Low-cost automated vectors and modular environmental sensors for plant phenotyping

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. High-throughput plant phenotyping in controlled environments (growth chambers and glasshouses) is often delivered via large, expensive installations, leading to limited access and the increased relevance of “affordable phenotyping” solutions. We present two robot vectors for automated plant phenotyping under controlled conditions. Using 3D-printed components and readily-available hardware and electronic components, these designs are inexpensive, flexible and easily modified to multiple tasks. We present a design for a thermal imaging robot for high-precision time-lapse imaging of canopies and a Plate Imager for high-throughput phenotyping of roots and shoots of plants grown on media plates. Phenotyping in controlled conditions requires multi-position spatial and temporal monitoring of environmental conditions. We also present a low-cost sensor platform for environmental monitoring based on inexpensive sensors, microcontrollers and internet-of-things (IoT) protocols

Second generation anticoagulant rodenticide residues in barn owls 2018

The current report is the fourth in a series of annual reports that describe the monitoring of second generation anticoagulant rodenticide (SGAR) liver residues in barn owls Tyto alba in Britain. This work is an element of an overarching monitoring programme undertaken to track the outcomes of stewardship activities associated with the use of anticoagulant rodenticides. The barn owl is used for exposure monitoring as it is considered a sentinel for species that are generalist predators of small mammals in rural areas. The specific work reported here is the measurement of liver SGAR residues in 100 barn owls that died in 2018 in locations across Britain. The residue data are compared with those from 395 barn owls that died between 2006 and 2012 (hereafter termed baseline years), prior to changes in anticoagulant rodenticide (AR) authorisations and onset of stewardship. As in the baseline years, the compounds detected most frequently in barn owls that died in 2018 were bromadiolone, difenacoum and brodifacoum. Overall, 87% of the owls had detectable liver residues of one or more SGAR. The metrics to be used for stewardship monitoring are reported below in terms of differences between owls that died in 2018 and in baseline years. Numbers of barn owls containing detectable residues of flocoumafen and difethialone. There was no significant difference in the proportion of barn owls with detectable liver residues of flocoumafen between the baseline years and 2018. There was a significantly higher proportion of barn owls with detectable liver residues of difethialone in 2018 compared to baseline years (8% vs 0.3% ). The ratio of birds with ”low” (100 ng/g wet wt.) concentrations for any single SGAR or for ∑SGARs. There was no significant difference between barn owls from baseline years and from 2018 for any individual compound or for summed SGARs (∑SGARs), although a decrease in the proportion of birds with “high” difenacoum residues approached significance. Average concentrations of brodifacoum, difenacoum, bromadiolone and ∑SGARs in the cohort of owls with “low” residues (100 ng/g ww). There was no significant difference between barn owls from baseline years and from 2018 in the concentrations of either “low” or “high” residues for bromadiolone, difenacoum (data tested statistically only for “low residues”), all residues summed (∑SGARs), or “high” brodifacoum residues. The median concentration of “low” brodifacoum residues was higher in birds from 2018 than in baseline years. Overall, there were few differences in liver SGAR accumulation between barn owls that died in baseline years and in 2018. The lack of significant reductions in SGAR residues in barn owls in 2018 suggests that full implementation of stewardship since 2016 has yet to result in a reduction in exposure of barn owls to SGARs

A person-centred analysis of the time-use, daily activities and health-related quality of life of Irish school-going late adolescents

Purpose: The health, well-being and quality of life of the world’s 1.2 billion adolescents are global priorities. A focus on their patterns or profiles of time-use and how these relate to health-related quality of life (HRQoL) may help to enhance their well-being and address the increasing burden of non-communicable diseases in adulthood. This study sought to establish whether distinct profiles of adolescent 24-h time-use exist and to examine the relationship of any identified profiles to self-reported HRQoL.Method: This cross-sectional study gathered data from a random sample of 731 adolescents (response rate 52 %) from 28 schools (response rate 76 %) across Cork city and county. A person-centred approach, latent profile analysis, was used to examine adolescent 24-h time-use and relate the identified profiles to HRQoL.Results: Three male profiles emerged, namely productive, high leisure and all-rounder. Two female profiles, higher study/lower leisure and moderate study/higher leisure, were identified. The quantitative and qualitative differences in male and female profiles support the gendered nature of adolescent time-use. No unifying trends emerged in the analysis of probable responses in the HRQoL domains across profiles. Females in the moderate study/higher leisure group were twice as likely to have above-average global HRQoL.Conclusion: Distinct time-use profiles can be identified amongst adolescents, but their relationship with HRQoL is complex. Rich mixed-method research is required to illuminate our understanding of how quantities and qualities of time-use shape lifestyle patterns and how these can enhance the HRQoL of adolescents in the twenty-first century

The acute angiogenic signalling response to low-load resistance exercise with blood flow restriction

This study investigated protein kinase activation and gene expression of angiogenic factors in response to low-load resistance exercise with or without blood flow restriction (BFR). In a repeated measures cross-over design, six males performed four sets of bilateral knee extension exercise at 20% 1RM (reps per set = 30:15:15:continued to fatigue) with BFR (110 mmHg) and without (CON). Muscle biopsies were obtained from the vastus lateralis before, 2 and 4 h post-exercise. mRNA expression was determined using real-time RT-PCR. Protein phosphorylation/expression was determined using Western blot. p38MAPK phosphorylation was greater (p = 0.05) at 2 h following BFR (1.3 ± 0.8) compared to CON (0.4 ± 0.3). AMPK phosphorylation remained unchanged. PGC-1α mRNA expression increased at 2 h (5.9 ± 1.3 vs. 2.1 ± 0.8; p = 0.03) and 4 h (3.2 ± 0.8 vs. 1.5 ± 0.4; p = 0.03) following BFR exercise with no change in CON. PGC-1α protein expression did not change following either exercise. BFR exercise enhanced mRNA expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) at 2 h (5.2 ± 2.8 vs 1.7 ± 1.1; p = .02) and 4 h (6.8 ± 4.9 vs. 2.5 ± 2.7; p = .01) compared to CON. mRNA expression of VEGF-R2 and hypoxia-inducible factor 1α increased following BFR exercise but only eNOS were enhanced relative to CON. Matrix metalloproteinase-9 mRNA expression was not altered in response to either exercise. Acute low-load resistance exercise with BFR provides a targeted angiogenic response potentially mediated through enhanced ischaemic and shear stress stimuli

Public policies, law and bioethics: : a framework for producing public health policy across the European Union

Unlike the duties of clinicians to patients, professional standards for ethical practice are not well defined in public health. This is mainly due to public health practice having to reconcile tensions between public and private interest(s). This involves at times being paternalistic, while recognising the importance of privacy and autonomy, and at the same time balancing the interests of some against those of others. The Public Health specialist operates at the macro level, frequently having to infer the wishes and needs of individuals that make up a population and may have to make decisions where the interests of people conflict. This is problematic when devising policy for small populations; however, it becomes even more difficult when there is responsibility for many communities or nation states. Under the Treaty on European Union, the European Commission was given a competence in public health. Different cultures will give different moral weight to protecting individual interests versus action for collective benefit. However, even subtle differences in moral preferences may cause problems in deriving public health policy within the European Union. Understanding the extent to which different communities perceive issues such as social cohesion by facilitating cultural dialogues will be vital if European institutions are to work towards new forms of citizenship. The aim of EuroPHEN was to derive a framework for producing common approaches to public health policy across Europe. Little work has been done on integrating ethical analysis with empirical research, especially on trade-offs between private and public interests. The disciplines of philosophy and public policy have been weakly connected. Much of the thinking on public health ethics has hitherto been conducted in the United States of America, and an ethical framework for public health within Europe would need to reflect the greater respect for values such as solidarity and integrity which are more highly valued in Europe. Towards this aim EuroPHEN compared the organisation of public health structures and public policy responses to selected public health problems in Member States to examine how public policy in different countries weighs competing claims of private and public interest. Ethical analysis was performed of tensions between the private and public interest in the context of various ethical theories, principles and traditions. During autumn 2003, 96 focus groups were held across 16 European Union Member States exploring public attitudes and values to public versus private interests. The groups were constructed to allow examination of differences in attitudes between countries and demographic groups (age, gender, smoking status, educational level and parental and marital status). Focus group participants discussed issues such as attitudes to community; funding of public services; rights and responsibilities of citizens; rules and regulations; compulsory car seat belts; policies to reduce tobacco consumption; Not-In-My-Back-Yard arguments; banning of smacking of children; legalising cannabis and parental choice with regards to immunisation. This project proposes a preliminary framework and stresses that a European policy of Public Health will have to adopt a complex, pluralistic and dynamic goal structure, capable of accommodating variations in what specific goals should be prioritised in the specific socio-economic settings of individual countries

The Economics of Debt Collection: Enforcement of Consumer Credit Contract,”

Abstract In the U.S., third-party debt collection agencies employ more than 140,000 people and recover more than $50 billion each year, mostly from consumers. Informational, legal, and other factors suggest that original creditors should have an advantage in collecting debts owed to them. Then, why does the debt collection industry exist and why is it so large? Explanations based on economies of scale or specialization cannot address many of the observed stylized facts. We develop an application of common agency theory that better explains those facts. The model explains how reliance on an unconcentrated industry of third-party debt collection agencies can implement an equilibrium with more intense collections activity than creditors would implement by themselves. We derive empirical implications for the nature of the debt collection market and the structure of the debt collection industry. A welfare analysis shows that, under certain conditions, an equilibrium in which creditors rely on third-party debt collectors can generate more credit supply and aggregate borrower surplus than an equilibrium where lenders collect debts owed to them on their own. There are, however, situations where the opposite is true. The model also suggests a number of policy instruments that may improve the functioning of the collections market

A genome-wide investigation of adaptive signatures in protein-coding genes related to tool behaviour in New Caledonian and Hawaiian crows

Funding: A David Phillips Fellowship to C.R. from the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC; grant BB/G023913/2). Further funding for personnel and data generation of the remaining species was provided by the European Research Council (ERCStG-336536 FuncSpecGen to J.B.W.W.), the Swedish Research Council Vetenskapsrådet (621-2013-4510 to J.B.W.W.), the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (to J.B.W.W.), the Lawski foundation (to V.E.K. and J.B.W.W.) and the German Research Foundation (KU 3402/1-1 to V.E.K.). A Marsden Fund Grant to G.R.H., R.D.G. and N.J.G. from the Royal Society of New Zealand (UOA1208), a Japanese Society for Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellowship (H.A.), together with funding from University of Auckland (G.R.H. and R.D.G.), the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, and University of Otago (N.J.G.). N.D. acknowledges funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation (P2SKP3_165031 and P300PA_177845) and the Carl Tryggers Foundation.Very few animals habitually manufacture and use tools. It has been suggested that advanced tool behaviour co-evolves with a suite of behavioural, morphological and life-history traits. In fact, there are indications for such an adaptive complex in tool-using crows (genus Corvus species). Here, we sequenced the genomes of two habitually tool-using and ten non-tool-using crow species to search for genomic signatures associated with a tool-using lifestyle. Using comparative genomic and population genetic approaches, we screened for signals of selection in protein-coding genes in the tool-using New Caledonian and Hawaiian crows. While we detected signals of recent selection in New Caledonian crows near genes associated with bill morphology, our data indicate that genetic changes in these two lineages are surprisingly subtle, with little evidence at present for convergence. We explore the biological explanations for these findings, such as the relative roles of gene regulation and protein-coding changes, as well as the possibility that statistical power to detect selection in recently diverged lineages may have been insufficient. Our study contributes to a growing body of literature aiming to decipher the genetic basis of recently evolved complex behaviour.PostprintPeer reviewe

Second generation anticoagulant rodenticide residues in barn owls 2019

The fifth in a series of annual reports describing the magnitude of second generation anticoagulant rodenticide (SGAR) liver residues in barn owls Tyto alba in Britain

Second generation anticoagulant rodenticide residues in barn owls 2017

CEH contract report to the Campaign for Responsible Rodenticide Use (CRRU) UK. A wide range of avian and mammalian predators and scavengers in rural Britain is known to be exposed to Second Generation Anticoagulant Rodenticides (SGARs). The barn owl Tyto alba is a sentinel for species that are generalist predators of small mammals in rural areas in the UK and monitoring of liver SGAR residues in barn owls has been adopted as an element of the monitoring undertaken as part of anticoagulant rodenticide stewardship. Monitoring of liver SGAR residues in some 100 barn owls per year is conducted in support of stewardship and annually collected data are compared with those from 395 barn owls that died between 2006 and 2012 (hereafter termed baseline years), prior to the 2016 changes in anticoagulant rodenticide (AR) authorisations and onset of stewardship. The rationale for using data on SGAR residues in barn owls that died between 2006 and 2012 as a baseline was that all measurements had been made using the same analytical techniques, there had been little clear change in exposure over that time period, and the data were the most recent available. The aim of the current study was to measure SGAR exposure in barn owls in 2017. As in the baseline years, the compounds detected most frequently in barn owls that died in 2017 were bromadiolone, difenacoum and brodifacoum. Overall, 90% of the owls had detectable liver residues of one or more SGAR. The metrics to be used for stewardship monitoring are reported below in terms of differences between owls that died in 2017 and in baseline years. Numbers of barn owls containing detectable residues of flocoumafen and difethialone. There was no significant difference in the proportion of barn owls with detectable liver residues of either flocoumafen or difethialone between the baseline years and 2017. The ratio of birds with ”low” (100 ng/g wet wt.) concentrations for any single SGAR or for ∑SGARs. There was no significant difference between barn owls from baseline years and from 2017 for any individual compound or for summed SGARs (∑SGARs) Average concentrations of brodifacoum, difenacoum, bromadiolone and ∑SGARs in the cohort of owls with “low” residues (100 ng/g wet wt.). There was no significant difference between barn owls from baseline years and from 2017 in the concentrations of either “low” or “high” residues for bromadiolone, difenacoum and brodifacoum, or for all residues summed (∑SGARs). Although not statistically significant, the median and 75th percentile values of “low residues” of most compounds and ∑SGARs were lower in 2017 [and 2016] than in the baseline years Overall, the lack of statistically significant differences in SGAR accumulation by barn owls in 2017 compared within baseline years suggests that full implementation of stewardship since 2016 has yet to be reflected by a detectable general reduction in exposure of barn owls

Second generation anticoagulant rodenticide residues in barn owls 2020

The current report is the sixth in a series of annual reports that describe the monitoring of second generation anticoagulant rodenticide (SGAR) liver residues in barn owls Tyto alba in Britain. This work is an element of an overarching monitoring programme undertaken to track the outcomes of stewardship activities associated with the use of anticoagulant rodenticides. The barn owl is used for exposure monitoring as it is considered a sentinel for species that are generalist predators of small mammals in rural areas. The specific work reported here is the measurement of liver SGAR residues in 100 barn owls that died in 2020 at locations across Britain. The residue data are compared with those from 395 barn owls that died between 2006 and 2012 (hereafter termed baseline years), prior to changes in anticoagulant rodenticide (AR) authorisations and onset of stewardship. As in the baseline years, the compounds detected most frequently in barn owls that died in 2020 were brodifacoum, bromadiolone, and difenacoum. Overall, 88% of the owls had detectable liver residues of one or more SGAR. Numbers of barn owls containing detectable residues of flocoumafen and difethialone. There was no significant difference in the proportion of barn owls with detectable liver residues of flocoumafen between the baseline years and 2020. There was a significantly higher proportion of barn owls with detectable liver residues of difethialone in 2020 compared to baseline years (5% vs 0.3%) but it was lower than in some of the intervening years (2016-2019). The ratio of birds with “low” (100 ng/g wet wt.) concentrations for any single SGAR or for ∑SGARs. There were significantly higher proportion of birds from 2020 with “high” concentrations of brodifacoum and summed SGARs (ƩSGARs) detected in their livers compared to baseline years. Average concentrations of brodifacoum, difenacoum, bromadiolone and ∑SGARs in the cohort of owls with “low” residues (100 ng/g wet wt.). There was no significant difference between barn owls from baseline years and from 2020 in the concentrations of either “low” or “high” residues for all residues summed (∑SGARs), bromadiolone and difenacoum, or “high” brodifacoum residues. The median concentration of “low” brodifacoum residues was higher in birds from 2020 than in baseline years. Overall, there were few differences in liver SGAR accumulation between barn owls that died in baseline years and in 2020, the eception being a potential increase brodifacoum residues. The lack of significant reductions in SGAR residues in barn owls in 2020 suggests that full implementation of stewardship since 2018 has yet to result in a statistically significant reduction in exposure of barn owls to SGARs