The Aggression and Vulnerablility Scale (AVS) for the measurement of inpatient behaviors: A demonstration of reliability

Background: The accurate and consistent recording of problematic incidents for in-patient behaviour is important in monitoring patient’s treatment and needs, and for comparing behaviour across different settings. Methods: The Aggression and Vulnerability Scale (AVS) classifies individual incidents into 10 categories covering aggression (Physical Aggression against Other People, Verbal Aggression, Aggression against Property, Non-Compliant Behaviour) and vulnerabilities (Self-Harm/Suicide Attempt, Self-Neglect, Victimized/Exploited, Sexual Vulnerability, Absconding Behaviour and Accident) and rates severity of the incident. Twenty raters (10 naïve and 10 experienced) rated 28 vignettes drawn from nursing records. Results: The AVS had high reliability for both classification category and severity in both experienced and inexperienced raters. Conclusion: The AVS is a reliable scheme for the coding of problematic behavior in an in-patient setting. The AVS is available free from the authors

Environmental risk assessment of GE plants under low-exposure conditions

The requirement for environmental risk assessment (ERA) of genetically engineered (GE) plants prior to large scale or commercial introduction into the environment is well established in national laws and regulations, as well as in international agreements. Since the first introductions of GE plants in commercial agriculture in the 1990s, a nearly universal paradigm has emerged for conducting these assessments based on a few guiding principles. These include the concept of case-by-case assessment, the use of comparative assessments, and a focus of the ERA on characteristics of the plant, the introduced trait, and the receiving environment as well as the intended use. In practice, however, ERAs for GE plants have frequently focused on achieving highly detailed characterizations of potential hazards at the expense of consideration of the relevant levels of exposure. This emphasis on exhaustive hazard characterization can lead to great difficulties when applied to ERA for GE plants under low-exposure conditions. This paper presents some relevant considerations for conducting an ERA for a GE plant in a low-exposure scenario in the context of the generalized ERA paradigm, building on discussions and case studies presented during a session at ISBGMO 12

Problem formulation in the environmental risk assessment for genetically modified plants

Problem formulation is the first step in environmental risk assessment (ERA) where policy goals, scope, assessment endpoints, and methodology are distilled to an explicitly stated problem and approach for analysis. The consistency and utility of ERAs for genetically modified (GM) plants can be improved through rigorous problem formulation (PF), producing an analysis plan that describes relevant exposure scenarios and the potential consequences of these scenarios. A properly executed PF assures the relevance of ERA outcomes for decision-making. Adopting a harmonized approach to problem formulation should bring about greater uniformity in the ERA process for GM plants among regulatory regimes globally. This paper is the product of an international expert group convened by the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) Research Foundation

Structured professional judgment to assist the evaluation and safety planning of suicide risk: The Risk of Suicide Protocol (RoSP)

Background: The Risk of Suicide Protocol (RoSP) is a structured professional judgment (SPJ) scheme designed in line with NICE guidelines to improve clinicians' ability to evaluate and manage suicide risk. Aims: This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of RoSP in two settings: (1) unexpected deaths of people in the community who were known to mental health services; and (2) an inpatient hospital specializing in the assessment and treatment of patients with personality disorder. Method: In Study 1, information from a database of unexpected deaths (N = 68) within an NHS health board was used to complete a RoSP assessment (blind to cause of death) and information from the Coroner's Court was used to assign people to suicide vs. natural causes/accidental death. In Study 2, patients (N = 62) were assessed on the RoSP upon admission to hospital and their self-injurious behaviors were recorded over the first 3 months of admission. Results: (1) Evaluations using RoSP were highly reliable in both samples (ICCs 0.93–0.98); (2) professional judgment based on the RoSP was predictive of completed suicide in the community sample (AUC = 0.83) and; (3) was predictive of both suicide attempts (AUC = 0.81) and all self-injurious behaviors (AUC = 0.80) for the inpatient sample. Conclusion: RoSP is a reliable and valid instrument for the structured clinical evaluation of suicide risk for use in inpatient psychiatric services and in community mental health services. RoSP's efficacy is comparable to well-established structured professional judgment instruments designed to predict other risk behavior (e.g., HCR-20 and the prediction of violence). The use of RoSP for the clinical evaluation of suicide risk and safety-planning provides a structure for meeting NICE guidelines for suicide prevention and is now evidence-based

Genetic basis and detection of unintended effects in genetically modified crop plants

In January 2014, an international meeting sponsored by the International Life Sciences Institute/Health and Environmental Sciences Institute and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency titled “Genetic Basis of Unintended Effects in Modified Plants” was held in Ottawa, Canada, bringing together over 75 scientists from academia, government, and the agro-biotech industry. The objectives of the meeting were to explore current knowledge and identify areas requiring further study on unintended effects in plants and to discuss how this information can inform and improve genetically modified (GM) crop risk assessments. The meeting featured presentations on the molecular basis of plant genome variability in general, unintended changes at the molecular and phenotypic levels, and the development and use of hypothesis-driven evaluations of unintended effects in assessing conventional and GM crops. The development and role of emerging “omics” technologies in the assessment of unintended effects was also discussed. Several themes recurred in a number of talks; for example, a common observation was that no system for genetic modification, including conventional methods of plant breeding, is without unintended effects. Another common observation was that “unintended” does not necessarily mean “harmful”. This paper summarizes key points from the information presented at the meeting to provide readers with current viewpoints on these topics

Networking Our Way to Better Ecosystem Service Provision.

The ecosystem services (EcoS) concept is being used increasingly to attach values to natural systems and the multiple benefits they provide to human societies. Ecosystem processes or functions only become EcoS if they are shown to have social and/or economic value. This should assure an explicit connection between the natural and social sciences, but EcoS approaches have been criticized for retaining little natural science. Preserving the natural, ecological science context within EcoS research is challenging because the multiple disciplines involved have very different traditions and vocabularies (common-language challenge) and span many organizational levels and temporal and spatial scales (scale challenge) that define the relevant interacting entities (interaction challenge). We propose a network-based approach to transcend these discipline challenges and place the natural science context at the heart of EcoS research.The QUINTESSENCE Consortium gratefully acknowledges the support of Départment SPE and Métaprogramme ECOSERV of INRA, and the French ANR projects PEERLESS (ANR-12-AGRO-0006) and AgroBioSE (ANR-13-AGRO-0001).This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2015.12.00