Money matters: a critique of 'informed financial consent'.

In recent years, concerns about the financial burdens of health care and growing recognition of the relevance of cost to decision making and patient experience have increasingly focused attention on financial 'transparency' and disclosure of costs to patients. In some jurisdictions, there have been calls not only for timely disclosure of costs information, but also for 'informed financial consent'. However, simply putting the 'financial' into 'informed consent' and invoking an informed consent standard for cost information encounters several ethical, legal, and practical difficulties.

Medicine in the marketplace: clinician and patient views on commercial influences on assisted reproductive technology.

Research Question: What are the views and experiences of patient and expert stakeholders on the positive and negative impacts of commercial influences on the provision of assisted reproductive technology (ART) services, and what are their suggestions for governance reforms?

Design: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 31 ART industry experts from across Australia and New Zealand and 25 patients undergoing ART from metropolitan and regional Australia, between September 2020 and September 2021. Data were analysed using thematic analysis.

Results: Expert and patient participants considered that commercial forces influence the provision of ART in a number of positive ways - increasing sustainability, ensuring consistency in standards and providing patients with greater choice.

Moral justification for the use of 'add-ons' in assisted reproductive technology: experts' views and experiences.

Research Question: What factors do assisted reproductive terchnology (ART) providers take into account when they make decisions about offering 'add-ons'?

Design: A qualitative analysis of interviews with 31 ART professionals, focusing on their views and experiences in relation to add-ons, including the factors that are considered when doctors make decisions about their use.

Results: The participants reported that a range of considerations are taken into account when it comes to justifying the use of a particular add-on in a given circumstance, including the likelihood of benefit and harm, patients' perceived psychological needs and preferences, and organizational expectations. Importantly, patient preferences, psychological factors and low risk of harm appear to be stronger motivations than increasing the likelihood of a live birth or the desire to innovate.

Long-term daily hydrometeorological drought indices, soil moisture, and evapotranspiration for ICOS sites.

Eddy covariance sites are ideally suited for the study of extreme events on ecosystems as they allow the exchange of trace gases and energy fluxes between ecosystems and the lower atmosphere to be directly measured on a continuous basis. However, standardized definitions of hydroclimatic extremes are needed to render studies of extreme events comparable across sites. This requires longer datasets than are available from on-site measurements in order to capture the full range of climatic variability.

Long-term annual soil nitrogen surplus across Europe (1850-2019).

Worldwide surface waters suffer from the presence of nitrogen (N) compounds causing eutrophication and deterioration of the water quality. Despite many Europe-wide legislation's, we still observe high N levels across many water bodies in Europe. Information on long-term annual soil N surplus is needed to better understand these N levels and inform future management strategies.

Defining Hydrogeological Site Similarity with Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering.

Hydrogeological information about an aquifer is difficult and costly to obtain, yet essential for the efficient management of groundwater resources. Transferring information from sampled sites to a specific site of interest can provide information when site-specific data is lacking. Central to this approach is the notion of site similarity, which is necessary for determining relevant sites to include in the data transfer process.

Evidence Based Estimation of Macrodispersivity for Groundwater Transport Applications.

The scope of this work is to discuss the proper choice of macrodispersion coefficients in modeling contaminant transport through the advection dispersion equation (ADE). It is common to model solute concentrations in transport by groundwater with the aid of the ADE. Spreading is quantified by macrodispersivity coefficients, which are much larger than the laboratory observed pore-scale dispersivities.

A New Priority Pathway for Biologicals in Australia: Contextualising and Evaluating the Proposed Reforms.

This section examines recent reforms to the regulatory framework for biologicals contained in the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 (Cth) in the context of the "New Frontier" of reform envisioned in a report completed by the Commonwealth Government in 2021. It compares Australia's proposed reform of the approval processes for biologicals to similar reforms that have been made over the last three decades in the United States and the European Union. It places the Australian reforms in the context of the commercialisation of regenerative medicine and identifies several potential shortcomings of the proposed reforms and reports on the current lack of data on the processes of expedited approvals in Australia more generally.

Ecological Sustainability Assessment of Water Distribution for the Maintenance of Ecosystems, their Services and Biodiversity.

Water provision and distribution are subject to conflicts between users worldwide, with agriculture as a major driver of discords. Water sensitive ecosystems and their services are often impaired by man-made water shortage. Nevertheless, they are not sufficiently included in sustainability or risk assessments and neglected when it comes to distribution of available water resources.

Great Lakes Runoff Intercomparison Project Phase 3: Lake Erie (GRIP-E).

Hydrologic model intercomparison studies help to evaluate the agility of models to simulate variables such as streamflow, evaporation, and soil moisture. This study is the third in a sequence of the Great Lakes Runoff Intercomparison Projects. The densely populated Lake Erie watershed studied here is an important international lake that has experienced recent flooding and shoreline erosion alongside excessive nutrient loads that have contributed to lake eutrophication.

Data driven high resolution modeling and spatial analyses of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus has spread around the world with over 100 million infections to date, and currently many countries are fighting the second wave of infections. With neither sufficient vaccination capacity nor effective medication, non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) remain the measure of choice. However, NPIs place a great burden on society, the mental health of individuals, and economics.

How to Find Aquifer Statistics Utilizing Pumping Tests? Two Field Studies Using welltestpy.

We present a workflow to estimate geostatistical aquifer parameters from pumping test data using the Python package welltestpy. The procedure of pumping test analysis is exemplified for two data sets from the Horkheimer Insel site and from the Lauswiesen site, Germany. The analysis is based on a semi-analytical drawdown solution from the upscaling approach Radial Coarse Graining, which enables to infer log-transmissivity variance and horizontal correlation length, beside mean transmissivity, and storativity, from pumping test data.

A Comparison of Six Transport Models of the MADE-1 Experiment Implemented With Different Types of Hydraulic Data.

Six conceptually different transport models were applied to the macrodispersion experiment (MADE)-1 field tracer experiment as a first major attempt for model comparison. The objective was to show that complex mass distributions in heterogeneous aquifers can be predicted without calibration of transport parameters, solely making use of structural and flow data. The models differ in their conceptualization of the heterogeneous aquifer structure, computational complexity, and use of conductivity data obtained from various observation methods (direct push injection logging, DPIL, grain size analysis, pumping tests and flowmeter).

Strong hydroclimatic controls on vulnerability to subsurface nitrate contamination across Europe.

Subsurface contamination due to excessive nutrient surpluses is a persistent and widespread problem in agricultural areas across Europe. The vulnerability of a particular location to pollution from reactive solutes, such as nitrate, is determined by the interplay between hydrologic transport and biogeochemical transformations. Current studies on the controls of subsurface vulnerability do not consider the transient behaviour of transport dynamics in the root zone.

A Critical Analysis of Transverse Dispersivity Field Data.

Transverse dispersion, or tracer spreading orthogonal to the mean flow direction, which is relevant e.g, for quantifying bio-degradation of contaminant plumes or mixing of reactive solutes, has been studied in the literature less than the longitudinal one. Inferring transverse dispersion coefficients from field experiments is a difficult and error-prone task, requiring a spatial resolution of solute plumes which is not easily achievable in applications.

Cross-disciplinary links in environmental systems science: Current state and claimed needs identified in a meta-review of process models.

Terrestrial environmental systems are characterised by numerous feedback links between their different compartments. However, scientific research is organized into disciplines that focus on processes within the respective compartments rather than on interdisciplinary links. Major feedback mechanisms between compartments might therefore have been systematically overlooked so far.

How do earthworms, soil texture and plant composition affect infiltration along an experimental plant diversity gradient in grassland?

Background: Infiltration is a key process in determining the water balance, but so far effects of earthworms, soil texture, plant species diversity and their interaction on infiltration capacity have not been studied.

Methodology/principal Findings: We measured infiltration capacity in subplots with ambient and reduced earthworm density nested in plots of different plant species (1, 4, and 16 species) and plant functional group richness and composition (1 to 4 groups; legumes, grasses, small herbs, tall herbs). In summer, earthworm presence significantly increased infiltration, whereas in fall effects of grasses and legumes on infiltration were due to plant-mediated changes in earthworm biomass.

Kinetic control of contaminant release from NAPLs--information potential of concentration time profiles.

Release of contaminants from non-aqueous phase liquids (NAPLs) is often limited by the dynamic exchange with aqueous solutions governed by a priori unknown kinetic laws. Release experiments require a thorough evaluation of the potential and limitations of kinetic models to reveal release processes. In this study, we investigated the characteristic concentration-time profiles of various models for the release of contaminants from an organic phase into an aqueous solution under no flow conditions.

Parameter importance in FRAP acquisition and analysis: a simulation approach.

Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) is a widespread technique used to determine intracellular reaction and diffusion parameters. In recent years, due to technical advances and an increasing number of mathematical models for analysis, there was a resurging interest in FRAP applications. However, care has to be taken when inverting parameters from such data.

Transcriptional signatures of regulatory and toxic responses to benzo-[a]-pyrene exposure.

Background: Small molecule ligands often have multiple effects on the transcriptional program of a cell: they trigger a receptor specific response and additional, indirect responses ("side effects"). Distinguishing those responses is important for understanding side effects of drugs and for elucidating molecular mechanisms of toxic chemicals.

Results: We explored this problem by exposing cells to the environmental contaminant benzo-[a]-pyrene (B[a]P).

Are assumptions about the model type necessary in reaction-diffusion modeling? A FRAP application.

At present, fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) data are interpreted using various types of reaction-diffusion (RD) models: the model type is usually fixed first, and corresponding model parameters are inferred subsequently. In this article, we describe what we believe to be a novel approach for RD modeling without using any assumptions of model type or parameters. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to address both model-type and parameter uncertainties in inverting FRAP data.

Diversity promotes temporal stability across levels of ecosystem organization in experimental grasslands.

The diversity-stability hypothesis states that current losses of biodiversity can impair the ability of an ecosystem to dampen the effect of environmental perturbations on its functioning. Using data from a long-term and comprehensive biodiversity experiment, we quantified the temporal stability of 42 variables characterizing twelve ecological functions in managed grassland plots varying in plant species richness. We demonstrate that diversity increases stability i) across trophic levels (producer, consumer), ii) at both the system (community, ecosystem) and the component levels (population, functional group, phylogenetic clade), and iii) primarily for aboveground rather than belowground processes.

Linear exchange model for the description of mass transfer limited bioavailability at the pore scale.

Reactive transport simulations are a common approach for the quantitative assessment of contaminant biodegradation in the subsurface. To use knowledge on microbial kinetics for the simulation of in situ biodegradation, the mass transfer processes controlling the bioavailability of the contaminants need to be described appropriately. A common approach to account for this problem is using a linear exchange model controlling the link between bulk and bioavailable concentration.