The Big Pet Diabetes Survey: Perceived Frequency and Triggers for Euthanasia

Current pet diabetes mellitus (DM) treatment necessitates the active daily involvement of owners and can be costly. The current study aimed to investigate the owner population which opts for euthanasia instead of DM treatment. A survey was designed using multiple feedback steps and made available online to veterinarians world-wide. A total of 1192 veterinarians completed the survey and suggested a median one in 10 diabetic pets are euthanased at diagnosis; a further median one in 10 within one year because of lack of success or compliance. Perceived most important motivating factors included “presence concurrent disease” (45% respondents); “costs” (44%); “animal age” (37%); “problems obtaining adequate control” (35%); “pet welfare” (35%); and “impact owner’s lifestyle” (32%). Cats in Canadian (odds ratio (OR) 2.7), Australian (OR 2.3), rural (OR 1.6) and mixed (OR 1.7) practices were more likely to be euthanased because of DM diagnosis, while cats presented to referral/university were less likely to be euthanased (OR 0.6). Dogs were more likely to be euthanased because of DM in Canadian (OR 1.8), rural (OR 1.8) and mixed (OR 1.6) practices. The survey results suggest that benefit exists in improved DM education with emphasis on offering a choice of treatment styles ranging from intense and expensive to hands-off and cheap

Race and sex: teachers' views on who gets ahead in schools?

The research reported here was part of a large study of the impact of age, disability, race and sex on the teaching profession in England. The basic question asked in this research was how do these factors interact with career aspirations and achievements of classteachers, promoted teachers and headteachers? There were three different data sources: a large postal survey drawn from diverse geographic regions across England with over 2000 respondents; face‐to‐face individual interviews with over 100 teachers in 18 case study schools from across all of the main regions of England; discussions with special interest groups of teachers. Not surprisingly, the answer to the above question was complex. Nonetheless, the paper's conclusion highlights some of the noteworthy themes across this broad sample of teachers from primary, secondary and special schools

Environment and Rural Affairs Monitoring & Modelling Programme - ERAMMP Year 1 Report 22: A Review of the contribution of species records held by Local Environmental Record Centres in Wales to ERAMMP Evidence Needs

I. Better use of Local Environmental Record Centre (LERC) data in delivering biodiversity objectives is stated explicitly in the Nature Recovery Action Plan for Wales. Consistent with this aspiration we carried out two quantitative assessments of LERC data to determine the availability of species records at the resolution required for ERAMMP and WFG (Indicator 44) evidence needs; <=1km. II. A comparison of the availability of 1km square records for section 7 reptiles, amphibians and mammals between LERC and NBN Atlas showed that LERC data were more numerous in every case and sometimes markedly so (on average 17 times as many 1km square records in LERC data). For these species the NBN Atlas tends to have a greater number of records available at 10 rather than 1km square resolution. III. An assessment of the contribution of LERC 1km square records to national trends modelling demonstrated that substantial benefits in increased species coverage and precision of modelled trends are likely to arise by including additional LERC data alongside surveillance scheme data already used for trends modelling. By combining datasets the number of species that could be modelled increased by 267% on average across all the taxonomic groups previously modelled. IV. The design of the new Wales-only Indicator 44 “status of biological diversity” is currently under consultation. Our results show that species coverage for this indicator will benefit from combining multiple datasets with the current analytical state-of-the-art for trends modelling. While results are always dependent on sufficient data, there would seem to be scope for exploring how an ecologically more comprehensive Indicator 44 could be developed in partnership with Wales LERC and others. V. Our assessment also suggests that exploiting the more numerous 1km square records for section 7 species will increase the chances of detecting legacy and future effects of management scheme interventions for biodiversity and resilience objectives. A strategy for extracting the most biodiversity understanding for time spent would most likely involve applying state-of-the-art spatio-temporal modelling in collaboration with the Wales LERC and surveillance schemes. VI. A key benefit of working more closely with LERC is their ability to identify recording gaps and to mobilise new recording effort among the interested public as well as scholarly recording societies. This kind of reactive engagement activity could also contribute to efficient risk-based surveillance but with the proviso that voluntary effort typically exhibits strong spatial bias and variation in recording quality. VII. Further evidence needs driven by recent legislation and policy in Wales are likely to become clearer as indicators for SoNaRR, in particular the resilience objective of SMNR evolve in the near future

Identification of ER-000444793, a Cyclophilin D-independent inhibitor of mitochondrial permeability transition, using a high-throughput screen in cryopreserved mitochondria

Growing evidence suggests persistent mitochondrial permeability transition pore (mPTP) opening is a key pathophysiological event in cell death underlying a variety of diseases. While it has long been clear the mPTP is a druggable target, current agents are limited by off-target effects and low therapeutic efficacy. Therefore identification and development of novel inhibitors is necessary. To rapidly screen large compound libraries for novel mPTP modulators, a method was exploited to cryopreserve large batches of functionally active mitochondria from cells and tissues. The cryopreserved mitochondria maintained respiratory coupling and ATP synthesis, Ca(2+) uptake and transmembrane potential. A high-throughput screen (HTS), using an assay of Ca(2+)-induced mitochondrial swelling in the cryopreserved mitochondria identified ER-000444793, a potent inhibitor of mPTP opening. Further evaluation using assays of Ca(2+)-induced membrane depolarisation and Ca(2+) retention capacity also indicated that ER-000444793 acted as an inhibitor of the mPTP. ER-000444793 neither affected cyclophilin D (CypD) enzymatic activity, nor displaced of CsA from CypD protein, suggesting a mechanism independent of CypD inhibition. Here we identified a novel, CypD-independent inhibitor of the mPTP. The screening approach and compound described provides a workflow and additional tool to aid the search for novel mPTP modulators and to help understand its molecular nature

Science lives: School choices and ‘natural tendencies’

An analysis of 12 semi-structured interviews with university-based scientists and non-scientists illustrates their life journeys towards, or away from, science and the strengths and impact of life occurrences leading them to choose science or non-science professions. We have adopted narrative approaches and used Mezirow's transformative learning theory framework. The areas of discussion from the result have stressed on three main categories that include ‘smooth transition’, ‘incremental wavering transition' and ‘transformative transition’. The article concludes by discussing the key influences that shaped initial attitudes and direction in these people through natural inclination, environmental inspirations and perceptions of science

Enriching the shared socioeconomic pathways to co-create consistent multi-sector scenarios for the UK

As the pressure to take action against global warming is growing in urgency, scenarios that incorporate multiple social, economic and environmental drivers become increasingly critical to support governments and other stakeholders in planning climate change mitigation or adaptation actions. This has led to the recent explosion of future scenario analyses at multiple scales, further accelerated since the development of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) research community Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). While RCPs have been widely applied to climate models to produce climate scenarios at multiple scales for investigating climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerabilities (CCIAV), SSPs are only recently being scaled for different geographical and sectoral applications. This is seen in the UK where significant investment has produced the RCP-based UK Climate Projections (UKCP18), but no equivalent UK version of the SSPs exists. We address this need by developing a set of multi-driver qualitative and quantitative UK-SSPs, following a state-of-the-art scenario methodology that integrates national stakeholder knowledge on locally-relevant drivers and indicators with higher level information from European and global SSPs. This was achieved through an intensive participatory process that facilitated the combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches to develop a set of UK-specific SSPs that are locally comprehensive, yet consistent with the global and European SSPs. The resulting scenarios balance the importance of consistency and legitimacy, demonstrating that divergence is not necessarily the result of inconsistency, nor comes as a choice to contextualise narratives at the appropriate scale

Surveying the views of pupils attending supplementary schools in England

This report is the first part of a wider research project intended to evaluate the role of supplementary school in supporting pupils’ educational progress. This study reports on the first phase of this research An attitude survey to find out what young people think about mainstream and supplementary education, about the core subjects of reading and mathematics, about themselves as learners and about their reasons for attending supplementary school.. Pupil questionnaires were sent to all schools who were successful in being awarded grants from the support service. Schools were asked to administer the questionnaires to ten nominated pupils within the school, although they could give the questionnaire to more than 10 pupils if they chose. Questionnaires were returned from a total of 772 pupils attending 63 supplementary schools in four major cities in England. This is the first study to systematically explore the attitudes of pupils attending supplementary school in England and is the largest ever study of supplementary schools and their pupils