Resilience: A Literature Review

Resilience has, in the past four decades, been a term increasingly employed throughout a number of sciences: psychology and ecology, most prominently. Increasingly one finds it in political science, business administration, sociology, history, disaster planning, urban planning, and international development. The shared use of the term does not, however, imply unified concepts of resilience nor the theories in which it is embedded. Different uses generate different methods, sometimes different methodologies. Evidential or other empirical support can differ between domains of application, even when concepts are broadly shared. The review centres on three resilience frameworks, of increasing complexity: Engineering Resilience (or ‘Common Sense’ resilience); Systems Resilience, called Robustness in economics; and Resilience in Complex Adaptive Systems. Although each framework has historical roots in particular disciplines, the frameworks themselves can be applied to any domain: Engineering Resilience is utilised in some child development studies; Systems Resilience is often used in governance and management; and the Complex Adaptive Systems approach has been applied to economics, innovation in technology, history, and urban planning. Thus different frameworks along the spectrum offer a choice of perspective; the acceptability of trade-offs between them, and not subject matter, will ultimately determine which perspective is chosen.The Rockerfeller Foundatio

The catalytic effect of IMF lending: evidence from sectoral FDI data

Our study contributes to the search for the elusive catalytic effect of International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending on inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI). Recent scholarship has found that the catalytic effect is conditional on political regime and program stringency. We contribute to this literature by developing and testing a theory which describes how the catalytic effect also varies by economic sector. This is a departure from existing studies, which have tended to focus on aggregate FDI flows after crises. Our findings corroborate previous research, which find that in general IMF lending has a substantial and negative effect on foreign direct investment. However, we find that the negative effect is concentrated in sectors that are highly dependent on external capital and have low sunk costs in the host country. Our findings are robust to several alternative explanations common in IMF literature, namely the importance of IMF program design and the ability of governments to make credible commitments to reform. Substantively, our findings suggest that investors are more likely to use IMF lending as an escape hatch in countries where FDI is dependent on external capital and has low sunk costs

Flowering-pattern and yield components at inflorescence nodes of snap bean as affected by irrigation and plant density

This paper reports the results of a 2 x 2 factorial experiment on bush snap beans `Oregon 1604'. The treatments were 2 contrasted irrigation regimes and 2 contrasted plant densities, and were applied in 1978 and repeated in 1979. Data were collected on the number of flowers and pods, and pod size, at each node of the terminal inflorescence (6-T) of the main stem, and at each node of the oldest inflorescence (2-A) at Node 2. High and low plant densities were 45 and 18 plants m-2 in 1978 and 54 and 33 plants m-2 in 1979. High temperatures, frequently above 32[deg]C, prevailed during bloom and pod development in 1978, but for the most part occurred only during the week prior to bloom in 1979. Inflorescences 6-T and 2-A usually formed 4 and 3 RN's, respectively, in 1978 and 3 and 2 RN's in 1979. The flowers at the proximal nodes of each inflorescence all opened within a few days of one another (duration of flowering at proximal nodes between 3 and 5 days); the flowering-periods of adjacent nodes overlapped, and the flowering period increased acropetally within the inflorescence (duration of flowering at distal nodes between 7 and 13 days). In general, number of flowers, pods formed, pods harvested and percent set decreased acropetally within each inflorescence. The rate of acropetal decline was lessened by high irrigation or low plant density. In both years, high irrigation increased the percent set of all RN's of the 2-A inflorescences, but few other consistent effects between years were observed. The 2 most proximal RN's together produced 93% or more of the yield of each inflorescence. High irrigation significantly increased the total number of pods harvested from these RN's of inflorescences 6-T and 2-A, and low density had a similar effect on 2-A.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/24846/1/0000272.pd

The effect of adult Early Warning Systems education on nurses' knowledge, confidence and clinical performance: A systematic review

Aims: This review aims to determine the effect of adult Early Warning Systems education on nurses’ knowledge, confidence and clinical performance. Background: Early Warning Systems support timely identification of clinical deterioration and prevention of avoidable deaths. Several educational programmes have been designed to help nurses recognize and manage deteriorating patients. Little is known as to the effectiveness of these programmes. Design: Systematic review. Data sources: Academic Search Complete, CINAHL, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, Psychology and Behavioral Science Collection, SocINDEX and the UK & Ireland Reference Centre, EMBASE, the Turning Research Into Practice database, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) and Grey Literature sources were searched between October and November 2015. Review methods: This is a quantitative systematic review using Cochrane methods. Studies published between January 2011 - November 2015 in English were sought. The risk of bias, level of evidence and the quality of evidence per outcome were assessed. Results: Eleven articles with 10 studies were included. Nine studies addressed clinical performance, four addressed knowledge and two addressed confidence. Knowledge, vital signs recording and Early Warning Score calculation were improved in the short term. Two interventions had no effect on nurses’ response to clinical deterioration and use of communication tools. Conclusion: This review highlights the importance of measuring outcomes using standardized tools and valid and reliable instruments. Using longitudinal designs, researchers are encouraged to investigate the effect of Early Warning Systems educational programmes. These can include interactive e-learning, on-site interdisciplinary Early Warning Scoring systems training sessions and simulated scenarios

The North Atlantic Fish Revolution (ca. AD 1500)

UID/HIS/04666/2013We propose the concept of the “Fish Revolution” to demarcate the dramatic increase in North Atlantic fisheries after AD 1500, which led to a 15-fold increase of cod (Gadus morhua) catch volumes and likely a tripling of fish protein to the European market.We consider three key questions: (1) What were the environmental parameters of the Fish Revolution? (2) What were the globalising effects of the Fish Revolution? (3) What were the consequences of the Fish Revolution for fishing communities? While these questions would have been considered unknowable a decade or two ago, methodological developments in marine environmental history and historical ecology have moved information about both supply and demand into the realm of the discernible. Although much research remains to be done, we conclude that this was a major event in the history of resource extraction from the sea, mediated by forces of climate change and globalisation, and is likely to provide a fruitful agenda for future multidisciplinary research.publishersversionpublishe

Use of polyethylene mulch and drip irrigation on Olympus strawberries

Published February 1982. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalo

Genetic identification of cell types underlying brain complex traits yields insights into the etiology of Parkinson's disease.

Genome-wide association studies have discovered hundreds of loci associated with complex brain disorders, but it remains unclear in which cell types these loci are active. Here we integrate genome-wide association study results with single-cell transcriptomic data from the entire mouse nervous system to systematically identify cell types underlying brain complex traits. We show that psychiatric disorders are predominantly associated with projecting excitatory and inhibitory neurons. Neurological diseases were associated with different cell types, which is consistent with other lines of evidence. Notably, Parkinson's disease was genetically associated not only with cholinergic and monoaminergic neurons (which include dopaminergic neurons) but also with enteric neurons and oligodendrocytes. Using post-mortem brain transcriptomic data, we confirmed alterations in these cells, even at the earliest stages of disease progression. Our study provides an important framework for understanding the cellular basis of complex brain maladies, and reveals an unexpected role of oligodendrocytes in Parkinson's disease

Genetic stratification of depression in UK Biobank

Depression is a common and clinically heterogeneous mental health disorder that is frequently comorbid with other diseases and conditions. Stratification of depression may align sub-diagnoses more closely with their underling aetiology and provide more tractable targets for research and effective treatment. In the current study, we investigated whether genetic data could be used to identify subgroups within people with depression using the UK Biobank. Examination of cross-locus correlations were used to test for evidence of subgroups using genetic data from seven other complex traits and disorders that were genetically correlated with depression and had sufficient power (>0.6) for detection. We found no evidence for subgroups within depression for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorder, anorexia nervosa, inflammatory bowel disease or obesity. This suggests that for these traits, genetic correlations with depression were driven by pleiotropic genetic variants carried by everyone rather than by a specific subgroup

Translating genome-wide association findings into new therapeutics for psychiatry

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in psychiatry, once they reach sufficient sample size and power, have been enormously successful. The Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) aims for mega-analyses with sample sizes that will grow to (cumulatively) >1 million individuals in the next 5 years. This should lead to hundreds of new findings for common genetic variants across nine psychiatric disorders studied by the PGC. The new targets discovered by GWAS have the potential to restart largely stalled psychiatric drug development pipelines, and the translation of GWAS findings into the clinic is a key aim of the recently funded phase 3 of the PGC. This is not without considerable technical challenges. These approaches complement the other main aim of GWAS studies on risk prediction approaches for improving detection, differential diagnosis, and clinical trial design. This paper outlines the motivations, technical and analytical issues, and the plans for translating PGC3 findings into new therapeutics

The Alaska Arctic Vegetation Archive (AVA-AK)

The Alaska Arctic Vegetation Archive (AVA-AK, GIVD-ID: NA-US-014) is a free, publically available database archive of vegetation-plot data from the Arctic tundra region of northern Alaska. The archive currently contains 24 datasets with 3,026 non-overlapping plots. Of these, 74% have geolocation data with 25-m or better precision. Species cover data and header data are stored in a Turboveg database. A standardized Pan Arctic Species List provides a consistent nomenclature for vascular plants, bryophytes, and lichens in the archive. A web-based online Alaska Arctic Geoecological Atlas (AGA-AK) allows viewing and downloading the species data in a variety of formats, and provides access to a wide variety of ancillary data. We conducted a preliminary cluster analysis of the first 16 datasets (1,613 plots) to examine how the spectrum of derived clusters is related to the suite of datasets, habitat types, and environmental gradients. Here, we present the contents of the archive, assess its strengths and weaknesses, and provide three supplementary files that include the data dictionary, a list of habitat types, an overview of the datasets, and details of the cluster analysis