Understanding tensions and identifying clinician agreement on improvements to early-stage chronic kidney disease monitoring in primary care : a qualitative study

Funding This article presents independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research School for Primary Care Research (NIHR SPCR) (reference:120). JE was also supported by the NIHR Programme Grants for Applied Research programme (Reference: RP-PG-1210-12012). DSL and LL are supported by the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research CentrePeer reviewedPublisher PD

Young Adults Performance of Unipedal Dynamic Balance with Various Footwear Conditions

International Journal of Exercise Science 13(4): 206-215, 2020. Wearing barefoot-style (minimalist) shoes is suggested as a transition between wearing shoes and barefoot running. Some sources equate wearing Vibram FiveFingers™(VFFs), a brand of barefoot shoes, with running/walking barefoot. Static and dynamic balance exercises are recommended. Little information is available on the effects barefoot shoes may have on dynamic balance. This study’s purpose was to examine dynamic balance when participants wore VFFs, athletic shoes, or went barefoot (BF). To test dynamic balance, participants used a modified version of the Star Excursion Balance Test (SEBT), in which the reaching leg followed only three spokes of the test: the anterior, posteromedial and posterolateral. For the timed test, participants touched down as quickly as possible in both directions using all 8 spokes. Thirty participants (ages 24.1+/-3.71 years) without lower extremity injury or experience wearing minimalist shoes were tested using the modified SEBT and a timed test wearing VFFs™, athletic shoes, or BF. Three trials for each footwear were completed for three reaching positions: anterior, posterolateral, posteromedial. The timed test measured (seconds) one counterclockwise and one clockwise direction of the 8-spoke figure. A repeated measures analysis of variance determined if any differences existed between footwear type and studied variables. Anterior reach was significantly greater when wearing shoes than with VFF or BF. Posteromedial reach was greater with shoes than BF. Time trials were not significantly different. Because no difference was found in any measured variables between VFF and BF, the results suggest wearing VFFS™ provided similar dynamic balance as going barefoot

Development of integrated mode reformatting components for diffraction-limited spectroscopy

We present the results of our work on developing fully integrated devices (photonic dicers) for reformatting multimode light to a diffraction limited pseudo-slit. These devices can be used to couple a seeing limited telescope point spread function to a spectrograph operating at the diffraction limit, thus potentially enabling compact, high-resolution spectrographs that are free of modal noise

The hidden biodiversity risks of increasing flexibility in biodiversity offset trades

Market-like mechanisms for biodiversity offsetting have emerged globally as supposedly cost-effective approaches for mitigating the impacts of development. In reality, offset buyers have commonly found that required credits are scarce and/or expensive. One response has been to seek improved market functionality, increasing eligible offset supply by allowing greater flexibility in the offset trading rules. These include increasing the size of geographical trading areas and expanding out-of-kind trades (‘geographical’ and ‘ecological’ flexibility). We summarise the arguments for and against flexibility, ultimately arguing that increasing flexibility undermines the achievement of No Net Loss (or Net Gain) of biodiversity where high-quality governance is lacking. We argue expanding out-of-kind trading often increases the pool of potentially eligible offsets with limited conservation justification. This interferes with vital information regarding the scarcity of the impacted biodiversity feature, thereby disincentivising impact avoidance. When a biodiversity feature under threat of development is scarce, expensive offsets are an essential feature of the economics of offsetting which communicate that scarcity, not a problem to be regulated away. We present examples where increasing ecological flexibility may be justifying the loss of conservation priorities. We also discuss how increasing geographical flexibility might compromise the additionality principle. We highlight alternative mechanisms for enhancing offset supply without the risks associated with increasing flexibility, including reducing policy uncertainty and improving engagement and awareness to increase landholder participation. Although there are legitimate reasons for increasing offsetting flexibility in some specific contexts, we argue that the biodiversity risks are considerable, and potentially undermine ‘no net loss’ outcomes

Global no net loss of natural ecosystems

A global goal of no net loss of natural ecosystems or better has recently been proposed, but such a goal would require equitable translation to country-level contributions. Given the wide variation in ecosystem depletion, these could vary from net gain (for countries where restoration is needed), to managed net loss (in rare circumstances where natural ecosystems remain extensive and human development imperative is greatest). National contributions and international support for implementation also must consider non-area targets factors such as the capacity to conserve and the imperative for human development

Aligning ecological compensation policies with the Post‐2020 Global Biodiversity Framework to achieve real net gain in biodiversity

Increasingly, government and corporate policies on ecological compensation (e.g., offsetting) are requiring “net gain” outcomes for biodiversity. This presents an opportunity to align development with the United Nations Conven-tion on Biological Diversity Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework's (GBF) proposed ambition for overall biodiversity recovery. In this perspective, we describe three conditions that should be accounted for in net gain policy to align outcomes with biodiversity recovery goals: namely, a requirement for residual losses from development to be compensated for by (1) absolute gains,which are (2) scaled to the achievement of explicit biodiversity targets, where(3) gains are demonstrably feasible. We show that few current policies meet these conditions, which risks undermining efforts to achieve the proposed Post-2020 GBF milestones and goals, as well as other jurisdictional policy imperatives to halt and reverse biodiversity decline. To guide future decision-making, we provide a supporting decision tree outlining net gain compensation feasibility