Long-term monitoring reveals forest tree community change driven by atmospheric sulphate pollution and contemporary climate change

Diversity and Distributions published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd Aim: Montane environments are sentinels of global change, providing unique opportunities to assess impacts on species diversity. Multiple anthropogenic stressors such as climate change and atmospheric pollution may act concurrently or synergistically in restructuring communities. Thus, a major challenge for conservation is untangling the relative importance of different stressors. Here, we combine long-term monitoring with multivariate community modelling to estimate the anthropogenic drivers shaping forest tree diversity along an elevational gradient. Location: Camels Hump Mountain, Vermont, USA. Methods: We used Generalized Dissimilarity Modelling (GDM) to model spatial and temporal turnover in beta diversity along an elevational gradient over a 50-year period and tested for spatiotemporal shifts in density and elevational distribution of individual species. GDMs were used to predict community turnover as nonlinear functions of changes in elevation, climate and atmospheric pollution. Results: We observed significant shifts in elevational range and density of individual species, which contributed to an overall reduction in the elevational gradient in beta diversity through time. GDMs showed the combined effects of sulphate deposition and temperature as drivers of this temporal reduction in beta diversity. Spatiotemporal changes differed among species, with shifts observed both up- and downslope. For example, in a reversal of a previous upslope range contraction, red spruce (Picea rubens Sarg.) increased in density and shifted downslope since the 1990s, occupying warmer, drier climates. Main conclusion: Our results demonstrate that global change is impacting the stratification of forest tree diversity along elevational gradients, but the responses of individual species are complex and variable in direction. We suggest abiotic drivers may directly impact individual species while also indirectly altering species interactions along elevational gradients. Our approach modelling the drivers of compositional turnover quantifies the rate and amount of change in beta diversity along environmental gradients and serves as a powerful complement to studying species-specific responses

Enriched biodiversity data as a resource and service

Background: Recent years have seen a surge in projects that produce large volumes of structured, machine-readable biodiversity data. To make these data amenable to processing by generic, open source “data enrichment” workflows, they are increasingly being represented in a variety of standards-compliant interchange formats. Here, we report on an initiative in which software developers and taxonomists came together to address the challenges and highlight the opportunities in the enrichment of such biodiversity data by engaging in intensive, collaborative software development: The Biodiversity Data Enrichment Hackathon. Results: The hackathon brought together 37 participants (including developers and taxonomists, i.e. scientific professionals that gather, identify, name and classify species) from 10 countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the UK, and the US. The participants brought expertise in processing structured data, text mining, development of ontologies, digital identification keys, geographic information systems, niche modeling, natural language processing, provenance annotation, semantic integration, taxonomic name resolution, web service interfaces, workflow tools and visualisation. Most use cases and exemplar data were provided by taxonomists. One goal of the meeting was to facilitate re-use and enhancement of biodiversity knowledge by a broad range of stakeholders, such as taxonomists, systematists, ecologists, niche modelers, informaticians and ontologists. The suggested use cases resulted in nine breakout groups addressing three main themes: i) mobilising heritage biodiversity knowledge; ii) formalising and linking concepts; and iii) addressing interoperability between service platforms. Another goal was to further foster a community of experts in biodiversity informatics and to build human links between research projects and institutions, in response to recent calls to further such integration in this research domain. Conclusions: Beyond deriving prototype solutions for each use case, areas of inadequacy were discussed and are being pursued further. It was striking how many possible applications for biodiversity data there were and how quickly solutions could be put together when the normal constraints to collaboration were broken down for a week. Conversely, mobilising biodiversity knowledge from their silos in heritage literature and natural history collections will continue to require formalisation of the concepts (and the links between them) that define the research domain, as well as increased interoperability between the software platforms that operate on these concepts

Elemental zoning enhances mass transport in zeolite catalysts for methanol to hydrocarbons

Mass transport limitations in zeolite catalysts pose major hurdles for their optimal performance in diverse chemical reactions. Most approaches to reduce these restrictions focus on the synthesis of either hierarchical or nanosized zeolites. Here we demonstrate that the existence of a siliceous, catalytically inactive exterior rim on ZSM-5 particles dramatically reduces the diffusion limitations, which leads to an enhanced catalyst lifetime for the methanol-to-hydrocarbon reaction. Our findings reveal that binary inorganic and organic structure-directing agents enable a one-pot synthesis of Si-zoned ZSM-5 catalysts with diffusion properties that are characteristic of particles with a much smaller size. Operando ultraviolet–visible light diffuse reflectance spectroscopy reveals a marked reduction in external coking among Si-zoned samples. Molecular dynamics simulations to assess the diffusion of methanol and benzene in siliceous pores and in those with Brønsted acids reveal substantially reduced transport limitations in zoned regions, consistent with the improved catalyst activity of Si-zoned zeolites relative to that of ZSM-5 with a homogeneous acid-site distribution. [Figure not available: see fulltext.]

Reducing No-Shows: Evaluating Financial Incentives in Maternal Infant Home Visiting Programs

The goal of this study is to determine if a modest cash incentive reduces the percentage of women who no-show for their first home visit as part of the Maternal Infant Health Program (MIHP), Michigan's state-funded home visiting program for Medicaid-enrolled pregnant women and new mothers

The agenda of the global patient reported outcomes for multiple sclerosis (PROMS) initiative: Progresses and open questions

International audienceOn 12 September 2019, the global Patient Reported Outcome for Multiple Sclerosis (PROMS) Initiative was launched at the 35th Congress of the European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ECTRIMS). The multi-stakeholder PROMS Initiative is jointly led by the European Charcot Foundation (ECF) and the Multiple Sclerosis International Federation (MSIF), with the Italian Multiple Sclerosis Society (AISM) acting as the lead agency for and on behalf of the global MSIF movement. The initiative has the ambitious mission to (i) maximize the impact of science with and of patient input on the life of people affected by MS, and (ii) to represent a unified view on Patient-Reported Outcomes for MS to people affected by MS, healthcare providers, regulatory agencies and Health Technologies Assessments agencies. Equipped with an innovative participatory governance of an international and interdisciplinary network of different stakeholders, PROMS has the potential to guide future breakthroughs in MS patient-focused research and care. In this paper we present the progresses of the global PROMS Initiative and discuss the open questions that we aim to address

Endotoxin as a determinant of asthma and wheeze among rural dwelling children and adolescents: A case–control study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The association between endotoxin exposure and asthma is complex and has been associated with rural living. We examined the relationship between domestic endotoxin and asthma or wheeze among rural school-aged children (6–18 years) and assessed the interaction between endotoxin and other characteristics with these outcomes.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Between 2005 and 2007 we conducted a case–control study of children 6–18 years in the rural region of Humboldt, Canada. Cases (n = 102) reported doctor-diagnosed asthma or wheeze in the past year. Controls (n = 208) were randomly selected from children without asthma or wheeze. Data were collected to ascertain symptoms, asthma history and indoor environmental exposures (questionnaire), endotoxin (dust collection from the play area floor and child’s mattress), and tobacco smoke exposure (saliva collection). Statistical testing was completed using multiple logistic regression to account for potential confounders and to assess interaction between risk factors. A stratified analysis was also completed to examine the effect of personal history of allergy.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Among children aged 6–12 years, mattress endotoxin concentration (EU/mg) and load (EU/m²) were inversely associated with being a case [odds ratio (OR) = 0.44, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.20-0.98; and OR = 0.38, 95% CI = 0.20-0.75, respectively]. These associations were not observed in older children or with play area endotoxin.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our results suggest that endotoxin exposure might be protective for asthma or wheeze. The protective effect is found in younger school-aged, non-allergic children. These results may help explain the inconsistencies in previous studies and suggest that the protective effects of endotoxin in the prevention of atopy and asthma or wheeze are most effective earlier in life.</p