Modern wildlife conservation initiatives and the pastoralist/hunter nomads of northwestern Tibet.

In 1993 the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) of China established the 300 000 km2 Chang Tang Nature Preserve on the northwestern Tibetan plateau, an action precipitated by rapidly diminishing populations of chiru (Tibetan antelope) and wild yak. Some 30 000 nomadic pastoralists use areas within this reserve for livestock grazing, with many having traditionally depended in part on hunting for supplementary subsistence and trade. Following a 1997 request from TAR leaders for international assistance in addressing the conservation issues associated with the creation of this reserve, the TAR Forestry Bureau and the Network for University Co-operation Tibet – Norway began a 3-year research collaboration program in 2000 to outline human-wildlife interactions and conservation priorities in the western part of the reserve. To date, four excursions (2-6 weeks each) have been made to the western Chang Tang region, and investigations of interactions between pastoralists and wildlife conservation objectives have been initiated in an area of about 5000 km2, including the 2300 km2 Aru basin located at 5000 m elevation at the northern edge of pastoralist inhabitation. The Aru site is unique in that nomads have only recently returned to this previously off-limits basin. But, as in surrounding areas, the people’s lives are undergoing changes recently influenced by the introduction of permanent winter houses, changing international trade in shahtoosh and cashmere wool, and a move towards stricter hunting regulations. The northwestern Chang Tang, with the Aru basin as a prime site, represents one of the last strongholds of the endangered chiru and wild yak, as well as home to Tibetan gazelle, kiang, Tibetan argali, blue sheep, wolf, snow leopard and brown bear. In autumn 2000, for example, with approximately 12 000 of the wild ungulates (mostly the migratory chiru) within the Aru basin along with some 8000 domestic livestock, issues of land use overlap and possible grazing competition are clear to both local nomads and reserve managers. Whereas livestock development actions elsewhere on the Tibetan plateau are promoting increased livestock production, they are doing so at the expense of wildlife, and such an approach will not be appropriate in areas where wildlife conservation is a major priority. Although some of the ongoing livestock development programs may be adapted to the western TAR, new approaches to pastoral development will have to be developed in the reserve. The ultimate goal of enhancing the nomads’ standard of living, while conserving this truly unique array of biodiversity, presents a daunting challenge

Children’s views on postsurgical pain in recovery units in Norway: A qualitative study

Aims and objectives: To explore children’s postsurgical experiences with pain and pain management in the recovery unit. Background: Children’s pain is underestimated and undertreated. Untreated pain can cause unnecessary suffering, increased complication risks, and may lead to chronic pain. Research exploring children’s experiences with postoperative pain and pain management is limited. Design: A qualitative, exploratory study. The study complied with the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research (COREQ). Methods: Children (N=20), 8–16 years old, took part in semi-structured interviews about their experiences with pain and postoperative pain management while they were in a recovery unit. Data were collected at two university hospitals in Norway. Content analysis was used to analyse the data. Results: Three themes emerged from the interviews; “children’s experiences of what felt unpleasant and painful”, “children’s experiences with pain management” and “children’s recommendations for future pain management”. About half of the children reported moderate to severe pain while in the recovery unit and they did not always tell their nurses when they had pain. They also reported experiencing pain in places other than their surgical wounds and stated that nausea and vomiting felt unpleasant and painful. The children indicated that pain medications and the use of non-pharmacological methods helped them cope with their pain and provided several recommendations about how to improve pain management. Conclusion: Paediatric postoperative pain management remains suboptimal. The children in our study provided useful information about their pain experiences, how to improve pain management and explained why they did not tell their nurses when they were in pain. Relevance to clinical practice: These findings should direct further improvements in paediatric postoperative pain management, such as increased use of pain assessment tools and preparatory information, as well as more appropriate administration of pain medications. This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Twycross, A.M., Smeland, A., Torgun, N., Nybro, L., Rustøen, T., Lundberg, S., and Reinertsen, H. (2019). Children’s views on postsurgical pain in recovery units in Norway: A qualitative study. Journal of Clinical Nursing, which has been published in final form at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jocn.14788. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions

Prevalence of atherosclerosis and association with 5-year outcome: The Norwegian Stroke in the Young Study

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The QUIET Instrument

The Q/U Imaging ExperimenT (QUIET) is designed to measure polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background, targeting the imprint of inflationary gravitational waves at large angular scales (~ 1 degree). Between 2008 October and 2010 December, two independent receiver arrays were deployed sequentially on a 1.4 m side-fed Dragonian telescope. The polarimeters which form the focal planes use a highly compact design based on High Electron Mobility Transistors (HEMTs) that provides simultaneous measurements of the Stokes parameters Q, U, and I in a single module. The 17-element Q-band polarimeter array, with a central frequency of 43.1 GHz, has the best sensitivity (69 uK sqrt(s)) and the lowest instrumental systematic errors ever achieved in this band, contributing to the tensor-to-scalar ratio at r < 0.1. The 84-element W-band polarimeter array has a sensitivity of 87 uK sqrt(s) at a central frequency of 94.5 GHz. It has the lowest systematic errors to date, contributing at r < 0.01. The two arrays together cover multipoles in the range l= 25-975. These are the largest HEMT-based arrays deployed to date. This article describes the design, calibration, performance of, and sources of systematic error for the instrument

Vascular risk factors and staging of atherosclerosis in patients and controls: The Norwegian Stroke in the Young Study

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The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Cross Correlation with Planck maps

We present the temperature power spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background obtained by cross-correlating maps from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) at 148 and 218 GHz with maps from the Planck satellite at 143 and 217 GHz, in two overlapping regions covering 592 square degrees. We find excellent agreement between the two datasets at both frequencies, quantified using the variance of the residuals between the ACT power spectra and the ACTxPlanck cross-spectra. We use these cross-correlations to calibrate the ACT data at 148 and 218 GHz, to 0.7% and 2% precision respectively. We find no evidence for anisotropy in the calibration parameter. We compare the Planck 353 GHz power spectrum with the measured amplitudes of dust and cosmic infrared background (CIB) of ACT data at 148 and 218 GHz. We also compare planet and point source measurements from the two experiments.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure

From planning the port/city to planning the port-city : exploring the economic interface in European port cities

In last three decades, planning agencies of most ports have institutionally evolved into a (semi-) independent port authority. The rationale behind this process is that port authorities are able to react more quickly to changing logistical and spatial preferences of maritime firms, hence increasing the competitiveness of ports. Although these dedicated port authorities have proven to be largely successful, new economic, social, and environmental challenges are quickly catching up on these port governance models, and particularly leads to (spatial) policy ‘conflicts’ between port and city. This chapter starts by assessing this conflict and argue that the conflict is partly a result of dominant—often also academic—spatial representations of the port city as two separate entities. To escape this divisive conception of contemporary port cities, this chapter presents a relational visualisation method that is able to analyse the economic interface between port and city. Based on our results, we reflect back on our proposition and argue that the core challenge today for researchers and policy makers is acknowledging the bias of port/city, being arguably a self-fulfilling prophecy. Hence, we turn the idea of (planning the) port/city conflicts into planning the port-city’s strengths and weaknesses

First Season QUIET Observations: Measurements of CMB Polarization Power Spectra at 43 GHz in the Multipole Range 25 <= ell <= 475

The Q/U Imaging ExperimenT (QUIET) employs coherent receivers at 43GHz and 95GHz, operating on the Chajnantor plateau in the Atacama Desert in Chile, to measure the anisotropy in the polarization of the CMB. QUIET primarily targets the B modes from primordial gravitational waves. The combination of these frequencies gives sensitivity to foreground contributions from diffuse Galactic synchrotron radiation. Between 2008 October and 2010 December, >10,000hours of data were collected, first with the 19-element 43GHz array (3458hours) and then with the 90-element 95GHz array. Each array observes the same four fields, selected for low foregrounds, together covering ~1000deg^2. This paper reports initial results from the 43GHz receiver which has an array sensitivity to CMB fluctuations of 69uK sqrt(s). The data were extensively studied with a large suite of null tests before the power spectra, determined with two independent pipelines, were examined. Analysis choices, including data selection, were modified until the null tests passed. Cross correlating maps with different telescope pointings is used to eliminate a bias. This paper reports the EE, BB and EB power spectra in the multipole range ell=25-475. With the exception of the lowest multipole bin for one of the fields, where a polarized foreground, consistent with Galactic synchrotron radiation, is detected with 3sigma significance, the E-mode spectrum is consistent with the LCDM model, confirming the only previous detection of the first acoustic peak. The B-mode spectrum is consistent with zero, leading to a measurement of the tensor-to-scalar ratio of r=0.35+1.06-0.87. The combination of a new time-stream double-demodulation technique, Mizuguchi-Dragone optics, natural sky rotation, and frequent boresight rotation leads to the lowest level of systematic contamination in the B-mode power so far reported, below the level of r=0.1Comment: 19 pages, 14 figures, higher quality figures are available at http://quiet.uchicago.edu/results/index.html; Fixed a typo and corrected statistical error values used as a reference in Figure 14, showing our systematic uncertainties (unchanged) vs. multipole; Revision to ApJ accepted version, this paper should be cited as "QUIET Collaboration et al. (2011)

Conversations About Responsible Nanoresearch

There is currently a strong focus on responsible research in relation to the development of nanoscience and nanotechnology. This study presents a series of conversations with nanoresearchers, with the ‘European Commission recommendation on a code of conduct for responsible nanosciences and nanotechnologies research’ (EC-CoC) as its point of departure. Six types of reactions to the document are developed, illustrating the diversity existing within the scientific community in responses towards this kind of new approaches to governance. Three broad notions of responsible nanoresearch are presented. The article concludes by arguing that while the suggestion put forward in the EC-CoC brings the concept of responsible nanoresearch a long way, one crucial element is to be wanted, namely responsible nanoresearch as increased awareness of moral choices

Factors associated with discharge destination from acute care after moderate-to-severe traumatic injuries in Norway: a prospective population-based study

Background - Previous studies have demonstrated that the trauma population has needs for rehabilitation services that are best provided in a continuous and coordinated way. The discharge destination after acute care is the second step to ensuring quality of care. There is a lack of knowledge regarding the factors associated with the discharge destination for the overall trauma population. This paper aims to identify sociodemographic, geographical, and injury-related factors associated with discharge destination following acute care at trauma centers for patients with moderate-to-severe traumatic injuries. Methods - A multicenter, population-based, prospective study was conducted with patients of all ages with traumatic injury [New Injury Severity Score (NISS) > 9] admitted within 72 h after the injury to regional trauma centers in southeastern and northern Norway over a 1-year period (2020). Results - In total, 601 patients were included; a majority (76%) sustained severe injuries, and 22% were discharged directly to specialized rehabilitation. Children were primarily discharged home, and most of the patients ≥ 65 years to their local hospital. Depending on the centrality of their residence [Norwegian Centrality Index (NCI) 1–6, where 1 is most central], we found that patients residing in NCI 3–4 and 5–6 areas sustained more severe injuries than patients residing in NCI 1–2 areas. An increase in the NISS, number of injuries, or a spinal injury with an Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) ≥ 3 was associated with discharge to local hospitals and specialized rehabilitation than to home. Patients with an AIS ≥ 3 head injury (RRR 6.1, 95% Confidence interval 2.80–13.38) were significantly more likely to be discharged to specialized rehabilitation than patients with a less severe head injury. Age  Conclusions - Two-thirds of the patients sustained severe traumatic injury, and 22% were discharged directly to specialized rehabilitation. Age, centrality of the residence, preinjury comorbidity, injury severity, length of hospital stay, and the number and specific types of injuries were factors that had the greatest influence on discharge destination