The use of unoccupied aircraft systems (UASs, also known as drones) in science is growing rapidly. Recent advances in microelectronics and battery technology have resulted in the rapid development of ...low-cost UASs that are transforming many industries. Drones are poised to revolutionize marine science and conservation, as they provide essentially on-demand remote sensing capabilities at low cost and with reduced human risk. A variety of multirotor, fixed-wing, and transitional UAS platforms are capable of carrying various optical and physical sampling payloads and are being employed in almost every subdiscipline of marine science and conservation. This article provides an overview of the UAS platforms and sensors used in marine science and conservation missions along with example physical, biological, and natural resource management applications and typical analytical workflows. It concludes with details on potential effects of UASs on marine wildlife and a look to the future of UASs in marine science and conservation.
Self-assessed general health (SAH) is one of the most frequently employed health measures in social science research. Its generic nature means it captures elements of health that more guided measures ...cannot, and its brevity makes it possible for health information to be included in crowded multifaceted surveys. However, a shortcoming of SAH is that it provides little guidance to researchers as to what individuals are thinking of when they assess their health – when a survey respondent reports that their health is “poor”, is it because they are in pain, tired, depressed, unable to climb stairs, or something else entirely? This limits the possible inference from empirical research. It also means that important determinants and consequences of health can be missed if they are only weakly reflected in SAH. Given the continued use of SAH, it is important to better understand its structure. In this paper we use household panel data from Australia to answer two related questions: (i) what components of health does SAH most strongly represent? and (ii) does the use of SAH conceal important health effects? To answer the first question, we use a detailed health instrument and take a rigorous econometric approach to identify the health dimensions most strongly reflected in SAH. To answer the second question, we estimate the causal effects of income on SAH and on disaggregated health measures using instrumental-variables models. We find that some health dimensions – especially vitality – are consistently important to an individual when they assess their health, while other dimensions are inconsequential. We demonstrate that this fact provides insight in to why some studies find weak income gradients in SAH. Instrumental-variable regression results show that shocks to household income have no effect on SAH, but strongly improve several dimensions of health that are less commonly measured.
•SAH most strongly reflects vitality – i.e. feeling full of life and energetic.•Some health dimensions are only weakly reflected by SAH.•Large unexpected shocks to income affect some health dimensions but not SAH.
Substandard drugs: a potential crisis for public health Johnston, Atholl; Holt, David W.
BJCP. British journal of clinical pharmacology/British journal of clinical pharmacology,
August 2014, Letnik:
78, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Poor‐quality medicines present a serious public health problem, particularly in emerging economies and developing countries, and may have a significant impact on the national clinical and economic ...burden. Attention has largely focused on the increasing availability of deliberately falsified drugs, but substandard medicines are also reaching patients because of poor manufacturing and quality‐control practices in the production of genuine drugs (either branded or generic). Substandard medicines are widespread and represent a threat to health because they can inadvertently lead to healthcare failures, such as antibiotic resistance and the spread of disease within a community, as well as death or additional illness in individuals. This article reviews the different aspects of substandard drug formulation that can occur (for example, pharmacological variability between drug batches or between generic and originator drugs, incorrect drug quantity and presence of impurities). The possible means of addressing substandard manufacturing practices are also discussed. A concerted effort is required on the part of governments, drug manufacturers, charities and healthcare providers to ensure that only drugs of acceptable quality reach the patient.
Baleen whales influence their ecosystems through immense prey consumption and nutrient recycling
. It is difficult to accurately gauge the magnitude of their current or historic ecosystem role ...without measuring feeding rates and prey consumed. To date, prey consumption of the largest species has been estimated using metabolic models
based on extrapolations that lack empirical validation. Here, we used tags deployed on seven baleen whale (Mysticeti) species (n = 321 tag deployments) in conjunction with acoustic measurements of prey density to calculate prey consumption at daily to annual scales from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Southern Oceans. Our results suggest that previous studies
have underestimated baleen whale prey consumption by threefold or more in some ecosystems. In the Southern Ocean alone, we calculate that pre-whaling populations of mysticetes annually consumed 430 million tonnes of Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba), twice the current estimated total biomass of E. superba
, and more than twice the global catch of marine fisheries today
. Larger whale populations may have supported higher productivity in large marine regions through enhanced nutrient recycling: our findings suggest mysticetes recycled 1.2 × 10
tonnes iron yr
in the Southern Ocean before whaling compared to 1.2 × 10
tonnes iron yr
recycled by whales today. The recovery of baleen whales and their nutrient recycling services
could augment productivity and restore ecosystem function lost during 20th century whaling
.
ABSTRACT Using the example of the tidal stream of the Milky Way globular cluster Palomar 5 (Pal 5), we demonstrate how observational data on tidal streams can be efficiently reduced in dimensionality ...and modeled in a Bayesian framework. Our approach combines detection of stream overdensities by a Difference-of-Gaussians process with fast streakline models of globular cluster streams and a continuous likelihood function built from these models. Inference is performed with Markov chain Monte Carlo. By generating model streams, we show that the unique geometry of the Pal 5 debris yields powerful constraints on the solar position and motion, the Milky Way and Pal 5 itself. All 10 model parameters were allowed to vary over large ranges without additional prior information. Using only readily available SDSS data and a few radial velocities from the literature, we find that the distance of the Sun from the Galactic Center is 8.30 0.25 kpc, and the transverse velocity is 253 16 km s−1. Both estimates are in excellent agreement with independent measurements of these two quantities. Assuming a standard disk and bulge model, we determine the Galactic mass within Pal 5's apogalactic radius of 19 kpc to be . Moreover, we find the potential of the dark halo with a flattening of to be essentially spherical-at least within the radial range that is effectively probed by Pal 5. We also determine Pal 5's mass, distance, and proper motion independently from other methods, which enables us to perform vital cross-checks. Our inferred heliocentric distance of Pal 5 is kpc, in perfect agreement with, and more precise than, estimates from isochrone fitting of deep Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging data. We conclude that finding and modeling more globular cluster streams is an efficient way to map out the structure of our Galaxy to high precision. With more observational data and by using additional prior information, the precision of this mapping can be significantly increased.
Dynamically cold stellar streams are ideal probes of the gravitational field of the Milky Way. This paper re-examines the question of how such streams might be used to test for the presence of ...'missing satellites'--the many thousands of dark-matter subhalos with masses 105-107 M which are seen to orbit within Galactic-scale dark-matter halos in simulations of structure formation in Delta *LCDM cosmologies. Analytical estimates of the frequency and energy scales of stream encounters indicate that these missing satellites should have a negligible effect on hot debris structures, such as the tails from the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. However, long cold streams, such as the structure known as GD1 or those from the globular cluster Palomar 5 (Pal 5), are expected to suffer many tens of direct impacts from missing satellites during their lifetimes. Numerical experiments confirm that these impacts create gaps in the debris' orbital energy distribution, which will evolve into degree- and sub-degree-scale fluctuations in surface density over the age of the debris. Maps of Pal 5's own stream contain surface density fluctuations on these scales. The presence and frequency of these inhomogeneities suggests the existence of a population of missing satellites in numbers predicted in the standard Delta *LCDM cosmologies.
Do economic downturns encourage racist attitudes? Does this in-turn lead to worse labour market outcome for minorities? We assess these important questions using British attitude and labour force ...data. The attitude data show that racial prejudice is countercyclical, with the effect driven by large increases for high-skilled middle-aged working men – a 1%-point increase in unemployment is estimated to increase self-reported racial prejudice by 4%-points. Correspondingly, the labour force data show that racial employment and wage gaps are counter-cyclical, with the largest effects also observed for high-skilled men, especially in the manufacturing and construction industries – a 1%-point increase in unemployment is estimated to increase the wage gap by 3%. These results are entirely consistent with the theoretical literature, which proposes that racial prejudice and discrimination are the result of labour market competition among individuals with similar traits, and that the effects of this competition are exacerbated during periods of economic downturn.
Background and aims
Problem gambling can lead to a myriad of harmful consequences, including unmanageable amounts of debt and serious financial problems. The aim of this study was to examine whether ...changes in the number of electronic gaming machine (EGM) venues within a local area (due to venue openings and closings) are associated with changes in the rates of serious financial problems.
Design
Area‐level longitudinal multivariate regressions controlling for possible confounders (fixed and time‐varying local area characteristics).
Setting
Australia's three largest states (New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland), during the period 2011–18.
Participants
A total of 225 local areas (Statistical Area 3 level) within the three states.
Measurements
Serious financial problems were measured by administrative data on total number of personal insolvencies (bankruptcies, debt agreements and insolvency agreements) in each local area per annum. The number of EGM venues in each local area was the regressor of primary interest. Area‐level covariates included the number of non‐gaming pubs and clubs, unemployment rate, population count, local area dummies, local area linear time trends and a separate set of state dummies for each year.
Findings
A one‐venue decrease over time within a local area decreased the number of personal insolvencies by 1.8 per year 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.4–3.2. The result is robust to alternative specifications, including allowing for geographical spillovers (β = 2.2, 95% CI = 0.7–3.7), temporal lagged effects (β = 1.6, 95% CI = 0.6–2.8) and the spatial variability of venues within areas (β = 2.7, 95% CI = 0.9–4.5).
Conclusions
There is a positive association between the number of gaming venues in a local geographic area and the number of personal insolvencies in that area. Reducing the number or accessibility of gaming venues could help to reduce financial harms associated with problem gambling.
The relationship between health and work is frequently investigated using self-assessments of disability from social surveys. The complication is that respondents may overstate their level of ...disability to justify non-employment and welfare receipt. This study provides new evidence on the existence and magnitude of justification bias by exploiting a novel feature of a large longitudinal survey: each wave respondents are asked identical disability questions twice; near the beginning and end of the face-to-face interview. Prior to answering the second disability question, respondents are asked a series of questions that increase the salience of their employment and welfare circumstances. Justification bias is identified by comparing the variation between the two measures within-individuals over time, with the variation in employment status over time. Results indicate substantial and statistically significant justification bias; especially for men and women who receive disability pensions.
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