A prickly problem: developing a volunteer-friendly tool for monitoring populations of a terrestrial urban mammal, the West European hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus)

Across Europe, hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus) appear to be in decline in both urban and rural landscapes. Current methods used to monitor urban populations are, however, associated with several potential limitations. In this study, we conducted hedgehog footprint-tunnel surveys in 219 residential gardens across Reading, UK between May–September in 2013 and/or 2014; gardens were surveyed for five continuous days. Single-species occupancy models were used to investigate factors influencing hedgehog occupancy and two-species occupancy models were used to estimate a species interaction factor (SIF) between hedgehogs and (a) badgers (Meles meles), (b) foxes (Vulpes vulpes) and (c) dogs (Canis familiaris). The five-day survey protocol was associated with a false-absence error rate of 0.1–0.4%, indicating that it was a reliable method for determining hedgehog presence; conversely, 34.7% of householders were not able to correctly predict hedgehog presence or absence. Hedgehogs were widely distributed across Reading, but detected in only 32–40% of gardens. None of the within-garden or outside-garden factors investigated significantly affected hedgehog occupancy in the single-species models, but the two-species models indicated that badgers (SIF = 0.471 ± 0.188), but not foxes (SIF = 0.954 ± 0.048) or dogs (SIF = 0.780 ± 0.228), negatively affected the presence of hedgehogs in gardens, although not significantly. Overall, footprint-tunnels represent a viable field method for monitoring urban hedgehog populations, however, other approaches are required to identify factors that make gardens "hedgehog friendly"

HEAPCRAFT: Quantifying and Predicting Collaboration in Minecraft

We present HEAPCRAFT: an open-source suite of tools for monitoring and improving collaboration in Minecraft. At the core of our system is a data collection and analysis framework or recording gameplay. We collected over 3451 playerhours of game behavior from 908 different players, and performed a general study of online collaboration. To make our game analytics easily accessible, we developed interactive information visualization tools and an analysis framework for players, administrators, and researchers to explore graphs, maps and timelines of live server activity. As part of our research, we introduce the collaboration index, a metric which allows server administrators and researchers to quantify, predict, and improve collaboration on Minecraft servers. Our analysis reveals several possible predictors of collaboration which can be used to improve collaboration on Minecraft servers. HEAPCRAFT is designed to be general, and has the potential to be used for other shared online virtual worlds

HeapCraft Social Tools: Understanding and Improving Player Collaboration in Minecraft

We introduce a framework to infuence and analyze player collaboration in Minecraft. The framework consists of a telemetry system and several tools to influence player behavior and provide value to server administrators to increase adoption. The data collection includes almost every aspect of gameplay and can be used for analysis beyond player collaboration.1 We started collecting data from several Minecraft servers in March 2015. Most data will be made available to researchers upon request.2 We have also demonstrated the use of our framework to statistically analyze player behavior in Minecraft. More details can be found [1]

Why Are Male Social Relationships Complex in the Doubtful Sound Bottlenose Dolphin Population?

Copyright 2008 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Statistical Analysis of Player Behavior in Minecraft

Interactive Virtual Worlds offer new individual and social experiences in a huge variety of artificial realities. They also have enormous potential for the study of how people interact, and how societies function and evolve. Systematic collection and analysis of in-play behavioral data will be invaluable for enhancing player experiences, facilitating effective administration, and unlocking the scientific potential of online societies. This paper details the development of a framework to collect player data in Minecraft. We present a complete solution which can be deployed on Minecraft servers to send collected data to a centralized server for visualization and analysis by researchers, players, and server administrators. Using the framework, we collected and analyzed over 14 person-days of active gameplay. We built a classification tool to identify high-level player behaviors from observations of their moment-by-moment game actions. Heat map visualizations highlighting spatial behavior can be used by players and server administrators to evaluate game experiences. Our data collection and analysis framework offers the opportunity to understand how individual behavior, environmental factors, and social systems interact through large-scale observational studies of virtual worlds

Measuring the health impact of human rights violations related to Australian asylum policies and practices: A mixed methods study

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund - Copyright @ 2009 Johnston et al.BACKGROUND: Human rights violations have adverse consequences for health. However, to date, there remains little empirical evidence documenting this association, beyond the obvious physical and psychological effects of torture. The primary aim of this study was to investigate whether Australian asylum policies and practices, which arguably violate human rights, are associated with adverse health outcomes. METHODS: We designed a mixed methods study to address the study aim. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 71 Iraqi Temporary Protection Visa (TPV) refugees and 60 Iraqi Permanent Humanitarian Visa (PHV) refugees, residing in Melbourne, Australia. Prior to a recent policy amendment, TPV refugees were only given temporary residency status and had restricted access to a range of government funded benefits and services that permanent refugees are automatically entitled to. The quantitative results were triangulated with semi-structured interviews with TPV refugees and service providers. The main outcome measures were self-reported physical and psychological health. Standardised self-report instruments, validated in an Arabic population, were used to measure health and wellbeing outcomes. RESULTS: Forty-six percent of TPV refugees compared with 25% of PHV refugees reported symptoms consistent with a diagnosis of clinical depression (p = 0.003). After controlling for the effects of age, gender and marital status, TPV status made a statistically significant contribution to psychological distress (B = 0.5, 95% CI 0.3 to 0.71, p </= 0.001) amongst Iraqi refugees. Qualitative data revealed that TPV refugees generally felt socially isolated and lacking in control over their life circumstances, because of their experiences in detention and on a temporary visa. This sense of powerlessness and, for some, an implicit awareness they were being denied basic human rights, culminated in a strong sense of injustice. CONCLUSION: Government asylum policies and practices violating human rights norms are associated with demonstrable psychological health impacts. This link between policy, rights violations and health outcomes offers a framework for addressing the impact of socio-political structures on health.This research was supported by an Australian National and Medical Research Council PhD Scholarship (N. 251782) and a Victorian Health Promotion Foundation research grant (No. 2002-0280)

Evidence for distinct coastal and offshore communities of bottlenose dolphins in the north east Atlantic.

Bottlenose dolphin stock structure in the northeast Atlantic remains poorly understood. However, fine scale photo-id data have shown that populations can comprise multiple overlapping social communities. These social communities form structural elements of bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) [corrected] populations, reflecting specific ecological and behavioural adaptations to local habitats. We investigated the social structure of bottlenose dolphins in the waters of northwest Ireland and present evidence for distinct inshore and offshore social communities. Individuals of the inshore community had a coastal distribution restricted to waters within 3 km from shore. These animals exhibited a cohesive, fission-fusion social organisation, with repeated resightings within the research area, within a larger coastal home range. The offshore community comprised one or more distinct groups, found significantly further offshore (>4 km) than the inshore animals. In addition, dorsal fin scarring patterns differed significantly between inshore and offshore communities with individuals of the offshore community having more distinctly marked dorsal fins. Specifically, almost half of the individuals in the offshore community (48%) had characteristic stereotyped damage to the tip of the dorsal fin, rarely recorded in the inshore community (7%). We propose that this characteristic is likely due to interactions with pelagic fisheries. Social segregation and scarring differences found here indicate that the distinct communities are likely to be spatially and behaviourally segregated. Together with recent genetic evidence of distinct offshore and coastal population structures, this provides evidence for bottlenose dolphin inshore/offshore community differentiation in the northeast Atlantic. We recommend that social communities should be considered as fundamental units for the management and conservation of bottlenose dolphins and their habitat specialisations

Adiposity has differing associations with incident coronary heart disease and mortality in the Scottish population: cross-sectional surveys with follow-up

Objective: Investigation of the association of excess adiposity with three different outcomes: all-cause mortality, coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality and incident CHD. Design: Cross-sectional surveys linked to hospital admissions and death records. Subjects: 19 329 adults (aged 18–86 years) from a representative sample of the Scottish population. Measurements: Gender-stratified Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) for all-cause mortality, CHD mortality and incident CHD. Separate models incorporating the anthropometric measurements body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC) or waist–hip ratio (WHR) were created adjusted for age, year of survey, smoking status and alcohol consumption. Results: For both genders, BMI-defined obesity (greater than or equal to30 kg m−2) was not associated with either an increased risk of all-cause mortality or CHD mortality. However, there was an increased risk of incident CHD among the obese men (hazard ratio (HR)=1.78; 95% confidence interval=1.37–2.31) and obese women (HR=1.93; 95% confidence interval=1.44–2.59). There was a similar pattern for WC with regard to the three outcomes; for incident CHD, the HR=1.70 (1.35–2.14) for men and 1.71 (1.28–2.29) for women in the highest WC category (men greater than or equal to102 cm, women greater than or equal to88 cm), synonymous with abdominal obesity. For men, the highest category of WHR (greater than or equal to1.0) was associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality (1.29; 1.04–1.60) and incident CHD (1.55; 1.19–2.01). Among women with a high WHR (greater than or equal to0.85) there was an increased risk of all outcomes: all-cause mortality (1.56; 1.26–1.94), CHD mortality (2.49; 1.36–4.56) and incident CHD (1.76; 1.31–2.38). Conclusions: In this study excess adiposity was associated with an increased risk of incident CHD but not necessarily death. One possibility is that modern medical intervention has contributed to improved survival of first CHD events. The future health burden of increased obesity levels may manifest as an increase in the prevalence of individuals living with CHD and its consequences

Photo-antagonism of the GABAA receptor

Neurotransmitter receptor trafficking is fundamentally important for synaptic transmission and neural network activity. GABAA receptors and inhibitory synapses are vital components of brain function, yet much of our knowledge regarding receptor mobility and function at inhibitory synapses is derived indirectly from using recombinant receptors, antibody-tagged native receptors and pharmacological treatments. Here we describe the use of a set of research tools that can irreversibly bind to and affect the function of recombinant and neuronal GABAA receptors following ultraviolet photoactivation. These compounds are based on the competitive antagonist gabazine and incorporate a variety of photoactive groups. By using site-directed mutagenesis and ligand-docking studies, they reveal new areas of the GABA binding site at the interface between receptor β and α subunits. These compounds enable the selected inactivation of native GABAA receptor populations providing new insight into the function of inhibitory synapses and extrasynaptic receptors in controlling neuronal excitation