The rarity of direct experiences of nature in an urban population

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.As people live more urbanised lifestyles there is potential to lose daily contact with nature, diminishing access to the wide range of associated health benefits of interacting with nature. Experiences of nature vary widely across populations, but this variation is poorly understood. We surveyed 1,023 residents of an urban population in the UK to measure four distinctly different nature interactions: indirect (viewing nature through a window at work and at home), incidental (spending time outside at work), intentional (time spent in private gardens) and intentional (time spent in public parks). Scaled-up to the whole study population, accumulation curves of the total number of hours per week that people were exposed to each type of nature interaction showed that 75% of nature interactions were experienced by half the population. Moreover, 75% of the interactions of a type where people were actually present in nature were experienced by just 32% of the population. The average hours each individual experienced nature per week varied across interactions: indirect (46.0 ± 27.3 SD), incidental (6.4 ± 12.7 SD), intentional-gardens (2.5 ± 2.9 SD) and intentional-parks (2.3 ± 2.7 SD). Experiencing nature regularly appears to be the exception rather than the norm, with a person’s connection to nature being positively associated with incidental and intentional experiences. This novel study provides baseline information regarding how an urban population experiences different types of nature. Deconstructing nature experience will pave the way for developing recommendations for targeted health outcomes.DTCC, HLH & KJG were funded by NERC grant NE/J015237/1. D.F.S. is supported through ARC Discovery Grant DP120102857 and the Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (CEED, Australia); R.A.F. holds an ARC Future Fellowship

The impact of urbanisation on nature dose and the implications for human health

This is the final version. Available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.The last 100 years have seen a huge change in the global structure of the human population, with the majority of people now living in urban rather than rural environments. An assumed consequence is that people will have fewer experiences of nature, and this could have important consequences given the myriad health benefits that they can gain from such experiences. Alternatively, as experiences of nature become rarer, people might be more likely actively to seek them out, mitigating the negative effects of urbanisation. In this study, we used data for 3000 survey respondents from across the UK, and a nature-dose framework, to determine whether (a) increasing urbanisation is associated with a decrease in the frequency, duration and intensity of nature dose; and (b) differences in nature exposure associated with urbanisation impact on four population health outcomes (depression, self-reported health, social cohesion and physical activity). We found negative exponential relationships between nature dose and the degree of urbanisation. The frequency and duration of dose decreased from rural to suburban environments, followed by little change with further increases in urbanisation. There were weak but positive associations between frequency and duration of dose across all four health domains, while different dimensions of dose showed more positive associations with specific health domains in towns and cities. We show that people in urban areas with a low nature dose tend to have worse health across multiple domains, but have the potential for the greatest gains from spending longer in nature, or living in green areas.D.T.C.C, H.L.H. and K.J.G were supported by the Fragments, Functions, Flows and Urban Ecosystem Services project, NERC grant NE/J015237/1, funded under the NERC Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service Sustainability program

Skewed contributions of individual trees to indirect nature experiences

This is the author accepted manuscript. Final version available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.Exposure to nature is associated with a broad range of benefits to human health. Whilst there has been exploration of how these experiences vary amongst people, the converse – how different individual organisms contribute to human nature experiences – has largely been overlooked. The most common way that people experience nature occurs indirectly, when they are in a room with a natural view. Here, we estimate variation in how individual trees provide indirect nature experiences in an urban human population. As a proxy for its contribution towards indirect nature experiences, within an extended urban area in southern England, UK (n = 612,920) we calculated the number of buildings with line of sight to each tree. We then modelled each tree’s contribution towards these experiences against potential predictors, namely tree height, land ownership, social deprivation, while controlling for human population density. We demonstrate that a small number of trees contribute disproportionately towards indirect nature experiences, with individual trees in socio-economically deprived high density housing falling within the viewscape of significantly more buildings. Further, trees in private gardens were generally more important for providing indirect nature experiences than those in public green spaces. This novel study demonstrates the skewed contribution of different organisms to human population indirect nature experiences. This approach can be applied more broadly to understand how individual organisms provide indirect, incidental and intentional nature experiences. Understanding the ecology behind human nature experiences is an important step towards linking urban design and policy for maximising the health benefits from nature.Natural Environment Research Council (NERC

Doses of neighborhood nature: the benefits for mental health of living with nature

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from OUP via the DOI in this record.Experiences of nature provide many mental health benefits, particularly for people living in urban areas. The natural characteristics of city residents’ neighborhoods are likely to be critical determinants of the daily nature dose that they receive, however which characteristics are important remains unclear. One possibility is that the greatest benefits are provided by characteristics that are most visible during the day and so most likely to be experienced by people. We demonstrate that of five neighborhood nature characteristics tested, vegetation cover and afternoon bird abundances were positively associated with a lower prevalence of depression, anxiety and stress. Further, dose-response modelling shows a threshold response where the population prevalence of mental health issues is significantly lower beyond minimum limits of neighborhood vegetation cover (depression >20% cover, anxiety >30% cover, stress >20% cover). Our findings demonstrate quantifiable associations of mental health with the characteristics of nearby nature that people actually experience

Sisyphus Cooling of Electrically Trapped Polyatomic Molecules

The rich internal structure and long-range dipole-dipole interactions establish polar molecules as unique instruments for quantum-controlled applications and fundamental investigations. Their potential fully unfolds at ultracold temperatures, where a plethora of effects is predicted in many-body physics, quantum information science, ultracold chemistry, and physics beyond the standard model. These objectives have inspired the development of a wide range of methods to produce cold molecular ensembles. However, cooling polyatomic molecules to ultracold temperatures has until now seemed intractable. Here we report on the experimental realization of opto-electrical cooling, a paradigm-changing cooling and accumulation method for polar molecules. Its key attribute is the removal of a large fraction of a molecule's kinetic energy in each step of the cooling cycle via a Sisyphus effect, allowing cooling with only few dissipative decay processes. We demonstrate its potential by reducing the temperature of about 10^6 trapped CH_3F molecules by a factor of 13.5, with the phase-space density increased by a factor of 29 or a factor of 70 discounting trap losses. In contrast to other cooling mechanisms, our scheme proceeds in a trap, cools in all three dimensions, and works for a large variety of polar molecules. With no fundamental temperature limit anticipated down to the photon-recoil temperature in the nanokelvin range, our method eliminates the primary hurdle in producing ultracold polyatomic molecules. The low temperatures, large molecule numbers and long trapping times up to 27 s will allow an interaction-dominated regime to be attained, enabling collision studies and investigation of evaporative cooling toward a BEC of polyatomic molecules

Using zebrafish larval models to study brain injury, locomotor and neuroinflammatory outcomes following intracerebral haemorrhage.

Intracerebral haemorrhage (ICH) is a devastating condition with limited treatment options, and current understanding of pathophysiology is incomplete. Spontaneous cerebral bleeding is a characteristic of the human condition that has proven difficult to recapitulate in existing pre-clinical rodent models. Zebrafish larvae are frequently used as vertebrate disease models and are associated with several advantages, including high fecundity, optical translucency and non-protected status prior to 5 days post-fertilisation. Furthermore, other groups have shown that zebrafish larvae can exhibit spontaneous ICH. The aim of this study was to investigate whether such models can be utilised to study the pathological consequences of bleeding in the brain, in the context of pre-clinical ICH research. Here, we compared existing genetic (bubblehead) and chemically inducible (atorvastatin) zebrafish larval models of spontaneous ICH and studied the subsequent disease processes. Through live, non-invasive imaging of transgenic fluorescent reporter lines and behavioural assessment we quantified brain injury, locomotor function and neuroinflammation following ICH. We show that ICH in both zebrafish larval models is comparable in timing, frequency and location. ICH results in increased brain cell death and a persistent locomotor deficit. Additionally, in haemorrhaged larvae we observed a significant increase in macrophage recruitment to the site of injury. Live in vivo imaging allowed us to track active macrophage-based phagocytosis of dying brain cells 24 hours after haemorrhage. Morphological analyses and quantification indicated that an increase in overall macrophage activation occurs in the haemorrhaged brain. Our study shows that in zebrafish larvae, bleeding in the brain induces quantifiable phenotypic outcomes that mimic key features of human ICH. We hope that this methodology will enable the pre-clinical ICH community to adopt the zebrafish larval model as an alternative to rodents, supporting future high throughput drug screening and as a complementary approach to elucidating crucial mechanisms associated with ICH pathophysiology

Intraocular lenses in age-related macular degeneration

Purpose: The aim of this work is to review the lenses, assessing their advantages and disadvantages. We describe a total of seven types of intraocular lenses (IOLs) recommended for age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Methods: We used the PubMed web platform to search for implantable devices in various stages of AMD. We searched for both prospective and retrospective studies and also case reports. Results: Clinical results in AMD patients have been described for a total of seven types of IOLs recommended for AMD: an implantable miniature telescope (IMT), IOL-VIP System, Lipshitz macular implant (LMI), sulcus-implanted Lipshitz macular implant, LMI-SI, Fresnel Prism Intraocular Lens, iolAMD and Scharioth Macula Lens. Conclusions: We conclude that to objectively ascertain the effectiveness and safety of these lenses, further independent clinical studies with longer follow-up data are necessary prior to the general use of these optical devices

Ultracold dense gas of deeply bound heteronuclear molecules

Recently, the quest for an ultracold and dense ensemble of polar molecules has attracted strong interest. Polar molecules have bright prospects for novel quantum gases with long-range and anisotropic interactions, for quantum information science, and for precision measurements. However, high-density clouds of ultracold polar molecules have so far not been produced. Here, we report a key step towards this goal. Starting from an ultracold dense gas of heteronuclear 40K-87Rb Feshbach molecules with typical binding energies of a few hundred kHz and a negligible dipole moment, we coherently transfer these molecules into a vibrational level of the ground-state molecular potential bound by >10 GHz. We thereby increase the binding energy and the expected dipole moment of the 40K-87Rb molecules by more than four orders of magnitude in a single transfer step. Starting with a single initial state prepared with Feshbach association, we achieve a transfer efficiency of 84%. While dipolar effects are not yet observable, the presented technique can be extended to access much more deeply bound vibrational levels and ultimately those exhibiting a significant dipole moment. The preparation of an ultracold quantum gas of polar molecules might therefore come within experimental reach.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Lithic technological responses to Late Pleistocene glacial cycling at Pinnacle Point Site 5-6, South Africa

There are multiple hypotheses for human responses to glacial cycling in the Late Pleistocene, including changes in population size, interconnectedness, and mobility. Lithic technological analysis informs us of human responses to environmental change because lithic assemblage characteristics are a reflection of raw material transport, reduction, and discard behaviors that depend on hunter-gatherer social and economic decisions. Pinnacle Point Site 5-6 (PP5-6), Western Cape, South Africa is an ideal locality for examining the influence of glacial cycling on early modern human behaviors because it preserves a long sequence spanning marine isotope stages (MIS) 5, 4, and 3 and is associated with robust records of paleoenvironmental change. The analysis presented here addresses the question, what, if any, lithic assemblage traits at PP5-6 represent changing behavioral responses to the MIS 5-4-3 interglacial-glacial cycle? It statistically evaluates changes in 93 traits with no a priori assumptions about which traits may significantly associate with MIS. In contrast to other studies that claim that there is little relationship between broad-scale patterns of climate change and lithic technology, we identified the following characteristics that are associated with MIS 4: increased use of quartz, increased evidence for outcrop sources of quartzite and silcrete, increased evidence for earlier stages of reduction in silcrete, evidence for increased flaking efficiency in all raw material types, and changes in tool types and function for silcrete. Based on these results, we suggest that foragers responded to MIS 4 glacial environmental conditions at PP5-6 with increased population or group sizes, 'place provisioning', longer and/or more intense site occupations, and decreased residential mobility. Several other traits, including silcrete frequency, do not exhibit an association with MIS. Backed pieces, once they appear in the PP5-6 record during MIS 4, persist through MIS 3. Changing paleoenvironments explain some, but not all temporal technological variability at PP5-6.Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada; NORAM; American-Scandinavian Foundation; Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia [SFRH/BPD/73598/2010]; IGERT [DGE 0801634]; Hyde Family Foundations; Institute of Human Origins; National Science Foundation [BCS-9912465, BCS-0130713, BCS-0524087, BCS-1138073]; John Templeton Foundation to the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State Universit

Determinants of Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) in the Multiethnic Singapore Population - A National Cohort Study

Background: HRQoL is an important outcome to guide and promote healthcare. Clinical and socioeconomic factors may influence HRQoL according to ethnicity. Methodology: A multiethnic cross-sectional national cohort (N = 7198) of the Singapore general population consisting of Chinese (N = 4873), Malay (N = 1167) and Indian (N = 1158) adults were evaluated using measures of HRQoL (SF-36 version 2), family functioning, health behaviours and clinical/laboratory assessments. Multiple regression analyses were performed to identify determinants of physical and mental HRQoL in the overall population and their potential differential effects by ethnicity. No a priori hypotheses were formulated so all interaction effects were explored. Principal Findings: HRQoL levels differed between ethnic groups. Chinese respondents had higher physical HRQoL (PCS) than Indian and Malay participants (p<0.001) whereas mental HRQoL (MCS) was higher in Malay relative to Chinese participants (p<0.001). Regressions models explained 17.1% and 14.6% of variance in PCS and MCS respectively with comorbid burden, income and employment being associated with lower HRQoL. Age and family were associated only with MCS. The effects of gender, stroke and musculoskeletal conditions on PCS varied by ethnicity, suggesting non-uniform patterns of association for Chinese, Malay and Indian individuals. Conclusions: Differences in HRQoL levels and determinants of HRQoL among ethnic groups underscore the need to better or differentially target population segments to promote well-being. More work is needed to explore HRQoL and wellness in relation to ethnicity