What kind of Brexit do voters want? Lessons from the Citizens’ Assembly on Brexit

The Citizens’ Assembly on Brexit was a major exercise in deliberative public engagement conducted in autumn 2017. It brought together fifty randomly selected members of the public for two carefully structured weekends of listening, learning, reflecting and discussing. Assembly Members considered what post-Brexit arrangements the UK should pursue, focusing on trade and migration. On trade, most Members wanted the UK to pursue a bespoke arrangement with the EU and rejected the option of leaving the EU with no deal. On migration, most wanted the UK to maintain free movement of labour while using already available policy levers to reduce immigration numbers. These findings provide unique insight into informed public opinion on vital, pressing policy questions. The Assembly also illustrates the valuable role that such deliberative exercises could play in UK democracy. We suggest they could be particular helpful for unlocking progress on issues, such as the future of social care, that are often felt to be ‘too difficult’ to handle

A Preliminary Evaluation of the Ability of Keratotic Tissue to Act as a Prognostic Indicator of Hip Fracture Risk

Studies have shown that Raman spectroscopic analysis of fingernail clippings can help differentiate between post-menopausal women who have and who have not suffered a fracture. However, all studies to date have been retrospective in nature, comparing the proteins in nails sourced from women, post-fracture. The objective of this study was to investigate the potential of a prospective test for hip fracture based on spectroscopic analysis of nail tissue. Archived toenail samples from post-menopausal women aged 50 to 63 years in the Nurses\u27 Health Study were obtained and analysed by Raman spectroscopy. Nails were matched case-controls sourced from 161 women; 82 who underwent a hip fracture up to 20 years after nail collection and 81 age-matched controls. A number of clinical risk factors (CRFs) from the Fracture Risk Assessment (FRAX) tool had been assessed at toenail collection. Using 80% of the spectra, models were developed for increasing time periods between nail collection and fracture. Scores were calculated from these models for the other 20% of the sample and the ability of the score to predict hip fracture was tested in model with and without the CRFs by comparing the odds ratios (ORs) per 1 SD increase in standardised predictive values. The Raman score successfully distinguished between hip fracture cases and controls. With only the score as a predictor, a statistically significant OR of 2.2 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.5-3.1) was found for hip fracture for up to 20 years after collection. The OR increased to 3.8 (2.6-5.4) when the CRFs were added to the model. For fractures limited to 13 years after collection, the OR was 6.3 (3.0-13.1) for the score alone. The test based on Raman spectroscopy has potential for identifying individuals who may suffer hip fractures several years in advance. Higher powered studies are required to evaluate the predictive capability of this test

Fates of Eroded Soil Organic Carbon: Mississippi Basin Case Study

We have developed a mass balance analysis of organic carbon (OC) across the five major river subsystems of the Mississippi (MS) Basin (an area of 3.2 3 106 km2). This largely agricultural landscape undergoes a bulk soil erosion rate of ;480 t·km22·yr21 (;1500 3 106 t/yr, across the MS Basin), and a soil organic carbon (SOC) erosion rate of ;7 t·km22·yr21 (;22 3 106 t/yr). Erosion translocates upland SOC to alluvial deposits, water impoundments, and the ocean. Soil erosion is generally considered to be a net source of CO2 release to the atmosphere in global budgets. However, our results indicate that SOC erosion and relocation of soil apparently can reduce the net SOC oxidation rate of the original upland SOC while promoting net replacement of eroded SOC in upland soils that were eroded. Soil erosion at the MS Basin scale is, therefore, a net CO2 sink rather than a source.This paper is part of ongoing studies by the coauthors to determine the role of landscape erosion and deposition in material fluxes and biogeochemical cycling. Parts of this work have been supported by internal institutional support at CICESE, Emporia State University, Miami University College of Arts and Science, and the Kansas Geological Survey, and by a Kansas NASA EPSCoR grant awarded to R. W. Buddemeier and R. O. Sleezer.We thank the numerous individuals who contributed technical assistance or conceptual support to these efforts. Three reviewers have provided useful critical comments on versions of this manuscript. Of these, we would like to single out Jon Cole, who thoroughly grasped the big picture of what we were advancing and whose summary comment seems worth quoting: ‘‘The idea that soil erosion is a large net sink of atmospheric CO2 is very interesting, well supported by the arguments and data in this paper, and likely to be a huge controversy. This controversy is a good thing, as Martha Stewart might say.’

Robust adaptation decision-making under uncertainty: Real Options Analysis for water storage

Planning for climate change adaptation is challenging due to the inherent uncertainty associated with future climate changes. Although we have a range of climate projections, even these cannot provide a definitive picture of the future, with little certainty regarding the timing, magnitude and location of change. As a result there is increasing interest in approaches that can accommodate uncertainty better. A range of approaches exist and are being developed across several disciplines. Each has advantages and disadvantages and is suited for different types of decisions. In this study we focus on one of these approaches, Real Options Analysis (ROA), and chose water storage for irrigation as an example to demonstrate its use in uncertain futures

The charm-quark contribution to light-by-light scattering in the muon (g−2)(g-2) from lattice QCD

We compute the hadronic light-by-light scattering contribution to the muon $g-2$ from the charm quark using lattice QCD. The calculation is performed on ensembles generated with dynamical $(u,d,s)$ quarks at the SU(3)$_{\rm f}$ symmetric point with degenerate pion and kaon masses of around 415 MeV. It includes the connected charm contribution, as well as the leading disconnected Wick contraction, involving the correlation between a charm and a light-quark loop. Cutoff effects turn out to be sizeable, which leads us to use lighter-than-physical charm masses, to employ a broad range of lattice spacings reaching down to 0.039 fm and to perform a combined charm-mass and continuum extrapolation. We use the $\eta_c$ meson to define the physical charm-mass point and obtain a final value of $a_\mu^{\rm HLbL,c} = (2.8\pm 0.5) \times 10^{-11}$, whose uncertainty is dominated by the systematics of the extrapolation. Our result is consistent with the estimate based on a simple charm-quark loop, whilst being free of any perturbative scheme dependence on the charm mass. The mixed charm-light disconnected contraction contributes a small negative amount to the final value.Comment: 21 pages, 8 figures, 9 table

Hadronic light-by-light contribution to (g−2)μ(g-2)_\mu from lattice QCD with SU(3) flavor symmetry

We perform a lattice QCD calculation of the hadronic light-by-light contribution to $(g-2)_\mu$ at the SU(3) flavor-symmetric point $m_\pi=m_K\simeq 420\,$MeV. The representation used is based on coordinate-space perturbation theory, with all QED elements of the relevant Feynman diagrams implemented in continuum, infinite Euclidean space. As a consequence, the effect of using finite lattices to evaluate the QCD four-point function of the electromagnetic current is exponentially suppressed. Thanks to the SU(3)-flavor symmetry, only two topologies of diagrams contribute, the fully connected and the leading disconnected. We show the equivalence in the continuum limit of two methods of computing the connected contribution, and introduce a sparse-grid technique for computing the disconnected contribution. Thanks to our previous calculation of the pion transition form factor, we are able to correct for the residual finite-size effects and extend the tail of the integrand. We test our understanding of finite-size effects by using gauge ensembles differing only by their volume. After a continuum extrapolation based on four lattice spacings, we obtain $a_\mu^{\rm hlbl} = (65.4\pm 4.9 \pm 6.6)\times 10^{-11}$, where the first error results from the uncertainties on the individual gauge ensembles and the second is the systematic error of the continuum extrapolation. Finally, we estimate how this value will change as the light-quark masses are lowered to their physical values.Comment: 19 figures, 39 pages; improved references, in particular concerning the eta exchange; no figures or results change

Dispelling urban myths about default uncertainty factors in chemical risk assessment - Sufficient protection against mixture effects?

© 2013 Martin et al.; licensee BioMed Central LtdThis article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Assessing the detrimental health effects of chemicals requires the extrapolation of experimental data in animals to human populations. This is achieved by applying a default uncertainty factor of 100 to doses not found to be associated with observable effects in laboratory animals. It is commonly assumed that the toxicokinetic and toxicodynamic sub-components of this default uncertainty factor represent worst-case scenarios and that the multiplication of those components yields conservative estimates of safe levels for humans. It is sometimes claimed that this conservatism also offers adequate protection from mixture effects. By analysing the evolution of uncertainty factors from a historical perspective, we expose that the default factor and its sub-components are intended to represent adequate rather than worst-case scenarios. The intention of using assessment factors for mixture effects was abandoned thirty years ago. It is also often ignored that the conservatism (or otherwise) of uncertainty factors can only be considered in relation to a defined level of protection. A protection equivalent to an effect magnitude of 0.001-0.0001% over background incidence is generally considered acceptable. However, it is impossible to say whether this level of protection is in fact realised with the tolerable doses that are derived by employing uncertainty factors. Accordingly, it is difficult to assess whether uncertainty factors overestimate or underestimate the sensitivity differences in human populations. It is also often not appreciated that the outcome of probabilistic approaches to the multiplication of sub-factors is dependent on the choice of probability distributions. Therefore, the idea that default uncertainty factors are overly conservative worst-case scenarios which can account both for the lack of statistical power in animal experiments and protect against potential mixture effects is ill-founded. We contend that precautionary regulation should provide an incentive to generate better data and recommend adopting a pragmatic, but scientifically better founded approach to mixture risk assessment. © 2013 Martin et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.Oak Foundatio