A National Scale “BioBlitz” Using Citizen Science and eDNA Metabarcoding for Monitoring Coastal Marine Fish

Marine biodiversity is threatened by human activities. To understand the changes happening in aquatic ecosystems and to inform management, detailed, synoptic monitoring of biodiversity across large spatial extents is needed. Such monitoring is challenging due to the time, cost, and specialized skills that this typically requires. In an unprecedented study, we combined citizen science with eDNA metabarcoding to map coastal fish biodiversity at a national scale. We engaged 360 citizen scientists to collect filtered seawater samples from 100 sites across Denmark over two seasons (1 p.m. on September 29th 2019 and May 10th 2020), and by sampling at nearly the exact same time across all 100 sites, we obtained an overview of fish biodiversity largely unaffected by temporal variation. This would have been logistically impossible for the involved scientists without the help of volunteers. We obtained a high return rate of 94% of the samples, and a total richness of 52 fish species, representing approximately 80% of coastal Danish fish species and approximately 25% of all Danish marine fish species. We retrieved distribution patterns matching known occurrence for both invasive, endangered, and cryptic species, and detected seasonal variation in accordance with known phenology. Dissimilarity of eDNA community compositions increased with distance between sites. Importantly, comparing our eDNA data with National Fish Atlas data (the latter compiled from a century of observations) we found positive correlation between species richness values and a congruent pattern of community compositions. These findings support the use of eDNA-based citizen science to detect patterns in biodiversity, and our approach is readily scalable to other countries, or even regional and global scales. We argue that future large-scale biomonitoring will benefit from using citizen science combined with emerging eDNA technology, and that such an approach will be important for data-driven biodiversity management and conservation

A holistic multi-methodology for sustainable renovation

A review of the barriers for building renovation has revealed a lack of methodologies, which can promote sustainability objectives and assist various stakeholders during the design stage of building renovation/retrofitting projects. The purpose of this paper is to develop a Holistic Multi-methodology for Sustainable Renovation, which aims to deal with complexity of renovation projects. It provides a framework through which to involve the different stakeholders in the design process to improve group learning and group decision-making, and hence make the building renovation design process more robust and efficient. Therefore, the paper discusses the essence of multifaceted barriers in building renovation regarding cultural changes and technological/physical changes. The outcome is a proposal for a multi-methodology framework, which is developed by introducing, evaluating and mixing methods from Soft Systems Methodologies (SSM) with Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM). The potential of applying the proposed methodology in renovation projects is demonstrated through a case study

Overweight status is associated with extensive signs of microvascular dysfunction and cardiovascular risk

The aim of this present study was to investigate if overweight individuals exhibit signs of vascular dysfunction associated with a high risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD). One hundred lean and 100 overweight participants were recruited for the present study. Retinal microvascular function was assessed using the Dynamic Retinal Vessel Analyser (DVA), and systemic macrovascular function by means of flow-mediated dilation (FMD). Investigations also included body composition, carotid intimal-media thickness (c-IMT), ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (BP), fasting plasma glucose, triglycerides (TG), cholesterol levels (HDL-C and LDL-C), and plasma von Willebrand factor (vWF). Overweight individuals presented with higher right and left c-IMT (p = 0.005 and p = 0.002, respectively), average 24-h BP values (all p <0.001), plasma glucose (p = 0.008), TG (p = 0.003), TG: HDL-C ratio (p = 0.010), and vWF levels (p = 0.004). Moreover, overweight individuals showed lower retinal arterial microvascular dilation (p = 0.039) and baseline-corrected flicker (bFR) responses (p = 0.022), as well as, prolonged dilation reaction time (RT, p = 0.047). These observations emphasise the importance of vascular screening and consideration of preventive interventions to decrease vascular risk in all individuals with adiposity above normal range

Are vaccination programmes delivered by lay health workers cost-effective? A systematic review

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>A recently updated Cochrane systematic review on the effects of lay or community health workers (LHWs) in primary and community health care concluded that LHW interventions could lead to promising benefits in the promotion of childhood vaccination uptake. However, understanding of the costs and cost-effectiveness of involving LHWs in vaccination programmes remains poor. This paper reviews the costs and cost-effectiveness of vaccination programme interventions involving LHWs.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Articles were retrieved if the title, keywords or abstract included terms related to 'lay health workers', 'vaccination' and 'economics'. Reference lists of studies assessed for inclusion were also searched and attempts were made to contact authors of all studies included in the Cochrane review. Studies were included after assessing eligibility of the full-text article. The included studies were then reviewed against a set of background and technical characteristics.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Of the 2616 records identified, only three studies fully met the inclusion criteria, while an additional 11 were retained as they included some cost data. Methodologically, the studies were strong but did not adequately address affordability and sustainability and were also highly heterogeneous in terms of settings and LHW outcomes, limiting their comparability. There were insufficient data to allow any conclusions to be drawn regarding the cost-effectiveness of LHW interventions to promote vaccination uptake. Studies focused largely on health outcomes and did illustrate to some extent how the institutional characteristics of communities, such as governance and sources of financial support, influence sustainability.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The included studies suggest that conventional economic evaluations, particularly cost-effectiveness analyses, generally focus too narrowly on health outcomes, especially in the context of vaccination promotion and delivery at the primary health care level by LHWs. Further studies on the costs and cost-effectiveness of vaccination programmes involving LHWs should be conducted, and these studies should adopt a broader and more holistic approach.</p

Interactions between sleep, stress, and metabolism: From physiological to pathological conditions

AbstractPoor sleep quality due to sleep disorders and sleep loss is highly prevalent in the modern society. Underlying mechanisms show that stress is involved in the relationship between sleep and metabolism through hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis activation. Sleep deprivation and sleep disorders are associated with maladaptive changes in the HPA axis, leading to neuroendocrine dysregulation. Excess of glucocorticoids increase glucose and insulin and decrease adiponectin levels. Thus, this review provides overall view of the relationship between sleep, stress, and metabolism from basic physiology to pathological conditions, highlighting effective treatments for metabolic disturbances

Software for the frontiers of quantum chemistry:An overview of developments in the Q-Chem 5 package

This article summarizes technical advances contained in the fifth major release of the Q-Chem quantum chemistry program package, covering developments since 2015. A comprehensive library of exchange–correlation functionals, along with a suite of correlated many-body methods, continues to be a hallmark of the Q-Chem software. The many-body methods include novel variants of both coupled-cluster and configuration-interaction approaches along with methods based on the algebraic diagrammatic construction and variational reduced density-matrix methods. Methods highlighted in Q-Chem 5 include a suite of tools for modeling core-level spectroscopy, methods for describing metastable resonances, methods for computing vibronic spectra, the nuclear–electronic orbital method, and several different energy decomposition analysis techniques. High-performance capabilities including multithreaded parallelism and support for calculations on graphics processing units are described. Q-Chem boasts a community of well over 100 active academic developers, and the continuing evolution of the software is supported by an “open teamware” model and an increasingly modular design