An Experimental Methodology for Automated Detection of Surface Turbulence Features in Tidal Stream Environments.

Tidal stream environments are important areas of marine habitat for the development of marine renewable energy (MRE) sources and as foraging hotspots for megafaunal species (seabirds and marine mammals). Hydrodynamic features can promote prey availability and foraging efficiency that influences megafaunal foraging success and behaviour, with the potential for animal interactions with MRE devices. Uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) offer a novel tool for the fine-scale data collection of surface turbulence features and animals, which is not possible through other techniques, to provide information on the potential environmental impacts of anthropogenic developments.

A proactive financial navigation intervention in patients with newly diagnosed gastric and gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma.

Purpose: Many cancer patients and caregivers experience financial hardship, leading to poor outcomes. Gastric and gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) cancer patients are particularly at risk for financial hardship given the intensity of treatment. This pilot randomized study among gastric/GEJ cancer patients and caregivers tested a proactive financial navigation (FN) intervention to obtain a signal of efficacy to inform a larger, more rigorous randomized study.

Quantification of circulating HBV RNA expressed from intrahepatic cccDNA in untreated and NUC treated patients with chronic hepatitis B.

Objective: A convenient, reproducible biomarker of hepatitis B virus (HBV) covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA) transcriptional activity is lacking. We measured circulating HBV RNA (cirB-RNA) in untreated and nucleos(t)ide analogues (NUC) treated chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients to define its correlation with intrahepatic viral markers and HBV core-related antigen (HBcrAg).

Design: Paired liver biopsy and serum samples were collected from 122 untreated and 30 NUC-treated CHB patients.

Pupil dilation evaluation of two mydriatic dosing profiles delivered by the Optejet.

To compare pupil dilation achieved by a single microdose versus two microdoses of tropicamide-phenylephrine fixed combination (TR-PH FC) delivered by the Optejet. In this assessor-masked, crossover, noninferiority study, 60 volunteers underwent two treatment visits and received either one (∼8 μl) or two sprays (∼16 μl) of TR-PH FC to both eyes in randomly assigned order. At 35 min postdose, mean change in pupil diameter was 4.

A review of the UK and British Channel Islands practical tidal stream energy resource.

This review provides a critical, multi-faceted assessment of the practical contribution tidal stream energy can make to the UK and British Channel Islands future energy mix. Evidence is presented that broadly supports the latest national-scale practical resource estimate, of 34 TWh/year, equivalent to 11% of the UK's current annual electricity demand. The size of the practical resource depends in part on the economic competitiveness of projects.

Insertional activation of and by HIV-1 proviruses in T cell lymphomas.

Retroviruses cause cancers in animals by integrating in or near oncogenes. Although HIV-1 infection increases the risk of cancer, most of the risk is associated with immunodeficiency and coinfection by oncogenic virus (Epstein-Barr virus, Kaposi sarcoma herpesvirus, and human papillomavirus). HIV-1 proviruses integrated in some oncogenes cause clonal expansion of infected T cells in vivo; however, the infected cells are not transformed, and it is generally believed that HIV-1 does not cause cancer directly.

Fishing within offshore wind farms in the North Sea: Stakeholder perspectives for multi-use from Scotland and Germany.

Offshore wind power generation requires large areas of sea to accommodate its activities, with increasing claims for exclusive access. As a result, pressure is placed on other established maritime uses, such as commercial fisheries. The latter sector has often been taking a back seat in the thrust to move energy production offshore, thus leading to disagreements and conflicts among the different stakeholder groups.

Ecological costs of climate change on marine predator-prey population distributions by 2050.

Identifying and quantifying the effects of climate change that alter the habitat overlap of marine predators and their prey population distributions is of great importance for the sustainable management of populations. This study uses Bayesian joint models with integrated nested Laplace approximation (INLA) to predict future spatial density distributions in the form of common spatial trends of predator-prey overlap in 2050 under the "business-as-usual, worst-case" climate change scenario. This was done for combinations of six mobile marine predator species (gray seal, harbor seal, harbor porpoise, common guillemot, black-legged kittiwake, and northern gannet) and two of their common prey species (herring and sandeels).

Bayesian joint models with INLA exploring marine mobile predator-prey and competitor species habitat overlap.

Understanding spatial physical habitat selection driven by competition and/or predator-prey interactions of mobile marine species is a fundamental goal of spatial ecology. However, spatial counts or density data for highly mobile animals often (1) include excess zeros, (2) have spatial correlation, and (3) have highly nonlinear relationships with physical habitat variables, which results in the need for complex joint spatial models. In this paper, we test the use of Bayesian hierarchical hurdle and zero-inflated joint models with integrated nested Laplace approximation (INLA), to fit complex joint models to spatial patterns of eight mobile marine species (grey seal, harbor seal, harbor porpoise, common guillemot, black-legged kittiwake, northern gannet, herring, and sandeels).

Taking movement data to new depths: Inferring prey availability and patch profitability from seabird foraging behavior.

Detailed information acquired using tracking technology has the potential to provide accurate pictures of the types of movements and behaviors performed by animals. To date, such data have not been widely exploited to provide inferred information about the foraging habitat. We collected data using multiple sensors (GPS, time depth recorders, and accelerometers) from two species of diving seabirds, razorbills (, = 5, from Fair Isle, UK) and common guillemots (, = 2 from Fair Isle and = 2 from Colonsay, UK).

A never-before opportunity to strengthen investment and action on adolescent contraception, and what we must do to make full use of it.

Background: Increasingly, the health and rights of adolescents are being recognized and prioritized on the global agenda. This presents us with a "never-before" opportunity to address adolescent contraception. This is timely, as there are enormous numbers of adolescents who are currently unable to obtain and use contraceptives.

The use of an unsupervised learning approach for characterizing latent behaviors in accelerometer data.

The recent increase in data accuracy from high resolution accelerometers offers substantial potential for improved understanding and prediction of animal movements. However, current approaches used for analysing these multivariable datasets typically require existing knowledge of the behaviors of the animals to inform the behavioral classification process. These methods are thus not well-suited for the many cases where limited knowledge of the different behaviors performed exist.

Modelling foraging movements of diving predators: a theoretical study exploring the effect of heterogeneous landscapes on foraging efficiency.

Foraging in the marine environment presents particular challenges for air-breathing predators. Information about prey capture rates, the strategies that diving predators use to maximise prey encounter rates and foraging success are still largely unknown and difficult to observe. As well, with the growing awareness of potential climate change impacts and the increasing interest in the development of renewable sources it is unknown how the foraging activity of diving predators such as seabirds will respond to both the presence of underwater structures and the potential corresponding changes in prey distributions.

Sanitation and health.

As one article in a four-part PLoS Medicine series on water and sanitation, David Trouba and colleagues discuss the importance of improved sanitation to health and the role that the health sector can play in its advocacy.

Interventions to improve disposal of human excreta for preventing diarrhoea.

Background: Diarrhoeal diseases are a leading cause of mortality and morbidity, especially among young children in low-income countries, and are associated with exposure to human excreta.

Objectives: To assess the effectiveness of interventions to improve the disposal of human excreta for preventing diarrhoeal diseases.

Search Strategy: We searched the Cochrane Infectious Disease Group Specialized Register; the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), published in The Cochrane Library; MEDLINE; EMBASE; LILACS; the metaRegister of Controlled Trials (mRCT); and Chinese-language databases available under the Wan Fang portal, and the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI-CAJ).

Water distribution systems as living ecosystems: impact on taste and odor.

Six waters from different U.S. cities with known diverse taste and odor (TO) evaluations were selected for additional microbial characterization.

Marketing hygiene behaviours: the impact of different communication channels on reported handwashing behaviour of women in Ghana.

In 2003-04, a National Handwashing Campaign utilizing mass media and community events took place in Ghana. This article describes the results of the evaluation of the campaign in a sample of 497 women with children <5 years. The unifying message across all communication channels was that hands were not 'truly' clean unless washed with soap.

Health in our hands, but not in our heads: understanding hygiene motivation in Ghana.

Each year more than 2 million children die from diarrhoeal diseases; the same number again die from acute respiratory infections. The simple hygiene behaviour of washing hands with soap represents an effective way of preventing the transmission of many of these infections. However, rates of handwashing across the globe are low, presenting a challenge for health promotion programmes.

Hard to handle: understanding mothers' handwashing behaviour in Ghana.

While handwashing with soap (HWWS) has been identified as a major pathway to reducing the risk of diarrhoeal diseases, and respiratory infections, rates of HWWS remain low across the globe. The current study, a national survey of Ghanaian mothers, found that as few as 4% of mothers engaged in HWWS after defecation, and only 2% after cleaning a child's bottom. In a multivariate analysis, we explored the determinants of handwashing at these key junctures, with and without soap.

Behavioral indicators of household decision-making and demand for sanitation and potential gains from social marketing in Ghana.

Household demand for improved sanitation in developing countries is an important social and behavioral process with implications for public health, sanitation policy and planning, and sanitation design and technology development. This paper develops a behavioral approach to assess household demand for improved sanitation in Ghana. Adoption decision stages of preference, intention, and choice to install a toilet in Ghana are defined, measured in a survey, and used to estimate sanitation demand, identify factors affecting demand at each stage, and classify households by adoption stage to identify targeted demand-stimulation strategies.

Ethics in public health research: masters of marketing: bringing private sector skills to public health partnerships.

Skill in marketing is a scarce resource in public health, especially in developing countries. The Global Public-Private Partnership for Handwashing with Soap set out to tap the consumer marketing skills of industry for national handwashing programs. Lessons learned from commercial marketers included how to (1) understand consumer motivation, (2) employ 1 single unifying idea, (3) plan for effective reach, and (4) ensure effectiveness before national launch.

Linking sandeel consumption and the likelihood of starvation in harbour porpoises in the Scottish North Sea: could climate change mean more starving porpoises?

Sandeels are known to be negatively affected by climate change in a number of ways. This study investigated whether these changes are affecting the harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena), a species which consumes sandeels. Porpoise diet was examined in spring (March-May), a critical time of year for survival when sandeels are important prey, from 1993 to 2001 to provide baseline information on the proportion of sandeels consumed.

Supply chain challenges. building relationships.

Supply chain management is all about software and systems, right? Put in the best technology, sit back, and watch as your processes run smoothly and the savings roll in? Apparently not. When HBR convened a panel of leading thinkers in the field of supply chain management, technology was not top of mind. People and relationships were the dominant issues of the day.