The UK Government’s first National Adaptation Programme seeks to create a ‘climate-ready society’ capable of making well-informed and far-sighted decisions to address risks and opportunities posed by ...a changing climate, where individual households are expected to adapt when it is in their interest to do so. How, and to what extent, households are able to do this remains unclear. Like other developed countries, research on UK adaptation has focused predominately on public and private organisations. To fill that gap, a systematic literature review was conducted to understand what actions UK households have taken in response to, or in anticipation of, a changing climate; what drives or impedes these actions; and whether households will act autonomously. We found that UK households struggle to build long-term adaptive capacity and are reliant upon traditional reactive coping responses. Of concern is that these coping responses are less effective for some climate risks (e.g. flooding); cost more over the long-term; and fail to create household capacity to adapt to other stresses. While low-cost, low-skill coping responses were already being implemented, the adoption of more permanent physical measures, behavioural changes, and acceptance of new responsibilities are unlikely to happen autonomously without further financial or government support. If public policy on household adaptation to climate change is to be better informed than more high-quality empirical research is urgently needed.
Tropical dry deciduous forests provide numerous ecosystem services yet their contribution to agricultural production remains underexplored. We address this research gap by quantifying the broader ...suite of ecosystem services that support small holder farmers and identifying farmers' knowledge of storm hazard reduction benefits provided by forest fragments in Madagascar. We survey 240 households and interview eight key informants to identify household and community responses in two communities with contrasting forest cover trajectories. Using multivariate statistics, results show a heavy dependence on forests for food and raw materials and a majority of the respondents holding a positive view of hazard mitigation services provided by forest fragments. Education levels, earning an income from forest based tourism and honey production are the only predictors of participation in forest management. Positive view of the hazard reduction benefits derived from forests could be due to external influences or personal observations, and together with barriers to participation in forest management need to be further investigated to better link forest management to reduced hazards risks. These findings are significant for forest management policy, as local knowledge and rationale for decisions are instrumental in the success of decentralized forest management and maintenance of vital forest benefits to farmers.
•Dry forest fragments provide important services for agricultural livelihoods.•There is common local knowledge of the linkages between forests and hydrological processes.•Storm hazard mitigation benefits of forests are widely acknowledged by farmers.•However participation in forest management is determined only by income generating services.
Background Over recent years, technological advances in wearables have allowed for continuous home monitoring of heart rate and oxygen saturation. These devices have primarily been used for sports ...and general wellness and may not be suitable for medical decision-making, especially in saturations below 90% and in patients with dark skin color. Wearable clinical-grade saturation of peripheral oxygen (SpO2) monitoring can be of great value to patients with chronic diseases, enabling them and their clinicians to better manage their condition with reliable real-time and trend data. Objective This study aimed to determine the SpO2 accuracy of a wearable ring pulse oximeter compared with arterial oxygen saturation (SaO2) in a controlled hypoxia study based on the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 80601-2-61:2019 standard over the range of 70%-100% SaO2 in volunteers with a broad range of skin color (Fitzpatrick I to VI) during nonmotion conditions. In parallel, accuracy was compared with a calibrated clinical-grade reference pulse oximeter (Masimo Radical-7). Acceptable medical device accuracy was defined as a maximum of 4% root mean square error (RMSE) per the ISO 80601-2-61 standard and a maximum of 3.5% RMSE per the US Food and Drug Administration guidance. Methods We performed a single-center, blinded hypoxia study of the test device in 11 healthy volunteers at the Hypoxia Research Laboratory, University of California at San Francisco, under the direction of Philip Bickler, MD, PhD, and John Feiner, MD. Each volunteer was connected to a breathing apparatus for the administration of a hypoxic gas mixture. To facilitate frequent blood gas sampling, a radial arterial cannula was placed on either wrist of each participant. One test device was placed on the index finger and another test device was placed on the fingertip. SaO2 analysis was performed using an ABL-90 multi-wavelength oximeter. Results For the 11 participants included in the analysis, there were 236, 258, and 313 SaO2-SpO2 data pairs for the test device placed on the finger, the test device placed on the fingertip, and the reference device, respectively. The RMSE of the test device for all participants was 2.1% for either finger or fingertip placement, while the Masimo Radical-7 reference pulse oximeter RMSE was 2.8%, exceeding the standard (4% or less) and the Food and Drug Administration guidance (3.5% or less). Accuracy of SaO2-SpO2 paired data from the 4 participants with dark skin in the study was separately analyzed for both test device placements and the reference device. The test and reference devices exceeded the minimum accuracy requirements for a medical device with RMSE at 1.8% (finger) and 1.6% (fingertip) and for the reference device at 2.9%. Conclusions The wearable ring meets an acceptable standard of accuracy for clinical-grade SpO2 under nonmotion conditions without regard to skin color. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05920278; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05920278
This paper aims to characterise the ways in which the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is trickling down to affect national level action on climate change. State and ...non-state actors were interviewed at the 8th UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COP8) during October and November 2002. The interviews revealed that, among interviewees, climate change was already perceived to be, or was becoming a priority issue. In a number of countries substantial legislation is already in place to facilitate climate change preparedness (both adaptation and mitigation), although respondents suggest that in the majority of cases these changes are not being developed in response to the UNFCCC, but to other drivers. While all respondents saw change occurring at the national level, mostly through planning and research, few saw climate change response actions at the local level. Respondents agreed that climate risks must be managed through various mechanisms, from finding ways to participate in the Kyoto Protocol mechanisms to managing the impacts of foreign direct investments. The majority of respondents focussed on in-country actions such as identifying the most vulnerable groups, but few identified the need for greater global cooperation.
To conclude, the Convention plays a role in shaping the discourse of climate change and in generating national level responses. These responses are played out differently according to the geographic, environmental, economic, social and cultural conditions of each country. The Convention is clearly important, but perhaps it is not adequate to inspire national action to resolve the problems of climate change. There is scope for many additional initiatives, through collaboration, trade or aid, and through bilateral agreements.
Drawing inspiration from sleight-of-hand magic tricks, we developed an experimental paradigm to investigate whether magicians' misdirection techniques could be used to induce the misperception of ..."phantom" objects. While previous experiments investigating sleight-of-hand magic tricks have focused on creating false assumptions about the movement of an object in a scene, our experiment investigated creating false assumptions about the presence of an object in a scene. Participants watched a sequence of silent videos depicting a magician performing with a single object. Following each video, participants were asked to write a description of the events in the video. In the final video, participants watched the Phantom Vanish Magic Trick, a novel magic trick developed for this experiment, in which the magician pantomimed the actions of presenting an object and then making it magically disappear. No object was presented during the final video. The silent videos precluded the use of false verbal suggestions, and participants were not asked leading questions about the objects. Nevertheless, 32% of participants reported having visual impressions of non-existent objects. These findings support an inferential model of perception, wherein top-down expectations can be manipulated by the magician to generate vivid illusory experiences, even in the absence of corresponding bottom-up information.
Localization of glucokinase gene expression in the rat brain.
R M Lynch ,
L S Tompkins ,
H L Brooks ,
A A Dunn-Meynell and
B E Levin
Department of Physiology, University of Arizona, Arizona Health ...Sciences Center, Tucson 87524, USA.
Abstract
The brain contains a subpopulation of glucosensing neurons that alter their firing rate in response to elevated glucose concentrations.
In pancreatic beta-cells, glucokinase (GK), the rate-limiting enzyme in glycolysis, mediates glucose-induced insulin release
by regulating intracellular ATP production. A similar role for GK is proposed to underlie neuronal glucosensing. Via in situ
hybridization, GK mRNA was localized to hypothalamic areas that are thought to contain relatively large populations of glucosensing
neurons (the arcuate, ventromedial, dorsomedial, and paraventricular nuclei and the lateral area). GK also was found in brain
areas without known glucosensing neurons (the lateral habenula, the bed nucleus stria terminalis, the inferior olive, the
retrochiasmatic and medial preoptic areas, and the thalamic posterior paraventricular, interpeduncular, oculomotor, and anterior
olfactory nuclei). Conversely, GK message was not found in the nucleus tractus solitarius, which contains glucosensing neurons,
or in ependymal cells lining the third ventricle, where others have described its presence. In the arcuate nucleus, >75% of
neuropeptide Y-positive neurons also expressed GK, and most GK+ neurons also expressed KIR6.2 (the pore-forming subunit of
the ATP-sensitive K+ channel). The anatomic distribution of GK mRNA was confirmed in micropunch samples of hypothalamus via
reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Nucleotide sequencing of the recovered PCR product indicated identity
with nucleotides 1092-1411 (within exon 9 and 10) of hepatic and beta-cell GK. The specific anatomic localization of GK mRNA
in hypothalamic areas known to contain glucosensing neurons and the coexpression of KIR6.2 and NPY in GK+ neurons support
a role for GK as a primary determinant of glucosensing in neuropeptide neurons that integrate multiple signals relating to
peripheral energy metabolism.
Resilience is widely seen as an important attribute of coastal systems and, as a concept, is increasingly prominent in policy documents. However, there are conflicting ideas on what constitutes ...resilience and its operationalisation as an overarching principle of coastal management remains limited. In this paper, we show how resilience to coastal flood and erosion hazard could be measured and applied within policy processes, using England as a case study. We define resilience pragmatically, integrating what is presently a disparate set of policy objectives for coastal areas. Our definition uses the concepts of resistance, recovery and adaptation, to consider how the economic, social and environmental dimensions of coastal systems respond to change. We develop a set of composite indicators for each dimension, grounded empirically with reference to national geospatial datasets. A prototype Coastal Resilience Model (CRM) has been developed, which combines the dimensions and generates a quantitative resilience index. We apply it to England's coastal hazard zone, capturing a range of different stakeholder perspectives using relative indicator weightings. The illustrative results demonstrate the practicality of formalising and quantifying resilience. To re-focus national policy around the stated desire of enhancing resilience to coastal flooding and erosion would require firm commitment from government to monitor progress towards resilience, requiring extension of the present risk-based approach, and a consensus methodology in which multiple (and sometimes conflicting) stakeholder values are explicitly considered. Such a transition may also challenge existing governance arrangements at national and local levels, requiring incentives for coastal managers to engage with and apply this new approach, more departmental integration and inter-agency cooperation. The proposed Coastal Resilience Model, with the tools to support planning and measure progress, has the potential to help enable this transition.
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•Coastal resilience can be made operational to guide hazard policy and management.•The Coastal Resilience Model (CRM) defines system state at both local and national scales.•The CRM maps future socio-environmental scenarios and projected adaptation pathways.•The CRM captures stakeholder perspectives to inform resource allocation and policy making.•An operational tool may need new data sets to be collected to fully describe resilience.
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