The COVID-19 pandemic is a major shock to society in terms of health and economy that is affecting both UK and global food and nutrition security. It is adding to the 'perfect storm' of threats to society from climate change, biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, at a time of considerable change, rising nationalism and breakdown in international collaboration. In the UK, the situation is further complicated due to Brexit.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis paper addresses the highly relevant and timely issues of global trade and food security by developing an empirically grounded, relation-driven agent-based global trade model. Contrary to most price-driven trade models in the literature, the relation-driven agent-based global trade model focuses on the role of relational factors such as trust, familiarity, trade history and conflicts in countries' trade behaviour. Moreover, the global trade model is linked to a comprehensive nutrition formula to investigate the impact of trade on food and nutrition security, including macro and micronutrients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResource distribution networks are the infrastructure facilitating the flow of resources in both biotic and abiotic systems. Both theoretical and empirical arguments have proposed that physical systems self-organise to maximise power production, but how this trajectory is related to network development, especially regarding the heterogeneity of resource distribution in explicitly spatial networks, is less understood. Quantifying the heterogeneity of resource distribution is necessary for understanding how phenomena such as economic inequality or energetic niches emerge across socio-ecological and environmental systems.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis paper develops an empirical agent-based model to assess the impacts of Brexit on Scottish cattle farms. We first identify several trends and processes among Scottish cattle farms that were ongoing before Brexit: the lack of succession, the rise of leisure farming, the trend to diversify and industrialise, and, finally, the phenomenon of the "disappearing middle", characterised by the decline of medium-sized farms and the polarization of farm sizes. We then study the potential impact of Brexit amid the local context and those ongoing social processes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Obesity may be the most predominant risk factor for recurrence following ventral hernia repair. This is secondary to significantly increased intra-abdominal pressures, higher rates of wound complications, and the technical difficulties encountered due to obesity. Medically managed weight loss prior to surgery is difficult.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAbdominal wall reconstruction (AWR) is often required for hernias created after temporary abdominal closure (TAC). Demographic and clinical data from patients undergoing TAC and AWR between January 1, 1992, and December 31, 2002, were collected and univariate analysis performed. Temporary abdominal closure and AWR were performed in 21 patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA novel approach to generalisation is presented that is able, under certain circumstances, to guarantee the generalisation to binary-output data for which no targets have been given. The basis of the guarantee is the recognition of a persistent global minimum error solution. An empirical test for whether the guarantee holds is provided which uses a technique called target reversal.
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