A cohort study of duplicate faecal immunochemical testing in patients at risk of colorectal cancer from North-West England.

Objectives: We sought to investigate if duplicate faecal immunochemical testing (FIT) sampling improves the negative and positive predictive value of patients thought to be at risk of colorectal cancer (CRC). Specifically, we aimed to investigate whether the proportion of FIT-negative CRC missed by a single FIT test in symptomatic patients could be reduced by duplicate FIT testing.

Design: A retrospective service evaluation cohort study of the diagnostic accuracy of duplicate FIT testing.

Fossil Energy Use, Climate Change Impacts, and Air Quality-Related Human Health Damages of Conventional and Diversified Cropping Systems in Iowa, USA.

Cropping system diversification can reduce the negative environmental impacts of agricultural production, including soil erosion and nutrient discharge. Less is known about how diversification affects energy use, climate change, and air quality, when considering farm operations and supply chain activities. We conducted a life cycle study using measurements from a nine-year Iowa field experiment to estimate fossil energy (FE) use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, PM-related emissions, human health impacts, and other agronomic and economic metrics of contrasting crop rotation systems and herbicide regimes.

Cropping System Diversity Effects on Nutrient Discharge, Soil Erosion, and Agronomic Performance.

Nutrient, herbicide, and sediment loading from agricultural fields cause environmental and economic damage. Nutrient leaching and runoff pollution can lead to eutrophication and impaired drinking water resources, while soil erosion reduces water quality and agronomic productivity. Increased cropping system diversification has been proposed to address these problems.

Reducing Freshwater Toxicity while Maintaining Weed Control, Profits, And Productivity: Effects of Increased Crop Rotation Diversity and Reduced Herbicide Usage.

Increasing crop rotation diversity while reducing herbicide applications may maintain effective weed control while reducing freshwater toxicity. To test this hypothesis, we applied the model USEtox 2.0 to data from a long-term Iowa field experiment that included three crop rotation systems: a 2-year corn-soybean sequence, a 3-year corn-soybean-oat/red clover sequence, and 4-year corn-soybean-oat/alfalfa-alfalfa sequence.

Physician Burnout and the Calling to Care for the Dying: A National Survey.

Background: Physician burnout raises concerns over what sustains physicians' career motivations. We assess whether physicians in end-of-life specialties had higher rates of burnout and/or calling to care for the dying. We also examined whether the patient centeredness of the clinical environment was associated with burnout.

Ecosystem-service tradeoffs associated with switching from annual to perennial energy crops in riparian zones of the US Midwest.

Integration of energy crops into agricultural landscapes could promote sustainability if they are placed in ways that foster multiple ecosystem services and mitigate ecosystem disservices from existing crops. We conducted a modeling study to investigate how replacing annual energy crops with perennial energy crops along Wisconsin waterways could affect a variety of provisioning and regulating ecosystem services. We found that a switch from continuous corn production to perennial-grass production decreased annual income provisioning by 75%, although it increased annual energy provisioning by 33%, decreased annual phosphorous loading to surface water by 29%, increased below-ground carbon sequestration by 30%, decreased annual nitrous oxide emissions by 84%, increased an index of pollinator abundance by an average of 11%, and increased an index of biocontrol potential by an average of 6%.