

Falling Through the Cracks: How the Community-Based Approach Has Failed Calgary’s Chronically Homeless

The seeds of chronic homelessness, with the addictions and mental illness that often accompany it, are sown frequently in traumatic childhoods. A survey of 300 people experiencing chronic homelessness and those sleeping rough in Calgary reveals that these individuals have suffered childhood trauma at a rate five times higher than the general population. Those traumas include neglect, parents with addiction issues, domestic violence and abuse. Unfortunately for those seeking help, community-based services in Calgary have been unable to keep up since the prevailing philosophy became one of releasing these people from institutions into the community.A 62 per cent reduction in psychiatric beds some 30 years ago was accompanied by levels of funding that simply weren’t enough to provide all the resulting community services needed. People without families to turn to, and with no social supports, tended to end up homeless. It has become a vicious circle – while mental health issues can lead to homelessness, homelessness also puts people at greater risk for mental illness.Because childhood trauma plays such a key role in chronic homelessness, it needs to be figured into the kinds of housing and support programs that are put in place for people who are homeless. Psychiatric supports should be among the programs that homeless shelters offer and should also be provided on a priority basis for people using the intervention program called Housing First.There is no doubt about the link between adverse childhood experiences and future mental health problems. People who have experienced at least four types of childhood trauma are 12 times more likely to have attempted suicide, seven times more likely to be alcoholic, and 10 times more likely to have injected street drugs. They are also much more likely to be violent.Interaction with the health-care and justice systems started early for the individuals surveyed in Calgary, aged between 18 and 80. Forty-two per cent of them had been foster children. Within the past year, 59 per cent had slept rough, 31 per cent had spent time in detox, 23 per cent had served jail time and 31 per cent had been in hospital. Eighty-two per cent regularly used alcohol, with 32 per cent using it daily and 70 per cent using drugs other than alcohol.Yet, the help that is available for the chronically homeless population is at best scattershot. More than 50 per cent of those surveyed who had received help for mental health and addiction issues said they didn’t get enough assistance. A quarter of those who didn’t receive treatment said they’d asked for help and hadn’t received it, while a third said long waitlists prevented them from accessing help. Many were in and out of a patchwork of programs with little to show for it.Solutions are not out of reach. Funding should target housing and case management programs designed to address the psychiatric issues resulting from childhood trauma. And Calgary’s network of community-based health care, housing and support programs should be expanded to help people suffering from multiple disorders. Currently, homeless shelters are serving as ad hoc institutions of mental health care for far too many people. With adequate funding and supports, long-term shelter users can be prioritized for psychiatric care, and shelters can return to their original mandate of being places where people who are temporarily homeless and in transition can get the help they need

Making Sure Orphan Drugs Don’t Get Left Behind

Orphan drugs developed to treat rare diseases are expensive, thus making it difficult for provincial governments to cover their costs and for patients to acquire them. However, a streamlined method of setting guidelines for coverage using a cost-based regulatory model could help patients get access to the drugs while ensuring manufacturers are fairly compensated. Currently, governments can justify covering cost-effective drugs. Manufacturing costs, including research and development, typically put orphan drugs over any threshold of cost-effectiveness because so few patients use them. Thus, governments either decline coverage or end up funding the drugs under pressure from patient advocacy groups. Without adequate compensation for their efforts, manufacturers will have no incentive to develop orphan drugs. A cost-based regulatory model, including yardstick pricing, would improve access to orphan drugs because it creates incentives for companies to lower their costs. Yardsticking means that prices are set using industry benchmarks and firms that successfully lower their costs below those of competitors can profit by it. Under this system, the government could still apply an initial cost-effectiveness test. In cases where that threshold is not met, the cost-based regulatory model would be used to decide upon the maximum price at which the drug would be covered. This would be done through an estimated, benchmarked, capital cost based on the average cost of drug development across the pharmaceutical industry, and take into consideration the probability of success. Such an approach would allow governments to bargain over a drug’s price, yet still create incentives for companies to develop orphan drugs at the lowest possible costs

The Fiscal, Social and Economic Dividends of Feeling Better and Living Longer

While Canada has socialized most of the costs of treating illness, Canada has maintained a reliance on individuals interacting through private markets to invest in upstream health promotion and disease prevention. The failure of the market to provide the efficient level of upstream investment in health is leading to large and avoidable increases in the need for downstream medical treatment. The way to reduce the future deadweight loss of illness and disease is for provincial governments to address the upstream market failures through an expansion of the scope of public payment for health care to include upstream services for health promotion and disease prevention. Perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, spending public health-care dollars across a broader range of health and wellness services can result in spending less in total, because of the efficiency gains that will come from better health in the population. That is certainly what the evidence from a unique Albertan pilot project leads us to conclude. The Pure North S’Energy Foundation is a philanthropic initiative that pays for and provides preventative health-care services for Albertans drawn from groups that are vulnerable to poor health. This includes homeless people, people suffering from addiction, people with low incomes, people in isolated areas and susceptible seniors. The health improvements observed in those participating in the Pure North program have been significant. Effective health-promotion and disease-prevention services obviously benefit patients. But there are also substantial benefits to society as well. The annual health-care bill for a Canadian in poor health is estimated to be more than $10,000 higher than for someone in good health, meaning that keeping people in good health can be an important means for controlling public health-care budgets, and can free up scarce acutecare hospital resources. If the Pure North program were scaled-up province-wide to cover the nearly quartermillion Albertans in poor health, the resulting health improvement seen in Pure North participants could translate into a nearly 25-per-cent reduction in hospital days used by Alberta patients every year and a net savings of$500 million on hospital and physician costs. That does not even include the economic benefits of keeping workers in better health and productive, while spending fewer days ill or hospitalized. To date, Canada’s approach to health care has largely left it to patients to choose whether to seek healthpromotion and disease-prevention services on their own, suggesting an implicit deference to an individual’s rights and responsibilities. But for many low-income, isolated, addicted or aboriginal Canadians, there often is no choice: These services, when delivered privately, are often too expensive or may be otherwise inaccessible. The initial spirit behind Canadian medicare was to correct a health-market failure, so that no patient would face barriers to accessing necessary treatments. That same philosophy also recommends extending universal coverage for health-promotion and disease-prevention to vulnerable Canadians who today face similar barriers to access. If the Alberta government wants to show both foresight and fairness, the benefits from this kind of program, economically and societally, are simply too attractive to disregard

Bending the Medicare Cost Curve in 12 Months or Less: How Preventative Health Care can Yield Significant Near-Term Savings for Acute Care in Alberta

Over the course of more than 30 years, a series of Canadian government commissions and health policy researchers have repeatedly identified the importance of “bending the cost curve” to sustain publicly funded health care, and the potential to do so through upstream investment in health promotion and disease prevention. So far, however, the level of public investment in prevention represents only a slight portion of total public health care expenditure, largely consisting of traditional public health initiatives such as vaccinations, disease screening and information campaigns. This study of the Pure North S’Energy Foundation’s preventative health care program — wherein health care usage by program participants was measured against age- and sex-matched control samples — finds that the sort of preventative health care services offered by Pure North can lead to genuine and significant near-term cost savings for Canada’s single-payer health care system. Participants in the first year of the program required 25 per cent fewer hospital visits and 17 per cent fewer emergency room visits compared to the control group. Among those who persisted in the program for a year or longer, the effects were even more significant: 45 per cent fewer hospital visits in the year after joining, and 28 per cent fewer visits to emergency departments, compared to the control group. This represents real cost savings for a public health service: From $388 per person who joined the program to$677 per person who persisted beyond the first year. As a proportion of annual health spending for these participants on hospitals, emergency departments and general practitioners, this represents a cost reduction ranging from 22 to 39 per cent. If the Alberta government were able to implement this kind of program provincewide (at an estimated cost of $500 per participant), and were to realize similar results in terms of reduced strain on acute care services, it is possible that the province could free-up the equivalent of 1,632 hospital beds every year. That is roughly the same as building two entirely new hospitals each on the scale of Calgary’s Foothills Medical Centre. This demonstrates that “bending the cost curve” for public health care spending is not merely something that is realizable in the long term, but rather in the immediate future, as quickly as within a year after this kind of program could be implemented province-wide. And yet, the near-term savings in acute care services represent only the first wave of benefits. The prevalence of chronic diseases and conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, cancer and mental illness, have been rising and are projected to keep doing so over the coming decade. The Pure North program aims to prevent and address these health conditions and chronic diseases through a combination of screening and testing, lifestyle modification, nutrition education, the identification of nutritional deficiencies, and dietary supplements. The long-term benefits of a Pure North-style program implemented province-wide in Alberta are likely to be that much greater as the prevalence of diabetes, heart disease, cancer and mental illness is tempered through the use of widespread preventative care. Then there are the broader “indirect benefits” of a generally healthier population: higher labour productivity, higher incomes and greater well-being. These returns to the Alberta government, and taxpayer, have the potential to be as large, if not larger, than the direct benefits of significantly reduced acute care costs

Scaling Relations of Spiral Galaxies

We construct a large data set of global structural parameters for 1300 field and cluster spiral galaxies and explore the joint distribution of luminosity L, optical rotation velocity V, and disk size R at I- and 2MASS K-bands. The I- and K-band velocity-luminosity (VL) relations have log-slopes of 0.29 and 0.27, respectively with sigma_ln(VL)~0.13, and show a small dependence on color and morphological type in the sense that redder, early-type disk galaxies rotate faster than bluer, later-type disk galaxies for most luminosities. The VL relation at I- and K-bands is independent of surface brightness, size and light concentration. The log-slope of the I- and K-band RL relations is a strong function of morphology and varies from 0.25 to 0.5. The average dispersion sigma_ln(RL) decreases from 0.33 at I-band to 0.29 at K, likely due to the 2MASS selection bias against lower surface brightness galaxies. Measurement uncertainties are sigma_ln(V)~0.09, sigma_ln(L)~0.14 and somewhat larger and harder to estimate for ln(R). The color dependence of the VL relation is consistent with expectations from stellar population synthesis models. The VL and RL residuals are largely uncorrelated with each other; the RV-RL residuals show only a weak positive correlation. These correlations suggest that scatter in luminosity is not a significant source of the scatter in the VL and RL relations. The observed scaling relations can be understood in the context of a model of disk galaxies embedded in dark matter halos that invokes low mean spin parameters and dark halo expansion, as we describe in our companion paper (Dutton et al. 2007). We discuss in two appendices various pitfalls of standard analytical derivations of galaxy scaling relations, including the Tully-Fisher relation with different slopes. (Abridged).Comment: Accepted for publication at ApJ. The full document, with high-resolution B&W and colour figures, is available at http://www.astro.queensu.ca/~courteau/papers/VRL2007ApJ.pdf . Our data base for 1303 spiral galaxies is also available at http://www.astro.queensu.ca/~courteau/data/VRL2007.da

Laying the Foundation for Policy: Measuring Local Prevalence for Autism Spectrum Disorder

Claims have been made that families with children living with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been migrating to Alberta because of higher funding available for ASD supports compared to other provinces. The legitimacy of these claims, along with many others about the adequacy or inadequacy of funding for supporting persons living with ASD, has not been evaluated because we simply don’t know how many people in Alberta are living with ASD. Typically in Canada, ASD prevalence is reported in national figures, based on international estimates. Canadian prevalence estimates for ASD are needed. With no national surveillance system in place, national estimates are difficult to determine. In addition, such broad measurements are problematic as they may not adequately inform the service delivery needs for specific jurisdictions. A new study shows that 1,711, or 1 in 94, school age children in the Calgary region have an ASD diagnosis. As this number matches what is often reported for the national prevalence of ASD, it suggests that Alberta’s relatively higher ASD funding is not inducing in-migration of families seeking better support. The data also show that the prevalence is higher in elementary-grade children, with a diagnosis in one of every 86 children. In the senior grades, there are significantly fewer students with ASD diagnoses, specifically within the Calgary Board of Education. There is no evident reason for diagnoses to seemingly dematerialize in the older grades. These students could be dropping out or choosing home-schooling in greater numbers. Possibly there has been an increase in prevalence. These prevalence estimates help to inform the demand for special-needs services within the local school system. In addition, there is growing concern that upon graduation there is a “support cliff” resulting from a less systematized, less generous support system available for adults with neurodevelopmental disability. Families that need support for ASD face enough challenges; it is critical for policy-makers to be aware of the extent of the situation in their own jurisdiction so as to develop the right kinds of supports for these families

A multicentre prospective randomized equivalence trial of a soft bandage and immediate discharge versus current treatment with rigid immobilization for torus fractures of the distal radius in children

Aims Torus fractures are the most common childhood fracture, accounting for 500,000 UK emergency attendances per year. UK treatment varies widely due to lack of scientific evidence. This is the protocol for a randomized controlled equivalence trial of ‘the offer of a soft bandage and immediate discharge’ versus ‘rigid immobilization and follow-up as per the protocol of the treating centre’ in the treatment of torus fractures. Methods Children aged four to 15-years-old inclusive who have sustained a torus/buckle fracture of the distal radius with/without an injury to the ulna are eligible to take part. Baseline pain as measured by the Wong Baker FACES pain scale, function using the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) upper limb, and quality of life (QoL) assessed with the EuroQol EQ-5D-Y will be collected. Each patient will be randomly allocated (1:1, stratified by centre and age group (four to seven years and ≥ eight years) to either a regimen of the offer of a soft bandage and immediate discharge or rigid immobilization and follow-up as per the protocol of the treating centre. Results At day one, three, and seven, data on pain, function, QoL, immobilization, and analgesia will be collected. Three and six weeks after injury, the main outcomes plus data on complications, resource use, and school absence will be collected. The primary outcome is the Wong-Baker FACES pain scale at three days post-randomization. All data will be obtained through electronic questionnaires completed by the participants and/or parents/guardian

Constructing a man-made c-type cytochrome maquette in vivo:electron transfer, oxygen transport and conversion to a photoactive light harvesting maquette

The successful use of man-made proteins to advance synthetic biology requires both the fabrication of functional artificial proteins in a living environment, and the ability of these proteins to interact productively with other proteins and substrates in that environment. Proteins made by the maquette method integrate sophisticated oxidoreductase function into evolutionarily naive, non-computationally designed protein constructs with sequences that are entirely unrelated to any natural protein. Nevertheless, we show here that we can efficiently interface with the natural cellular machinery that covalently incorporates heme into natural cytochromes c to produce in vivo an artificial c-type cytochrome maquette. Furthermore, this c-type cytochrome maquette is designed with a displaceable histidine heme ligand that opens to allow functional oxygen binding, the primary event in more sophisticated functions ranging from oxygen storage and transport to catalytic hydroxylation. To exploit the range of functions that comes from the freedom to bind a variety of redox cofactors within a single maquette framework, this c-type cytochrome maquette is designed with a second, non-heme C, tetrapyrrole binding site, enabling the construction of an elementary electron transport chain, and when the heme C iron is replaced with zinc to create a Zn porphyrin, a light-activatable artificial redox protein. The work we describe here represents a major advance in de novo protein design, offering a robust platform for new c-type heme based oxidoreductase designs and an equally important proof-of-principle that cofactor-equipped man-made proteins can be expressed in living cells, paving the way for constructing functionally useful man-made proteins in vivo