Abandoned metal mines and their impact on receiving waters: A case study from Southwest England.

Historic mine sites are a major source of contamination to terrestrial and river environments. To demonstrate the importance of determining the significance of point and diffuse metal contamination and the related bioavailability of the metals present from abandoned mines a case study has been carried out. The study provides a quantitative assessment of a historic mine site, Wheal Betsy, southwest England, and its contribution to non-compliance with Water Framework Directive (WFD) Environmental Quality Standards (EQS) for Cd, Cu, Pb and Zn. Surface water and sediment samples showed significant negative environmental impacts even taking account of the bioavailability of the metal present, with lead concentration in the stream sediment up to 76 times higher than the Canadian sediment guidelines 'Probable Effect Level'. Benthic invertebrates showed a decline in species richness adjacent to the mine site with lead and cadmium the main cause. The main mine drainage adit was the single most significant source of metal (typically 50% of metal load from the area, but 88% for Ni) but the mine spoil tips north and south of the adit input added together discharged roughly an equivalent loading of metal with the exception of Ni. The bioavailability of metal in the spoil tips exhibited differing spatial patterns owing to varying ambient soil physico-chemistry. The data collected is essential to provide a clear understanding of the contamination present as well as its mobility and bioavailability, in order to direct the decision making process regarding remediation options and their likely effectiveness

Change in cardio-protective medication and health-related quality of life after diagnosis of screen-detected diabetes: Results from the ADDITION-Cambridge cohort.

AIMS: Establishing a balance between the benefits and harms of treatment is important among individuals with screen-detected diabetes, for whom the burden of treatment might be higher than the burden of the disease. We described the association between cardio-protective medication and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) among individuals with screen-detected diabetes. METHODS: 867 participants with screen-detected diabetes underwent clinical measurements at diagnosis, one and five years. General HRQoL (EQ5D) was measured at baseline, one- and five-years, and diabetes-specific HRQoL (ADDQoL-AWI) and health status (SF-36) at one and five years. Multivariable linear regression was used to quantify the association between change in HRQoL and change in cardio-protective medication. RESULTS: The median (IQR) number of prescribed cardio-protective agents was 2 (1 to 3) at diagnosis, 3 (2 to 4) at one year and 4 (3 to 5) at five years. Change in cardio-protective medication was not associated with change in HRQoL from diagnosis to one year. From one year to five years, change in cardio-protective agents was not associated with change in the SF-36 mental health score. One additional agent was associated with an increase in the SF-36 physical health score (2.1; 95%CI 0.4, 3.8) and an increase in the EQ-5D (0.05; 95%CI 0.02, 0.08). Conversely, one additional agent was associated with a decrease in the ADDQoL-AWI (-0.32; 95%CI -0.51, -0.13), compared to no change. CONCLUSIONS: We found little evidence that increases in the number of cardio-protective medications impacted negatively on HRQoL among individuals with screen-detected diabetes over five years.ADDITION-Cambridge was supported by the Wellcome Trust (grant reference No G061895) the Medical Research Council (grant reference no: G0001164), National Health Service R&D support funding (including the Primary Care Research and Diabetes Research Networks), and the National Institute for Health Research. We received an unrestricted grant from University of Aarhus, Denmark, to support the ADDITION-Cambridge trial. Bio-Rad provided equipment to undertake capillary glucose screening by HbA1c in general practice. The Primary Care Research Unit is supported by NIHR Research funds. SJG receives support from the Department of Health NIHR Programme Grant funding scheme (RP-PG-0606-1259). This article presents independent research funded by the NIHR under the Programme Grants for Applied Research programme (RP-PG-0606-1259]. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR, or the Department of Health.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.diabres.2015.04.01

Participating locally and nationally: explaining the offline and online activism of British party members

Drawing on survey data on the members of six British parties gathered in the immediate aftermath of the general election of 2015, this article addresses the question of what members do for their parties during campaigns. It identifies a key distinction between traditional forms of activity and more recent forms of online campaign participation. While the well-established general incentives theory of participation continues to offer a useful basis for explaining both types of campaign activism, we find that our understanding is significantly enhanced by considering the impact of national and local political contexts. Whereas the former chiefly adds explanatory value to the model of online participation by party members, the latter considerably improves the model of offline participation

Low-Rank Subspace Override for Unsupervised Domain Adaptation

Current supervised learning models cannot generalize well across domain boundaries, which is a known problem in many applications, such as robotics or visual classification. Domain adaptation methods are used to improve these generalization properties. However, these techniques suffer either from being restricted to a particular task, such as visual adaptation, require a lot of computational time and data, which is not always guaranteed, have complex parameterization, or expensive optimization procedures. In this work, we present an approach that requires only a well-chosen snapshot of data to find a single domain invariant subspace. The subspace is calculated in closed form and overrides domain structures, which makes it fast and stable in parameterization. By employing low-rank techniques, we emphasize on descriptive characteristics of data. The presented idea is evaluated on various domain adaptation tasks such as text and image classification against state of the art domain adaptation approaches and achieves remarkable performance across all tasks

Translating concerns into action: a detailed qualitative evaluation of an interdisciplinary intervention on medical wards

Objectives To understand how frontline reports of day-to-day care failings might be better translated into improvement. Design Qualitative evaluation of an interdisciplinary team intervention to capitalise on the frontline experience of care delivery. Prospective clinical team surveillance (PCTS) involved structured interdisciplinary briefings to capture challenges in care delivery, facilitated organisational escalation of the issues they identified, and feedback. Eighteen months of ethnography and two focus groups were conducted with staff taking part in a trial of PCTS. Results PCTS fostered psychological safety – a confidence that the team would not embarrass or punish those who speak up. This was complemented by a hard edge of accountability, whereby team members would regulate their own behaviour in anticipation of future briefings. Frontline concerns were triaged to managers, or resolved autonomously by ward teams, reversing what had been well-established normalisations of deviance. Junior clinicians found a degree of catharsis in airing their concerns, and their teams became more proactive in addressing improvement opportunities. PCTS generated tangible organisational changes, and enabled managers to make a convincing case for investment. However, briefings were constrained by the need to preserve professional credibility, and the relative comfort afforded by the avoidance of accountability. At higher organisational levels, frontline concerns were subject to competition with other priorities, and their resolution was limited by the scale of the challenges they described. Conclusions Prospective safety strategies relying on staff-volunteered data do approximate the realities of frontline care, but still produce acceptable, negotiated accounts, subject to the many interdisciplinary tensions that characterise ward work. Nonetheless, they give managers access to these accounts, and support frontline staff to make incremental changes in their daily work. These are goals for learning healthcare organisations

Impact of weight maintenance and loss on diabetes risk and burden: a population-based study in 33,184 participants

$\textbf{Background}$ Weight loss in individuals at high risk of diabetes is an effective prevention method and a major component of the currently prevailing diabetes prevention strategies. The aim of the present study was to investigate the public health potential for diabetes prevention of weight maintenance or moderate weight loss on a population level in an observational cohort with repeated measurements of weight and diabetes status. $\textbf{Methods}$ Height, weight and diabetes status were objectively measured at baseline and 10 year follow-up in a population-based cohort of 33,184 participants aged 30–60 years between 1990 and 2013 in Västerbotten County, Sweden. The association between risk of incident diabetes and change in BMI or relative weight was modelled using multivariate logistic regression. Population attributable fractions (PAF) were used to assess population impact of shift in weight. $\textbf{Results}$ Mean (SD) BMI at baseline was 25.0 (3.6) kg/m$^2$. Increase in relative weight between baseline and follow-up was linearly associated with incident diabetes risk, odds ratio (OR) 1.05 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.04–1.06) per 1% change in weight. Compared to weight maintenance (±1.0 kg/m$^2$), weight gain of >+1.0 kg/m$^2$ was associated with an increased risk of incident diabetes, OR 1.52 (95% CI 1.32, 1.74), representing a PAF of 21.9% (95% CI 15.8, 27.6%). For moderate weight loss (−1.0 to −2.0 kg/m$^2$) the OR was 0.72 (95% CI 0.52, 0.99). $\textbf{Conclusions}$ Weight maintenance in adulthood is strongly associated with reduced incident diabetes risk and there is considerable potential for diabetes prevention in promoting this as a whole population strategy.This work was supported by the Medical Research Council [MC_UU_12015/ 4], the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research [FAS 2006_1512] and the Swedish Research Council [2006-21576-36119-666]. The Västerbotten Intervention Programme is financed by Västerbotten County Council. Dr Feldman is supported by the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Foundation through Churchill College, Cambridge

Dating and relationship violence victimization and perpetration among 11-16 year olds in Wales: a cross-sectional analysis of the School Health Research Network (SHRN) survey

This is the final version. Available on open access from OUP via the DOI in this recordBACKGROUND: This study examines the prevalence of dating and relationship violence (DRV) victimization, perpetration and joint victimization and perpetration, and associations between DRV and socio-demographic characteristics. METHODS: Cross-sectional self-report data from 74 908 students aged 11-16 from 193 schools across Wales were collected and analysed using generalized estimating equations to examine prevalence and predictors of emotional and physical DRV victimization, perpetration and joint victimization and perpetration. RESULTS: More girls reported emotional victimization (28%) and perpetration (18%) than boys (20% and 16%, respectively). More girls (8%) than boys (7%) reported physical perpetration. However, boys (17%) reported more physical victimization than girls (12%). Age-related trajectories of DRV victimization and perpetration were stronger in girls than in boys. Students from single or step parent homes, those in care, and certain ethnic minority groups had increased odds of DRV. No association was found between socioeconomic status and DRV. CONCLUSIONS: Age-related trajectories and the lack of social patterning by socioeconomic status point to the value of early, universal interventions, while some evidence of ethnic patterning and family structure-related risk factors suggest areas for further research and targeted interventions. DRV continues to be a major public health problem for which little UK-specific intervention evidence exists.British Heart FoundationCancer Research UKEconomic and Social Research Council (ESRC)Medical Research Council (MRC)Welsh GovernmentWellcome Trus

Predict Market Share with Users’ Online Activities Data: An Initial Study on Market Share and Search Index of Mobile Phone

Acquiring accurate and timely market share information is very important for producers to arrange producing plan and design marketing strategy. However the high cost and long period of collecting survey data in survey-based method make it much difficult to easily get latest market shares data. Recently, the emerging online web systems provide users with new and convenient ways of searching, learning, experiencing and buying products. The users’ activities data captured by these web systems can reflect users’ buying intentions and behaviours very well, and contain very valuable information for predicting market shares. In this study, the correlation between Google search index and market shares of mobile phones is analyzed with time series analysis technology. The experiment result shows the statistically significant relationships exist between search index and market shares. This indicates the easily got search index data with low cost has the power of timely forecasting market shares. This study opens a door to apply users’ online activities data to accurately and timely predict market shares, which will bring many benefits to producers and customers

Activated but functionally impaired memory Tregs are expanded in slow progressors to type 1 diabetes

This is the final version. Available on open access from Springer via the DOI in this recordData availability: The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.Aims/hypothesis Slow progressors to type 1 diabetes are individuals positive for multiple pancreatic islet autoantibodies who have remained diabetes-free for at least 10 years; regulation of the autoimmune response is understudied in this group. Here, we profile CD4+ regulatory T cells (Tregs) in a small but well-characterised cohort of extreme slow progressors with a median age 43 (range 31–72 years), followed up for 18–32 years. Methods Peripheral blood samples were obtained from slow progressors (n = 8), age- and sex-matched to healthy donors. One participant in this study was identified with a raised HbA1c at the time of assessment and subsequently diagnosed with diabetes; this donor was individually evaluated in the analysis of the data. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were isolated, and to assess frequency, phenotype and function of Tregs in donors, multi-parameter flow cytometry and T cell suppression assays were performed. Unsupervised clustering analysis, using FlowSOM and CITRUS (cluster identification, characterization, and regression), was used to evaluate Treg phenotypes. Results Unsupervised clustering on memory CD4+ T cells from slow progressors showed an increased frequency of activated memory CD4+ Tregs, associated with increased expression of glucocorticoid-induced TNFR-related protein (GITR), compared with matched healthy donors. One participant with a raised HbA1c at the time of assessment had a different Treg profile compared with both slow progressors and matched controls. Functional assays demonstrated that Treg-mediated suppression of CD4+ effector T cells from slow progressors was significantly impaired, compared with healthy donors. However, effector CD4+ T cells from slow progressors were more responsive to Treg suppression compared with healthy donors, demonstrated by increased suppression of CD25 and CD134 expression on effector CD4+ T cells. Conclusions/interpretations We conclude that activated memory CD4+ Tregs from slow progressors are expanded and enriched for GITR expression, highlighting the need for further study of Treg heterogeneity in individuals at risk of developing type 1 diabetes.Diabetes UKJDR

Measuring compensation in neurodegeneration using MRI

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Despite signs of cortical and subcortical loss, patients with prodromal and early-stage neurodegenerative disease are able to perform at a level comparable to the normal population. It is presumed that the onset of compensatory processes, that is changes in brain activation within a function-specific network or in the recruitment of a region outside of the task-network, underlies this maintenance of normal performance. However, in most studies to date, increased brain activity is not correlated with indices of both disease and performance and what appears to be compensation could simply be a symptom of neurodegeneration. RECENT FINDINGS: MRI studies have explored compensation in neurodegenerative disease, claiming that compensation is evident across a number of disorders, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, but generally always in early stages; after this point, compensation is generally no longer able to operate under the severe burden of disease. However, none of these studies explicitly adopted a particular model of compensation. Thus, we also discuss our recent attempts to operationalize compensation for empirical testing. SUMMARY: There is clear evidence of compensatory processes in the early stages of neurodegenerative disease. However, for a more complete understanding, this requires more explicit empirical modelling