Communications Biophysics

Contains reports on three research projects

Applying Failure Modes and Effects Analysis to Public Health Models: The Breathe Easy at Home Program

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a structured process used to identify and prioritize risks by ranking them based on severity, occurrence, and detectability. Historically, FMEA has been used within industries, including automotive and health care. This project explored the adaption of the FMEA template to a small public health program designed to improve asthma outcomes. The Breathe Easy at Home (BEAH) program is a multi-sector partnership that uses a web-based system to link clinical sites with housing code inspections and enforcement for patients with asthma. In July and August 2014, an FMEA was conducted to uncover risks within the BEAH process, and failures were prioritized for corrective action. The FMEA team prioritized risk based on severity, occurrence, and detectability to apply the FMEA process to a public health program. The FMEA team developed an action plan to improve failure modes that received the highest rankings. To fit the needs of a relatively small public health program, Joint Health Commission and U.S. Veterans Administration rating scales were adapted. The FMEA process can be adapted to a public health systems evaluation framework in order to prioritize areas for improvement

The community of advantage

This paper gives an overview of my recently published book, The Community of Advantage: A Behavioural Economist’s Defence of the Market. I explain that my stance as author is that of a behavioural economist and an economic liberal. The book is an attempt to counter the widespread belief that the findings of behavioural economics justify regulatory interventions in the economy that would previously have been thought unacceptably paternalistic. I argue that competitive markets are desirable, not as an efficient means for satisfying the given preferences of assumedly rational individuals, but as an institutional structure that provides opportunities for whatever voluntary transactions people might want to make

Responses of global waterbird populations to climate change vary with latitude

While climate change continues to present a major threat to global biodiversity and ecosystems, most research on climate change impacts do not have the resolution to detect changes in species abundance and are often limited to temperate ecosystems. This limits our understanding of global responses in species abundance—a determinant of ecosystem function and services—to climate change including in the highly-biodiverse tropics. We address this knowledge gap by quantifying abundance responses to climate change in waterbirds, an indicator taxon of wetland biodiversity, at 6,822 sites between −55° and 64°. Using 1,303,651 count records since 1990 of 390 species, we show that with temperature increase, the abundance of species and populations decreased at lower latitudes, particularly in the tropics, but increased at higher latitudes. These contrasting responses to temperature increase according to latitude indicate potential global-scale poleward shifts of species abundance under climate change, providing empirical support for predictions by earlier studies. The negative responses to temperature increase in tropical species and populations are of conservation concern, as they are often also threatened by other anthropogenic factors. Our results suggest that existing biases in studies towards temperate regions could underestimate the impact of climate change on waterbirds and other species

Speech Communication

Contains reports on three research projects.U.S. Air Force (Air Force Cambridge Research Center, Air Research and Development Command) under Contract AF 19(604)-2061National Science Foundatio

The macroecology of animal versus wind pollination: ecological factors are more important than historical climate stability

Background: The relative frequency of wind and animal pollinated plants is non-randomly distributed across the globe and numerous hypotheses have been raised for the greater occurrence of wind pollination in some habitats and towards higher latitudes. To date, however, there has been no comprehensive global investigation of these hypotheses. Aims: Investigating a range of hypotheses for the role of biotic and abiotic factors as determinants of the global variation in animal versus wind pollination. Methods: We analysed 67 plant communities ranging from 70º North to 34º South. For these we determined habitat type, species richness, insularity, topographic heterogeneity, current climate and Late-Quaternary climate change. The predictive effects of these factors on the proportion of wind- and animal-pollinated plants were tested using correlations, ordinary least squares (OLS) and logistic regression analyses with information-theoretic model selection. Results: The proportion of animal-pollinated plant species was positively associated with plant species richness and current temperature. Furthermore, in forest, animal pollination was positively related to precipitation. Historical climate was only weakly and idiosyncratically correlated with animal pollination. Conclusion: Results were consistent with the hypothesised reduced chance for wind-transported pollen reaching conspecific flowers in species-rich communities, fewer constraints on nectar production in warm and wet habitats, and reduced relative effectiveness of wind dispersal in humid areas. There was little evidence of a legacy of historical climate change affecting these patterns

'A habitual disposition to the good': on reason, virtue and realism

Amidst the crisis of instrumental reason, a number of contemporary political philosophers including Jürgen Habermas have sought to rescue the project of a reasonable humanism from the twin threats of religious fundamentalism and secular naturalism. In his recent work, Habermas defends a post-metaphysical politics that aims to protect rationality against encroachment while also accommodating religious faith within the public sphere. This paper contends that Habermas’ post-metaphysical project fails to provide a robust alternative either to the double challenge of secular naturalism and religious fundamentalism or to the ruthless instrumentalism that underpins capitalism. By contrast with Habermas and also with the ‘new realism’ of contemporary political philosophers such as Raymond Geuss or Bernard Williams, realism in the tradition of Plato and Aristotle can defend reason against instrumental rationality and blind belief by integrating it with habit, feeling and even faith. Such metaphysical–political realism can help develop a politics of virtue that goes beyond communitarian thinking by emphasising plural modes of association (not merely ‘community’), substantive ties of sympathy and the importance of pursuing goodness and mutual flourishing

Communications Biophysics

Contains reports on six research projects