The late quaternary vegetational history of Holderness, Yorkshire

This study was undertaken to reconstruct the regional vegetational history of Holderness, in south-east Yorkshire. It is an area with great potential for palaeo-ecological investigations and yet it has been largely ignored during the great increase of research in this field in recent years. Being on the east coast, Holderness is well placed to provide information on the migration of plants into this country, particularly in Late-glacial and early Flandrian times, when the region was joined to the continent by dry land. As a distinct and somewhat isolated region of low-lying land which must have been rather waterlogged for much of Post-glacial time it would have provided a considerable challenge to prehistoric man. Therefore an examination of the extent to which early man was able to emploit this difficult environment seems to be worthwhile.Among the most interesting advances in the study of vegetational history have been the introduction of the evaluation of pollen concentration and absolute pollen frequencies in an attempt to give a more quantitative picture of post vegetational communities, and also the considerable reassessment of climatic conditions during the Late glacial period. Consequently, in the elucidation of the vegetational history of Holderness, the intention has also been to throw some light on these current problems. The Late-glacial of Holderness has therefore been studied in terms of pollen concentrations and absolute pollen frequencies, and the results obtained compared with other recent evidence, much of which has come from north-western England, to try to establish to what extent conditions varied within northern England during this period. Somewhat more approximate estimates of absolute pollen frequencies in Post-glacial times have been made, and the value that this information adds to the understanding of vegetational history of the area, has been considered

The late quaternary vegetational history of Holderness, Yorkshire

This study was undertaken to reconstruct the regional vegetational history of Holderness, in south-east Yorkshire. It is an area with great potential for palaeo-ecological investigations and yet it has been largely ignored during the great increase of research in this field in recent years. Being on the east coast, Holderness is well placed to provide information on the migration of plants into this country, particularly in Late-glacial and early Flandrian times, when the region was joined to the continent by dry land. As a distinct and somewhat isolated region of low-lying land which must have been rather waterlogged for much of Post-glacial time it would have provided a considerable challenge to prehistoric man. Therefore an examination of the extent to which early man was able to emploit this difficult environment seems to be worthwhile.Among the most interesting advances in the study of vegetational history have been the introduction of the evaluation of pollen concentration and absolute pollen frequencies in an attempt to give a more quantitative picture of post vegetational communities, and also the considerable reassessment of climatic conditions during the Late glacial period. Consequently, in the elucidation of the vegetational history of Holderness, the intention has also been to throw some light on these current problems. The Late-glacial of Holderness has therefore been studied in terms of pollen concentrations and absolute pollen frequencies, and the results obtained compared with other recent evidence, much of which has come from north-western England, to try to establish to what extent conditions varied within northern England during this period. Somewhat more approximate estimates of absolute pollen frequencies in Post-glacial times have been made, and the value that this information adds to the understanding of vegetational history of the area, has been considered

Coevolutionary diversification creates nested-modular structure in phage-bacteria interaction networks

This is a post-print of an article published in Interface Focus. Please cite the published article.Phage and their bacterial hosts are the most diverse and abundant biological entities in the oceans, where their interactions have a major impact on marine ecology and ecosystem function. The structure of interaction networks for natural phage-bacteria communities offers insight into their coevolutionary origin. At small phylogenetic scales, observed communities typically show a nested structure, in which both hosts and phage can be ranked by their range of resistance and infectivity respectively. A qualitatively different multiscale structure is seen at larger phylogenetic scales; a natural assemblage sampled from the Atlantic Ocean displays large-scale modularity and local nestedness within each module. Here we show that such “nested-modular” interaction networks can be produced by a simple model of host-phage coevolution in which infection depends on genetic matching. Negative frequency-dependent selection causes diversification of hosts (to escape phage) and phage (to track their evolving hosts). This creates a diverse community of bacteria and phage, maintained by kill-the-winner ecological dynamics. When the resulting communities are visualised as bipartite networks of who-infects-whom, they show the nested-modular structure characteristic of the Atlantic sample. The statistical significance and strength of this observation varies depending on whether the interaction networks take into account the density of the interacting strains, with implications for interpretation of interaction networks constructed by different methods. Our results suggest that the apparently complex community structures associated with marine bacteria and phage may arise from relatively simple coevolutionary origins.University of Exete

The Research Commission on Poverty and Policy Advocacy: A Report from One of the BERA Research Commissions. Final Report

No abstract available

The Research Commission on Poverty and Policy Advocacy: A Report from One of the BERA Research Commissions. Summary Report

No abstract available

Achieving Thoracic Oncology data collection in Europe: a precursor study in 35 Countries

Background: A minority of European countries have participated in international comparisons with high level data on lung cancer. However, the nature and extent of data collection across the continent is simply unknown, and without accurate data collection it is not possible to compare practice and set benchmarks to which lung cancer services can aspire. Methods: Using an established network of lung cancer specialists in 37 European countries, a survey was distributed in December 2014. The results relate to current practice in each country at the time, early 2015. The results were compiled and then verified with co-authors over the following months. Results: Thirty-five completed surveys were received which describe a range of current practice for lung cancer data collection. Thirty countries have data collection at the national level, but this is not so in Albania, BosniaHerzegovina, Italy, Spain and Switzerland. Data collection varied from paper records with no survival analysis, to well-established electronic databases with links to census data and survival analyses. Conclusion: Using a network of committed clinicians, we have gathered validated comparative data reporting an observed difference in data collection mechanisms across Europe. We have identified the need to develop a welldesigned dataset, whilst acknowledging what is feasible within each country, and aspiring to collect high quality data for clinical research