Public perceptions of the UK marine environment

The damaging effects of human activities on marine health suggest that a major shift is required in the way marine systems are used by individuals. Identifying how to engage society in this shift is an ongoing debate. This includes strengthening the positive connections between society and the sea. This study uses a survey (n¼1047) to investigate UK public perceptions of subtidal species and marine health to assess whether it is possible to build more positive connections between society and the sea. Respondents showed considerable interest in traditionally charismatic species (puffins, seals and seahorses) although many respondents thought these species did not live in UK seas. Gender and experience of marine environments influenced public perceptions of species. Public perceptions of marine health showed issues such as litter to be considered as the greatest indicator of poor health. Ecological concepts of habitat integrity and biodiversity were also rated as important to marine health. Social values were found to influence public perceptions of marine health. The results show that perceptions are far from uniform across the population, and such diversity of perceptions is likely impact upon methods to catalyse societal engagement with marine conservation. These findings reinforce previous research on public perceptions of UK seas, and identify opportunities for building positive connections between society and the sea. Research priorities to further the debate of engaging society with the sea are identified

The dynamic role of the ilio-sacral joint in jumping frogs

A striking feature among jumping frogs is a sharp pelvic bend about the ilio-sacral (IS) joint, unique to anurans. Although this sagittal plane hinge has been interpreted as crucial for the evolution of jumping, its mechanical contribution has not been quantified. Using a model based on Kassina maculata and animated with kinematics from prior experiments, we solved the ground contact dynamics in MuJoCo enabling inverse dynamics without force plate measurements. We altered the magnitude, speed and direction of IS extension (leaving remaining kinematics unaltered) to determine its role in jumping. Ground reaction forces (GRFs) matched recorded data. Prior work postulated that IS rotation facilitates jumping by aligning the torso with the GRF. However, our simulations revealed that static torso orientation has little effect on GRF due to the close proximity of the IS joint with the COM, failing to support the ‘torso alignment’ hypothesis. Rather than a postural role, IS rotation has a dynamic function whereby angular acceleration (i) influences GRF direction to modulate jump direction and (ii) increases joint loading, particularly at the ankle and knee, perhaps increasing tendon elastic energy storage early in jumps. Findings suggest that the pelvic hinge mechanism is not obligatory for jumping, but rather crucial for the fine tuning of jump trajectory, particularly in complex habitats

Incidence, impact, and predictors of cranial nerve palsy and haematoma following carotid endarterectomy in the international carotid stenting study.

OBJECTIVE: Cranial nerve palsy (CNP) and neck haematoma are complications of carotid endarterectomy (CEA). The effects of patient factors and surgical technique were analysed on the risk, and impact on disability, of CNP or haematoma in the surgical arm of the International Carotid Stenting Study (ICSS), a randomized controlled clinical trial of stenting versus CEA in patients with symptomatic carotid stenosis. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A per-protocol analysis of early outcome in patients receiving CEA in ICSS is reported. Haematoma was defined by the surgeon. CNP was confirmed by an independent neurologist. Factors associated with the risk of CNP and haematoma were investigated in a binomial regression analysis. RESULTS: Of the patients undergoing CEA, 45/821 (5.5%) developed CNP, one of which was disabling (modified Rankin score = 3 at 1 month). Twenty-eight (3.4%) developed severe haematoma. Twelve patients with haematoma also had CNP, a significant association (p 14 days (RR 3.33, 95% CI 1.05 to 10.57). The risk of haematoma was increased in women, by the prescription of anticoagulant drugs pre-procedure and in patients with atrial fibrillation, and was decreased in patients in whom a shunt was used and in those with a higher baseline cholesterol level. CONCLUSIONS: CNP remains relatively common after CEA, but is rarely disabling. Women should be warned about an increased risk. Attention to haemostasis might reduce the incidence of CNP. ICSS is a registered clinical trial: ISRCTN 25337470

Исследование обобщающих характеристик пузырей подводных газовых факелов

Objective: To decrease the procedural risk of carotid revascularisation it is crucial to understand the mechanisms of procedural stroke. This study analysed the features of procedural strokes associated with carotid artery stenting (CAS) and carotid endarterectomy (CEA) within the International Carotid Stenting Study (ICSS) to identify the underlying pathophysiological mechanism. Materials and methods: Patients with recently symptomatic carotid stenosis (1,713) were randomly allocated to CAS or CEA. Procedural strokes were classified by type (ischaemic or haemorrhagic), time of onset (intraprocedural or after the procedure), side (ipsilateral or contralateral), severity (disabling or non-disabling), and patency of the treated artery. Only patients in whom the allocated treatment was initiated were included. The most likely pathophysiological mechanism was determined using the following classification system: (1) carotid-embolic, (2) haemodynamic, (3) thrombosis or occlusion of the revascularised carotid artery, (4) hyperperfusion, (5) cardio-embolic, (6) multiple, and (7) undetermined. Results: Procedural stroke occurred within 30 days of revascularisation in 85 patients (CAS 58 out of 791 and CEA 27 out of 819). Strokes were predominately ischaemic (77; 56 CAS and 21 CEA), after the procedure (57; 37 CAS and 20 CEA), ipsilateral to the treated artery (77; 52 CAS and 25 CEA), and non-disabling (47; 36 CAS and 11 CEA). Mechanisms of stroke were carotid-embolic (14; 10 CAS and 4 CEA), haemodynamic (20; 15 CAS and 5 CEA), thrombosis or occlusion of the carotid artery (15; 11 CAS and 4 CEA), hyperperfusion (9; 3 CAS and 6 CEA), cardio-embolic (5; 2 CAS and 3 CEA) and multiple causes (3; 3 CAS). In 19 patients (14 CAS and 5 CEA) the cause of stroke remained undetermined. Conclusion: Although the mechanism of procedural stroke in both CAS and CEA is diverse, haemodynamic disturbance is an important mechanism. Careful attention to blood pressure control could lower the incidence of procedural stroke. </p

Evaluation of the ECOSSE model for simulating soil organic carbon under Miscanthus and short rotation coppice-willow crops in Britain

In this paper, we focus on the impact on soil organic carbon (SOC) of two dedicated energy crops: perennial grass Miscanthus x Giganteus (Miscanthus) and short rotation coppice (SRC)-willow. The amount of SOC sequestered in the soil is a function of site-specific factors including soil texture, management practices, initial SOC levels and climate; for these reasons, both losses and gains in SOC were observed in previous Miscanthus and SRC-willow studies. The ECOSSE model was developed to simulate soil C dynamics and greenhouse gas emissions in mineral and organic soils. The performance of ECOSSE has already been tested at site level to simulate the impacts of land-use change to short rotation forestry (SRF) on SOC. However, it has not been extensively evaluated under other bioenergy plantations, such as Miscanthus and SRC-willow. Twenty-nine locations in the United Kingdom, comprising 19 paired transitions to SRC-willow and 20 paired transitions to Miscanthus, were selected to evaluate the performance of ECOSSE in predicting SOC and SOC change from conventional systems (arable and grassland) to these selected bioenergy crops. The results of the present work revealed a strong correlation between modelled and measured SOC and SOC change after transition to Miscanthus and SRC-willow plantations, at two soil depths (0–30 and 0–100 cm), as well as the absence of significant bias in the model. Moreover, model error was within (i.e. not significantly larger than) the measurement error. The high degrees of association and coincidence with measured SOC under Miscanthus and SRC-willow plantations in the United Kingdom, provide confidence in using this process-based model for quantitatively predicting the impacts of future land use on SOC, at site level as well as at national level

Evaluation of the ECOSSE model for simulating soilcarbon under short rotation forestry energy crops in Britain

Understanding and predicting the effects of land-use change to short rotation forestry (SRF) on soil carbon (C) is an important requirement for fully assessing the C mitigation potential of SRF as a bioenergy crop. There is little current knowledge of SRF in the UK and in particular a lack of consistent measured data sets on the direct impacts of land use change on soil C stocks. The ECOSSE model was developed to simulate soil C dynamics and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in mineral and organic soils. The ECOSSE model has already been applied spatially to simulate land-use change impacts on soil C and GHG emissions. However, it has not been extensively evaluated under SRF. Eleven sites comprising 29 transitions in Britain, representing land-use change from nonwoodland land uses to SRF, were selected to evaluate the performance of ECOSSE in predicting soil C and soil C change in SRF plantations. The modelled C under SRF showed a strong correlation with the soil C measurements at both 0–30 cm (R = 0.93) and 0–100 cm soil depth (R = 0.82). As for the SRF plots, the soil C at the reference sites have been accurately simulated by the model. The extremely high correlation for the reference fields (R ≥ 0.99) shows a good performance of the model spin-up. The statistical analysis of the model performance to simulate soil C and soil C changes after land-use change to SRF highlighted the absence of significant error between modelled and measured values as well as the absence of significant bias in the model. Overall, this evaluation reinforces previous studies on the ability of ECOSSE to simulate soil C and emphasize its accuracy to simulate soil C under SRF plantations

Radical Reactivity of Frustrated Lewis Pairs with Diaryl Esters

Advances in the chemistry of metal-free systems known as frustrated Lewis pairs (FLPs) has exposed new reactivity of the p-block elements, particularly in small-molecule activation and catalysis. Typically, the mode of activation by FLPs has been predicated on a heterolytic two-electron process, although recently, select FLPs have been shown to participate in single-electron processes. Here, we report the reaction of diaryl substituted esters with FLPs. This results in divergent pathways, one whereby the diaryl moiety is stabilized by the Lewis basic phosphine, and the alternative pathway, wherein a single-electron transfer process occurs, generating the [Mes_{3}P]+⋅/[C(H)Ar_{2}]⋅ radical ion pair. The latter species undergoes a homocoupling reaction to yield tetraphenylethane derivatives. In the presence of olefins, this reactivity can be harnessed through an sp^{2}-sp^{3} C–C heterocoupling reaction to generate α,β-substituted olefins. Notably, this work showcases an FLP approach to metal-free radical C–H bond activation with subsequent C–C bond formation, which also displays complementary reactivity to other approaches

Vanadium

International audienceVanadium (chemical symbol, V) is a d-block transition metal,silver in color, appearing in the first long period of the peri-odic table between titanium and chromium. Vanadium hastwo stable isotopes: 50V and 51V, with atomic abundance of0.25 % and 99.75 %, respectively. Vanadium has several oxidation forms (between 2+ and 5+). In the lithosphere, Voccurs as reducing V(III) form, whereas in oxidizing con- ditions V prevails under V(IV) form. Vanadium(II) is partic- ularly unstable in the environment. Vanadium(III) is more stable than V(II), but it is also gradually oxidized by the air or dissolved oxygen. Vanadium(V) is expected to be the prevailing form in waters exposed to atmospheric oxygen, whereas V(IV) may be present in reducing environments. Depending upon geometry and environment, V ionic radii vary between 36 pm and 79 pm. Vanadium has a high melting point of 1910 42 C and is a mildly incompatible, refractory,lithophile (siderophile in the iron core and chondrites) ele- ment. Vanadium has an electronegativity of 1.63 on the Pau- ling scale and displays a first ionization potential of 6.74 eV. More details can be found in Richards (2006) and Haynes (2015)

Low volume in vitro diagnostic proton NMR spectroscopy of human blood plasma for lipoprotein and metabolite analysis: application to SARS-CoV-2 biomarkers.

The utility of low sample volume in vitro diagnostic (IVDr) proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR) spectroscopic experiments on blood plasma for information recovery from limited availability or high value samples was exemplified using plasma from patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection and normal controls. 1H NMR spectra were obtained using solvent-suppressed 1D, spin-echo (CPMG), and 2-dimensional J-resolved (JRES) spectroscopy using both 3 mm outer diameter SampleJet NMR tubes (100 μL plasma) and 5 mm SampleJet NMR tubes (300 μL plasma) under in vitro diagnostic conditions. We noted near identical diagnostic models in both standard and low volume IVDr lipoprotein analysis (measuring 112 lipoprotein parameters) with a comparison of the two tubes yielding R2 values ranging between 0.82 and 0.99 for the 40 paired lipoprotein parameters samples. Lipoprotein measurements for the 3 mm tubes were achieved without time penalty over the 5 mm tubes as defined by biomarker recovery for SARS-CoV-2. Overall, biomarker pattern recovery for the lipoproteins was extremely similar, but there were some small positive offsets in the linear equations for several variables due to small shimming artifacts, but there was minimal degradation of the biological information. For the standard untargeted 1D, CPMG, and JRES NMR experiments on the same samples, the reduced signal-to-noise was more constraining and required greater scanning times to achieve similar differential diagnostic performance (15 min per sample per experiment for 3 mm 1D and CPMG, compared to 4 min for the 5 mm tubes). We conclude that the 3 mm IVDr method is fit-for-purpose for quantitative lipoprotein measurements, allowing the preparation of smaller volumes for high value or limited volume samples that is common in clinical studies. If there are no analytical time constraints, the lower volume experiments are equally informative for untargeted profiling

Cosmic Hydrogen Was Significantly Neutral a Billion Years After the Big Bang

The ionization fraction of cosmic hydrogen, left over from the big bang, provides crucial fossil evidence for when the first stars and quasar black holes formed in the infant universe. Spectra of the two most distant quasars known show nearly complete absorption of photons with wavelengths shorter than the Ly-alpha transition of neutral hydrogen, indicating that hydrogen in the intergalactic medium (IGM) had not been completely ionized at a redshift z~6.3, about a billion years after the big bang. Here we show that the radii of influence of ionizing radiation from these quasars imply that the surrounding IGM had a neutral hydrogen fraction of tens of percent prior to the quasar activity, much higher than previous lower limits of ~0.1%. When combined with the recent inference of a large cumulative optical depth to electron scattering after cosmological recombination from the WMAP data, our result suggests the existence of a second peak in the mean ionization history, potentially due to an early formation episode of the first stars.Comment: 14 Pages, 2 Figures. Accepted for publication in Nature. Press embargo until publishe