The prevalence of fibromyalgia in axial spondyloarthritis

Open access via Springer Compact Agreement ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS SIRAS was funded by unrestricted educational grants from AbbVie and Pfzer. BM was funded by the Ministry of Health, Sri Lanka. We thank all the clinicians and research nurses who facilitated recruitment and data collection to the SIRAS study. We are indebted to the SIRAS steering committee, especially Professor Roger Sturrock (chair) and Dr David Marshall (vice-chair). We also thank staf from the SIRAS coordinating centre, in particular: Elizabeth Ferguson-Jones, Giles O’Donovan, Nabi Moaven-Hashemi and Flora Joyce. We would also like to acknowledge the Post Graduate Institute of Medicine, Sri LankaPeer reviewedPublisher PD

Safeguarding community-centred global health research during crises

Global health researchers encounter challenges in conducting research during crises, including pandemics, natural disasters and humanitarian conflicts.1 2 External crises often arise without prior notice and disrupt well-planned research. It is difficult to continue research activities under these circumstances, particularly when researchers and communities are at risk.3 Furthermore, community engagement and involvement (CEI), a crucial element in decolonised global health research,4 can become particularly difficult, as the community members’ primary focus may be on survival and acquiring basic needs, which must be a priority above commitment and participation in research. Conducting research in a context of crisis imposes concerns about ethical, credible and equitable research.5 6 The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on global health research, particularly in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). Both funding acquisition and scholarly output in LMICs were affected.2 Collaborative research relied on virtual communication platforms, and alternative data collection mechanisms, such as online questionnaires and telephone interviews. However, the validity, reliability and generalisability of such datasets are still subject to extensive discussion.7 Populations without reliable internet access and electronic devices were often excluded from participation, which further exacerbated social inequity, particularly in disadvantaged rural communities.8 9 Here, we share the experience of the Sri Lankan team of the multicountry global health research programme ECLIPSE. We highlight three aspects that will inform the global scientific community in safeguarding research during crises: (1) positioning the research within the crisis context; (2) using CEI for ongoing research and (3) innovating methods and moving beyond the virtual mode

A farming system framework for investment planning and priority setting in Ethiopia

This study highlights the diversity of farming systems in Ethiopia and their significance as a basis for planning agriculture-led development interventions in diverse landscapes. This report has been developed as an output of the ACIAR Small Research Activity (SRA) ‘Farming systems approach to supporting national CAADP [Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme] investment planning for sustainable intensification and climate-smart agriculture in Africa’

Public Preferences for Forest Ecosystem Management in Japan with Emphasis on Species Diversity

We carried out online choice experiments (CE) to investigate what value Japanese individuals assign to rare versus familiar species in forest ecosystem, and to determine how preference heterogeneity arises. CE attributes comprised a forestry charge as the price attribute and rare versus familiar species of animals or plants as the good to be valued. Species numbers in a 5 km-mesh forest area were evaluated without the use of species names to focus purely on responses to numerical changes. Positional effects were also tested to validate results regarding alternatives and attributes other than the price attribute. A random parameter logit model was adopted to capture preferences for species diversity. After confirming that no positional effects existed, we found that (1) rare animals were valued more highly than rare plants, (2) familiar plants were assigned a positive value, but familiar animals were not assigned significant value at the mean parameter estimate, and (3) preference heterogeneities existed for all species. The sources of preference heterogeneity were analyzed with a latent class model having principal components of environmental attitudes. The influence of such attitudes was shown to be significant and suggested that attention should be paid to belief systems rather than solely demographics

Market based instruments to achieve sustainable land management goals relating to agricultural salinity issues in Australia

There is a developing interest in Australia in the use of incentive-based policies to deal with natural resource management issues such as salinity. This compares to the previous focus on regulatory controls, suasion and in some cases, direct subsidies, to address these issues. In contrast, incentive-based mechanisms have the potential to provide greater encouragement for land managers and individual resource users to take up practices that may lead to greater individual and collective benefits. Incentive mechanisms work by using market-like processes to automatically transfer information about benefits of alternative courses of actions between participants. Key advantages of using market-like mechanisms, compared to the traditional regulatory measures, are that the desired outcomes could be met at lower costs because participants have the flexibility to vary their involvement to better suit their individual circumstances. There are a range of different incentive mechanisms that could be potentially used to address salinity issues in agricultural regions. In this paper the potential role of market based instruments in addressing agricultural salinity is reviewed

Climate change and climate uncertainty in the Murray-Darling Basin

Human activity has modified the environment at all scales from the smallest ecosystems to the global climate systems. In the analysis of the Murray-Darling Basin, it is necessary to take account of effects of human activity ranging from local changes in water tables and soil structure through basin-level effects of the expansion of irrigation to changes in precipitation pattern arising from the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In this paper, we analyse the impact of, and adjustments to, climate change in the Murray-Darling Basin, using a simulation model that incorporates a state-contingent representation of uncertainty