Hunter-gatherer and Environmental Relations during the Mesolithic of Atlantic Europe.

Environmental change is a major concern for society today. This concern extends the flooding of people’s homes, the reduction of biodiversity due to habitat loss, and the threat to economic prosperity where it is dependent upon the exploitation of wild resources. In terms of past climate change there has been significant amounts of research conducted into the Pleistocene to Holocene transition. This project explores the evidence for environmental change, of a less severe yet potentially disruptive amplitude, and its influence on the behaviour and decisions of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers on the Atlantic façade of Europe. The archaeological record is reviewed with a particular focus on the 8.2K cal bp event and the 2nd half of the 5th millennium cal BC. The resulting datasets are interrogated utilising a multiproxy approach and consideration is given to that which is archaeologically visible and that which is not. The limitations of the archaeological record are addressed through the development of new methodologies and interpretative frameworks. The findings are significant, as the severity of the 8.2k cal bp event at northern latitudes is confirmed, although this falls short of being able to assert a total abandonment at higher latitudes. During the 5th millennium cal BC, a period of instability related to more energetic shoreline conditions has been identified and this is very likely a regional phenomenon. The period of instability is accompanied by changes in hunter-gatherer behaviour, and this includes changes in the spatial organisation of settlement, and adjustments to procurement strategies. The overall situation is that environmental change is the norm during the Mesolithic of the Atlantic façade, almost certainly due to its highly moderated climate. The adaptability of hunter-gatherer societies in response to the changes brought about by fluctuations in the moderating mechanisms is strongly attested. In many ways not much has changed, as flooded homes, reductions in biodiversity and changes in the resources available for exploitation are all observed

Exploring the Equity Impact of Current Digital Health Design Practices:Protocol for a Scoping Review

BACKGROUND: The field of digital health has grown rapidly in part due to digital health tools’ potential to reduce health inequities. However, such potential has not always been realized. The design approaches used in digital health are one of the known aspects that have an impact on health equity. OBJECTIVE: The aim of our scoping review will be to understand how design approaches in digital health have an impact on health equity. METHODS: A scoping review of studies that describe how design practices for digital health have an impact on health equity will be carried out. The scoping review will follow the methodologies laid out by Arksey and O’Malley, the Joanna Briggs Institute, and the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews) checklist. The PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and ACM Digital Library databases will be searched for peer-reviewed papers. The ProQuest Dissertations and Theses and Global Index Medicus databases will be searched for gray literature. The results will be screened against our inclusion and exclusion criteria. Subsequently, the data extracted from the included studies will be analyzed. RESULTS: As of March 2022, a preliminary search of the peer-reviewed databases has yielded over 4900 studies, and more are anticipated when gray literature databases are searched. We expect that after duplicates are removed and screening is completed, a much smaller number of studies will meet all of our inclusion criteria. CONCLUSIONS: Although there has been much discussion about the importance of design for lowering barriers to digital health participation, the evidence base demonstrating its impacts on health equity is less obvious. We hope that our findings will contribute to a better understanding of the impact that design in digital health has on health equity and that these findings will translate into action that leads to stronger, more equitable health care systems

Antagonistic interactions between honey bee bacterial symbionts and implications for disease

BACKGROUND: Honey bees, Apis mellifera, face many parasites and pathogens and consequently rely on a diverse set of individual and group-level defenses to prevent disease. One route by which honey bees and other insects might combat disease is through the shielding effects of their microbial symbionts. Bees carry a diverse assemblage of bacteria, very few of which appear to be pathogenic. Here we explore the inhibitory effects of these resident bacteria against the primary bacterial pathogen of honey bees, Paenibacillus larvae. RESULTS: Here we isolate, culture, and describe by 16S rRNA and protein-coding gene sequences 61 bacterial isolates from honey bee larvae, reflecting a total of 43 distinct bacterial taxa. We culture these bacteria alongside the primary larval pathogen of honey bees, Paenibacillus larvae, and show that many of these isolates severely inhibit the growth of this pathogen. Accordingly, symbiotic bacteria including those described here are plausible natural antagonists toward this widespread pathogen. CONCLUSION: The results suggest a tradeoff in social insect colonies between the maintenance of potentially beneficial bacterial symbionts and deterrence at the individual and colony level of pathogenic species. They also provide a novel mechanism for recently described social components behind disease resistance in insect colonies, and point toward a potential control strategy for an important bee disease

The Mechanism of the Iodination of Phenols

Author Institution: Department of Chemistry, Miami University, Oxfor

Reducing wildfire impacts through long term prescribed fire management:: a north Australian case study

This study aims to assess changes in a regional fire regime and commensurate environmental benefits associated with over a decade of active fire management. Given the recent history of (1) post-colonial cessation of traditional indigenous fire management and, consequently (2) fire regimes becoming dominated by frequent and extensive late dry season wildfire, being implicated in (3) ongoing collapse of biodiversity values in Australia's fire-prone northern savannas, regional conservation-based fire management programs now typically aim to mitigate wildfire through the implementation of strategic prescribed burning during the cooler early dry season. Many fire management programs are now resourced through participation in a nationally legislated emissions abatement initiative. However, it remains unclear the extent such environmental concerns are being addressed by these renewed fire management efforts. Utilising a long term fine-scale spatial fire history covering the western Arnhem Land region of northern Australia, where since 2006 fire management has been resourced through contractual agreements to abate emissions, we document trends in common landscape scale fire metrics and assess effects on measures of defined ecological thresholds of concern. Although overall area burnt did not decrease significantly over the 12-year period, the regional fire regime transitioned from late dry season, wildfire-dominated to being characterised with a majority fires occurring as small early dry season prescribed burns. Most ecological metrics improved, with 40% of those assessed attaining desired threshold levels, one exception being thresholds describing the maintenance of longer-unburnt habitat. While a decade of continuously resourced fire management could be considered long term, these results indicate that, given the temporal scales of many biotic requirements regarding fire, commitments to resourcing fire management must remain ongoing if significant environmental benefits are to be realised. This can be achieved through utilisation of carbon market-based mechanisms.This study aims to assess changes in a regional fire regime and commensurate environmental benefits associated with over a decade of active fire management. Given the recent history of (1) post-colonial cessation of traditional indigenous fire management and, consequently (2) fire regimes becoming dominated by frequent and extensive late dry season wildfire, being implicated in (3) ongoing collapse of biodiversity values in Australia's fire-prone northern savannas, regional conservation-based fire management programs now typically aim to mitigate wildfire through the implementation of strategic prescribed burning during the cooler early dry season. Many fire management programs are now resourced through participation in a nationally legislated emissions abatement initiative. However, it remains unclear the extent such environmental concerns are being addressed by these renewed fire management efforts. Utilising a long term fine-scale spatial fire history covering the western Arnhem Land region of northern Australia, where since 2006 fire management has been resourced through contractual agreements to abate emissions, we document trends in common landscape scale fire metrics and assess effects on measures of defined ecological thresholds of concern. Although overall area burnt did not decrease significantly over the 12-year period, the regional fire regime transitioned from late dry season, wildfire-dominated to being characterised with a majority fires occurring as small early dry season prescribed burns. Most ecological metrics improved, with 40% of those assessed attaining desired threshold levels, one exception being thresholds describing the maintenance of longer-unburnt habitat. While a decade of continuously resourced fire management could be considered long term, these results indicate that, given the temporal scales of many biotic requirements regarding fire, commitments to resourcing fire management must remain ongoing if significant environmental benefits are to be realised. This can be achieved through utilisation of carbon market-based mechanisms

Exploring concepts of compassion in care home settings : a scoping review protocol

Introduction There is widespread agreement that medical care without compassion cannot be patient-centred, but patients still routinely cite that they feel a lack of compassion in the care environment. There is a dearth of research on how compassion is experienced in a non-hospital setting such as a care home, not just by residents but by staff and other key stakeholders. This scoping review aims to determine the body of existing, published research that explicitly refers to compassion or empathy in the context of care homes. Methods and analysis This scoping review will follow the methodology described by Arksey and O'Malley and the PRISMAextension for scoping reviews guideline to adhere to an established methodological framework. Relevant publications will be searched on the EMBASE, MEDLINE, PubMed, CINAHL, EBM Reviews and PsycInfo databases. Peer-reviewed literature focusing on experiences of compassion or empathy in care home settings from the perspective of either staff, residents (or clients), family members or their combined perspectives will be included. We will focus on literature published from 2000 up to 1 November 2021, in English, Spanish, Portuguese Finnish and Estonian. The review process will consist of three stages: a title review to identify articles of interest, this will be followed by an abstract review and finally, a full-text review. These three stages will be conducted by two reviewers. Data will be extracted, collated and charted and a narrative synthesis of the results will be presented. Ethics and dissemination Ethical approval is not required for this scoping review. This study supports the first part of a larger programme to understand the importance of technologies in care homes. The scoping review will examine data from publicly available documentation, reports and published papers. Dissemination will be achieved through engagement with stakeholder communities, and publishing results. Our team will include representatives from the different communities involved.Peer reviewe