Visionmaker.NYC: An Online Landscape Ecology Tool to Support Social-Ecological System Visioning and Planning

The Welikeia project and the corresponding free online tool Visionmaker.NYC focus on the historical landscape ecologies of New York City. This article provides a brief introduction to online participatory tools, describes the Visionmaker tool in detail, and offers suggested ways to use the tool for Extension professionals based in and outside New York City. This information provides a basis for best practices Extension professionals can apply when using Visionmaker to support ecological thinking and participatory planning to catalyze change among urban residents

Chronology of Range Expansion of the Coyote, Canis latrans, in New York

Coyotes (Canis latrans) were historically restricted to central North America. In less than two centuries, however, Coyotes have colonized most of the continent, including much of northeastern North America. Better understanding causes and proximate mechanisms of this expansion requires a detailed understanding of how Coyotes colonized areas on a fine scale. We examined the establishment of Coyotes in the State of New York by collecting and analyzing reports of their first occurrence throughout the state over the past century, and creating a detailed map of range expansion. Coyotes first entered New York from the north, circled the Adirondack region prior to colonizing it, and then expanded southward and westward at ca. 78-90 km/decade. The revealed pattern lends little support to the hypotheses that the range expansion is attributable to translocations and releases, or that Coyotes were historically present in the region and only recently expanded in numbers. Rather, the data suggest a correlative relationship between anthropogenic land use and Coyote range expansion

What is the role for conservation organizations in poverty alleviation in the world’s wild places?

In this paper we provide an empirically-based way to address the general question of the broad-scale spatial relationship between poverty occurrence and areas of interest to those seeking conservation of large wild areas. We address the question of the spatial relationship between poor people and areas less impacted by human activity by asking three questions about the global spatial relationship between poor people and ecological intactness and how it varies by major biome and geographical region. We use infant mortality rate as a proxy for poverty and the Human Footprint as a proxy for ecological intactness, comparing global terrestrial maps of both. The analysis shows that the vast majority of the world’s poor people live in extremely urban and very transformed (peri transformed) areas. Only a small percentage of the world’s most poor are found in areas that are somewhat or extremely wild: about 0.25% of the world’s population. This fact has implications for the calls being made for conservation organizations to undertake poverty alleviation, suggesting that at a global scale those groups with interest in conserving wild areas would be able to contribute little to globally significant poverty alleviation efforts. However, these conservation groups are well positioned to develop new partnerships for delivery of benefits to some of the least accessible poor people in the wildest places of the world

A Case-Control Study of Trace-Element Status and Lung Cancer in Appalachian Kentucky

Appalachian Kentucky (App KY) leads the nation in lung cancer incidence and mortality. Trace elements, such as As, have been associated with lung cancers in other regions of the country and we hypothesized that a population-based study would reveal higher trace element concentrations in App KY individuals with cancer compared to controls. Using toenail and drinking water trace element concentrations, this study investigated a possible association between lung cancer incidence and trace-element exposure in residents of this region. This population-based case-control study had 520 subjects, and 367 subjects provided toenail samples. Additionally, we explored the relationship between toenail and fingernail trace-element concentrations to determine if fingernails could be used as a surrogate for toenails when patients are unable to provide toenail samples. We found that, contrary to our initial hypothesis, trace element concentrations (Al, As, Cr, Mn, Co, Fe, Ni, Cu, Se, and Pb) were not higher in cancer cases than controls with the exception of Zn where concentrations were slightly higher in cases. In fact, univariate logistic regression models showed that individuals with lower concentrations of several elements (Al, Mn, Cr, and Se) were more likely to have lung cancer, although only Mn was significant in multivariate models which controlled for confounding factors. While drinking water concentrations of Al, Cr and Co were positively related to cancer incidence in univariate models, only Co remained significant in multivariate models. However, since the drinking water concentrations were extremely low and not reflected in the toenail concentrations, the significance of this finding is unclear. We also found that fingernail concentrations were not consistently predictive of toenail concentrations, indicating that fingernails should not be used as surrogates for toenails in future studies

Are We Capturing Faunal Intactness? A Comparison of Intact Forest Landscapes and the “Last of the Wild in Each Ecoregion”

Efforts to designate priority areas for conservation have had a long history, with most modern initiatives focused on either designating areas important for biodiversity or those least impacted by direct human disturbance. Ecologically intact ecosystems are becoming increasingly limited on the planet, making their identification and conservation an important priority. Intact forest landscapes (IFL) are defined as forests that are mainly free of significant anthropogenic degradation and at least 500 km2 in size. Here we define a new metric, the Last of the Wild in each Ecoregion (LWE), as a preliminary scoping of the most intact parts of each ecoregion. IFL and LWE are approaches among a broad family of techniques to mapping ecological integrity at the global scale. Although both implicitly include species integrity as a dimension of intactness, this is inferred rather than directly measured. We assessed whether IFL or LWE areas were better at capturing species where they are most abundant using species distribution data for a set of forest species for which range-wide data were available and human activity limits the range. We found that IFL and LWE methods identified areas where species we assessed are either absent or at too low an abundance to be ecologically functional. As such many IFL/LWE polygons did not have intact fauna. We also show that 54.7% of the terrestrial realm (excluding Antarctica) has at least one species recorded as extinct and that two thirds of IFL/LWE areas overlap with areas where species have gone extinct in the past 500 years. The results show that even within the most remote areas, serious faunal loss has taken place at many localities so direct species survey work is also needed to confirm faunal intactness

Nanopore sequencing of influenza A and B in Oxfordshire and the United Kingdom, 2022–23

Objectives: We evaluated Nanopore sequencing for influenza surveillance. Methods; Influenza A and B PCR-positive samples from hospital patients in Oxfordshire, UK, and a UK-wide population survey from winter 2022–23 underwent Nanopore sequencing following targeted rt-PCR amplification. Results: From 941 infections, successful sequencing was achieved in 292/388 (75 %) available Oxfordshire samples: 231 (79 %) A/H3N2, 53 (18 %) A/H1N1, and 8 (3 %) B/Victoria and in 53/113 (47 %) UK-wide samples. Sequencing was more successful at lower Ct values. Most same-sample replicate sequences had identical haemagglutinin segments (124/141, 88 %); 36/39 (92 %) Illumina vs. Nanopore comparisons were identical, and 3 (8 %) differed by 1 variant. Comparison of Oxfordshire and UK-wide sequences showed frequent inter-regional transmission. Infections were closely-related to 2022–23 vaccine strains. Only one sample had a neuraminidase inhibitor resistance mutation. 849/941 (90 %) Oxfordshire infections were community-acquired. 63/88 (72 %) potentially healthcare-associated cases shared a hospital ward with ≥ 1 known infectious case. 33 epidemiologically-plausible transmission links had sequencing data for both source and recipient: 8 were within ≤ 5 SNPs, of these, 5 (63 %) involved potential sources that were also hospital-acquired. Conclusions: Nanopore influenza sequencing was reproducible and antiviral resistance rare. Inter-regional transmission was common; most infections were genomically similar. Hospital-acquired infections are likely an important source of nosocomial transmission and should be prioritised for infection prevention and control

Data Descriptor: Global terrestrial Human Footprint maps for 1993 and 2009

Remotely-sensed and bottom-up survey information were compiled on eight variables measuring the direct and indirect human pressures on the environment globally in 1993 and 2009. This represents not only the most current information of its type, but also the first temporally-consistent set of Human Footprint maps. Data on human pressures were acquired or developed for: 1) built environments, 2) population density, 3) electric infrastructure, 4) crop lands, 5) pasture lands, 6) roads, 7) railways, and 8) navigable waterways. Pressures were then overlaid to create the standardized Human Footprint maps for all non-Antarctic land areas. A validation analysis using scored pressures from 3114 × 1 km2 random sample plots revealed strong agreement with the Human Footprint maps.We anticipate that the Human Footprint maps will find a range of uses as proxies for human disturbance of natural systems. The updated maps should provide an increased understanding of the human pressures that drive macro-ecological patterns, as well as for tracking environmental change and informing conservation science and application

Disparities and risks of sexually transmissible infections among men who have sex with men in China: a meta-analysis and data synthesis.

BACKGROUND: Sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including Hepatitis B and C virus, are emerging public health risks in China, especially among men who have sex with men (MSM). This study aims to assess the magnitude and risks of STIs among Chinese MSM. METHODS: Chinese and English peer-reviewed articles were searched in five electronic databases from January 2000 to February 2013. Pooled prevalence estimates for each STI infection were calculated using meta-analysis. Infection risks of STIs in MSM, HIV-positive MSM and male sex workers (MSW) were obtained. This review followed the PRISMA guidelines and was registered in PROSPERO. RESULTS: Eighty-eight articles (11 in English and 77 in Chinese) investigating 35,203 MSM in 28 provinces were included in this review. The prevalence levels of STIs among MSM were 6.3% (95% CI: 3.5-11.0%) for chlamydia, 1.5% (0.7-2.9%) for genital wart, 1.9% (1.3-2.7%) for gonorrhoea, 8.9% (7.8-10.2%) for hepatitis B (HBV), 1.2% (1.0-1.6%) for hepatitis C (HCV), 66.3% (57.4-74.1%) for human papillomavirus (HPV), 10.6% (6.2-17.6%) for herpes simplex virus (HSV-2) and 4.3% (3.2-5.8%) for Ureaplasma urealyticum. HIV-positive MSM have consistently higher odds of all these infections than the broader MSM population. As a subgroup of MSM, MSW were 2.5 (1.4-4.7), 5.7 (2.7-12.3), and 2.2 (1.4-3.7) times more likely to be infected with chlamydia, gonorrhoea and HCV than the broader MSM population, respectively. CONCLUSION: Prevalence levels of STIs among MSW were significantly higher than the broader MSM population. Co-infection of HIV and STIs were prevalent among Chinese MSM. Integration of HIV and STIs healthcare and surveillance systems is essential in providing effective HIV/STIs preventive measures and treatments. TRIAL REGISTRATION: PROSPERO NO: CRD42013003721

Temporal changes in clinical and radiographic variables in dogs with preclinical myxomatous mitral valve disease: The EPIC study

The Evaluation of pimobendan in dogs with cardiomegaly caused by preclinical myxomatous mitral valve disease (EPIC) study monitored dogs with myxomatous mitral valve disease (MMVD) as they developed congestive heart failure (CHF)