A practical guide to the Freedom of Information Act 2000

The Constitution Unit has rewritten the Practical Guide to the Freedom of Information Act 2000. The revised edition differs considerably from the original in format and content. Foremest among the changes are the three case studies (with comments) at the end and the references to recently published, more detailed official advice. The guide is designed for practitioners who are responsible for or otherwise involved in their authority's plans to implement and operate the FoI Act. The guide serves as an introduction to implementation and operation of the FoI Act, focusing specifically on its core principles and features, how public authorities should prepare for implementation and what FoI practitioners should do when they receive requests for information

Importance of Reward and Prefrontal Circuitry in Hunger and Satiety: Prader-Willi Syndrome vs. Simple Obesity

Background: The majority of research on obesity has focused primarily on clinical features (eating behavior, adiposity measures), or peripheral appetite-regulatory peptides (leptin, ghrelin). However, recent functional neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that some reward circuitry regions which are associated with appetite-regulatory hormones are also involved in the development and maintenance of obesity. Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS), characterized by hyperphagia and hyperghrelinemia reflecting multi-system dysfunction in inhibitory and satiety mechanisms, serves as an extreme model of genetic obesity. Simple (non-PWS) obesity (OB) represents an obesity control state. Objective: This study investigated subcortical food motivation circuitry and prefrontal inhibitory circuitry functioning in response to food stimuli before and after eating in individuals with PWS compared with OB. We hypothesized that groups would differ in limbic regions (i.e., hypothalamus, amygdala) and prefrontal regions associated with cognitive control [i.e., dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), orbitofrontal cortex (OFC)] after eating. Design and Participants: Fourteen individuals with PWS, 14 BMI- and age-matched individuals with OB, and 15 age-matched healthy-weight controls (HWC) viewed food and non-food images while undergoing functional MRI before (pre-meal) and after (post-meal) eating. Using SPM8, group contrasts were tested for hypothesized regions: hypothalamus, nucleus accumbens (NAc), amygdala, hippocampus, OFC, medial PFC, and DLPFC. Results: Compared with OB and HWC, PWS demonstrated higher activity in reward/limbic regions (NAc, amygdala) and lower activity in hypothalamus and hippocampus, in response to food (vs. non-food) images pre-meal. Post-meal, PWS exhibited higher subcortical activation (hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus) compared to OB and HWC. OB showed significantly higher activity versus PWS and HWC in cortical regions (DLPFC, OFC) associated with inhibitory control. Conclusion: In PWS compared with obesity per se, results suggest hyperactivations in subcortical reward circuitry and hypoactivations in cortical inhibitory regions after eating, which provides evidence of neural substrates associated with variable abnormal food motivation phenotypes in PWS and simple obesity

TPH2 polymorphisms and expression in Prader-Willi syndrome subjects with differing genetic subtypes

Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) is a genetic imprinting disease that causes developmental and behavioral disturbances resulting from loss of expression of genes from the paternal chromosome 15q11-q13 region. In about 70% of subjects, this portion of the paternal chromosome is deleted, while 25% have two copies of the maternal chromosome 15, or uniparental maternal disomy (UPD; the remaining subjects have imprinting center defects. There are several documented physical and behavioral differences between the two major PWS genetic subtypes (deletion and UPD) indicating the genetic subtype plays a role in clinical presentation. Serotonin is known to be disturbed in PWS and affects both eating behavior and compulsion, which are reported to be abnormal in PWS. We investigated the tryptophan hydroxylase gene (TPH2), the rate-limiting enzyme in the production of brain serotonin, by analyzing three different TPH2 gene polymorphisms, transcript expression, and correlation with PWS genetic subtype. DNA and RNA from lymphoblastoid cell lines derived from 12 PWS and 12 comparison subjects were used for the determination of genetic subtype, TPH2 polymorphisms and quantitative RT-PCR analysis. A similar frequency of TPH2 polymorphisms was seen in the PWS and comparison subjects with PWS deletion subjects showing increased expression with one or more TPH2 polymorphism. Both PWS deletion and PWS UPD subjects had significantly lower TPH2 expression than control subjects and PWS deletion subjects had significantly lower TPH2 expression compared with PWS UPD subjects. PWS subjects with 15q11-q13 deletions had lower TPH2 expression compared with PWS UPD or control subjects, requiring replication and further studies to identify the cause including identification of disturbed gene interactions resulting from the deletion process

Estimation of speciated and total mercury dry deposition at monitoring locations in eastern and central North America

Dry deposition of speciated mercury, i.e., gaseous oxidized mercury (GOM), particulate-bound mercury (PBM), and gaseous elemental mercury (GEM), was estimated for the year 2008–2009 at 19 monitoring locations in eastern and central North America. Dry deposition estimates were obtained by combining monitored two- to four-hourly speciated ambient concentrations with modeled hourly dry deposition velocities (<i>V</i><sub>d</sub>) calculated using forecasted meteorology. Annual dry deposition of GOM+PBM was estimated to be in the range of 0.4 to 8.1 μg m<sup>−2</sup> at these locations with GOM deposition being mostly five to ten times higher than PBM deposition, due to their different modeled <i>V</i><sub>d</sub> values. Net annual GEM dry deposition was estimated to be in the range of 5 to 26 μg m<sup>−2</sup> at 18 sites and 33 μg m<sup>−2</sup> at one site. The estimated dry deposition agrees very well with limited surrogate-surface dry deposition measurements of GOM and PBM, and also agrees with litterfall mercury measurements conducted at multiple locations in eastern and central North America. This study suggests that GEM contributes much more than GOM+PBM to the total dry deposition at the majority of the sites considered here; the only exception is at locations close to significant point sources where GEM and GOM+PBM contribute equally to the total dry deposition. The relative magnitude of the speciated dry deposition and their good comparisons with litterfall deposition suggest that mercury in litterfall originates primarily from GEM, which is consistent with the limited number of previous field studies. The study also supports previous analyses suggesting that total dry deposition of mercury is equal to, if not more important than, wet deposition of mercury on a regional scale in eastern North America

Constraints from observations and modeling on atmosphere-surface exchange of mercury in eastern North America

Atmosphere-surface exchange of mercury, although a critical component of its global cycle, is currently poorly constrained. Here we use the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model to interpret atmospheric Hg-0 (gaseous elemental mercury) data collected during the 2013 summer Nitrogen, Oxidants, Mercury and Aerosol Distributions, Sources and Sinks (NOMADSS) aircraft campaign as well as ground-and ship-based observations in terms of their constraints on the atmosphere-surface exchange of Hg-0 over eastern North America. Model-observation comparison suggests that the Northwest Atlantic may be a net source of Hg-0, with high evasion fluxes in summer (our best sensitivity simulation shows an average oceanic Hg-0 flux of 3.3 ng m(-2) h(-1) over the Northwest Atlantic), while the terrestrial ecosystem in the summer of the eastern United States is likely a net sink of Hg-0 (our best sensitivity simulation shows an average terrestrial Hg-0 flux of -0.6 ng m(-2) h(-1) over the eastern United States). The inferred high Hg-0 fluxes from the Northwest Atlantic may result from high wet deposition fluxes of oxidized Hg, which are in turn related to high precipitation rates in this region. We also find that increasing simulated terrestrial fluxes of Hg-0 in spring compared to other seasons can better reproduce observed seasonal variability of Hg-0 concentration at ground-based sites in eastern North America.Peer reviewe

Top-down constraints on atmospheric mercury emissions and implications for global biogeochemical cycling

We perform global-scale inverse modeling to constrain present-day atmospheric mercury emissions and relevant physiochemical parameters in the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model. We use Bayesian inversion methods combining simulations with GEOS-Chem and ground-based Hg[superscript 0] observations from regional monitoring networks and individual sites in recent years. Using optimized emissions/parameters, GEOS-Chem better reproduces these ground-based observations and also matches regional over-water Hg[superscript 0] and wet deposition measurements. The optimized global mercury emission to the atmosphere is ~ 5.8 Gg yr[superscript −1]. The ocean accounts for 3.2 Gg yr[superscript −1] (55% of the total), and the terrestrial ecosystem is neither a net source nor a net sink of Hg[superscript 0]. The optimized Asian anthropogenic emission of Hg[superscript 0] (gas elemental mercury) is 650–1770 Mg yr[superscript −1], higher than its bottom-up estimates (550–800 Mg yr[superscript −1]). The ocean parameter inversions suggest that dark oxidation of aqueous elemental mercury is faster, and less mercury is removed from the mixed layer through particle sinking, when compared with current simulations. Parameter changes affect the simulated global ocean mercury budget, particularly mass exchange between the mixed layer and subsurface waters. Based on our inversion results, we re-evaluate the long-term global biogeochemical cycle of mercury, and show that legacy mercury becomes more likely to reside in the terrestrial ecosystem than in the ocean. We estimate that primary anthropogenic mercury contributes up to 23 % of present-day atmospheric deposition.National Science Foundation (U.S.). Atmospheric Chemistry Program (1053648

Nested-grid simulation of mercury over North America

We have developed a new nested-grid mercury (Hg) simulation over North America with a 1/2° latitude by 2/3° longitude horizontal resolution employing the GEOS-Chem global chemical transport model. Emissions, chemistry, deposition, and meteorology are self-consistent between the global and nested domains. Compared to the global model (4° latitude by 5° longitude), the nested model shows improved skill at capturing the high spatial and temporal variability of Hg wet deposition over North America observed by the Mercury Deposition Network (MDN) in 2008–2009. The nested simulation resolves features such as higher deposition due to orographic precipitation, land/ocean contrast and and predicts more efficient convective rain scavenging of Hg over the southeast United States. However, the nested model overestimates Hg wet deposition over the Ohio River Valley region (ORV) by 27%. We modify anthropogenic emission speciation profiles in the US EPA National Emission Inventory (NEI) to account for the rapid in-plume reduction of reactive to elemental Hg (IPR simulation). This leads to a decrease in the model bias to −2.3% over the ORV region. Over the contiguous US, the correlation coefficient (<i>r</i>) between MDN observations and our IPR simulation increases from 0.60 to 0.78. The IPR nested simulation generally reproduces the seasonal cycle in surface concentrations of speciated Hg from the Atmospheric Mercury Network (AMNet) and Canadian Atmospheric Mercury Network (CAMNet). In the IPR simulation, annual mean gaseous and particulate-bound Hg(II) are within 140% and 11% of observations, respectively. In contrast, the simulation with unmodified anthropogenic Hg speciation profiles overestimates these observations by factors of 4 and 2 for gaseous and particulate-bound Hg(II), respectively. The nested model shows improved skill at capturing the horizontal variability of Hg observed over California during the ARCTAS aircraft campaign. The nested model suggests that North American anthropogenic emissions account for 10–22% of Hg wet deposition flux over the US, depending on the anthropogenic emissions speciation profile assumed. The modeled percent contribution can be as high as 60% near large point sources in ORV. Our results indicate that the North American anthropogenic contribution to dry deposition is 13–20%

Cerebral activations during viewing of food stimuli in adult patients with acquired structural hypothalamic damage: A functional neuroimaging study

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Obesity is common following hypothalamic damage due to tumours. Homeostatic and non-homeostatic brain centres control appetite and energy balance but their interaction in the presence of hypothalamic damage remains unknown. We hypothesized that abnormal appetite in obese patients with hypothalamic damage results from aberrant brain processing of food stimuli. We sought to establish differences in activation of brain food motivation and reward neurocircuitry in patients with hypothalamic obesity (HO) compared with patients with hypothalamic damage whose weight had remained stable. SUBJECTS/METHODS: In a cross-sectional study at a University Clinical Research Centre, we studied 9 patients with HO, 10 age-matched obese controls, 7 patients who remained weight-stable following hypothalamic insult (HWS) and 10 non-obese controls. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was performed in the fasted state, 1 h and 3 h after a test meal, while subjects were presented with images of high-calorie foods, low-calorie foods and non-food objects. Insulin, glucagon-like peptide-1, Peptide YY and ghrelin were measured throughout the experiment, and appetite ratings were recorded. RESULTS: Mean neural activation in the posterior insula and lingual gyrus (brain areas linked to food motivation and reward value of food) in HWS were significantly lower than in the other three groups (P=0.001). A significant negative correlation was found between insulin levels and posterior insula activation (P=0.002). CONCLUSIONS: Neural pathways associated with food motivation and reward-related behaviour, and the influence of insulin on their activation may be involved in the pathophysiology of HO.International Journal of Obesity advance online publicatio

Face scanning and spontaneous emotion preference in Cornelia de Lange syndrome and Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome

Background Existing literature suggests differences in face scanning in individuals with different socio-behavioural characteristics. Cornelia de Lange syndrome (CdLS) and Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome (RTS) are two genetically defined neurodevelopmental disorders with unique profiles of social behaviour. Methods Here, we examine eye gaze to the eye and mouth regions of neutrally expressive faces, as well as the spontaneous visual preference for happy and disgusted facial expressions compared to neutral faces, in individuals with CdLS versus RTS. Results Results indicate that the amount of time spent looking at the eye and mouth regions of faces was similar in 15 individuals with CdLS and 17 individuals with RTS. Both participant groups also showed a similar pattern of spontaneous visual preference for emotions. Conclusions These results provide insight into two rare, genetically defined neurodevelopmental disorders that have been reported to exhibit contrasting socio-behavioural characteristics and suggest that differences in social behaviour may not be sufficient to predict attention to the eye region of faces. These results also suggest that differences in the social behaviours of these two groups may be cognitively mediated rather than subcortically mediated