Editorial

It is my pleasure to present the second issue of the second volume of Lifespans & Styles: Undergraduate Working Papers on Intraspeaker Variation. This issue includes six papers from nine authors. The first three papers are by undergraduate students in Dr Laurel MacKenzie’s class, Language Change Across the Lifespan, at the University of Manchester. The fourth and fifth papers come from former students of my class, Sociolinguistics, at the University of Edinburgh, and the sixth paper is based on a University of Edinburgh Honours dissertation. As in the two previous issues, Volume 2, Issue 2 offers a breadth of approaches to the study of within-speaker, or intraspeaker, variation

Understanding prehospital blood transfusion decision-making for injured patients : an interview study

Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.Peer reviewe

Synergies for Improving Oil Palm Production and Forest Conservation in Floodplain Landscapes

Lowland tropical forests are increasingly threatened with conversion to oil palm as global demand and high profit drives crop expansion throughout the world’s tropical regions. Yet, landscapes are not homogeneous and regional constraints dictate land suitability for this crop. We conducted a regional study to investigate spatial and economic components of forest conversion to oil palm within a tropical floodplain in the Lower Kinabatangan, Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. The Kinabatangan ecosystem harbours significant biodiversity with globally threatened species but has suffered forest loss and fragmentation. We mapped the oil palm and forested landscapes (using object-based-image analysis, classification and regression tree analysis and on-screen digitising of high-resolution imagery) and undertook economic modelling. Within the study region (520,269 ha), 250,617 ha is cultivated with oil palm with 77% having high Net-Present-Value (NPV) estimates ($413/ha?yr–$637/ha?yr); but 20.5% is under-producing. In fact 6.3% (15,810 ha) of oil palm is commercially redundant (with negative NPV of $-299/ha?yr-$-65/ha?yr) due to palm mortality from flood inundation. These areas would have been important riparian or flooded forest types. Moreover, 30,173 ha of unprotected forest remain and despite its value for connectivity and biodiversity 64% is allocated for future oil palm. However, we estimate that at minimum 54% of these forests are unsuitable for this crop due to inundation events. If conversion to oil palm occurs, we predict a further 16,207 ha will become commercially redundant. This means that over 32,000 ha of forest within the floodplain would have been converted for little or no financial gain yet with significant cost to the ecosystem. Our findings have globally relevant implications for similar floodplain landscapes undergoing forest transformation to agriculture such as oil palm. Understanding landscape level constraints to this crop, and transferring these into policy and practice, may provide conservation and economic opportunities within these seemingly high opportunity cost landscapes

Artificial intelligence in cancer imaging: Clinical challenges and applications

Judgement, as one of the core tenets of medicine, relies upon the integration of multilayered data with nuanced decision making. Cancer offers a unique context for medical decisions given not only its variegated forms with evolution of disease but also the need to take into account the individual condition of patients, their ability to receive treatment, and their responses to treatment. Challenges remain in the accurate detection, characterization, and monitoring of cancers despite improved technologies. Radiographic assessment of disease most commonly relies upon visual evaluations, the interpretations of which may be augmented by advanced computational analyses. In particular, artificial intelligence (AI) promises to make great strides in the qualitative interpretation of cancer imaging by expert clinicians, including volumetric delineation of tumors over time, extrapolation of the tumor genotype and biological course from its radiographic phenotype, prediction of clinical outcome, and assessment of the impact of disease and treatment on adjacent organs. AI may automate processes in the initial interpretation of images and shift the clinical workflow of radiographic detection, management decisions on whether or not to administer an intervention, and subsequent observation to a yet to be envisioned paradigm. Here, the authors review the current state of AI as applied to medical imaging of cancer and describe advances in 4 tumor types (lung, brain, breast, and prostate) to illustrate how common clinical problems are being addressed. Although most studies evaluating AI applications in oncology to date have not been vigorously validated for reproducibility and generalizability, the results do highlight increasingly concerted efforts in pushing AI technology to clinical use and to impact future directions in cancer care

Sex-specific disruption of murine midbrain astrocytic and dopaminergic developmental trajectories following antenatal GC treatment

The mammalian midbrain dopaminergic systems arising in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) and ventral tegmental area (VTA) are critical for coping behaviours and are implicated in neuropsychiatric disorders where early life challenges comprise significant risk factors. Here, we aimed to advance our hypothesis that glucocorticoids (GCs), recognised key players in neurobiological programming, target development within these systems, with a novel focus on the astrocytic population. Mice received antenatal GC treatment (AGT) by including the synthetic GC, dexamethasone, in the mothers' drinking water on gestational days 16-19; controls received normal drinking water. Analyses of regional shapes and volumes of the adult SNc and VTA demonstrated that AGT induced long-term, dose-dependent, structural changes that were accompanied by profound effects on astrocytes (doubling/tripling of numbers and/or density). Additionally, AGT induced long-term changes in the population size and distribution of SNc/VTA dopaminergic neurons, confirming and extending our previous observations made in rats. Furthermore, glial/neuronal structural remodelling was sexually dimorphic and depended on the AGT dose and sub-region of the SNc/VTA. Investigations within the neonatal brain revealed that these long-term organisational effects of AGT depend, at least in part, on targeting perinatal processes that determine astrocyte density and programmed cell death in dopaminergic neurons. Collectively, our characterisation of enduring, AGT-induced, sex-specific cytoarchitectural disturbances suggests novel mechanistic links for the strong association between early environmental challenge (inappropriate exposure to excess GCs) and vulnerability to developing aberrant behaviours in later life, with translational implications for dopamine-associated disorders (such as schizophrenia, ADHD, autism, depression), which typically show a sex bia

British container breeding mosquitoes: the impact of urbanisation and climate change on community composition and phenology

The proliferation of artificial container habitats in urban areas has benefitted urban adaptable mosquito species globally. In areas where mosquitoes transmit viruses and parasites, it can promote vector population productivity and fuel mosquito-borne disease outbreaks. In Britain, storage of water in garden water butts is increasing, potentially expanding mosquito larval habitats and influencing population dynamics and mosquito-human contact. Here we show that the community composition, abundance and phenology of mosquitoes breeding in experimental water butt containers were influenced by urbanisation. Mosquitoes in urban containers were less species-rich but present in significantly higher densities (100.4±21.3) per container than those in rural containers (77.7±15.1). Urban containers were dominated by Culex pipiens (a potential vector of West Nile Virus [WNV]) and appear to be increasingly exploited by Anopheles plumbeus (a human-biting potential WNV and malaria vector). Culex phenology was influenced by urban land use type, with peaks in larval abundances occurring earlier in urban than rural containers. Among other factors, this was associated with an urban heat island effect which raised urban air and water temperatures by 0.9°C and 1.2°C respectively. Further increases in domestic water storage, particularly in urban areas, in combination with climate changes will likely alter mosquito population dynamics in the UK

Target-site resistance mutations (kdr and RDL), but not metabolic resistance, negatively impact male mating competiveness in the malaria vector Anopheles gambiae

The implementation of successful insecticide resistance management strategies for malaria control is currently hampered by poor understanding of the fitness cost of resistance on mosquito populations, including their mating competiveness. To fill this knowledge gap, coupled and uncoupled Anopheles gambiae s.l. males (all M form (Anopheles coluzzii)) were collected from mating swarms in Burkina Faso. This multiple insecticide resistant population exhibited high 1014F kdrR allele frequencies (460%) and RDLR (480%) in contrast to the Ace-1R allele (o6%). Kdr heterozygote males were more likely to mate than homozygote resistant (OR=2.36; Po0.001), suggesting a negative impact of kdr on An. coluzzii mating ability. Interestingly, heterozygote males were also more competitive than homozygote susceptible (OR=3.26; P=0.006), suggesting a heterozygote advantage effect. Similarly, heterozygote RDLR/RDLS were also more likely to mate than homozygote-resistant males (OR=2.58; P=0.007). Furthermore, an additive mating disadvantage was detected in male homozygotes for both kdr/RDL-resistant alleles. In contrast, no fitness difference was observed for the Ace-1 mutation. Comparative microarray-based genome-wide transcription analysis revealed that metabolic resistance did not significantly alter the mating competitiveness of male An. coluzzii mosquitoes. Indeed, no significant difference of expression levels was observed for the main metabolic resistance genes, suggesting that metabolic resistance has a limited impact on male mating competiveness. In addition, specific gene classes/GO terms associated with mating process were detected including sensory perception and peroxidase activity. The detrimental impact of insecticide resistance on mating competiveness observed here suggests that resistance management strategies such as insecticide rotation could help reverse the resistance, if implemented early