Investigating the sustainability of careers in academic primary care: a UK survey.

This is a freely-available open access publication. Please cite the published version which is available via the DOI link in this record.The UK National Health Service (NHS) is undergoing institutional reorganisation due to the Health and Social Care Act-2012 with a continued restriction on funding within the NHS and clinically focused academic institutions. The UK Society for Academic Primary Care (SAPC) is examining the sustainability of academic primary care careers within this climate and preliminary qualitative work has highlighted individual and organisational barriers. This study seeks to quantify the current situation for academics within primary care.UK Society for Academic Primary CareNIHR SPCR Fellowshi

The value of CCTV surveillance cameras as an investigative tool: an empirical analysis

There has been extensive research on the value of closed-circuit television (CCTV) for preventing crime, but little on its value as an investigative tool. This study sought to establish how often CCTV provides useful evidence and how this is affected by circumstances, analysing 251,195 crimes recorded by British Transport Police that occurred on the British railway network between 2011 and 2015. CCTV was available to investigators in 45% of cases and judged to be useful in 29% (65% of cases in which it was available). Useful CCTV was associated with significantly increased chances of crimes being solved for all crime types except drugs/weapons possession and fraud. Images were more likely to be available for more-serious crimes, and less likely to be available for cases occurring at unknown times or in certain types of locations. Although this research was limited to offences on railways, it appears that CCTV is a powerful investigative tool for many types of crime. The usefulness of CCTV is limited by several factors, most notably the number of public areas not covered. Several recommendations for increasing the usefulness of CCTV are discussed

Evolution of sex-specific pace-of-life syndromes: genetic architecture and physiological mechanisms

Sex differences in life history, physiology, and behavior are nearly ubiquitous across taxa, owing to sex-specific selection that arises from different reproductive strategies of the sexes. The pace-of-life syndrome (POLS) hypothesis predicts that most variation in such traits among individuals, populations, and species falls along a slow-fast pace-of-life continuum. As a result of their different reproductive roles and environment, the sexes also commonly differ in pace-of-life, with important consequences for the evolution of POLS. Here, we outline mechanisms for how males and females can evolve differences in POLS traits and in how such traits can covary differently despite constraints resulting from a shared genome. We review the current knowledge of the genetic basis of POLS traits and suggest candidate genes and pathways for future studies. Pleiotropic effects may govern many of the genetic correlations, but little is still known about the mechanisms involved in trade-offs between current and future reproduction and their integration with behavioral variation. We highlight the importance of metabolic and hormonal pathways in mediating sex differences in POLS traits; however, there is still a shortage of studies that test for sex specificity in molecular effects and their evolutionary causes. Considering whether and how sexual dimorphism evolves in POLS traits provides a more holistic framework to understand how behavioral variation is integrated with life histories and physiology, and we call for studies that focus on examining the sex-specific genetic architecture of this integration

Racism as a determinant of health: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Despite a growing body of epidemiological evidence in recent years documenting the health impacts of racism, the cumulative evidence base has yet to be synthesized in a comprehensive meta-analysis focused specifically on racism as a determinant of health. This meta-analysis reviewed the literature focusing on the relationship between reported racism and mental and physical health outcomes. Data from 293 studies reported in 333 articles published between 1983 and 2013, and conducted predominately in the U.S., were analysed using random effects models and mean weighted effect sizes. Racism was associated with poorer mental health (negative mental health: r = -.23, 95% CI [-.24,-.21], k = 227; positive mental health: r = -.13, 95% CI [-.16,-.10], k = 113), including depression, anxiety, psychological stress and various other outcomes. Racism was also associated with poorer general health (r = -.13 (95% CI [-.18,-.09], k = 30), and poorer physical health (r = -.09, 95% CI [-.12,-.06], k = 50). Moderation effects were found for some outcomes with regard to study and exposure characteristics. Effect sizes of racism on mental health were stronger in cross-sectional compared with longitudinal data and in non-representative samples compared with representative samples. Age, sex, birthplace and education level did not moderate the effects of racism on health. Ethnicity significantly moderated the effect of racism on negative mental health and physical health: the association between racism and negative mental health was significantly stronger for Asian American and Latino(a) American participants compared with African American participants, and the association between racism and physical health was significantly stronger for Latino(a) American participants compared with African American participants.<br /

Increased fire activity at the Triassic/Jurassic boundary in Greenland due to climate-driven floral change

One of the largest mass extinctions of the past 600 million years (Myr) occurred 200 Myr ago, at the Triassic/Jurassic boundary. The major floral and faunal turnovers have been linked to a marked increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, probably resulting from massive volcanism in the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province. Future climate change predictions suggest that fire activity may increase, in part because higher global temperatures are thought to increase storminess. Here we use palaeontological reconstructions of the fossil flora from East Greenland to assess forest flammability along with records of fossil charcoal preserved in the rocks to show that fire activity increased markedly across the Triassic/Jurassic boundary. We find a fivefold increase in the abundance of fossil charcoal in the earliest Jurassic, which we attribute to a climate-driven shift from a prevalence of broad-leaved taxa to a predominantly narrow-leaved assemblage. Our fire calorimetry experiments show that narrow lead morphologies are more flammable than broad-leaved morphologies. We suggest that the warming associated with increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels favoured a dominance of narroow-leaved plants, which, coupled with more frequent lightening strikes, led to an increase in fire activity at the Triassic/Jurassic boundary