‘Sterile Citizens’ & ‘Excellent Disbursers’: Opium and the Representations of Indentured Migrant Consumption in British Guiana and Trinidad

This article examines the representation of Asian indentured migrants as ‘consumers’ in colonial British Guiana and Trinidad. Focusing on the specific case of opium, it explores how attitudes towards the drug fed into broader debates about socio-economic responsibilities of these labouring communities. After first establishing the considerable revenues which colonial authorities derived from the taxation of opium, the article illustrates the growing calls for migrants to ‘pay back’ to the colonies which had shouldered the cost of their introduction. It also explores how stereotypical representations of Chinese and Indian consumption informed debates about the economic viability of continuing to import various forms of migrant labour. The article argues that migrant consumption mattered, and that understanding why it mattered necessitates a broader understanding of how indentured migration shaped the economic and social histories of various British colonies following emancipation

Impacts of the Desiccation of the Aral Sea on the Central Asian Dust Life‐Cycle

The formation of the Aralkum (Aral Desert), following the severe desiccation of the former Aral Sea since the 1960s, has created what may be regarded as one of the world's most significant anthropogenic dust sources. In this paper, focusing on dust emission and transport patterns from the Aralkum, the dust life‐cycle has been simulated over Central Asia using the aerosol transport model COSMO‐MUSCAT (COnsortium for Small‐scale MOdelling‐MUltiScale Chemistry Aerosol Transport Model), making use of the Global Surface Water data set to take into account the sensitivity to changes in surface water coverage over the region between the 1980s (the “past”) and the 2010s (the “present”). Over a case study 1‐year period, the simulated dust emissions from the Aralkum region increased from 14.3 to 27.1 Tg year−1 between the past and present, an increase driven solely by the changes in the surface water environment. Of these simulated modern emissions, 14.5 Tg are driven by westerly winds, indicating that regions downwind to the east may be worst affected by Aralkum dust. However a high degree of interannual variability in the prevailing surface wind patterns ensures that these transport patterns of Aralkum dust do not occur every year. Frequent cloud cover poses substantial challenges for observations of Central Asian dust: in the Aralkum, over two‐thirds of the yearly emissions are emitted under overcast skies, dust which may be impossible to observe using traditional satellite or ground‐based passive remote sensing techniques. Furthermore, it is apparent that the pattern of dust transport from the Aralkum under clear‐sky conditions is not representative of the pattern under all‐sky conditions

Dust aerosol from the Aralkum Desert influences the radiation budget and atmospheric dynamics of Central Asia

The Aralkum is a new desert created by the desiccation of the Aral Sea and is an efficient source of dust aerosol which perturbs the regional Central Asian radiation balance. COSMO–MUSCAT model simulations are used to quantify the direct radiative effects (DREs) of Aralkum dust, and investigate the associated perturbations to the atmospheric environment. Considering scenarios of “Past” (end of 20th century) and “Present” (beginning of 21st century) defined by differences in surface water coverage, it is found that in the Present scenario the simulated yearly mean net surface DRE across the Aralkum is -1.34Wm-2with a standard deviation ( ±) of 6.19 Wm-2, of which -0.15±1.19 Wm-2comes from dust emitted by the Aralkum. In the atmosphere the yearly mean DRE is -0.62±2.91 Wm-2, of which -0.05±0.51 Wm-2is from Aralkum dust: on the yearly timescale, Aralkum dust is cooling both at the surface and in the atmosphere, due to its optically scattering properties. The daytime surface cooling effect (solar zenith angle ≲70–80°) outweighs the nighttime heating effect and the atmospheric daytime (solar zenith angle ≲60–70°) heating and nighttime cooling effects. Instantaneous Aralkum dust DREs contribute up to -116Wm-2of surface cooling and +54Wm-2of atmospheric heating. Aralkum dust perturbs the surface pressure in the vicinity of the Aralkum by up to +0.76Pa on the monthly timescale, implying a strengthening of the Siberian High in winter and a weakening of the Central Asian heat low in summer. These results highlight the impacts of anthropogenic lakebed dust on regional atmospheric environments

Solar cooking in the sahel

Solar cookers are a cheap, practical tool for sustainable development, which can be built and maintained without access to expensive tools or machinery. Solar cookers require direct sunshine for effective cooking, so clouds or heavy atmospheric dust loads can slow down or prevent their use. Surface meteorological (SYNOP) stations record the daily hours of direct sunshine and were used to generate climatology of days with greater than 6 h available for cooking. The SYNOP dataset is very sparse in many parts of Africa and therefore is complemented by the use of geostationary satellite data. Higher temporal resolution surface insolation records are derived from SEVIRI (Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager) on board the Meteosat Second Generation satellite series by EUMETSAT's Land Satellite Application Facility, but the approach uses fixed aerosol climatology. Direct surface solar irradiance was derived using the Beer-Lambert law using AODs retrieved from SEVIRI. Validation indicates that its capabilities are strongest over drier and less vegetated surfaces such as those found in the Sahara and Sahel. Biomass-burning aerosol may be significant over the Sahel in winter, and SEVIRI AODs may miss this unless it is masked as cloud, although here SYNOP values are still greater than those from SEVIRI

A systematic review and thematic synthesis of patients' experience of medicines adherence

Background: Medicines non-adherence continues to be problematic in health care practice. After decades of research, few interventions have a robust evidence-based demonstrating their applicability to improve adherence. Phenomenology has a place within the health care research environment. Objective: To explore patients’ lived experiences of medicines adherence reported in the phenomenonologic literature. Methods: A systematic literature search was conducted to identify peer-reviewed and published phenomenological investigations in adults that aimed to investigate patients’ lived experiences of medicines adherence. Studies were appraised using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) Qualitative Research Tool. Thematic synthesis was conducted using a combination of manual coding and NVivo10 [QSR International, Melbourne] coding to aid data management. Results: Descriptive themes identified included i) dislike for medicines, ii) survival, iii) perceived need, including a) symptoms and side-effects and b) cost, and iv) routine. Analytic themes identified were i) identity and ii) interaction. Conclusions: This work describes adherence as a social interaction between the identity of patients and medicines, mediated by interaction with family, friends, health care professionals, the media and the medicine, itself. Health care professionals and policy makers should seek to re-locate adherence as a social phenomenon, directing the development of interventions to exploit patient interaction with wider society, such that patients ‘get to know’ their medicines, and how they can be taken, throughout the life of the patient and the prescription

Optimizing process and methods for a living systematic review: 30 search updates and three review updates later

Objective To describe the living systematic review (LSR) process and to share experience of planning, searches, screening, extraction, publishing and dissemination to inform and assist authors planning their own LSR. Many LSR do not publish more than one update, we hope this paper helps to increase this. Study Design and Setting A Cochrane LSR with an international author team that has been ‘living’ for two years, with monthly search updates and three full updates published in this time. LSRs are regularly updated systematic reviews that allow new evidence to be incorporated as it becomes available. LSR are ideally suited to policy-relevant topics where there is uncertainty and new evidence will likely impact the interpretation and/or certainty of outcomes. Results The key features of the process that require consideration are: specifying the frequency of searches and triggers for full updates in the protocol; stakeholder input; publishing and disseminating monthly search findings. A strong team, incorporating methodological and topic expertise, with core members that meet regularly is essential. Regular search updates make it important to have a clear cyclical schedule of activity. To achieve timely updates this process should be streamlined, for example, using automated monthly searches, and systematic reviewing software for screening. LSR provide a unique opportunity to incorporate stakeholder feedback. Conclusions We recommend that LSRs should be: justified; carefully planned including the timing of search updates, triggers for publication and termination; published in a timely manner; have a clear dissemination plan; and a strong core team of authors

Coral of Opportunity Survivorship and the Use of Coral Nurseries in Coral Reef Restoration

Coral reef damage is unfortunately becoming a common occurrence off southeast Florida, U.S.A. Reattachment of the dislodged scleractinian corals usually initiates damage site restoration. Because mortality of dislodged colonies is typically high and natural recovery in southeast Florida is typically slow, transplantation of additional scleractinian corals into a damaged area has been used to accelerate reef recovery. Donor colonies available for transplantation have been grown in situ, grown in laboratories, and taken from nondamaged reef areas. An alternative source of donor colonies for transplantation into damaged sites is “corals of opportunity,” which we define as scleractinian corals that have been detached from the reef through natural processes or unknown events. This paper describes a project, initiated in 2001 in Broward County, Florida, that was developed to collect these dislodged colonies and transplant them to a coral nursery. Coral nurseries are interim locations that function as storage sites for corals of opportunity where they can be cached, stabilized, and allowed to grow, until needed as donor colonies for future restoration activities. This project is a partnership between a local university, county government, and a volunteer dive group. Two hundred and fifty corals of opportunity were collected, transplanted to the coral nurseries, and monitored for survival. Transplanted colony survival was similar to that of naturally attached control colonies and significantly greater than that of corals of opportunity left unattached. Results provide resource managers with information on the utility of using corals of opportunity as a source of transplant donor colonies, and the value of using coral nurseries to create a reserve of corals of opportunity for use in future coral reef restoration activities

Pied-pipers wanted: The search for super-lures of New Zealand mammal pests

​Introduced mammalian competitors and predators are the leading threat to New Zealand’s native wildlife (Craig et al. 2000). The recent Pest Summit (3–4 December, 2012: Linklater 2013a) identified improving ways of detecting and killing mammals as the top three research priorities. One of these was the development of better lures to attract pest mammals to monitoring and killing devices. We have fought conservation battles largely with existing food-based lures. Mammals have been eradicated on islands and their populations depressed on the mainland. But we are not yet winning the war. Eradication of the worst mammal pests remains improbable on the mainland because current technolo-gies cannot operate at the required scale and intensity within probable budgets. The extensive deployment of killing devices for extermination at greater scales is juxtaposed logistically against the intensity of effort required to kill the few last, most difficult to detect, animals

Antidepressants for smoking cessation

Background The pharmacological profiles and mechanisms of antidepressants are varied. However, there are common reasons why they might help people to stop smoking tobacco: nicotine withdrawal can produce short‐term low mood that antidepressants may relieve; and some antidepressants may have a specific effect on neural pathways or receptors that underlie nicotine addiction. Objectives To assess the evidence for the efficacy, harms, and tolerability of medications with antidepressant properties in assisting long‐term tobacco smoking cessation in people who smoke cigarettes. Search methods We searched the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group Specialised Register, most recently on 29 April 2022. Selection criteria We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) in people who smoked, comparing antidepressant medications with placebo or no pharmacological treatment, an alternative pharmacotherapy, or the same medication used differently. We excluded trials with fewer than six months of follow‐up from efficacy analyses. We included trials with any follow‐up length for our analyses of harms. Data collection and analysis We extracted data and assessed risk of bias using standard Cochrane methods. Our primary outcome measure was smoking cessation after at least six months' follow‐up. We used the most rigorous definition of abstinence available in each trial, and biochemically validated rates if available. Our secondary outcomes were harms and tolerance outcomes, including adverse events (AEs), serious adverse events (SAEs), psychiatric AEs, seizures, overdoses, suicide attempts, death by suicide, all‐cause mortality, and trial dropouts due to treatment. We carried out meta‐analyses where appropriate. Main results We included a total of 124 studies (48,832 participants) in this review, with 10 new studies added to this update version. Most studies recruited adults from the community or from smoking cessation clinics; four studies focused on adolescents (with participants between 12 and 21 years old). We judged 34 studies to be at high risk of bias; however, restricting analyses only to studies at low or unclear risk of bias did not change clinical interpretation of the results. There was high‐certainty evidence that bupropion increased smoking cessation rates when compared to placebo or no pharmacological treatment (RR 1.60, 95% CI 1.49 to 1.72; I2 = 16%; 50 studies, 18,577 participants). There was moderate‐certainty evidence that a combination of bupropion and varenicline may have resulted in superior quit rates to varenicline alone (RR 1.21, 95% CI 0.95 to 1.55; I2 = 15%; 3 studies, 1057 participants). However, there was insufficient evidence to establish whether a combination of bupropion and nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) resulted in superior quit rates to NRT alone (RR 1.17, 95% CI 0.95 to 1.44; I2 = 43%; 15 studies, 4117 participants; low‐certainty evidence). There was moderate‐certainty evidence that participants taking bupropion were more likely to report SAEs than those taking placebo or no pharmacological treatment. However, results were imprecise and the CI also encompassed no difference (RR 1.16, 95% CI 0.90 to 1.48; I2 = 0%; 23 studies, 10,958 participants). Results were also imprecise when comparing SAEs between people randomised to a combination of bupropion and NRT versus NRT alone (RR 1.52, 95% CI 0.26 to 8.89; I2 = 0%; 4 studies, 657 participants) and randomised to bupropion plus varenicline versus varenicline alone (RR 1.23, 95% CI 0.63 to 2.42; I2 = 0%; 5 studies, 1268 participants). In both cases, we judged evidence to be of low certainty. There was high‐certainty evidence that bupropion resulted in more trial dropouts due to AEs than placebo or no pharmacological treatment (RR 1.44, 95% CI 1.27 to 1.65; I2 = 2%; 25 studies, 12,346 participants). However, there was insufficient evidence that bupropion combined with NRT versus NRT alone (RR 1.67, 95% CI 0.95 to 2.92; I2 = 0%; 3 studies, 737 participants) or bupropion combined with varenicline versus varenicline alone (RR 0.80, 95% CI 0.45 to 1.45; I2 = 0%; 4 studies, 1230 participants) had an impact on the number of dropouts due to treatment. In both cases, imprecision was substantial (we judged the evidence to be of low certainty for both comparisons). Bupropion resulted in inferior smoking cessation rates to varenicline (RR 0.73, 95% CI 0.67 to 0.80; I2 = 0%; 9 studies, 7564 participants), and to combination NRT (RR 0.74, 95% CI 0.55 to 0.98; I2 = 0%; 2 studies; 720 participants). However, there was no clear evidence of a difference in efficacy between bupropion and single‐form NRT (RR 1.03, 95% CI 0.93 to 1.13; I2 = 0%; 10 studies, 7613 participants). We also found evidence that nortriptyline aided smoking cessation when compared with placebo (RR 2.03, 95% CI 1.48 to 2.78; I2 = 16%; 6 studies, 975 participants), and some evidence that bupropion resulted in superior quit rates to nortriptyline (RR 1.30, 95% CI 0.93 to 1.82; I2 = 0%; 3 studies, 417 participants), although this result was subject to imprecision. Findings were sparse and inconsistent as to whether antidepressants, primarily bupropion and nortriptyline, had a particular benefit for people with current or previous depression. Authors' conclusions There is high‐certainty evidence that bupropion can aid long‐term smoking cessation. However, bupropion may increase SAEs (moderate‐certainty evidence when compared to placebo/no pharmacological treatment). There is high‐certainty evidence that people taking bupropion are more likely to discontinue treatment compared with people receiving placebo or no pharmacological treatment. Nortriptyline also appears to have a beneficial effect on smoking quit rates relative to placebo, although bupropion may be more effective. Evidence also suggests that bupropion may be as successful as single‐form NRT in helping people to quit smoking, but less effective than combination NRT and varenicline. In most cases, a paucity of data made it difficult to draw conclusions regarding harms and tolerability. Further studies investigating the efficacy of bupropion versus placebo are unlikely to change our interpretation of the effect, providing no clear justification for pursuing bupropion for smoking cessation over other licensed smoking cessation treatments; namely, NRT and varenicline. However, it is important that future studies of antidepressants for smoking cessation measure and report on harms and tolerability

DeepWeeds: a multiclass weed species image dataset for deep learning

Robotic weed control has seen increased research of late with its potential for boosting productivity in agriculture. Majority of works focus on developing robotics for croplands, ignoring the weed management problems facing rangeland stock farmers. perhaps the greatest obstacle to widespread uptake of robotic weed control is the robust classification of weed species in their natural environment. the unparalleled successes of deep learning make it an ideal candidate for recognising various weed species in the complex rangeland environment. This work contributes the first large, public, multiclass image dataset of weed species from the Australian rangelands; allowing for the development of robust classification methods to make robotic weed control viable. The DeepWeeds dataset consists of 17,509 labelled images of eight nationally significant weed species native to eight locations across northern Australia. This paper presents a baseline for classification performance on the dataset using the benchmark deep learning models, Inception-v3 and ResNet-50. These models achieved an average classification accuracy of 95.1% and 95.7%, respectively. We also demonstrate real time performance of the ResNet-50 architecture, with an average inference time of 53.4 ms per image. These strong results bode well for future field implementation of robotic weed control methods in the Australian rangelands