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"Slade, M"
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Personal recovery, clinical recovery and patient-rated measures
2023
This talk will cover two common areas of confusion. First, the relationship between personal recovery and clinical recovery will be described, using recent meta-analytic evidence. It will be argued that personal recovery is not the same as clinical recovery, and that there is now an established policy and practice consensus that supporting personal recovery is the primary aim of mental health systems. Traditional clinical recovery-oriented treatments which target for example symptomatology or relapse prevention can for many people with mental health issues contribute to their recovery at points in their lives, but for others different approaches are needed. This variation in clinical need is addressed in the second area – patient-rated measures. The rationale for measures of experiential knowledge will be given. A distinction will be drawn between Patient-rated outcome measures (PROMs) and Patient-rated experience measures (PREMs), and between peer-developed patient-generated PROMs (PG-PROMs) compared with those developed by non-peer research teams. It will be argued that modern mental health systems should be judged by their impact on recovery, as measured using PROMs and PREMs in preference to staff-rated measures.Disclosure of InterestNone Declared
Journal Article
Functional identity and diversity of animals predict ecosystem functioning better than species-based indices
2015
Drastic biodiversity declines have raised concerns about the deterioration of ecosystem functions and have motivated much recent research on the relationship between species diversity and ecosystem functioning. A functional trait framework has been proposed to improve the mechanistic understanding of this relationship, but this has rarely been tested for organisms other than plants. We analysed eight datasets, including five animal groups, to examine how well a trait-based approach, compared with a more traditional taxonomic approach, predicts seven ecosystem functions below- and above-ground. Trait-based indices consistently provided greater explanatory power than species richness or abundance. The frequency distributions of single or multiple traits in the community were the best predictors of ecosystem functioning. This implies that the ecosystem functions we investigated were underpinned by the combination of trait identities (i.e. single-trait indices) and trait complementarity (i.e. multi-trait indices) in the communities. Our study provides new insights into the general mechanisms that link biodiversity to ecosystem functioning in natural animal communities and suggests that the observed responses were due to the identity and dominance patterns of the trait composition rather than the number or abundance of species per se.
Journal Article
The role of dung beetles in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from cattle farming
by
TUOMISTO Hanna Leena
,
RIUTTA Terhi
,
ROSLIN Tomas
in
631/158/2456
,
631/158/2458
,
704/106/694/682
2016
Agriculture is one of the largest anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gases (GHGs), with dairy and beef production accounting for nearly two-thirds of emissions. Several recent papers suggest that dung beetles may affect fluxes of GHGs from cattle farming. Here, we put these previous findings into context. Using Finland as an example, we assessed GHG emissions at three scales: the dung pat, pasture ecosystem, and whole lifecycle of milk or beef production. At the first two levels, dung beetles reduced GHG emissions by up to 7% and 12% respectively, mainly through large reductions in methane (CH4) emissions. However, at the lifecycle level, dung beetles accounted for only a 0.05–0.13% reduction of overall GHG emissions. This mismatch derives from the fact that in intensive production systems, only a limited fraction of all cow pats end up on pastures, offering limited scope for dung beetle mitigation of GHG fluxes. In contrast, we suggest that the effects of dung beetles may be accentuated in tropical countries, where more manure is left on pastures, and dung beetles remove and aerate dung faster, and that this is thus a key area for future research. These considerations give a new perspective on previous results perspective, and suggest that studies of biotic effects on GHG emissions from dung pats on a global scale are a priority for current research.
Publication
Large Longitude Libration of Mercury Reveals a Molten Core
2007
Observations of radar speckle patterns tied to the rotation of Mercury establish that the planet occupies a Cassini state with obliquity of 2.11 ± 0.1 arc minutes. The measurements show that the planet exhibits librations in longitude that are forced at the 88-day orbital period, as predicted by theory. The large amplitude of the oscillations, 35.8 ± 2 arc seconds, together with the Mariner 10 determination of the gravitational harmonic coefficient C₂₂, indicates that the mantle of Mercury is decoupled from a core that is at least partially molten.
Journal Article
Dung beetle species interactions and multifunctionality are affected by an experimentally warmed climate
2016
While substantial effort has been invested in modelling changes in species distribution with climate change, less attention has been given to how climate warming will affect interactions among co-occurring species, and the cascading functional consequences. In this study, realistic dung beetle communities were subjected to an experimental warming treatment and the net effect on the functions of dung decomposition (in terms of dung mass) and plant productivity (in terms of biomass production of ryegrass grown on soil from underneath the dung pats) were examined. A priori, we hypothesized that the largest tunneling species would be functionally dominant, and be differently affected by experimental warming compared to pat-dwelling, smaller species. In terms of dung decomposition, the largest beetles did prove to be the functionally most important, with the qualitative pattern unaffected by experimental warming. In contrast, for plant productivity all species appeared equally important under ambient conditions. However, the effects of single species on plant productivity were reduced as temperature increased: In a warmed climate, a combination of both tunneling and pat-dwelling species came the closest to returning ecosystem functioning to levels found in the ambient treatment. These results suggest different roles for different species, and highlight the importance of maintaining multiple species within an ecosystem – particularly when systems are perturbed.
Journal Article
Declining Skeletal Muscle Function in Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy
2017
The present review highlights current concepts regarding the effects of diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) in skeletal muscle. It discusses the lack of effective pharmacologic treatments and the role of physical exercise intervention in limb protection and symptom reversal. It also highlights the importance of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques in providing a mechanistic understanding of the disease and helping develop targeted treatments.
This review provides a comprehensive reporting on the effects of DPN in the skeletal muscle of patients with diabetes. It also provides an update on the most recent trials of exercise intervention targeting DPN pathology. Lastly, we report on emerging MRI techniques that have shown promise in providing a mechanistic understanding of DPN and can help improve the design and implementation of clinical trials in the future.
Impairments in lower limb muscles reduce functional capacity and contribute to altered gait, increased fall risk, and impaired balance in patients with DPN. This finding is an important concern for patients with DPN because their falls are likely to be injurious and lead to bone fractures, poorly healing wounds, and chronic infections that may require amputation. Preliminary studies have shown that moderate-intensity exercise programs are well tolerated by patients with DPN. They can improve their cardiorespiratory function and partially reverse some of the symptoms of DPN. MRI has the potential to bring new mechanistic insights into the effects of DPN as well as to objectively measure small changes in DPN pathology as a result of intervention.
Noninvasive exercise intervention is particularly valuable in DPN because of its safety, low cost, and potential to augment pharmacologic interventions. As we gain a better mechanistic understanding of the disease, more targeted and effective interventions can be designed.
Journal Article
Riparian buffers in tropical agriculture
by
Gray, Claudia L.
,
Slade, Eleanor M.
,
Williamson, Joseph
in
Agricultural ecosystems
,
Agricultural management
,
Agriculture
2019
There is a weak evidence base supporting the effective management of riparian ecosystems within tropical agriculture. Policies to protect riparian buffers—strips of non‐cultivated land alongside waterways—are vague and vary greatly between countries. From a rapid evidence appraisal, we find that riparian buffers are beneficial to hydrology, water quality, biodiversity and some ecosystem functions in tropical landscapes. However, effects on connectivity, carbon storage and emissions reduction remain understudied. Riparian functions are mediated by buffer width and habitat quality, but explicit threshold recommendations are rare. Policy implications. A one‐size fits all width criterion, commonly applied, will be insufficient to provide all riparian functions in all circumstances. Context‐specific guidelines for allocating, restoring and managing riparian buffers are necessary to minimise continued degradation of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in tropical agriculture. A one‐size fits all width criterion, commonly applied, will be insufficient to provide all riparian functions in all circumstances. Context‐specific guidelines for allocating, restoring and managing riparian buffers are necessary to minimise continued degradation of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in tropical agriculture.
Journal Article
Clovis point allometry, modularity, and integration: Exploring shape variation due to tool use with landmark-based geometric morphometrics
by
Thulman, David K.
,
Shott, Michael J.
,
Slade, Alan M.
in
Allometry
,
Archaeology
,
Biology and Life Sciences
2023
Landmark-based geometric morphometrics (LGM) is most often used in archaeology to characterize and differentiate groups of artifacts, but it can be used for much more. We demonstrate LGM’s power to uncover new insights by exploring stone-tool allometry, modularity, and integration using a sample of 100 western North American Clovis points. Here, allometry concerns how stone tools change in shape as their size changes through their use-lives, and modularity and integration concern how the constituent parts of a tool work together. We show that Clovis points are surprisingly complex tools. When their blades and hafts are defined technologically, rather than arbitrarily, they unambiguously exhibit allometry, and their hafts and blades are modular and highly integrated. We use these analyses to further explore questions about Clovis points, including the differences between cache and non-cache points. Finally, we use heuristic haft-size categories to examine functional constraints on the shape and size of hafts and blades. This work illustrates the importance of using accurate measurements of point components rather than estimates or proxies, which can lead to unfounded inferences. These analytical approaches and accompanying R code are easily transferable to other research questions of stone-tool use.
Journal Article
Quantifying Beetle-Mediated Effects on Gas Fluxes from Dung Pats
by
Minkkinen, Kari
,
Riutta, Terhi
,
Penttilä, Atte
in
Agriculture
,
Air pollution
,
Air pollution control
2013
Agriculture is one of the largest contributors of the anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs) responsible for global warming. Measurements of gas fluxes from dung pats suggest that dung is a source of GHGs, but whether these emissions are modified by arthropods has not been studied. A closed chamber system was used to measure the fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) from dung pats with and without dung beetles on a grass sward. The presence of dung beetles significantly affected the fluxes of GHGs from dung pats. Most importantly, fresh dung pats emitted higher amounts of CO2 and lower amounts of CH4 per day in the presence than absence of beetles. Emissions of N2O showed a distinct peak three weeks after the start of the experiment--a pattern detected only in the presence of beetles. When summed over the main grazing season (June-July), total emissions of CH4 proved significantly lower, and total emissions of N2O significantly higher in the presence than absence of beetles. While clearly conditional on the experimental conditions, the patterns observed here reveal a potential impact of dung beetles on gas fluxes realized at a small spatial scale, and thereby suggest that arthropods may have an overall effect on gas fluxes from agriculture. Dissecting the exact mechanisms behind these effects, mapping out the range of conditions under which they occur, and quantifying effect sizes under variable environmental conditions emerge as key priorities for further research.
Journal Article