The COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented shock to capture fisheries and aquaculture sectors. This scoping review of 670 articles explored the spatial, temporal, and thematic coverage of this ...event. The search period was January 1, 2020 to February 7, 2022. Articles were mainly peer-reviewed journals (88%) with the remainder from the gray literature (12%). Studies were performed at the global (21%), multi-country (11%), national (45%), and sub-national (23%) levels. Most studies involved primary or secondary data collection (71%) and the remainder were either review articles (17%) or commentaries (12%). Among the studies using primary and secondary data, nearly half (49%) were performed in the first five months of the pandemic (March to July 2020), and 84% within the first year of the pandemic (March 2020-February 2021). There were many studies in South and Southeast Asia, Southern Europe, China, and the United States, and fewer studies in other regions. The pandemic created challenges and opportunities, with heterogeneity in impacts among industrial and small-scale sectors, production methods, geographies, value chains, and by gender. Cumulative impacts from climate change and conflicts contributed to pandemic-related hardships. Increased unemployment and inflation led to rising food insecurity for small-scale producers, fishworkers, and low-income households. Aquatic food intake was more severely affected than other food groups during lockdowns, and it decreased more in low- and middle-income countries than in high-income countries. Responses were diverse, reflecting the capacity and resources of a country, but in general there was unprecedented public support to sustain the private sector (i.e., income support, tax relief, subsidies). As this study focused mainly on the first year of the pandemic, future work is needed to identify which groups exited the pandemic stronger or weaker, what factors enabled some populations to bounce-back, how the crisis affected value chains, and the effectiveness of interventions.
Despite the option to connect an external power source, it comes across as quite an obvious design flaw and one which can quickly turn into a pricy endeavor with repeated use. ...observing deep-sky ...objects was somewhat less thrilling than planetary viewing, as much of the open clusters stored in the GoTo's address book simply didn't fit in the field of view. A pack of 8x AAs were quickly drained, so an external power supply is the most reliable option for uninterrupted viewing.
The aim of the study was to use multiple in vitro assays to assess the effects of a model irritant, sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) (≤10 mM (0.29 %, w/v)), on an in vitro model of the airway, ...MucilAir™. The use of MucilAir™ in recovery studies was also explored.
A 24 h exposure increased IL-8 release at an SDS concentration ≥0.63 mM (0.018 %, w/v). Mucin secretion increased and transepithelial electrical resistance (TEER) decreased at SDS concentrations ≥1.25 mM (0.04 %, w/v). Cytotoxicity (lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release into basolateral chamber) was observed at SDS concentrations of ≥2.5 mM (0.07 %, w/v). The sensitivity of the assays was IL-8 release > TEER = mucin secretion > LDH release.
After 7 days, full or partial recovery was observed for intermediate concentrations of SDS using all assays but not at 5 and 10 mM SDS. Morphologically, erosion and cell loss were observed at these concentrations. Resazurin metabolism at 7 days tended to decrease in a dose-dependent manner at SDS concentrations above 2.5 mM (0.07 %, w/v).
Together, these data support a No Observable Effect Level of 0.31 mM (0.009 % w/v) SDS and the use of MucilAir™ as a relevant model for airway toxicity studies.
•Simultaneous endpoint assays were used to assess the respiratory toxicity of SDS.•3D model assay sensitivity was IL8 release > TEER = mucin secretion > LDH release.•MucilAir™ was used to study recovery from SDS toxic insult.•MucilAir™ was used to calculate a No Observable Effect Level of SDS.•MucilAir™ can replace acute in vivo regulatory respiratory toxicology tests.
Over the past 20 years, increasing land values, a rising population and inward investment from overseas have combined to encourage the demolition and redevelopment of many large council-owned estates ...across London. While it is now widely speculated that this is causing gentrification and displacement, the extent to which it has forced low-income households to move away from their local community remains to a large degree conjectural and specific to those estates that have undergone special scrutiny. Given the lack of spatially disaggregated migration data that allows us to study patterns of dispersal from individual estates, in this article, we report on an attempt to use consumer-derived data (LCRs) to infer relocations at a high spatial resolution. The evidence presented suggests that around 85% of those displaced remain in London, with most remaining in borough, albeit there is evidence of an increasing number of moves out of London to the South-East and East of England.
Dietary supplementation with beetroot juice (BR) has been shown to reduce resting blood pressure and the O(2) cost of submaximal exercise and to increase tolerance to high-intensity cycling. We ...tested the hypothesis that the physiological effects of BR were consequent to its high NO(3)(-) content per se, and not the presence of other potentially bioactive compounds. We investigated changes in blood pressure, mitochondrial oxidative capacity (Q(max)), and physiological responses to walking and moderate- and severe-intensity running following dietary supplementation with BR and NO(3)(-)-depleted BR placebo (PL). After control (nonsupplemented) tests, nine healthy, physically active male subjects were assigned in a randomized, double-blind, crossover design to receive BR (0.5 l/day, containing ∼6.2 mmol of NO(3)(-)) and PL (0.5 l/day, containing ∼0.003 mmol of NO(3)(-)) for 6 days. Subjects completed treadmill exercise tests on days 4 and 5 and knee-extension exercise tests for estimation of Q(max) (using (31)P-magnetic resonance spectroscopy) on day 6 of the supplementation periods. Relative to PL, BR elevated plasma NO(2)(-) concentration (183 ± 119 vs. 373 ± 211 nM, P < 0.05) and reduced systolic blood pressure (129 ± 9 vs. 124 ± 10 mmHg, P < 0.01). Q(max) was not different between PL and BR (0.93 ± 0.05 and 1.05 ± 0.22 mM/s, respectively). The O(2) cost of walking (0.87 ± 0.12 and 0.70 ± 0.10 l/min in PL and BR, respectively, P < 0.01), moderate-intensity running (2.26 ± 0.27 and 2.10 ± 0.28 l/min in PL and BR, respectively, P < 0.01), and severe-intensity running (end-exercise O(2) uptake = 3.77 ± 0.57 and 3.50 ± 0.62 l/min in PL and BL, respectively, P < 0.01) was reduced by BR, and time to exhaustion during severe-intensity running was increased by 15% (7.6 ± 1.5 and 8.7 ± 1.8 min in PL and BR, respectively, P < 0.01). In contrast, relative to control, PL supplementation did not alter plasma NO(2)(-) concentration, blood pressure, or the physiological responses to exercise. These results indicate that the positive effects of 6 days of BR supplementation on the physiological responses to exercise can be ascribed to the high NO(3)(-) content per se.
Mesothelioma is an aggressive asbestos induced cancer with extremely poor prognosis and limited treatment options. Immune checkpoint blockade (ICPB) has demonstrated effective therapy in melanoma and ...is now being applied to other cancers, including mesothelioma. However, the efficacy of ICPB and which immune checkpoint combinations constitute the best therapeutic option for mesothelioma have yet to be fully elucidated. Here, we used our well characterised mesothelioma tumour model to investigate the efficacy of different ICBP treatments to generate effective therapy for mesothelioma. We show that tumour resident regulatory T cell co-express high levels of CTLA-4, OX40 and GITR relative to T effector subsets and that these receptors are co-expressed on a large proportion of cells. Targeting any of CTLA-4, OX40 or GITR individually generated effective responses against mesothelioma. Furthermore, the combination of αCTLA-4 and αOX40 was synergistic, with an increase in complete tumour regressions from 20% to 80%. Other combinations did not synergise to enhance treatment outcomes. Finally, an early pattern in T cell response was predictive of response, with activation status and ICP receptor expression profile of T effector cells harvested from tumour and dLN correlating with response to immunotherapy. Taken together, these data demonstrate that combination ICPB can work synergistically to induce strong, durable immunity against mesothelioma in an animal model.
Assessment of disease burden and drug efficacy is achieved preclinically using high resolution micro computed tomography (CT). However, micro-CT is not applicable to clinical human imaging due to ...operating at high dose. In addition, the technology differences between micro-CT and standard clinical CT prevent direct translation of preclinical applications. The current proof-of-concept study presents spectral photon-counting CT as a clinically translatable, molecular imaging tool by assessing contrast uptake in an ex-vivo mouse model of pulmonary tuberculosis (TB). Iodine, a common contrast used in clinical CT imaging, was introduced into a murine model of TB. The excised mouse lungs were imaged using a standard micro-CT subsystem (SuperArgus) and the contrast enhanced TB lesions quantified. The same lungs were imaged using a spectral photoncounting CT system (MARS small-bore scanner). Iodine and soft tissues (water and lipid) were materially separated, and iodine uptake quantified. The volume of the TB infection quantified by spectral CT and micro-CT was found to be 2.96 mm 3 and 2.83 mm 3 , respectively. This proof-of-concept study showed that spectral photon-counting CT could be used as a predictive preclinical imaging tool for the purpose of facilitating drug discovery and development. Also, as this imaging modality is available for human trials, all applications are translatable to human imaging. In conclusion, spectral photon-counting CT could accelerate a deeper understanding of infectious lung diseases using targeted pharmaceuticals and intrinsic markers, and ultimately improve the efficacy of therapies by measuring drug delivery and response to treatment in animal models and later in humans.
In this article, we propose a slice-based interactive segmentation of spectral CT datasets using a bag of features method. The data are acquired from a MARS scanner that divides up the X-ray spectrum ...into multiple energy bins for imaging. In literature, most existing segmentation methods are limited to performing a specific task or tied to a particular imaging modality. Therefore, when applying generalized methods to MARS datasets, the additional energy information acquired from the scanner cannot be sufficiently utilized. We describe a new approach that circumvents this problem by effectively aggregating the data from multiple channels. Our method solves a classification problem to get the solution for segmentation. Starting with a set of labeled pixels, we partition the data using superpixels. Then, a set of local descriptors, extracted from each superpixel, are encoded into a codebook and pooled together to create a global superpixel-level descriptor (bag of features representation). We propose to use the vector of locally aggregated descriptors as our encoding/pooling strategy, as it is efficient to compute and leads to good results with simple linear classifiers. A linear support vector machine is then used to classify the superpixels into different labels. The proposed method was evaluated on multiple MARS datasets. Experimental results show that our method achieved an average of more than 10% increase in the accuracy over other state-of-the-art methods.
‘In this age of astonishing political volatility, politicians shouldn’t be afraid to embrace radical ideas. That’s why I came out for basic income – and why I think it must be part of the debate ...going forward.’In early 2016, using the freedom from collective responsibility that I had recently attained by leaving the Labour frontbench, I wrote an article for the New Statesman entitled: ‘How I learnt to stop worrying and love basic income’.For some time I had maintained a closet interest in UBI, and felt the time was now right to talk openly about why it appealed. But writing this piece was not without reputational risk. I was acutely conscious it would be written up as ‘mainstream MP backs non-mainstream idea’.Yet the reaction was extremely positive. I attribute this to two principal things: first, concerns about how the welfare state is operating at present in the UK; and second, concerns about how the welfare state might survive the transition into the future, especially in a world of automation and digital self-employment.But as well as both of these I wanted to address the challenges faced by politicians on the left when it comes to rapid economic change and the impact that can have.My outlook on politics is fundamentally shaped by my experience of growing up in the North East of England in the 1980s. The closure of entire industries, like coal and shipbuilding, had dramatic and fundamental consequences for the areas built around them. The same is true of the areas that have lost elements of the steel industry today. I still believe the Thatcher government’s abject response to deindustrialisation lies at the heart of many of the problems the UK faces, such as low skills, worklessness and poor public health. The UK spent a fraction of what other countries, such as Sweden, spent on education and retraining as traditional industries declined, and we have suffered the consequences.The left no longer has a convincing answer to how it should respond to seismic economic change. The traditional response, calling for the nationalisation of failing industries, doesn’t solve the problem. Running an industry at a loss because it is subsidised by the taxpayer is not a long-term answer.
These are worrying times for those of us who believe in a welfare state that supports people from the cradle to the grave. In the past seven years, under the cover of a global financial crisis, the ...British government has accelerated the scaling back of the state, a process that began in the early 1980s, and has gradually chipped away at social security provision. Housing benefit has been slashed, child benefit is no longer universal and many of the services that people rely on in their communities – from libraries to children’s centres – have been sacrificed at the altar of austerity.
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