Prioritising biosecurity investment between protecting agricultural and environmental systems

This paper is motivated by the observation that there is a difference between the time paths of damage valuations for invasions which affect agricultural compared with environmental systems. In particular, unlike agricultural systems, studies have shown that the social valuation of an environmental system is likely to be exponentially positively related to the extent of its deterioration. This paper explores the implications of this difference in determining biosecurity investment priorities. It is concluded that because of this difference an environmental system will often not be prioritised for such protection over an agricultural system even though its ultimate social value exceeds that of the agricultural system

Creative destruction in science

Drawing on the concept of a gale of creative destruction in a capitalistic economy, we argue that initiatives to assess the robustness of findings in the organizational literature should aim to simultaneously test competing ideas operating in the same theoretical space. In other words, replication efforts should seek not just to support or question the original findings, but also to replace them with revised, stronger theories with greater explanatory power. Achieving this will typically require adding new measures, conditions, and subject populations to research designs, in order to carry out conceptual tests of multiple theories in addition to directly replicating the original findings. To illustrate the value of the creative destruction approach for theory pruning in organizational scholarship, we describe recent replication initiatives re-examining culture and work morality, working parents\u2019 reasoning about day care options, and gender discrimination in hiring decisions. Significance statement It is becoming increasingly clear that many, if not most, published research findings across scientific fields are not readily replicable when the same method is repeated. Although extremely valuable, failed replications risk leaving a theoretical void\u2014 reducing confidence the original theoretical prediction is true, but not replacing it with positive evidence in favor of an alternative theory. We introduce the creative destruction approach to replication, which combines theory pruning methods from the field of management with emerging best practices from the open science movement, with the aim of making replications as generative as possible. In effect, we advocate for a Replication 2.0 movement in which the goal shifts from checking on the reliability of past findings to actively engaging in competitive theory testing and theory building. Scientific transparency statement The materials, code, and data for this article are posted publicly on the Open Science Framework, with links provided in the article

Examining the generalizability of research findings from archival data

This initiative examined systematically the extent to which a large set of archival research findings generalizes across contexts. We repeated the key analyses for 29 original strategic management effects in the same context (direct reproduction) as well as in 52 novel time periods and geographies; 45% of the reproductions returned results matching the original reports together with 55% of tests in different spans of years and 40% of tests in novel geographies. Some original findings were associated with multiple new tests. Reproducibility was the best predictor of generalizability—for the findings that proved directly reproducible, 84% emerged in other available time periods and 57% emerged in other geographies. Overall, only limited empirical evidence emerged for context sensitivity. In a forecasting survey, independent scientists were able to anticipate which effects would find support in tests in new samples

Prioritising Biosecurity Investment between Protecting Agricultural and Environmental Systems

This paper is motivated by the observation that there is a difference between the time paths of damage valuations for invasions which affect agricultural compared with environmental systems. In particular, unlike agricultural systems, studies have shown that the social valuation of an environmental system is likely to be exponentially positively related to the extent of its deterioration. This paper explores the implications of this difference in determining biosecurity investment priorities. It is concluded that because of this difference an environmental system will often not be prioritised for such protection over an agricultural system even though its ultimate social value exceeds that of the agricultural system.Biosecurity; invasive species

You have to try your luck: male Ghanaian youth and the uncertainty of football migration

This final published version of this paper is available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0308518X15594920The migration of male African youth within the football industry, particularly cases involving human trafficking, has become a subject of academic and political interest. This article contributes to work on this topic and to literature on the agency of youth in the urban Global South by turning the academic gaze away from European actors and settings, and towards their African counterparts. Drawing upon research conducted in Ghana, the article reveals how youth perceive migration through football as a solution to the socio-­‐economic uncertainty and life constraints facing them in neoliberal Accra. This perception is tied to broader representations of spatial mobility as a precursor for social mobility. Youth attempt to achieve spatial mobility through football by ‘trying their luck’, a form of social navigation that is used to mediate the uncertainty associated with this strategy for realizing spatial change. Through illustrating why youth want to be spatially mobile and how they attempt to do so through football, this article demonstrates why studies of African football migration need to engage better with how conditions inside the football industry interact with those beyond it

Laparoscopic cholecystectomy: first, do no harm; second, take care of bile duct stones

Editorial. The introduction of laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) in the USA in 1989 marked the beginning of what has become know as the ‘‘laparoscopic revolution’’ [1–4]. It was quickly adopted among surgeons in private practice. The Society of American Gastrointestinal Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES) was the first organization to take the lead in ensuring patient safety by insisting on quality training through certified training courses, establishing guidelines, and introducing credentialing criteria for laparoscopic surgery. More than two decades later, it is time for SAGES to assume a leadership role in addressing two major and troublesome issues that remain in laparoscopic biliary surgery relating to patient safety and high-quality outcomes

The trans-ancestral genomic architecture of glycemic traits

Abstract Glycemic traits are used to diagnose and monitor type 2 diabetes and cardiometabolic health. To date, most genetic studies of glycemic traits have focused on individuals of European ancestry. Here we aggregated genome-wide association studies comprising up to 281,416 individuals without diabetes (30% non-European ancestry) for whom fasting glucose, 2-h glucose after an oral glucose challenge, glycated hemoglobin and fasting insulin data were available. Trans-ancestry and single-ancestry meta-analyses identified 242 loci (99 novel; P < 5 x 10-8), 80% of which had no significant evidence of between-ancestry heterogeneity. Analyses restricted to individuals of European ancestry with equivalent sample size would have led to 24 fewer new loci. Compared with single-ancestry analyses, equivalent-sized trans-ancestry fine-mapping reduced the number of estimated variants in 99% credible sets by a median of 37.5%. Genomic-feature, gene-expression and gene-set analyses revealed distinct biological signatures for each trait, highlighting different underlying biological pathways. Our results increase our understanding of diabetes pathophysiology by using trans-ancestry studies for improved power and resolution