Identifying Land Use Options for Networked Māori Owned Land Blocks to Deliver on Collective Aspirations in New Zealand

Māori (the indigenous people of New Zealand) have many opportunities and challenges to realise the potential provided by their whenua (land), wai (water) and tangata (people) to deliver to their goals and aspirations. The challenges are old and new, including environmental constraints, governance, geographic isolation, fragmented land ownership, access to finance, and lack of appropriate skills, knowledge, and networks. Extension programmes aimed at the general primary production sector have failed to attract or retain any or many Māori participants. Landowner to landowner learning built around landowner aspirations along with collective action has the potential to inform an extension approach of relevance to Māori. Shared knowledge and scale can enable the realisation of opportunities from networked primary production assets and people. A programme of work “Māori Agribusiness Extension (MABX)” is being undertaken where clusters, a grouping of Māori-owned land blocks or agribusinesses willing to collaborate or collectivise towards a common goal or agreed outcomes, are formed to enable collective learning to build confidence to implement land use change and support decision making. This paper describes the extension model being used and gives an example of one cluster

Generalized linear models

The technique of iterative weighted linear regression can be used to obtain maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters with observations distributed according to some exponential family and systematic effects that can be made linear by a suitable transformation. A generalization of the analysis of variance is given for these models using log-likelihoods. These generalized linear models are illustrated by examples relating to four distributions; the Normal, Binomial (probit analysis, etc.), Poisson (contingency tables) and gamma (variance components). The implications of the approach in designing statistics courses are discussed

Development of an internationally agreed minimal dataset for juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM) for clinical and research use

Background: Juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM) is a rare autoimmune inflammatory disorder associated with significant morbidity and mortality. International collaboration is necessary to better understand the pathogenesis of the disease, response to treatment and long-term outcome. To aid international collaboration, it is essential to have a core set of data that all researchers and clinicians collect in a standardised way for clinical purposes and for research. This should include demographic details, diagnostic data and measures of disease activity, investigations and treatment. Variables in existing clinical registries have been compared to produce a provisional data set for JDM. We now aim to develop this into a consensus-approved minimum core dataset, tested in a wider setting, with the objective of achieving international agreement. Methods/Design: A two-stage bespoke Delphi-process will engage the opinion of a large number of key stakeholders through Email distribution via established international paediatric rheumatology and myositis organisations. This, together with a formalised patient/parent participation process will help inform a consensus meeting of international experts that will utilise a nominal group technique (NGT). The resulting proposed minimal dataset will be tested for feasibility within existing database infrastructures. The developed minimal dataset will be sent to all internationally representative collaborators for final comment. The participants of the expert consensus group will be asked to draw together these comments, ratify and 'sign off' the final minimal dataset. Discussion: An internationally agreed minimal dataset has the potential to significantly enhance collaboration, allow effective communication between groups, provide a minimal standard of care and enable analysis of the largest possible number of JDM patients to provide a greater understanding of this disease. The final approved minimum core dataset could be rapidly incorporated into national and international collaborative efforts, including existing prospective databases, and be available for use in randomised controlled trials and for treatment/protocol comparisons in cohort studies

Validity of a three-variable juvenile arthritis disease activity score in children with new-onset juvenile idiopathic arthritis

<p>Objectives To investigate the validity and feasibility of the Juvenile Arthritis Disease Activity Score (JADAS) in the routine clinical setting for all juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) disease categories and explore whether exclusion of the erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) from JADAS (the ‘JADAS3’) influences correlation with single markers of disease activity.</p> <p>Methods JADAS-71, JADAS-27 and JADAS-10 were determined at baseline for an inception cohort of children with JIA in the Childhood Arthritis Prospective Study. JADAS3-71, JADAS3-27 and JADAS3-10 were determined using an identical formula but with exclusion of ESR. Correlation of JADAS with JADAS3 and single measures of disease activity/severity were determined by category.</p> <p>Results Of 956 eligible children, sufficient data were available to calculate JADAS-71, JADAS-27 and JADAS-10 at baseline in 352 (37%) and JADAS3 in 551 (58%). The median (IQR) JADAS-71, JADAS-27 and JADAS-10 for all 352 children was 11 (5.9–18), 10.4 (5.7–17) and 11 (5.9–17.3), respectively. Median JADAS and JADAS3 varied significantly with the category (Kruskal–Wallis p=0.0001), with the highest values in children with polyarticular disease patterns. Correlation of JADAS and JADAS3 across all categories was excellent. Correlation of JADAS71 with single markers of disease activity/severity was good to moderate, with some variation across the categories. With the exception of ESR, correlation of JADAS3-71 was similar to correlation of JADAS-71 with the same indices.</p> <p>Conclusions This study is the first to apply JADAS to all categories of JIA in a routine clinical setting in the UK, adding further information about the feasibility and construct validity of JADAS. For the majority of categories, clinical applicability would be improved by exclusion of the ESR.</p&gt

Comparison of some Reduced Representation Approximations

In the field of numerical approximation, specialists considering highly complex problems have recently proposed various ways to simplify their underlying problems. In this field, depending on the problem they were tackling and the community that are at work, different approaches have been developed with some success and have even gained some maturity, the applications can now be applied to information analysis or for numerical simulation of PDE's. At this point, a crossed analysis and effort for understanding the similarities and the differences between these approaches that found their starting points in different backgrounds is of interest. It is the purpose of this paper to contribute to this effort by comparing some constructive reduced representations of complex functions. We present here in full details the Adaptive Cross Approximation (ACA) and the Empirical Interpolation Method (EIM) together with other approaches that enter in the same category

The Quasi-score statistic in quasi-likelihood model

[[abstract]]In quasi-likelihood model, we propose the quasi-score statistic to establish test procedure for testing the hypothesis that whether the link function is correct or not. In addition, fOur practical examples are given to Snow me advantage of the proposed test.[[notice]]補正完

Job insecurity, employee anxiety, and commitment: The moderating role of collective trust in management

This article examines the moderating effect of collective trust in management on the relation between job insecurity (both objective and subjective) and employee outcomes (work-related anxiety and organisational commitment). This is contextualised in the modern British workplace which has seen increased employment insecurity and widespread cynicism. We use matched employer-employee data extracted from the British Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS) 2011, which includes over 16,000 employees from more than 1100 organisations. The multilevel analyses confirm that objective job insecurity (loss of important elements of a job such as cuts in pay, overtime, training, and working hours) are significantly correlated with high levels of work-related anxiety and lower levels of organisational commitment. These correlations are partially mediated by subjective job insecurity (perception of possible job loss). More importantly, collective trust in management (a consensus of management being reliable, honest and fair) significantly attenuates the negative impact of objective job insecurity on organisational commitment, and reduces the impact of subjective job insecurity on work-related anxiety. Theoretical and practical implications and limitations of these effects are discussed

Favourable antibody responses to human coronaviruses in children and adolescents with autoimmune rheumatic diseases

Background: Differences in humoral immunity to coronaviruses, including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), between children and adults remain unexplained and the impact of underlying immune dysfunction or suppression unknown. Here, we sought to examine the antibody immune competence of children and adolescents with prevalent inflammatory rheumatic diseases, juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA), juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM) and juvenile systemic lupus erythematosus (JSLE), against the seasonal human coronavirus (HCoV)-OC43 that frequently infects this age group. // Methods: Sera were collected from JIA (n=118), JDM (n=49) and JSLE (n=30) patients, and from healthy control (n=54) children and adolescents, prior to the coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic. We employed sensitive flow cytometry-based assays to determine titres of antibodies that reacted with the spike and nucleoprotein of HCoV-OC43 and cross-reacted with the spike and nucleoprotein of SARS-CoV-2, and compared with respective titres in sera from patients with multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children and adolescents (MIS-C). // Findings: Despite immune dysfunction and immunosuppressive treatment, JIA, JDM and JSLE patients maintained comparable or stronger humoral responses than healthier peers, dominated by IgG antibodies to HCoV-OC43 spike, and harboured IgG antibodies that cross-reacted with SARS-CoV-2 spike. In contrast, responses to HCoV-OC43 and SARS-CoV-2 nucleoproteins exhibited delayed age-dependent class-switching and were not elevated in JIA, JDM and JSLE patients, arguing against increased exposure. // Conclusions: Consequently, autoimmune rheumatic diseases and their treatment were associated with a favourable ratio of spike to nucleoprotein antibodies