Publications by authors named "Beaumont N"

Plastic pollution is now considered globally ubiquitous, irreversible, and a planetary boundary threat. Solutions are urgently needed but their development and application are hampered by the complexity and scale of the issue. System dynamics is a technique used to understand complex behaviours of systems through model building and is useful for conceptualising the relationships between various interacting, dynamic factors, and identifying potential intervention points within the system where specific policies or innovations might have the greatest impact or meet with the greatest resistance.

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  • First Contact Practitioners (FCPs) in the NHS have evolved into a specialized physiotherapy role in GP practices, aimed at easing the pressure from increasing patient workloads.
  • The study conducted a systematic review of qualitative research to understand FCPs' experiences and perceptions, focusing on concepts like job satisfaction, burnout, and the complexities of their roles.
  • Findings indicate that while FCP clinicians generally have a positive outlook on their roles, they face significant burnout risks, and their job satisfaction is closely tied to proper training and mentorship.
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  • * Researchers measured CO2 levels and air changes per hour (ACH) in 100 classrooms over 20 months, finding a significant link between high CO2 levels (≥1,000 ppm) and increased SARS-CoV-2 cases, although ACH alone didn't show a significant correlation.
  • * The results indicated that classrooms with MERV-13 filters had lower SARS-CoV-2 positivity rates, prompting ongoing improvements in the school’s ventilation systems to better safeguard student health.
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The pervasive use of plastic in modern society has led to plastic litter becoming ubiquitous within the ocean. Land-based sources of plastic litter are thought to account for the majority of plastic pollution in the marine environment, with plastic bags, bottles, wrappers, food containers and cutlery among the most common items found. In the marine environment, plastic is a transboundary pollutant, with the potential to cause damage far beyond the political borders from where it originated, making the management of this global pollutant particularly complex.

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  • - Plastic pollution is a major global issue that requires collective action, with ongoing international talks aimed at creating a global treaty to address it.
  • - Key insights suggest that past regulations have focused more on environmental damage than human health, and the success of banning harmful pollutants often relies on having suitable alternatives available.
  • - These findings highlight the importance of understanding environmental impacts while also encouraging more research on human health risks, ultimately emphasizing that finding substitutes can help reduce plastic use and pollution effectively.
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Switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy is key to international energy transition efforts and the move toward net zero. For many nations, this requires decommissioning of hundreds of oil and gas infrastructure in the marine environment. Current international, regional and national legislation largely dictates that structures must be completely removed at end-of-life although, increasingly, alternative decommissioning options are being promoted and implemented.

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Background: This study examined the correlation of classroom ventilation (air exchanges per hour (ACH)) and exposure to CO ≥1,000 ppm with the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 over a 20-month period in a specialized school for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). These students were at a higher risk of respiratory infection from SARS-CoV-2 due to challenges in tolerating mitigation measures (e.g.

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Coastal saltmarshes provide globally important ecosystem services including 'blue carbon' sequestration, flood protection, pollutant remediation, habitat provision and cultural value. Large portions of marshes have been lost or fragmented as a result of land reclamation, embankment construction, and pollution. Sea level rise threatens marsh survival by blocking landward migration where coastlines have been developed.

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Evaluating what patients get out of therapeutic patient education (TPE) from their point of view makes it possible to enrich traditional educational evaluations and satisfaction measures (ad hoc indicators, defined a priori). A scale of the perceived value of TPE has been developed for research on the patient experience in oncology (analytical version), or for routine evaluations (synthetic version). Researchers and teams will thus be able to better appreciate and value the contributions of TPE.

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Southeast Asia is considered to have some of the highest levels of marine plastic pollution in the world. It is therefore vitally important to increase our understanding of the impacts and risks of plastic pollution to marine ecosystems and the essential services they provide to support the development of mitigation measures in the region. An interdisciplinary, international network of experts (Australia, Indonesia, Ireland, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam) set a research agenda for marine plastic pollution in the region, synthesizing current knowledge and highlighting areas for further research in Southeast Asia.

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  • - Current methods for measuring ecosystem services often oversimplify the value of natural capital by relying on single metrics that don't account for local conditions, highlighting the need for a better understanding of the link between habitat quality and ecosystem service provision.
  • - The Solent Marine Sites in the UK serve as a case study to demonstrate how combining ecological status indicators and habitat data can lead to more accurate assessments for coastal and marine habitat restoration.
  • - Incorporating habitat condition into natural capital assessments significantly improves estimates of ecosystem service benefits (by 11-67%), and the potential economic value of restoring habitats could reach up to £1.218 billion annually if optimal ecological conditions are achieved.
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Non-invasive small-animal imaging technologies, such as optical imaging, magnetic resonance imaging and x -ray computed tomography, have enabled researchers to study normal biological phenomena or disease progression in their native conditions. However, existing small-animal imaging technologies often lack either the penetration capability for interrogating deep tissues (e.g.

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Preclinical mouse solid tumor models are widely used to evaluate efficacy of novel cancer therapeutics. Recent reports have highlighted the need for utilizing orthotopic implantation to represent clinical disease more accurately, however the deep tissue location of these tumors makes longitudinal assessment challenging without the use of imaging techniques. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of a new multi-modality high-throughput in vivo imaging system that combines bioluminescence imaging (BLI) with robotic, hands-free ultrasound (US) for evaluating orthotopic mouse models.

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The purpose of this study was to understand preferences for different coastal flood protection measures and the factors that influence such preferences, to inform management and policy. The Discrete Choice Experiment applied to Wales residents revealed that there is willingness-to-pay for coastal flood protection, especially through Nature-based Solutions (NbS) including expanding saltmarsh area and increasing saltmarsh with high vegetation. The preference for NbS provides evidence for including specific coastal area targets in financial schemes initially aimed at other benefits from natural habitats, such as habitat creation for biodiversity.

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Marine spatial planning that addresses ocean climate-driven change ('climate-smart MSP') is a global aspiration to support economic growth, food security and ecosystem sustainability. Ocean climate change ('CC') modelling may become a key decision-support tool for MSP, but traditional modelling analysis and communication challenges prevent their broad uptake. We employed MSP-specific ocean climate modelling analyses to inform a real-life MSP process; addressing how nature conservation and fisheries could be adapted to CC.

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Polycystic kidney disease (PKD) is an inherited disorder characterized by renal cyst formation and enlargement of the kidney. PKD severity can be staged noninvasively by measuring total kidney volume (TKV), a promising biomarker that has recently received regulatory qualification. In preclinical mouse models, where the disease is studied and potential therapeutics are evaluated, the most popular noninvasive method of measuring TKV is magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

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  • The study explores how different shapes of microplastics (beads, fibers, fragments) and certain algal chemicals (DMS, DMSP) affect the ingestion rates in various marine zooplankton species, including copepods and European lobster larvae.
  • Each zooplankton species showed a preference for different shapes: fragments for copepods, fibers for another species, and beads for lobster larvae, indicating that feeding strategies influence shape selection.
  • The research highlights that species using chemosensory cues to find prey might be more vulnerable to consuming aged microplastics, emphasizing the importance of their feeding habits in their risk of ingestion.
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Using a natural capital framework to inform improvements to water quality and mitigation of climate change requires robust and spatially explicit ecosystem service data. Yet, for coastal habitats this approach is often constrained by a) sufficient and relevant habitat extent data and b) significant variability in baseline assessments used to quantify and value regulatory habitat services. Here, the European Nature Information System (EUNIS) habitat classification scheme is used to map seven key temperate coastal biotopes (littoral sediment, mat-forming green macroalgae, subtidal sediment, saltmarsh, seagrass, reedbeds and native oyster reefs) within the UK's Solent European Marine Site (SEMS).

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  • Ecosystem-based management (EBM) aims to create a sustainable approach that connects environmental, social, and economic factors in managing marine fauna, but there are challenges in linking these goals to practical assessments and management plans.
  • The study suggests using an ecosystem-service framework at the population level for marine mammals as a way to identify indicators that can assess their contributions to ecosystem services and disservices.
  • Preliminary findings indicate that existing data on indicators for marine mammals can support this approach, but further investigation is needed to address potential disagreements regarding the ecosystem service concept among stakeholders.
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An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

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The term Blue Carbon (BC) was first coined a decade ago to describe the disproportionately large contribution of coastal vegetated ecosystems to global carbon sequestration. The role of BC in climate change mitigation and adaptation has now reached international prominence. To help prioritise future research, we assembled leading experts in the field to agree upon the top-ten pending questions in BC science.

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This research takes a holistic approach to considering the consequences of marine plastic pollution. A semi-systematic literature review of 1191 data points provides the basis to determine the global ecological, social and economic impacts. An ecosystem impact analysis demonstrates that there is global evidence of impact with medium to high frequency on all subjects, with a medium to high degree of irreversibility.

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