The future of seagrass ecosystem services in a changing world

Seagrass meadows are found growing on beach foreshores throughout the Caribbean. These underwater meadows greatly influence the coastal zone and provide services that benefit marine organisms and human communities, termed ecosystem services. Seagrasses photosynthesise, removing CO2 from the seawater, and provide a food source and habitat for fish, turtles and urchins. Furthermore, as waves travel over the seagrass canopy, the flexible seagrass leaves sway back and forth, removing wave energy and stabilising the sand on the seafloor. In doing so, seagrass meadows protect the beach foreshore slope from erosion. In this PhD, I show how these ecosystem services are dependent on healthy native seagrass meadows and healthy neighbouring ecosystems like coral reefs. When in a good condition, the seagrass meadows can help to naturally maintain stable beaches and make them resilient to extreme storms like category 5 hurricanes. This natural protection reduces the need for human intervention, such as sand nourishments and seawalls. Unfortunately seagrass meadows are under threat from human disturbance, invasive species and lowering coastal water quality. Degradation of tropical seagrass meadows puts tropical beaches at risk from erosion and threatens the many species that are reliant upon them as a food source and habitat. Ensuring seagrass meadows continue to exist is especially vital at this time when we require their ecosystem services to help combat rising sea-level and increasing storminess, which intensify coastal erosion. Continued loss of seagrass habitat will only help to exacerbate the negative effects of climate change facing tropical regions

Influencing side-effects to medicinal treatments : a systematic review of brief psychological interventions

Background: Nocebo effects contribute to a large proportion of the non-specific side-effects attributed to medications and are mainly generated through negative expectations. Previous reviews show that interventions designed to change participants' expectations have a small effect on pain experience. They are also effective in reducing side-effects caused by exposure to sham medications. To date, there has been no review of the influence of such interventions on symptoms attributed to real medicinal treatments. Objective: To review studies using a randomized controlled design testing the effect of brief psychological interventions compared to usual practice on the side-effect experience to medicinal treatments in healthy volunteers and patients. Methods: We searched Web of Science, Scopus, Medline, PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, and Cochrane CENTRAL using search terms for randomized controlled trials along with “nocebo,” “placebo effect,” “medication,” “side-effects,” and associated terms. Studies were eligible if they studied a human population, used an active medicine, delivered a brief psychological intervention intended to influence side-effect reporting compared to usual care or no intervention, and used a randomized controlled design. Because of the heterogeneity of the literature we used a narrative synthesis and assessed evidence quality using the GRADE approach. Results: Our database search and supplementary search of the reference sections of included studies retrieved 50,140 citations. After screening, full text review and manual reference searches, 27 studies were included. The quality of the studies and evidence was judged to be low. The strongest and most consistent effect came from omitting side-effect information, although surprisingly de-emphasizing side-effects did not affect side-effect reporting. Other techniques, including priming, distraction, and altering the perception of branding, produced mixed results. Conclusion: Brief psychological interventions can influence side-effect reporting to active medications. Research is currently investigating new ways to de-emphasize side-effects whilst still upholding informed consent, but larger confirmatory trials with suitable control groups are needed. The literature in this area would be improved by more detailed reporting of studies

Sequencing, Acoustic Separation, and 3-D Negotiation of Complex Barriers: Charlene Barshefsky and IP Rights in China

Taking the perspective of the lead U.S. negotiator, Charlene Barshefsky, this article details and analyzes the negotiations that took place in the mid-1990s between the United States and the People\u27s Republic of China over intellectual property rights (IPR). Employing a negotiation analytic methodology, Charlene Barshefsky\u27s actions are interpreted to suggest a number of promising approaches to managing the daunting complexities of trade and other negotiations: recognizing the multiparty aspects of apparently bilateral dealings and capturing them in a deal diagram; carefully assessing barriers to agreement; sequencing to build a winning coalition and overcome potentially blocking ones; acoustic separation of issueframes; and, most broadly, changing the game advantageously relative to a purely tactical orientation at the table through 3-D actions away from the table

FACTORS INFLUENCING WEST TENNESSEE FARMERS' WILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR A BOLL WEEVIL ERADICATION PROGRAM

Data from a survey were used to evaluate Tennessee farmers' willingness to pay for the boll weevil eradication program. Producer experience, boll weevil control costs, and attitudes about boll weevil damage and insecticide usage after the program were significant explanatory variables and had a positive influence on willingness to pay.Contingent valuation, cotton, regional pest control, pest management groups, Demand and Price Analysis, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Yield instability of winter oilseed rape modulated by early winter temperature

Yield stability is a major problem in oilseed rape with inter-annual variation accounting for between 30–50% of the crop value among the major global rapeseed producers. The United Kingdom has persistent problems with yield instability, but the underlying causes remain unclear. We tested whether temperature plays a role in UK winter oilseed rape (WOSR) yield variation through analysis of aggregated country-wide on-farm yield data and in annual Recommended List variety trial data run by the UK Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB). Our analyses of the two independent datasets both show that mean temperature in early winter is strongly and uniquely linked to variation in WOSR yield, with a rise in mean temperature of 1 °C associated with an average reduction of 113 (+−21) kg ha−1 in yield. We propose that understanding the mechanism by which early winter chilling affects WOSR yield will enable the breeding of varieties with a more stable and resilient yield in Western Europe as climatic variation increases

What is the Best Way to Produce Consensus and Buy in to Guidelines for Rectal Cancer?

Evidence-based guidelines are important tools and common pathways for translating evidence into clinical practice. It is most urgently needed when significant heterogeneity in practice exist. Actively engaging opinion leaders in the process of evidence-based guidelines development is important for several reasons. These include allowing the collective views of the practice communities to be represented, resolving heterogeneity in practice through discussion, and allowing credible recommendations to be formulated. Most importantly, the process itself is a tool for facilitating dissemination and implementation. Recognizing the gap between practice pattern and guideline recommendations, and devising strategies to address it represent an important step toward maximizing concordance between guideline and practice. Evidence-based recommendations serve as important reference points, against which we can measure, debate, and innovate from

The Feasibility of a Using a Smart Button Mobile Health System to Self-Track Medication Adherence and Deliver Tailored Short Message Service Text Message Feedback

BACKGROUND: As many as 50% of people experience medication nonadherence, yet studies for detecting nonadherence and delivering real-time interventions to improve adherence are lacking. Mobile health (mHealth) technologies show promise to track and support medication adherence. OBJECTIVE: The study aimed to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of using an mHealth system for medication adherence tracking and intervention delivery. The mHealth system comprises a smart button device to self-track medication taking, a companion smartphone app, a computer algorithm used to determine adherence and then deliver a standard or tailored SMS (short message service) text message on the basis of timing of medication taking. Standard SMS text messages indicated that the smartphone app registered the button press, whereas tailored SMS text messages encouraged habit formation and systems thinking on the basis of the timing the medications were taken. METHODS: A convenience sample of 5 adults with chronic kidney disease (CKD), who were prescribed antihypertensive medication, participated in a 52-day longitudinal study. The study was conducted in 3 phases, with a standard SMS text message sent in phases 1 (study days 1-14) and 3 (study days 46-52) and tailored SMS text messages sent during phase 2 (study days 15-45) in response to participant medication self-tracking. Medication adherence was measured using: (1) the smart button and (2) electronic medication monitoring caps. Concordance between these 2 methods was evaluated using percentage of measurements made on the same day and occurring within ±5 min of one another. Acceptability was evaluated using qualitative feedback from participants. RESULTS: A total of 5 patients with CKD, stages 1-4, were enrolled in the study, with the majority being men (60%), white (80%), and Hispanic/Latino (40%) of middle age (52.6 years, SD 22.49; range 20-70). The mHealth system was successfully initiated in the clinic setting for all enrolled participants. Of the expected 260 data points, 36.5% (n=95) were recorded with the smart button and 76.2% (n=198) with electronic monitoring. Concordant events (n=94), in which events were recorded with both the smart button and electronic monitoring, occurred 47% of the time and 58% of these events occurred within ±5 min of one another. Participant comments suggested SMS text messages were encouraging. CONCLUSIONS: It was feasible to recruit participants in the clinic setting for an mHealth study, and our system was successfully initiated for all enrolled participants. The smart button is an innovative way to self-report adherence data, including date and timing of medication taking, which were not previously available from measures that rely on recall of adherence. Although the selected smart button had poor concordance with electronic monitoring caps, participants were willing to use it to self-track medication adherence, and they found the mHealth system acceptable to use in most cases

Impaired contextual modulation of memories in PTSD: an fMRI and psychophysiological study of extinction retention and fear renewal

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients display pervasive fear memories, expressed indiscriminately. Proposed mechanisms include enhanced fear learning and impaired extinction or extinction recall. Documented extinction recall deficits and failure to use safety signals could result from general failure to use contextual information, a hippocampus-dependent process. This can be probed by adding a renewal phase to standard conditioning and extinction paradigms. Human subjects with PTSD and combat controls were conditioned (skin conductance response), extinguished, and tested for extinction retention and renewal in a scanner (fMRI). Fear conditioning (light paired with shock) occurred in one context, followed by extinction in another, to create danger and safety contexts. The next day, the extinguished conditioned stimulus (CS+E) was re-presented to assess extinction recall (safety context) and fear renewal (danger context). PTSD patients showed impaired extinction recall, with increased skin conductance and heightened amygdala activity to the extinguished CS+ in the safety context. However, they also showed impaired fear renewal; in the danger context, they had less skin conductance response to CS+E and lower activity in amygdala and ventral-medial prefrontal cortex compared with combat controls. Control subjects displayed appropriate contextual modulation of memory recall, with extinction (safety) memory prevailing in the safety context, and fear memory prevailing in the danger context. PTSD patients could not use safety context to sustain suppression of extinguished fear memory, but they also less effectively used danger context to enhance fear. They did not display globally enhanced fear expression, but rather showed a globally diminished capacity to use contextual information to modulate fear expression