A biomimetic sperm selection device for routine sperm selection.

Research Question: Can a biomimetic microfluidic sperm sorter isolate motile sperm while minimizing DNA damage in comparison with density gradient centrifugation (DGC)?

Design: This was a two-phase study of 61 men, consisting of a proof-of-concept study with 21 donated semen samples in a university research laboratory, followed by a diagnostic andrology study with 40 consenting patients who presented at a fertility clinic for semen diagnostics. Each sample was split to perform DGC and microfluidic sperm selection (one-step sperm selection with 15 min of incubation) side-by-side. Outcomes evaluated included concentration, progressive motility, and DNA fragmentation index (DFI) of raw semen, and sperm isolated using DGC and the microfluidic device.

The potential importance of the built-environment microbiome and its impact on human health.

There is increasing evidence that interactions between microbes and their hosts not only play a role in determining health and disease but also in emotions, thought, and behavior. Built environments greatly influence microbiome exposures because of their built-in highly specific microbiomes coproduced with myriad metaorganisms including humans, pets, plants, rodents, and insects. Seemingly static built structures host complex ecologies of microorganisms that are only starting to be mapped.

Tracing Tomorrow: young people's preferences and values related to use of personal sensing to predict mental health, using a digital game methodology.

Background: Use of personal sensing to predict mental health risk has sparked interest in adolescent psychiatry, offering a potential tool for targeted early intervention.

Objectives: We investigated the preferences and values of UK adolescents with regard to use of digital sensing information, including social media and internet searching behaviour. We also investigated the impact of risk information on adolescents' self-understanding.

On Disease Configurations, Black-Grass Blowback, and Probiotic Pest Management.

This article explores approaches to managing pests that are being developed in response to the faltering effectiveness of antibiotic regimes of chemical control. It focuses on black-grass (), an endemic plant in European agriculture that has emerged as a serious yield-robber with increasing levels of herbicidal resistance. Following farmers and agronomists who have developed "integrated" approaches to black-grass management, the article identifies approaches to biosecurity that do not target unwanted life so much as they modulate ecological systems in their entirety.

Evaluating the effects of lymphoedema management strategies on functional status and health-related quality of life following treatment for head and neck cancer: Protocol for a systematic review.

Introduction/background: Patients living with and after head and neck cancer often experience treatment-related consequences. Head and neck lymphoedema can be described as a common chronic side effect of head and neck cancer and recognised as a contributing factor to impairment of functional status, symptom burden and health-related quality of life. The effects of head and neck lymphoedema can limit patients' involvement in daily activities and alter their appearance, increasing symptom burden and negatively affecting health-related quality of life.

Green rebranding: Regenerative agriculture, future-pasts, and the naturalisation of livestock.

Anxieties around the relationship between livestock agriculture and the environmental crisis are driving sustained discussions about the place of beef and dairy farming in a sustainable food system. Proposed solutions range from 'clean-cow' sustainable intensification to 'no-cow', animal free futures, both of which encourage a disruptive break with past practice. This paper reviews the alternative proposition of regenerative agriculture that naturalises beef and dairy production by invoking the past to justify future, nature-based solutions.

Veganuary and the vegan sausage (t)rolls: conflict and commercial engagement in online climate-diet discourse.

Social media platforms have become critical venues for a wide spectrum of influence campaigns, from activism to advertising. Sometimes these two ends overlap and it remains unknown how the latter might impact the former. Situated within contemporary scholarship on vegan activism, this work examines corporate involvement with the Veganuary 2019 campaign on Twitter, as well as the antagonistic backlash it received.

When you wish upon a (GWP) star: Environmental governance and the reflexive performativity of global warming metrics.

The metrics used in environmental management are performative. That is, the tools deployed to classify and measure the natural world interact with the things they were designed to observe. The idea of performativity also captures the way these interactions shape or distort the governance activities that metrics are used to inform.

Immaterial animals and financialized forests: Asset manager capitalism, ESG integration and the politics of livestock.

This article uses interviews with responsible investment professionals to examine the extent to which institutional equity investors, and specifically 'universal owners' with highly diversified shareholdings, engage with public issues associated with livestock agriculture. As share ownership becomes increasingly concentrated, and the market for Environmental, Social and Governance investment products grows, these investors are increasingly involved in governing the activities of publicly traded corporations (including leading agribusinesses). This paper brings together political economy and marketization studies research to explore how universal owners become concerned about particular environmental and ethical problems, why they overlook other public concerns, and in what ways their selective engagement with ethico-political issues might be altering the content of food politics.

How reconfiguration of a minor injuries unit has affected service delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic: a retrospective analysis.

Introduction: Redeployment of orthopaedic consultants to a minor injuries unit (MIU) during the COVID-19 pandemic provided a unique opportunity to assess the impact of early senior specialist input on patient management.

Methods: Patient demographics, diagnosis, location of injury and disposal method were compared between three 7-day periods: during the April 2020 COVID-19 lockdown (period A), one month prior to period A (period B) and one year prior to period A (period C). Orthopaedic consultants staffed the MIU during period A, and emergency nurse practitioners staffed the MIU during periods B and C.

Vegan food geographies and the rise of Big Veganism.

Veganism is the subject of an increasingly diverse body of social scientific research, yet it remains relatively understudied in geography. Meanwhile, contemporary cultural commentaries note how veganism has gone mainstream, with critics warning of veganism's corporate nature - expressed in the rise of what we term 'Big Veganism'. We argue that food geographers are well placed to examine these trends.

Data sharing in the age of predictive psychiatry: an adolescent perspective.

Background: Advances in genetics and digital phenotyping in psychiatry have given rise to testing services targeting young people, which claim to predict psychiatric outcomes before difficulties emerge. These services raise several ethical challenges surrounding data sharing and information privacy.

Objectives: This study aimed to investigate young people's interest in predictive testing for mental health challenges and their attitudes towards sharing biological, psychosocial and digital data for such purpose.

How to build a game for empirical bioethics research: The case of 'Tracing Tomorrow'.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the field of empirical bioethics requires methodological innovations that can keep up with the scale and pace of contemporary research in health and medicine. With that in mind, we have recently argued for Design Bioethics-the use of purpose-built, engineered research tools that allow researchers to investigate moral decision-making in ways that are embodied and contextualized. In this paper, we outline the development, testing and implementation of a novel prototype tool in the Design Bioethics Workshop-with each step illustrated with collected data.

Controversy around climate change reports: a case study of Twitter responses to the 2019 IPCC report on land.

Unlabelled: In August 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its Special Report on Climate Change and Land (SRCCL), which generated extensive societal debate and interest in mainstream and social media. Using computational and conceptual text analysis, we examined more than 6,000 English-language posts on Twitter to establish the relative presence of different topics. Then, we assessed their levels of toxicity and sentiment polarity as an indication of contention and controversy.

Young people's moral attitudes and motivations towards direct-to-consumer genetic testing for inherited risk of Alzheimer disease.

Purpose: Since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved sales of genetic tests for late-onset Alzheimer's disease (LOAD) risk, a heated debate has arisen over whether these tests should indeed be offered online and direct-to-consumer (DTC).

Governing AI-Driven Health Research: Are IRBs Up to the Task?

Many are calling for concrete mechanisms of oversight for health research involving artificial intelligence (AI). In response, institutional review boards (IRBs) are being turned to as a familiar model of governance. Here, we examine the IRB model as a form of ethics oversight for health research that uses AI.

Palatable disruption: the politics of plant milk.

Plant-based milk alternatives-or -have surged in popularity over the past ten years. We consider the politics and consumer subjectivities fostered by mylks as part of the broader trend towards 'plant-based' food. We demonstrate how mylk companies inherit and strategically deploy positive framings of milk as wholesome and convenient, as well as negative framings of dairy as environmentally damaging and cruel, to position plant-based as the 'better' alternative.

Animal Research beyond the Laboratory: Report from a Workshop on Places Other than Licensed Establishments (POLEs) in the UK.

Research involving animals that occurs outside the laboratory raises an array of unique challenges. With regard to UK legislation, however, it receives only limited attention in terms of official guidelines, support, and statistics, which are unsurprisingly orientated towards the laboratory environment in which the majority of animal research takes place. In September 2019, four social scientists from the Animal Research Nexus program gathered together a group of 13 experts to discuss nonlaboratory research under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act (A(SP)A) of 1986 (mirroring European Union (EU) Directive 2010/63/EU), which is the primary mechanism for regulating animal research in the UK.

Framing the future of food: The contested promises of alternative proteins.

This paper offers a critical examination of the narrative landscape that has emerged with a new movement of alternative proteins intended as substitutes for conventional meat, milk and other animal-based food products. The alternative protein approaches analysed include edible insects, plant-based proteins and cellular agriculture, the latter of which encompasses 'cultured' or 'clean' meat, milk and egg products produced in vitro via cell-science methods. We build on previous research that has analysed the promissory narratives specific to cultured/clean meat by examining the key promises that have worked across the broader alternative protein movement.

Co-producing research with youth: The NeurOx young people's advisory group model.

Context: The 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that children have the right to be heard in all matters affecting them. The Convention inspired a surge in research that investigates young people's perspectives on health and wellness-related concerns and that involves children as 'co-researchers'. Young people's advisory groups (YPAGs) are a widely used method to enable young people's involvement in all research stages, but there is a lack of academic literature to guide researchers on how to set up, run and evaluate the impact of such groups.

Dairy intensification: Drivers, impacts and alternatives.

Dairy production systems have rapidly intensified over the past several decades. Dairy farms in many world regions are larger and concentrated in fewer hands. Higher productivity can increase overall economic gains but also incurs site-specific social and environmental costs.

The Effect of Moral Congruence of Calls to Action and Salient Social Norms on Online Charitable Donations: A Protocol Study.

Online advertising is an important tool that can be utilized by charities to elicit attention and funding. A critical examination of advertisement strategies is thus necessary to increase the efficacy of fundraising efforts. Previous studies have shown that individuals' moral views and perceptions of social norms can play important roles in charitable behavior.