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Earlier collapse of Anthropocene ecosystems driven by multiple faster and noisier drivers
Get PDFA major concern for the world’s ecosystems is the possibility of collapse, where landscapes and the societies they support change abruptly. Accelerating stress levels, increasing frequencies of extreme events, and strengthening inter-system connections suggest that conventional modelling approaches based on incremental changes in a single stress may provide poor estimates of the impact of climate and human activities on ecosystems. We conduct experiments on four models that simulate abrupt changes in the Chilika lagoon fishery, the Easter Island community, forest dieback and lake water quality – representing ecosystems with a range of anthropogenic interactions. Collapses occur sooner under increasing levels of primary stress, but additional stresses and/or the inclusion of noise in all four models bring the collapses substantially closer to today by ~38-81%. We discuss the implications for further research and the need for humanity to be vigilant for signs that ecosystems are degrading even more rapidly than previously thought
Achieving Consensus on Psychosocial and Physical Rehabilitation management for People Living with Kidney Disease.
Get PDFBackground. People living with chronic kidney disease (CKD) need to be able to live well with their condition. The provision of psychosocial interventions (psychological, psychiatric and social care) and physical rehabilitationmanagement is variable across England, as well as the rest of the UK. There is a need for clear recommendations for standards of psychosocial and physical rehabilitation care for people living with CKD, and guidance for thecommissioning and measurement of these services. The National Health Service (NHS) England Renal Services Transformation Programme (RSTP) supported a programme of work and modified Delphi process to address themanagement of psychosocial and physical rehabilitation care as part of a larger body of work to formulate a comprehensive commissioning toolkit for renal care services across England. We sought to achieve expert consensus regarding the psychosocial and physical rehabilitation management of people living with CKD in England and the rest of the UK. Methods. A Delphi consensus method was used to gather and refine expert opinions of senior members of the kidney multi-disciplinary team (MDT) and other key stakeholders in the UK. An agreement was sought on 16 statementsreflecting aspects of psychosocial and physical rehabilitation management for people living with CKD.Results. Twenty-six expert practitioners and other key stakeholders, including lived experience representatives, participated in the process. The consensus (>80% affirmative votes) amongst the respondents for all 16 statements washigh. Nine recommendation statements were discussed and refined further to be included in the final iteration of the ‘Systems’ section of the NHS England RSTP commissioning toolkit. These priority recommendations reflect pragmaticsolutions that can be implemented in renal care and include recommendations for a holistic wellbeing assessment for all people living with CKD who are approaching dialysis, or who are at listing for kidney transplantation, which includes the use of validated measurement tools to assess the need for further intervention in psychosocial and physical rehabilitation management. It is recommended that the scores from these measurement tools be included in the NHS England Renal Data Dashboard. There was also a recommendation for referral as appropriate to NHS Talking Therapies, psychology, counselling or psychotherapy, social work or liaison psychiatry for those with identified psychosocial needs. The use of digital resources was recommended to be used in addition to face-to-face care to provide physical rehabilitation, and all healthcare professionals should be educated to recognize psychosocial and physical rehabilitation needs and refer/sign-post people with CKD to appropriate services.Conclusion. There was high consensus amongst senior members of the kidney MDT and other key stakeholders, including those with lived experience, in the UK on all aspects of the psychosocial and physical rehabilitationmanagement of people living with CKD. The results of this process will be used by NHS England to inform the ‘Systems’ section of the commissioning toolkit and data dashboard and to inform the National Standards of Care for people livingwith CKD
Investigation of marine temperature changes across temporal and spatial Gradients: Providing a fundament for studies on the effects of warming on marine ecosystem function and biodiversity
Get PDFA current critical issue in climate change studies is how temperature changes and shifts on different spatial and temporal scales can affect organisms in terms of trends, variability and frequency of extremes. In this paper, we analysed marine temperature data on different temporal and spatial scales. We related the sea surface temperature data from the Helgoland Roads Time Series, one of the most important and detailed long-term in situ marine ecological time series, to the Sylt Roads, North Sea, Germany, Europe, North Atlantic and Northern Hemisphere surface temperatures. All time series showed a distinct upwards shift in temperature in the late 1980s, early 1990s, with positive trends in overall for the period between 1962 and 2019 ranging from 1 to 2 °C over 57 years. We quantified changes in temperature variability by comparing the years before and after 1990, on both long-term and seasonal scales. At Helgoland and Sylt, an increase in the number of warmer days in summer and a decrease in extremely cold days in winter are the new characteristics of the temperature pattern after 1990; higher than expected temperatures now also occur earlier during the year. For these locations, we observed the highest trends overall, i.e. of around 0.3 °C/decade. The observed bimodal shape of the probability density functions, characterized by winter and summer modes, had become more heterogeneous, with the cold mode peak moving to higher values and the steepness to the peak increasing, which is a consequence of a decrease in extremely cold days. North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) large-scale phenomena had no significant correlations or, for the NAO, were limited to the winter season at the regional and local scales. The closest landmass (mainland Germany) temperature was highly correlated with the North Sea sites. Taken together, our results suggest that marine pelagic ecosystems and their species are subject to temperature shifts with similar patterns but with variations in magnitude at the different scales. Temperature is one of the main drivers of species diversity and distribution, and this manifests on different spatial and temporal scales depending on population growth, life stages, cycles and habitat. Accordingly, we here present the temperature changes on the appropriate spatio-temporal scales, and thus provide the suitable and useful fundament for studies on the effects of warming on marine ecosystem function and biodiversity
Time flows vertically in Chinese
Get PDFSpeakers of Mandarin Chinese are thought to conceptualise time along the vertical axis—as evidence for metaphor embodiment—but the extant behavioural evidence remains unclear. Here, we used electrophysiology to test space–time conceptual relationships implicitly in native speakers of Chinese. We employed a modified arrow flanker task, in which the central arrow in a set of three was replaced by a spatial word (e.g., 上–‘up’), a spatiotemporal metaphor (e. g., 上个月–‘last month’, literally ‘up month’) or a non-spatial temporal expression (e.g., 去年 –‘last year’, literally ‘gone year’). N400 modulations of event-related brain potentials served to measure the level of perceived congruency between semantic word content and arrow direction. Critically, we tested whether N400 modulations expected for spatial words and spatial temporal metaphors would generalise to non-spatial temporal expressions. In addition to the predicted N400 effects, we found a congruency effect of a similar magnitude for non-spatial temporal metaphors. On the basis of direct brain measurements indexing semantic processing, and in the absence of contrastive behavioural patterns, we demonstrate that native speakers of Chinese conceptualise time along the vertical axis, and thus have embodied spatiotemporal metaphors
Is parental unemployment associated with increased risk of adverse childhood experiences? A systematic review and meta-analysis
Get PDFBackgroundUnemployment has adverse consequences for families and can put children at risk of harm. This study presents a systematic review and meta-analysis of global evidence on associations between parental unemployment and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).MethodsSystematic literature searches across four databases identified cross-sectional, cohort or case–control studies measuring associations between parental employment and individual or cumulative ACEs in children. Available risk estimates were extracted and pooled odds ratios calculated using random-effects models.ResultsOf 60 included studies, 37 provided risk estimates suitable for pooling across seven ACE types. Paternal/any parental unemployment was associated with a 29% increased risk of sexual abuse, 54% increased risk of neglect, 60% increased risk of physical abuse and around 90% increased risk of child maltreatment and parental mental illness. No associations were found between maternal unemployment and ACEs. Pooling estimates from representative general population studies also identified increased risk of child maltreatment with paternal/any parental unemployment (82%) but not maternal unemployment.ConclusionsChildren who grow up with parental unemployment can be at increased risk of ACEs. A combination of socioeconomic measures to increase employment opportunities and parental support targeting fathers and mothers may help break multigenerational cycles of abuse and deprivation
Exploring the Challenges of Intercultural Qualitative Health Research and the Experiences of Doctors in Lesotho
Get PDFResearch ideas matter: Guidance for research students and early career researchers
Get PDFThis paper draws on the collective experience of the authors as researchers, supervisors and editors spanning the fields of medical science, psychology, analytics, entrepreneurship, accounting, and finance. We provide guidance about research idea formulation for novice researchers, both Higher Degree Research students (HDRs) such as PhD students, and Early Career Researchers (ECRs). Drawing on parallels with business opportunity formulation, we break down the process into three steps: generating, refining and then evaluating research ideas. We present strategies to help generate high-quality research ideas, including five key perspectives for identifying gaps in the literature that are opportunities to be addressed with novel research ideas. We also provide advice for refining research ideas, and provide guidance on evaluating and ranking those ideas. Despite the diverse background of the authorship team, there are many commonalities because of the rigorous scientific nature of the general academic research process. Helpful research tools and templates, as well as examples and suggested readings, are also presented to assist novice researchers in the challenging process of forming research ideas
National scale mapping of supply and demand for recreational ecosystem services
Get PDFCultural ecosystem services (CES) are often underrepresented in ecosystem service assessments, despite the importance of these benefits. Recreation is often used to represent CES, however identifying, quantifying, and mapping these services continues to be a challenge. In this study, we develop a national CES map predicting recreation demand (e.g. walking, hiking, cycling) for the United Kingdom (UK). Recreation demand is calculated as the number of projected visits for local recreation estimated using the universal law of human mobility which accounts for the attractiveness of an area. Recreation demand was found to be the greatest in areas surrounding high population centres, compared with protected sites which were deemed more attractive but were in more remote areas. This pattern was most pronounced when evaluating weekly visits, but was still evident where the visit frequency was reduced to annual. In this study, we also evaluate whether this demand is met for recreation by assessing the presence of paths. The mean for met demand (paths present) was 4.5 times greater than unmet demand (paths absent) for yearly visits across the UK. Generally, in the areas of highest demand close to populated centres, paths were present, making 84% of all yearly recreational demand met by path infrastructure. However, paths are lacking from 42% of the UK, with some of these areas coinciding with higher recreation demand, for example in the northeast and parts of Wales. Our study therefore highlights not only where the recreation demand is highest and access should be maintained, but also where demand for recreation exists but the infrastructure including paths are not present, and therefore has the potential to be improved. This information is useful for policy makers and land managers, as it allows areas to be prioritised for the maintenance and improvement of recreation provision under new land management policy
A geometric approach to understand biological responses to environmental fluctuations from the perspective of marine organisms
Get PDFA main concern in marine ecology is understanding the mechanisms driving responses of biological systems to environmental fluctuations. A major issue is that each biological system (e.g. organism, ecosystem) experiences fluctuations according to its own intrinsic characteristics. For instance, how an organism experiences a thermal fluctuation, i.e as a long marine heatwave or as a mild pulse, depends on its thermal tolerance and developmental time, which can vary as the fluctuation is experienced. Here, I explore a geometric approach, considering the biological perspective. Environmental fluctuations are represented as points in a “space of fluctuations”. The biological perspective is then defined as a coordinate frame within that space. Coordinates are given by components (e.g. amplitude and time scale) characterising each environmental fluctuation, which are then transformed into biological scales, using biological traits (tolerance and biological time). Using simulations of organisms growing under thermal fluctuations with different characteristics, I show how this approach: (1) Enables to integrate physiology and phenology to better interpret biological responses to fluctuating environments. (2) Improves understanding of the role of adaptive plasticity as a rescue effect. (3) Facilitates understanding the effects of thermal fluctuations on additional organismal traits (e.g. body mass). I also discuss wider applications in the context of species persistence, coexistence, biodiversity, and ecosystem function in scenarios of extreme fluctuations
Widespread variation in functional trait-vital rate relationships in tropical tree seedlings across a precipitation and soil phosphorus gradient
Get PDFA fundamental assumption of functional ecology is that functional traits are related to interspecific variation in performance. However, the relationship between functional traits and performance is often weak or uncertain, especially for plants. A potential explanation for this inconsistency is that the relationship between functional traits and vital rates (e.g., growth and mortality) is dependent on local environmental conditions, which would lead to variation in trait-rate relationships across environmental gradients. In this study, we examined trait-rate relationships for six functional traits (seed mass, wood density, maximum height, leaf mass per area, leaf area, and leaf dry matter content) using long-term data on seedling growth and survival of woody plant species from eight forest sites spanning a pronounced precipitation and soil phosphorus gradient in central Panama. For all traits considered except for leaf mass per area-mortality, leaf mass per area-growth, and leaf area-mortality relationships, we found widespread variation in the strength of trait-rate relationships across sites. For some traits, trait-rate relationships showed no overall trend but displayed wide site-to-site variation. In a small subset of cases, variation in trait-rate relationships were explained by soil phosphorus availability. Our results demonstrate that environmental gradients have the potential to influence how functional traits are related to growth and mortality rates, though much variation remains to be explained. Accounting for site-to-site variation may help resolve a fundamental issue in trait-based ecology - that traits are often weakly related to performance - and improve the utility of functional traits for explaining key ecological and evolutionary processes