The "witness anonymity" and "investigation anonymity" provisions

This article offers an analysis of the creation of statutory powers to allow witnesses to give evidence anonymously. The latest provisions are those in the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 replacing the emergency temporary legislation: Criminal Evidence (Witness Anonymity) Act 2008. Consideration is given to that Act, its legislative history and case law. Examination of the new powers for investigation anonymity orders suggests that these are likely to be of symbolic rather than practical significance

The effects of riparian forestry on invertebrate drift and brown trout in upland streams of contrasting acidity

International audienceVariations in macroinvertebrate drift and benthic invertebrate abundance were assessed in 30 upland Welsh streams of varying acidity (pH 6.0) and riparian land-use (conifer, moorland or native broadleaf). The consequences for the diet and condition of wild brown trout Salmo trutta were also assessed. As expected from previous studies, there were significant reductions in benthic invertebrate abundance, aquatic drift density (by >60%), aquatic drift biomass (by >35%), total drift density (by >35%) and total drift biomass (by >20%) at acid sites by comparison with circumneutral sites due largely to the scarcity of mayflies. Absolute drift from terrestrial sources was unrelated to stream pH but formed a significantly greater proportion of total drift at acid sites (30-65% of density) than at circumneutral sites (20-40%) as aquatic contributions declined. Most of this apparent land use effect reflected significantly increased terrestrial drift under broadleaves. There was no significant reduction in terrestrial or aquatic drift at conifer forest sites per se after accounting for low pH. Trout diet varied substantially between locations partly reflecting variations in drift: significantly fewer mayflies and stoneflies were eaten at acid sites, and significantly more terrestrial prey were eaten under broadleaves. However, acidity did not reduce trout condition or gut-fullness. Unexpectedly, trout condition was significantly enhanced at conifer sites, irrespective of their pH. Hence, acidity has greater effects on the benthic abundance and drift density of invertebrates in upland streams than does riparian land use. However, trout forage flexibly enough to offset any possible food deficit, for example by switching to chironomids and terrestrial invertebrates. Enhanced terrestrial contributions to invertebrate drift from riparian broadleaf trees may be important in supplementing foraging opportunities for trout where aquatic prey are scarce. These data illustrate the value of native tree species in riparian locations in upland Britain and the energy subsidy they provide might well be disproportionately important for otherwise impoverished acid streams Keywords: brown trout, land-use, acidification, drift, forestry, stream

An observational prospective study of topical acidified nitrite for killing methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in contaminated wounds

Background Endogenous nitric oxide (NO) kills bacteria and other organisms as part of the innate immune response. When nitrite is exposed to low pH, NO is generated and has been used as an NO delivery system to treat skin infections. We demonstrated eradication of MRSA carriage from wounds using a topical formulation of citric acid (4.5%) and sodium nitrite (3%) creams co-applied for 5 days to 15 wounds in an observational prospective pilot study of 8 patients. Findings Following treatment with topical citric acid and sodium nitrite, 9 of 15 wounds (60%) and 3 of 8 patients (37%) were cleared of infection. MRSA isolates from these patients were all sensitive to acidified nitrite in vitro compared to methicillin-sensitive S. aureus and a reference strain of MRSA. Conclusions Nitric oxide and acidified nitrite offer a novel therapy for control of MRSA in wounds. Wounds that were not cleared of infection may have been re-contaminated or the bioavailability of acidified nitrite impaired by local factors in the tissue

A complex systems approach to constructing better models for managing financial markets and the economy

We outline a vision for an ambitious program to understand the economy and financial markets as a complex evolving system of coupled networks of interacting agents. This is a completely different vision from that currently used in most economic models. This view implies new challenges and opportunities for policy and managing economic crises. The dynamics of such models inherently involve sudden and sometimes dramatic changes of state. Further, the tools and approaches we use emphasize the analysis of crises rather than of calm periods. In this they respond directly to the calls of Governors Bernanke and Trichet for new approaches to macroeconomic modelling. Graphical abstrac

The statistical laws of popularity: Universal properties of the box office dynamics of motion pictures

Are there general principles governing the process by which certain products or ideas become popular relative to other (often qualitatively similar) competitors? To investigate this question in detail, we have focused on the popularity of movies as measured by their box-office income. We observe that the log-normal distribution describes well the tail (corresponding to the most successful movies) of the empirical distributions for the total income, the income on the opening week, as well as, the weekly income per theater. This observation suggests that popularity may be the outcome of a linear multiplicative stochastic process. In addition, the distributions of the total income and the opening income show a bimodal form, with the majority of movies either performing very well or very poorly in theaters. We also observe that the gross income per theater for a movie at any point during its lifetime is, on average, inversely proportional to the period that has elapsed after its release. We argue that (i) the log-normal nature of the tail, (ii) the bimodal form of the overall gross income distribution, and (iii) the decay of gross income per theater with time as a power law, constitute the fundamental set of {\em stylized facts} (i.e., empirical "laws") that can be used to explain other observations about movie popularity. We show that, in conjunction with an assumption of a fixed lower cut-off for income per theater below which a movie is withdrawn from a cinema, these laws can be used to derive a Weibull distribution for the survival probability of movies which agrees with empirical data. The connection to extreme-value distributions suggests that popularity can be viewed as a process where a product becomes popular by avoiding failure (i.e., being pulled out from circulation) for many successive time periods. We suggest that these results may apply to popularity in general.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figure

Biomechanics for inclusive urban design : effects of tactile paving on older adults’ gait when crossing the street

In light of our ageing population it is important that the urban environment is easily accessible and hence supports older adults’ independence. Tactile ‘blister’ paving was originally designed to provide guidance for visually impaired people at pedestrian crossings. However, as research links irregular surfaces to falls in older adults, such paving may have an adverse effect on older people. We investigated the effects of tactile paving on older adults’ gait in a scenario closely resembling “crossing the street”. Gait analysis of 32 healthy older adults showed that tactile, as compared to smooth, paving increases the variability in timing of foot placement by 20%, thereby indicating a disturbance of the rhythmic gait pattern. Moreover, toe-clearance during the swing phase increased by 7% on tactile paving, and the ability to stop upon cue from the traffic light was compromised. These results need to be viewed under consideration of the limitations associated with laboratory studies and real world analysis is needed to fully understand their implications for urban design

Comparative functional histopathology of human breast carcinoma xenografts.

A series of xenografts of human breast carcinomas has been established and serially transplanted in immune-suppressed mice. Certain structural and functional features of the original human tumours, including carcinoembryonic antigen and epithelial membrane antigen, continue to be expressed by the resulting xenografts. Stromal responses such as elastosis and oestrogen-receptor activity were lost by the xenografts. No metastases were detected in tumour-bearing mice. This study suggests that xenografts may have some value in experimental pathology as one type of model of human breast carcinoma

Development and validation of a rapid, generic measure of disease control from the patient's perspective: The IBD-Control questionnaire

Introduction: The use of patient reported outcome measures to support routine inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) care is not widespread and suggests that existing questionnaires lack relevance to day-to-day decisions or are too cumbersome to administer. We developed a simple, generic tool for capturing disease control from the patient's perspective to address these barriers. Methods: Development based on literature review, patient focus groups/interviews and a steering group, defining a limited set of generic questions. The ‘IBD-Control’ questionnaire comprises 13 items plus a visual analogue scale (VAS) (0–100). Prospective validation involved baseline completion of IBD-Control, quality of life (QoL) questionnaire (UK-IBD-Q), EuroQol (EQ-5D), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Score; and clinician assessment (blinded to questionnaire; recording Harvey-Bradshaw Index or Simple Clinical Colitis Activity Index; Global Clinician Rating; treatment outcome). Results: 299 patients returned baseline surveys (Crohn's disease, n=160; ulcerative colitis, n=139) and 138 attended for repeat visits. Completion time (mean; SD): 1 min 15 s; 25 s; Internal consistency: Cronbach's α for all 13 items (0.85); for subgroup of eight questions (‘IBD-Control-8’; 0.86). Strong correlation between IBD-Control-8 and IBD-Control-VAS (r=0.81). Test-retest reliability (2 week repeat): intra-class correlation=0.97 for IBD-Control-8 and 0.96 for IBD-Control-VAS. Construct validity: Moderate-to-strong correlations between IBD-Control-8 and IBD-Control-VAS versus activity indices, UK-IBD-Q and EQ-5D (utility) with r values 0.52–0.86. Discriminant validity (mean instrument scores for remission, mild, moderate or severe): p<0.001 (analysis of variance (ANOVA)). Sensitivity to change: Effect sizes: 0.76–1.44. Conclusions: The IBD-Control is a rapid, reliable, valid and sensitive instrument for measuring overall disease control from the patient's perspective. Unlike existing patient reported outcome measures, its simplicity, ease-of-use and generic applicability make it a candidate for supporting routine care

Global Systems Science and Policy

The vision of Global Systems Science (GSS) is to provide scientific evidence and means to engage into a reflective dialogue to support policy-making and public action and to enable civil society to collectively engage in societal action in response to global challenges like climate change, urbanisation, or social inclusion. GSS has four elements: policy and its implementation, the science of complex systems, policy informatics, and citizen engagement. It aims to give policy makers and citizens a better understanding of the possible behaviours of complex social systems. Policy informatics helps generate and evaluate policy options with computer-based tools and the abundance of data available today. The results they generate are made accessible to everybody—policymakers, citizens—through intuitive user interfaces, animations, visual analytics, gaming, social media, and so on. Examples of Global Systems include epidemics, finance, cities, the Internet, trade systems and more. GSS addresses the question of policies having desirable outcomes, not necessarily optimal outcomes. The underpinning idea of GSS is not to precisely predict but to establish possible and desirable futures and their likelihood. Solving policy problems is a process, often needing the requirements, constraints, and lines of action to be revisited and modified, until the problem is ‘satisficed’, i.e. an acceptable compromise is found between competing objectives and constraints. Thus policy problems and their solutions coevolve much as in a design process. Policy and societal action is as much about attempts to understand objective facts as it is about the narratives that guide our actions. GSS tries to reconcile these apparently contradictory modes of operations. GSS thus provides policy makers and society guidance on their course of action rather than proposing (illusionary) optimal solutions

EPOCHS VI: The Size and Shape Evolution of Galaxies since z ~ 8 with JWST Observations

We present the results of a size and structural analysis of 1395 galaxies at $0.5 \leq z \lesssim 8$ with stellar masses $\log \left(M_* / M_{\odot}\right)$ $>$ 9.5 within the JWST Public CEERS field that overlaps with the HST CANDELS EGS observations. We use GALFIT to fit single S\'ersic models to the rest-frame optical profile of our galaxies, which is a mass-selected sample complete to our redshift and mass limit. Our primary result is that at fixed rest-frame wavelength and stellar mass, galaxies get progressively smaller, evolving as $\sim (1+z)^{-0.71\pm0.19}$ up to $z \sim 8$. We discover that the vast majority of massive galaxies at high redshifts have low S\'ersic indices, thus do not contain steep, concentrated light profiles. Additionally, we explore the evolution of the size-stellar mass relationship, finding a correlation such that more massive systems are larger up to $z \sim 3$. This relationship breaks down at $z > 3$, where we find that galaxies are of similar sizes, regardless of their star formation rates and S\'ersic index, varying little with mass. We show that galaxies are more compact at redder wavelengths, independent of sSFR or stellar mass up to $z \sim 3$. We demonstrate the size evolution of galaxies continues up to $z \sim 8$, showing that the process or causes for this evolution is active at early times. We discuss these results in terms of ideas behind galaxy formation and evolution at early epochs, such as their importance in tracing processes driving size evolution, including minor mergers and AGN activity.Comment: Submitted to MNRA