A checklist for health research priority setting: nine common themes of good practice

Health research priority setting processes assist researchers and policymakers in effectively targeting research that has the greatest potential public health benefit. Many different approaches to health research prioritization exist, but there is no agreement on what might constitute best practice. Moreover, because of the many different contexts for which priorities can be set, attempting to produce one best practice is in fact not appropriate, as the optimal approach varies per exercise. Therefore, following a literature review and an analysis of health research priority setting exercises that were organized or coordinated by the World Health Organization since 2005, we propose a checklist for health research priority setting that allows for informed choices on different approaches and outlines nine common themes of good practice. It is intended to provide generic assistance for planning health research prioritization processes. The checklist explains what needs to be clarified in order to establish the context for which priorities are set; it reviews available approaches to health research priority setting; it offers discussions on stakeholder participation and information gathering; it sets out options for use of criteria and different methods for deciding upon priorities; and it emphasizes the importance of well-planned implementation, evaluation and transparency

Global urban environmental change drives adaptation in white clover

Urbanization transforms environments in ways that alter biological evolution. We examined whether urban environmental change drives parallel evolution by sampling 110,019 white clover plants from 6169 populations in 160 cities globally. Plants were assayed for a Mendelian antiherbivore defense that also affects tolerance to abiotic stressors. Urban-rural gradients were associated with the evolution of clines in defense in 47% of cities throughout the world. Variation in the strength of clines was explained by environmental changes in drought stress and vegetation cover that varied among cities. Sequencing 2074 genomes from 26 cities revealed that the evolution of urban-rural clines was best explained by adaptive evolution, but the degree of parallel adaptation varied among cities. Our results demonstrate that urbanization leads to adaptation at a global scale

Environmental stability of electrically conductive viologen-polyaniline systems

10.1002/app.11194Journal of Applied Polymer Science8682099-2107JAPN