Reviews

Review of What Unemployment Means, Women's Employment and Unemployment: A Reasearch Report, Hidden Unemployment - the Australian Experience, The Economics of Unemployment in Britain

Fearscapes: Mapping Functional Properties of Cover for Prey with Terrestrial LiDAR

Heterogeneous vegetation structure can create a variable landscape of predation risk—a fearscape—that influences the use and selection of habitat by animals. Mapping the functional properties of vegetation that influence predation risk (e.g., concealment and visibility) across landscapes can be challenging. Traditional ground-based measures of predation risk are location specific and limited in spatial resolution. We demonstrate the benefits of terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) to map the properties of vegetation structure that shape fearscapes. We used TLS data to estimate the concealment of prey from multiple vantage points, representing predator sightlines, as well as the visibility of potential predators from the locations of prey. TLS provides a comprehensive data set that allows an exploration of how habitat changes may affect prey and predators. Together with other remotely sensed imagery, TLS could facilitate the scaling up of fearscape analyses to promote the management and restoration of landscapes

Reviews

Reviews of Workers' participation in decisions within undertakings, Industrial democracy in Europe, European industrial relations, Australian Unions: an Industrial relations perspective, The history of the A.C.T.U., Tackling discrimination at the workplace: an analysis of sex discrimination in Britain, Brothers: male dominance and technological change, Microelectronics and office jobs: women's employment, Women at Work, Married to the job: wives' incorporation in men's work, The future of work, Safety at work and the unions, The system of industrial relations in New Zealand, and The economics of Australian labour market

Operations in the homology spectral sequence of a cosimplicial infinite loop space

Consider the mod 2 homology spectral sequence associated to a cosimplicial space X. We construct external operations whose target is the spectral sequence associated to E\Sigma_2 \times_{\Sigma_2} (X\times X). If X is a cosimplicial E_\infty-space, we couple these external operations with the structure map E\Sigma_2 \times_{\Sigma_2} (X\times X) \to X to produce internal operations in the spectral sequence. In the sequel we show that they agree with the usual Araki-Kudo operations on the abutment H_*(Tot X).Comment: final versio

Spectral Fingerprints Predict Functional Chemistry of Native Plants Across Sagebrush-Steppe Landscapes

Landscapes are changing and under threat from anthropogenic activities, decreasing land cover, contaminated air and water quality, and climate change. These changes impact native communities and their functions at all spatial scales. A major functional trait being affected across these communities is nitrogen. Nitrogen supports plant nutrient cycling and growth, serves as an indicator for crude protein and productivity, and offers quality forage for wild and domestic herbivores. We need better ways to monitor nitrogen across space and time. Current monitoring is elaborate, time-consuming, and expensive. We propose drawing from agricultural methodologies to incorporate near-infrared spectroscopy as a technique in detecting and monitoring nitrogen concentrations across a threatened shrub-steppe ecosystem. We are currently developing calibration equations for nitrogen in sagebrush across four species (Artemisia tridentata wyomingensis, A. tripartita, A. arbuscula, A. nova), three study sites and two seasons. Preliminary results suggest that nitrogen can be accurately predicted across all sites, species, and seasons, explaining 75-90% of the variation in nitrogen. These results indicate that near infrared spectroscopy offers a rapid, noninvasive diagnostic tool for assessing nitrogen in wild systems. This advancing technology is important because it economizes the collection of ecological data in rapidly changing landscapes and provides land managers and researchers with valuable information about the health and sustainability of their lands

Relations between mud volcanoes, thrust deformation, slope sedimentation, and gas hydrate, offshore north Panama

SeaMARC II swath-mapping and migrated seismic reflection data show a high concentration of mud volcanoes in the primary sediment depocentre along the lower slope of a thrust belt, offshore north Panama. The mud volcanoes are 0.4-2.0 km wide, Sonar reflectivity (backscattering), sediment cores, and seismic stratigraphic relations indicate that the depocentre contains thick sequences of basinal turbidites which are ponded between the anticlinal ridges. The ridges are composed of the deformed turbidites of the Colombian basin and exhibit a strong bottom-simulating reflector (BSR), apparently associated with a gas hydrate layer. Based on the concentration of mud volcanoes along the crests of the anticlinal ridges in the depocentre and the structural position of the BSR, we suggest that folding along the deformation front, sediment ponding leading to differential loading, methane migration and accumulation in the anticlines, and gas hydrate formation are important factors in the development of mud volcanoes in this region.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/28727/1/0000553.pd

A coronary heart disease risk model for predicting the effect of potent antiretroviral therapy in HIV-1 infected men

Background Many HIV-infected patients on highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) experience metabolic complications including dyslipidaemia and insulin resistance, which may increase their coronary heart disease (CHD) risk. We developed a prognostic model for CHD tailored to the changes in risk factors observed in patients starting HAART. Methods Data from five cohort studies (British Regional Heart Study, Caerphilly and Speedwell Studies, Framingham Offspring Study, Whitehall II) on 13 100 men aged 40-70 and 114 443 years of follow up were used. CHD was defined as myocardial infarction or death from CHD. Model fit was assessed using the Akaike Information Criterion; generalizability across cohorts was examined using internal-external cross-validation. Results A parametric model based on the Gompertz distribution generalized best. Variables included in the model were systolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, triglyceride, glucose, diabetes mellitus, body mass index and smoking status. Compared with patients not on HAART, the estimated CHD hazard ratio (HR) for patients on HAART was 1.46 (95% CI 1.15-1.86) for moderate and 2.48 (95% CI 1.76-3.51) for severe metabolic complications. Conclusions The change in the risk of CHD in HIV-infected men starting HAART can be estimated based on typical changes in risk factors, assuming that HRs estimated using data from non-infected men are applicable to HIV-infected men. Based on this model the risk of CHD is likely to increase, but increases may often be modest, and could be offset by lifestyle change

Remotely-Sensing Chemical Diversity and Function of Native Plants Across Sagebrush-Steppe Landscapes

Plant chemical diversity provides ecosystem services by supporting wildlife diversity and offering sources for novel medicines. Current mapping of phytochemicals can be expensive, time-intensive and provides only a snapshot of available diversity. To overcome this, I will use handheld and airborne instruments collecting near infrared spectra and hyperspectral imagery to remotely sense chemical diversity within plants and ecosystems. I hypothesize that greater plant chemical diversity will be correlated with greater habitat use by wildlife and greater bioactivity of plant extracts. This research provides a powerful tool to map chemical diversity, target wildlife conservation and direct the discovery of novel medicines

Enhanced estrogen-induced proliferation in obese rat endometrium.

OBJECTIVE: We tested the hypothesis that the proliferative estrogen effect on the endometrium is enhanced in obese vs lean animals. STUDY DESIGN: Using Zucker fa/fa obese rats and lean control, we examined endometrial cell proliferation and the expression patterns of certain estrogen-regulated proproliferative and antiproliferative genes after short-term treatment with estradiol. RESULTS: No significant morphologic/histologic difference was seen between the obese rats and the lean rats. Estrogen-induced proproliferative genes cyclin A and c-Myc messenger RNA expression were significantly higher in the endometrium of obese rats compared with those of the lean control. Expression of the antiproliferative gene p27Kip1 was suppressed by estrogen treatment in both obese and lean rats; however, the decrease was more pronounced in obese rats. Estrogen more strongly induced the antiproliferative genes retinaldehyde dehydrogenases 2 and secreted frizzled-related protein 4 in lean rats but had little or no effect in obese rats. CONCLUSION: Enhancement of estrogen-induced endometrial proproliferative gene expression and suppression of antiproliferative gene expression was seen in the endometrium of obese vs lean animals

Association of circulating metabolites with healthy diet and risk of cardiovascular disease : analysis of two cohort studies

Diet may modify metabolomic profiles towards higher or lower cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. We aimed to identify metabolite profiles associated with high adherence to dietary recommendations-the Alternative Healthy Eating Index (AHEI) - and the extent to which metabolites associated with AHEI also predict incident CVD. Relations between AHEI score and 80 circulating lipids and metabolites, quantified by nuclear magnetic resonance metabolomics, were examined using linear regression models in the Whitehall II study (n = 4824, 55.9 +/- 6.1 years, 28.0% women) and were replicated in the Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study (n = 1716, 37.7 +/- 5.0 years, 56.3% women). We used Cox models to study associations between metabolites and incident CVD over the 15.8-year follow-up in the Whitehall II study. After adjustment for confounders, higher AHEI score (indicating healthier diet) was associated with higher degree of unsaturation of fatty acids (FA) and higher ratios of polyunsaturated FA, omega-3 and docosahexaenoic acid relative to total FA in both Whitehall II and Young Finns studies. A concordance of associations of metabolites with higher AHEI score and lower CVD risk was observed in Whitehall II. Adherence to healthy diet seems to be associated with specific FA that reduce risk of CVD.Peer reviewe