The multifactorial role of the 3Rs in shifting the harm-benefit analysis in animal models of disease

AbstractEthics on animal use in science in Western society is based on utilitarianism, weighing the harms and benefits to the animals involved against those of the intended human beneficiaries. The 3Rs concept (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement) is both a robust framework for minimizing animal use and suffering (addressing the harms to animals) and a means of supporting high quality science and translation (addressing the benefits). The ambiguity of basic research performed early in the research continuum can sometimes make harm-benefit analysis more difficult since anticipated benefit is often an incremental contribution to a field of knowledge. On the other hand, benefit is much more evident in translational research aimed at developing treatments for direct application in humans or animals suffering from disease. Though benefit may be easier to define, it should certainly not be considered automatic. Issues related to model validity seriously compromise experiments and have been implicated as a major impediment in translation, especially in complex disease models where harms to animals can be intensified. Increased investment and activity in the 3Rs is delivering new research models, tools and approaches with reduced reliance on animal use, improved animal welfare, and improved scientific and predictive value

Nature’s contributions to people and the Sustainable Development Goals in Nepal

Nature's contributions to people (NCPs) underpin the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) but are declining globally. It is therefore critical to identify the drivers of changes in NCPs, and to understand how and where NCPs can contribute towards the achievement of the SDGs. By integrating the conceptual framework of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBESs) and the SDGs, we can obtain a better understanding of how changes in the state of NCPs support or hinder attainment of the SDGs, and how changes in NCPs are driven by development interventions. We conducted a systematic synthesis of the literature to determine the state of research on NCPs, trends in NCPs and their drivers, and the contribution of NCPs towards achieving the SDGs in Nepal, a low-income and highly biodiverse country. We found that NCPs contributed positively towards the achievement of 12 SDGs. However, NCPs were reported to be declining across Nepal, ultimately undermining Nepal's ability to achieve SDG targets. The major direct drivers of decline were land-use change, over-exploitation, and climate change. These direct drivers were linked to conventional development interventions, including agricultural expansion and the construction of road and energy infrastructure. However, some interventions, such as community forestry and protected areas, increased the supply of NCPs. Better integration of Indigenous knowledge and local practices was also reported to be effective in improving the provision of NCPs and contributing to improving livelihoods at local scales. We identified opportunities for further research in NCPs, particularly in increasing geographical representativeness and improving our understanding of non-material NCPs. Our approach of combining the IPBES conceptual framework and the SDGs enabled us to more comprehensively identify how progress towards the SDGs are mediated by NCPs and provides actionable guidelines for how to take more integrative measures to achieve the SDGs in Nepal and countries facing similar development challenges

Formalizing artisanal and small-scale gold mining : A grand challenge of the Minamata Convention

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is the world's largest source of anthropogenic mercury emissions and releases. These have devastating consequences for miners' health and the environment. Most of the >20 million ASGM miners worldwide are not officially recognized, registered, regulated, or protected by state laws. Formalization-the process of organizing, registering, and reforming ASGM-is mandated by the Minamata Convention on Mercury. Previous attempts to reduce mercury emissions from ASGM have largely failed. Our perspective argues that signatories to the Convention will only succeed in reducing ASGM mercury emissions and releases with comprehensive bottom-up formalization approaches centered around working with miners, and significant external funding from consumers, large mining corporations, and governments. The approximate global 5-year cost of this approach could be US$355 million (upper and lower estimate bounds: US$213-742 million) if scaled per country, or US$808 million (US$248 million-US$2.17 billion) if scaled per miner.Peer reviewe

A multi‐methods approach for assessing how conserving biodiversity interacts with other sustainable development goals in Nepal

Achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs) requires a context-specific understanding of how actions to achieve one goal interact with others. We analyzed statistical data, and conducted online surveys and interviews with conservation professionals to understand how terrestrial conservation goals (SDG 15: Life on land) influence and are influenced by other goals in Nepal. Our findings suggest that SDG 15 synergized with economic growth (SDG 8), gender equality (SDG 5), water access (SDG 6), sustainable production and consumption (SDG 12), and climate action (SDG 13), but traded off with food security (SDG 2), energy access (SDG 7), poverty alleviation (SDG 1), and infrastructure development (SDG 9). Increased multi-sectoral collaboration between conservation and development stakeholders is urgently needed to address the negative impacts of other goals on SDG 15. Additionally, conservation measures in Nepal can benefit from being more people-focused, participatory, and contextualized to mitigate negative impacts on socioeconomic goals

Adaptive responses to cool climate promotes persistence of a non-native lizard

Successful establishment and range expansion of non-native species often require rapid accommodation of novel environments. Here, we use common-garden experiments to demonstrate parallel adaptive evolutionary response to a cool climate in populations of wall lizards (Podarcis muralis) introduced from southern Europe into England. Low soil temperatures in the introduced range delay hatching, which generates directional selection for a shorter incubation period. Non-native lizards from two separate lineages have responded to this selection by retaining their embryos for longer before oviposition-hence reducing the time needed to complete embryogenesis in the nest-and by an increased developmental rate at low temperatures. This divergence mirrors local adaptation across latitudes and altitudes within widely distributed species and suggests that evolutionary responses to climate can be very rapid. When extrapolated to soil temperatures encountered in nests within the introduced range, embryo retention and faster developmental rate result in one to several weeks earlier emergence compared with the ancestral state. We show that this difference translates into substantial survival benefits for offspring. This should promote short- and long-term persistence of non-native populations, and ultimately enable expansion into areas that would be unattainable with incubation duration representative of the native range

Design of the Subpopulations and Intermediate Outcome Measures in COPD (SPIROMICS) AIR Study.

IntroductionPopulation-based epidemiological evidence suggests that exposure to ambient air pollutants increases hospitalisations and mortality from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), but less is known about the impact of exposure to air pollutants on patient-reported outcomes, morbidity and progression of COPD.Methods and analysisThe Subpopulations and Intermediate Outcome Measures in COPD (SPIROMICS) Air Pollution Study (SPIROMICS AIR) was initiated in 2013 to investigate the relation between individual-level estimates of short-term and long-term air pollution exposures, day-to-day symptom variability and disease progression in individuals with COPD. SPIROMICS AIR builds on a multicentre study of smokers with COPD, supplementing it with state-of-the-art air pollution exposure assessments of fine particulate matter, oxides of nitrogen, ozone, sulfur dioxide and black carbon. In the parent study, approximately 3000 smokers with and without airflow obstruction are being followed for up to 3 years for the identification of intermediate biomarkers which predict disease progression. Subcohorts undergo daily symptom monitoring using comprehensive daily diaries. The air monitoring and modelling methods employed in SPIROMICS AIR will provide estimates of individual exposure that incorporate residence-specific infiltration characteristics and participant-specific time-activity patterns. The overarching study aim is to understand the health effects of short-term and long-term exposures to air pollution on COPD morbidity, including exacerbation risk, patient-reported outcomes and disease progression.Ethics and disseminationThe institutional review boards of all the participating institutions approved the study protocols. The results of the trial will be presented at national and international meetings and published in peer-reviewed journals

CWRML: representing crop wild relative conservation and use data in XML

Background Crop wild relatives are wild species that are closely related to crops. They are valuable as potential gene donors for crop improvement and may help to ensure food security for the future. However, they are becoming increasingly threatened in the wild and are inadequately conserved, both in situ and ex situ. Information about the conservation status and utilisation potential of crop wild relatives is diverse and dispersed, and no single agreed standard exists for representing such information; yet, this information is vital to ensure these species are effectively conserved and utilised. The European Community-funded project, European Crop Wild Relative Diversity Assessment and Conservation Forum, determined the minimum information requirements for the conservation and utilisation of crop wild relatives and created the Crop Wild Relative Information System, incorporating an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) schema to aid data sharing and exchange. Results Crop Wild Relative Markup Language (CWRML) was developed to represent the data necessary for crop wild relative conservation and ensure that they can be effectively utilised for crop improvement. The schema partitions data into taxon-, site-, and population-specific elements, to allow for integration with other more general conservation biology schemata which may emerge as accepted standards in the future. These elements are composed of sub-elements, which are structured in order to facilitate the use of the schema in a variety of crop wild relative conservation and use contexts. Pre-existing standards for data representation in conservation biology were reviewed and incorporated into the schema as restrictions on element data contents, where appropriate. Conclusion CWRML provides a flexible data communication format for representing in situ and ex situ conservation status of individual taxa as well as their utilisation potential. The development of the schema highlights a number of instances where additional standards-development may be valuable, particularly with regard to the representation of population-specific data and utilisation potential. As crop wild relatives are intrinsically no different to other wild plant species there is potential for the inclusion of CWRML data elements in the emerging standards for representation of biodiversity data

Stakeholder perspectives on nature, people and sustainability at Mount Kilimanjaro

Effective approaches towards sustainability need to be informed by a diverse array of stakeholder perspectives. However, capturing these perspectives in a way that can be integrated with other forms of knowledge can represent a challenge. Here we present the first application of the conceptual framework of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) to a participatory assessment of local perspectives on nature, people and sustainability on Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. This assessment was organized in the form of a participatory workshop with five different groups of stakeholders. Following this framework, we assembled information on the state of and trends in species diversity, Nature's Contributions to People (NCP), and on the main drivers of changes in species and habitats. Additionally, we gathered perspectives on the needs and opportunities for the sustainable management and conservation of natural resources from the individual to the international level. The various stakeholders agreed that both the condition and extent of the various habitats and NCP are declining. In line with available knowledge, the key direct drivers of change mentioned by the workshop participants were land use and climate change, whereas human population growth was singled out as the most important indirect driver. The most frequently suggested measures to address the observed decline in species diversity and its drivers were related to land and water management and to education and awareness raising. Yet, the stakeholder groups differed in the measures they suggested. The willingness of a diversity of knowledge holders to systematically engage in a structured discussion around all the elements of the IPBES framework provides support for its applicability in participatory workshops aimed at capturing nuanced and context-based perspectives on social–ecological systems from informed stakeholders. The application of the IPBES framework enabled the comparability needed for developing narratives of stakeholder visions that can help identify new pathways towards sustainability and guide planning while retaining the context-based nuances that remain unresolved with non-participatory methods

Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) : stellar mass functions by Hubble type

This work was supported by the Austrian Science Foundation FWF under grant P23946. AWG was supported under the Australian Research Council's funding scheme FT110100263.We present an estimate of the galaxy stellar mass function and its division by morphological type in the local (0.025 < z < 0.06) Universe. Adopting robust morphological classifications as previously presented (Kelvin et al.) for a sample of 3727 galaxies taken from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly survey, we define a local volume and stellar mass limited sub-sample of 2711 galaxies to a lower stellar mass limit of M = 109.0 MΘ. We confirm that the galaxy stellar mass function is well described by a double-Schechter function given by Μ* = 1010.64 MΘ, α1 = 0.43, φ1* = 4.18 dex-1 Mpc-3, α2 = −1.50 and φ2* = 0.74 dex-1 Mpc-3. The constituent morphological-type stellar mass functions are well sampled above our lower stellar mass limit, excepting the faint little blue spheroid population of galaxies. We find approximately 71-4+3 per cent of the stellar mass in the local Universe is found within spheroid-dominated galaxies; ellipticals and S0-Sas. The remaining 29-3+4 per cent falls predominantly within late-type disc-dominated systems, Sab-Scds and Sd-Irrs. Adopting reasonable bulge-to-total ratios implies that approximately half the stellar mass today resides in spheroidal structures, and half in disc structures. Within this local sample, we find approximate stellar mass proportions for E : S0-Sa : Sab-Scd : Sd-Irr of 34 : 37 : 24 :5.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe