The geography of wage inequality in British cities

There is widespread concern about the scale and implications of urban inequality in Great Britain, but little evidence on which cities are the most unequal and why. This paper investigates patterns of wage inequality in 60 British cities. It has two principal goals: (1) to describe which cities are most unequal and (2) to assess the important determinants of inequality. The results show a distinct geography of wage inequality, the most unequal cities tend to be affluent and located in parts of the Greater South East of England. A central determinant of these patterns is the geography of highly skilled workers. Because of this, the geography of urban wage inequality reflects the geography of affluence more generally

Impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on air quality in Wales: March to October 2020

The report covers the WAQF's activity in 2020 and important policy developments since the last report was published in 2020. As usual we review the latest trends in air pollution measurements and implications for policy compliance as well as maps of Air Quality for NO2, O3, PM10 and PM2.5 in 2020. The area of special interest this year looks at the Landmark Second Inquest Rules that Air Pollution Contributed to the Death in London of 9-Year Old, Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah. The health chapter provides a review of Air Quality and Public Health in 2020

The lung cancer exercise training study: a randomized trial of aerobic training, resistance training, or both in postsurgical lung cancer patients: rationale and design

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The Lung Cancer Exercise Training Study (LUNGEVITY) is a randomized trial to investigate the efficacy of different types of exercise training on cardiorespiratory fitness (VO_2peak), patient-reported outcomes, and the organ components that govern VO_2peakin post-operative non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients.</p> <p>Methods/Design</p> <p>Using a single-center, randomized design, 160 subjects (40 patients/study arm) with histologically confirmed stage I-IIIA NSCLC following curative-intent complete surgical resection at Duke University Medical Center (DUMC) will be potentially eligible for this trial. Following baseline assessments, eligible participants will be randomly assigned to one of four conditions: (1) aerobic training alone, (2) resistance training alone, (3) the combination of aerobic and resistance training, or (4) attention-control (progressive stretching). The ultimate goal for all exercise training groups will be 3 supervised exercise sessions per week an intensity above 70% of the individually determined VO_2peakfor aerobic training and an intensity between 60 and 80% of one-repetition maximum for resistance training, for 30-45 minutes/session. Progressive stretching will be matched to the exercise groups in terms of program length (i.e., 16 weeks), social interaction (participants will receive one-on-one instruction), and duration (30-45 mins/session). The primary study endpoint is VO_2peak. Secondary endpoints include: patient-reported outcomes (PROs) (e.g., quality of life, fatigue, depression, etc.) and organ components of the oxygen cascade (i.e., pulmonary function, cardiac function, skeletal muscle function). All endpoints will be assessed at baseline and postintervention (16 weeks). Substudies will include genetic studies regarding individual responses to an exercise stimulus, theoretical determinants of exercise adherence, examination of the psychological mediators of the exercise - PRO relationship, and exercise-induced changes in gene expression.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>VO_2peakis becoming increasingly recognized as an outcome of major importance in NSCLC. LUNGEVITY will identify the optimal form of exercise training for NSCLC survivors as well as provide insight into the physiological mechanisms underlying this effect. Overall, this study will contribute to the establishment of clinical exercise therapy rehabilitation guidelines for patients across the entire NSCLC continuum.</p> <p>Trial Registration</p> <p>NCT00018255</p

Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) for the Anthropocene Series: Where and how to look for potential candidates

International audienc

Multiplatform Analysis of 12 Cancer Types Reveals Molecular Classification within and across Tissues of Origin

Recent genomic analyses of pathologically-defined tumor types identify “within-a-tissue” disease subtypes. However, the extent to which genomic signatures are shared across tissues is still unclear. We performed an integrative analysis using five genome-wide platforms and one proteomic platform on 3,527 specimens from 12 cancer types, revealing a unified classification into 11 major subtypes. Five subtypes were nearly identical to their tissue-of-origin counterparts, but several distinct cancer types were found to converge into common subtypes. Lung squamous, head & neck, and a subset of bladder cancers coalesced into one subtype typified by TP53 alterations, TP63 amplifications, and high expression of immune and proliferation pathway genes. Of note, bladder cancers split into three pan-cancer subtypes. The multi-platform classification, while correlated with tissue-of-origin, provides independent information for predicting clinical outcomes. All datasets are available for data-mining from a unified resource to support further biological discoveries and insights into novel therapeutic strategies

Exploration of the stochastic approach to modelling industrial dynamics and size distribution

Under the stochastic process known as Gibrat's Law firm growth follows a random walk with no persistence in growth rates and both firm growth rates and the variance of growth rates independent of firm size. Over time, for a fixed population of firms, such a stochastic process gives rise to a lognormal limiting distribution of firm sizes. Utilising an official U.K. regional database of manufacturing plants, the empirical validity of the propositions of Gibrat's Law and the lognormal distribution are examined across three sequential U.K. economic cycles, making use of a range of econometric and statistical methods to assess the sensitivity of the results. Formal statistical tests and non-parametric kernel density estimation methods provide evidence of generally stable aggregate plant size distributions, though frequency exhibiting deviations in the form of positive skewness and leptokurtosis compared to the lognormal distribution. Examination of age and selection effects indicates some right-shift of the plant size distributions with time, though not generally in the form of a simple or consistent evolution towards the lognormal distribution. Plant growth rate distributions are found to often exhibit highly peaked distributions with "fatter tails" than the normal or Laplace distributions. Considerable heterogeneity is observed in both plant size and growth rate distributions across industries. Using a number of econometric model specifications the proposition of equi-proportional plant growth is statistically rejected for aggregate samples with mean reversion observed, a finding robust to corrections for heteroscedasticity and sample selection bias. However, equi-proportional plant growth cannot be rejected for a number of sub-groups. Consistent with previous research, plant growth is found to decline with age. Statistical tests reject the proposition of the variance of plant growth rates being independent of plant size, with a consistent negative relationship identified. Regression approaches suggest the absence of significant plant growth rate persistence effects

Cold Storage Preservation and Warm Ischaemic Injury to Isolated Arterial Segments: Endothelial Cell Injury

Injury to endothelial calls is thought to be important to the development of the vascular lesion of chronic rejection. It was the aim of this study to develop a semiquantitative method to assess endothelial injury in arterial grafts and to document the injury produced by cold storage preservation and additional warm ischaemia. Twelve- and 24-h cold preservation of rat aortic segments, together with an additional 1 h of warm ischaemia, were assessed. Electron micrographs of representative endothelial cells were scored for cytoplasmic, nuclear and mitochondrial injury. The overall injury score was obtained by addition of the individual scores. Storage for up to 24 h in University of Wisconsin (UW) and Terasaki did not produce any injury. Twenty-four hours of storage in Euro-Collins resulted in endothelial cell death. Injury occurred after 12 h of storage in Ross, Collins and normal saline, and the injury increased following 24 h of storage. One hour of warm ischaemia did not increase the injury. Injury to endothelial cells varies with the preservation solution used and the time of cold storage, so that both the type of solution and the storage time should be taken into account in clinical studies looking at the influence of cold ischaemia time and graft outcome