Social impacts and life cycle assessment: proposals for methodological development for SMEs in the European food and drink sector

Purpose: Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) account for 99 % of companies operating in the European food and drink industry and, often, are part of highly fragmented and complex food chains. The article focuses on the development of a social impact assessment methodology for SMEs in selected food and drink products as part of the EU-FP7 SENSE research project. The proposed methodology employs a top-down and bottom-up approach and focuses on labour rights/working conditions along the product supply chain as the key social impact indicator, limiting key stakeholder classification to workers/employees and local communities impacted by the production process. Problems related to this emerging field are discussed, and questions for further research are expounded. Methods: The article reviews both academic and 'grey' literature on life cycle assessment (LCA) and its relationship to social LCA (S-LCA) and SMEs at the beginning of 2013 and includes case study evidence from the food sector. A pilot questionnaire survey sent to European food and drink sector SMEs and trade associations (as partners in the research project) about their knowledge, experience and engagement with social impacts is presented. Proposals are elaborated for a social impact assessment methodology that identifies the key data for SMEs to collect. Results and discussion: The literature reveals the complexity of the S-LCA approach as it aims to unite disparate and often conflicting interests. Findings from the pilot questionnaire are discussed. Using a top-down and bottom-up approach, the proposed methodology assesses data from SMEs along the supply chain in order to gauge social improvements in the management of labour-related issues for different product sectors. Issues relating to the 'attributional' choice of a social impact indicator and key stakeholder categories are discussed. How 'scoring' is interpreted and reported and what the intended effect of its use will be are also elaborated upon. Conclusions: Whilst recognising the difficulty of devising a robust social impact assessment for SMEs in the food and drink sector, it is argued that the proposed methodology makes a useful contribution in this fast-emerging field

Ages for exoplanet host stars

Age is an important characteristic of a planetary system, but also one that is difficult to determine. Assuming that the host star and the planets are formed at the same time, the challenge is to determine the stellar age. Asteroseismology provides precise age determination, but in many cases the required detailed pulsation observations are not available. Here we concentrate on other techniques, which may have broader applicability but also serious limitations. Further development of this area requires improvements in our understanding of the evolution of stars and their age-dependent characteristics, combined with observations that allow reliable calibration of the various techniques.Comment: To appear in "Handbook of Exoplanets", eds. Deeg, H.J. & Belmonte, J.A, Springer (2018

Deletion of parasite immune modulatory sequences combined with immune activating signals enhances vaccine mediated protection against filarial nematodes

<p>Background: Filarial nematodes are tissue-dwelling parasites that can be killed by Th2-driven immune effectors, but that have evolved to withstand immune attack and establish chronic infections by suppressing host immunity. As a consequence, the efficacy of a vaccine against filariasis may depend on its capacity to counter parasite-driven immunomodulation.</p> <p>Methodology and Principal Findings: We immunised mice with DNA plasmids expressing functionally-inactivated forms of two immunomodulatory molecules expressed by the filarial parasite Litomosoides sigmodontis: the abundant larval transcript-1 (LsALT) and cysteine protease inhibitor-2 (LsCPI). The mutant proteins enhanced antibody and cytokine responses to live parasite challenge, and led to more leukocyte recruitment to the site of infection than their native forms. The immune response was further enhanced when the antigens were targeted to dendritic cells using a single chain Fv-αDEC205 antibody and co-administered with plasmids that enhance T helper 2 immunity (IL-4) and antigen-presenting cell recruitment (Flt3L, MIP-1α). Mice immunised simultaneously against the mutated forms of LsALT and LsCPI eliminated adult parasites faster and consistently reduced peripheral microfilaraemia. A multifactorial analysis of the immune response revealed that protection was strongly correlated with the production of parasite-specific IgG1 and with the numbers of leukocytes present at the site of infection.</p> <p>Conclusions: We have developed a successful strategy for DNA vaccination against a nematode infection that specifically targets parasite-driven immunosuppression while simultaneously enhancing Th2 immune responses and parasite antigen presentation by dendritic cells.</p&gt

Breast cancer risk among women with psychiatric admission with affective or neurotic disorders: a nationwide cohort study in Denmark

There is a considerable interest in the possible relationship between psychosocial factors and the onset of breast cancer. This cohort study was based upon two nationwide and population-based central registers: The Danish Psychiatric Central Register, which contains all cases of psychiatric admissions, and The Danish Cancer Registry, which contains all cases of cancer. The register-linkage was accomplished by using a personal identification number. The study population comprised all women admitted to psychiatric departments or psychiatric hospitals in Denmark between 1969 and 1993 with an affective or a neurotic disorder. Overall, 66 648 women comprising 199 910 admissions and 775 522 person-years were included. The incidence of breast cancer in the cohort was compared with the national breast cancer incidence rates adjusted for age and calendar time. In all, 1270 women with affective or neurotic disorders developed breast cancer subsequent to the first admission as compared with the 1242 women expected, standardized incidence ratio (SIR) = 1.02 (95% confidence interval 0.97–1.08). None of the hypothetical risk factors: type of diagnosis, age or calendar period at cohort entry, age at breast cancer, alcohol abuse, alcohol/drug abuse without further specification, total number of admissions, total length of admissions, or time from first admission showed a statistically significant effect on the relative risk of breast cancer. We found no support for the hypothesis that women admitted to a psychiatric department with an affective or a neurotic disorder subsequently have an increased risk of breast cancer. © 1999 Cancer Research Campaig

An investigation of the apparent breast cancer epidemic in France: screening and incidence trends in birth cohorts

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Official descriptive data from France showed a strong increase in breast-cancer incidence between 1980 to 2005 without a corresponding change in breast-cancer mortality. This study quantifies the part of incidence increase due to secular changes in risk factor exposure and in overdiagnosis due to organised or opportunistic screening. Overdiagnosis was defined as non progressive tumours diagnosed as cancer at histology or progressive cancer that would remain asymptomatic until time of death for another cause.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Comparison between age-matched cohorts from 1980 to 2005. All women residing in France and born 1911-1915, 1926-1930 and 1941-1945 are included. Sources are official data sets and published French reports on screening by mammography, age and time specific breast-cancer incidence and mortality, hormone replacement therapy, alcohol and obesity. Outcome measures include breast-cancer incidence differences adjusted for changes in risk factor distributions between pairs of age-matched cohorts who had experienced different levels of screening intensity.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There was an 8-fold increase in the number of mammography machines operating in France between 1980 and 2000. Opportunistic and organised screening increased over time. In comparison to age-matched cohorts born 15 years earlier, recent cohorts had adjusted incidence proportion over 11 years that were 76% higher [95% confidence limits (CL) 67%, 85%] for women aged 50 to 64 years and 23% higher [95% CL 15%, 31%] for women aged 65 to 79 years. Given that mortality did not change correspondingly, this increase in adjusted 11 year incidence proportion was considered as an estimate of overdiagnosis.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Breast cancer may be overdiagnosed because screening increases diagnosis of slowly progressing non-life threatening cancer and increases misdiagnosis among women without progressive cancer. We suggest that these effects could largely explain the reported "epidemic" of breast cancer in France. Better predictive classification of tumours is needed in order to avoid unnecessary cancer diagnoses and subsequent procedures.</p

Promotional Tone in Reviews of Menopausal Hormone Therapy After the Women's Health Initiative: An Analysis of Published Articles

Adriane Fugh-Berman and colleagues analyzed a selection of published opinion pieces on hormone therapy and show that there may be a connection between receiving industry funding for speaking, consulting, or research and the tone of such opinion pieces

Accurate masses and radii of normal stars: modern results and applications

This paper presents and discusses a critical compilation of accurate, fundamental determinations of stellar masses and radii. We have identified 95 detached binary systems containing 190 stars (94 eclipsing systems, and alpha Centauri) that satisfy our criterion that the mass and radius of both stars be known to 3% or better. To these we add interstellar reddening, effective temperature, metal abundance, rotational velocity and apsidal motion determinations when available, and we compute a number of other physical parameters, notably luminosity and distance. We discuss the use of this information for testing models of stellar evolution. The amount and quality of the data also allow us to analyse the tidal evolution of the systems in considerable depth, testing prescriptions of rotational synchronisation and orbital circularisation in greater detail than possible before. The new data also enable us to derive empirical calibrations of M and R for single (post-) main-sequence stars above 0.6 M(Sun). Simple, polynomial functions of T(eff), log g and [Fe/H] yield M and R with errors of 6% and 3%, respectively. Excellent agreement is found with independent determinations for host stars of transiting extrasolar planets, and good agreement with determinations of M and R from stellar models as constrained by trigonometric parallaxes and spectroscopic values of T(eff) and [Fe/H]. Finally, we list a set of 23 interferometric binaries with masses known to better than 3%, but without fundamental radius determinations (except alpha Aur). We discuss the prospects for improving these and other stellar parameters in the near future.Comment: 56 pages including figures and tables. To appear in The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review. Ascii versions of the tables will appear in the online version of the articl

New genetic loci implicated in fasting glucose homeostasis and their impact on type 2 diabetes risk.

Levels of circulating glucose are tightly regulated. To identify new loci influencing glycemic traits, we performed meta-analyses of 21 genome-wide association studies informative for fasting glucose, fasting insulin and indices of beta-cell function (HOMA-B) and insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) in up to 46,186 nondiabetic participants. Follow-up of 25 loci in up to 76,558 additional subjects identified 16 loci associated with fasting glucose and HOMA-B and two loci associated with fasting insulin and HOMA-IR. These include nine loci newly associated with fasting glucose (in or near ADCY5, MADD, ADRA2A, CRY2, FADS1, GLIS3, SLC2A2, PROX1 and C2CD4B) and one influencing fasting insulin and HOMA-IR (near IGF1). We also demonstrated association of ADCY5, PROX1, GCK, GCKR and DGKB-TMEM195 with type 2 diabetes. Within these loci, likely biological candidate genes influence signal transduction, cell proliferation, development, glucose-sensing and circadian regulation. Our results demonstrate that genetic studies of glycemic traits can identify type 2 diabetes risk loci, as well as loci containing gene variants that are associated with a modest elevation in glucose levels but are not associated with overt diabetes

Excursions into the Evolution of Early-Type Galaxies in Clusters

Recent observations have revealed that early-type galaxies (ETG) in clusters comprise an old galaxy population that is evolving passively. We review some recent observations from the ground and from HST that show that ETG have undergone a significant amount of luminosity evolution. This evolution is traced by two projections of the fundamental plane (FP): the size-magnitude relation (SMR) and the color-magnitude relation (CMR). We will briefly discuss the relevance of all these results in the context of the universality of the IMF.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the proccedings of "New Quests in Stellar Astrophysics: The Link Between Stars and Cosmology, Chavez et al. ed